Free Wrecked by Charlotte Roche

forcing children to humiliate themselves.
    I was heavily indebted to my previous husband. The first thing my new husband did was pay off all my debts, and I’ve never been able to completely cast off the feeling that he bought me from my ex-husband like an old camel. I think it’s true, I let myself be bought—because I badly needed security. I was such a mess mentally from my trauma that I couldn’t have dealt with a life weighed down by debt. Georg was able not only to fill the financial role of the father but to fill the mental role of both parents. Naturally Frau Drescher thinks this is too much pressure to put on my new husband, and she’s probably right again. But I’m still working through that with her.
    I get my daughter ready for bed. For seven years it’s been the same routine, like in prison: bathe, brush your teeth, go to the bathroom. For me, brushing your teeth is a matter of life and death. I think that only low-class scumbags ever have kids with bad teeth. Especially bad baby teeth. That’s just not acceptable. You have to drastically reduce their intake of sweets. And you have to make sure they brush their teeth at least once a day. For a good long time. I’ve developed some nasty tricks to ensure proper oral hygiene despite the natural opposition of my daughter. I use the same trick that people typically use to impose moral behavior—they invent a god and say that he sees everything, so you’d better be good.
    When she was still little, I talked to my daughter constantly about the tooth trolls named Cavity and Bacteria. They are children’s book characters invented by the German government or something in order to get kids to stick to a good oral hygiene regimen. It’s pure scare tactics. The book explains that the tooth trolls feed on bits of food left in your mouth and that their excretions burn holes in your teeth. I told Liza over and over, “If you don’t brush, Cavity and Bacteria will come with their hammer and sickle and bludgeon holes in your teeth—and those holes will hurt, which will mean you’ll have to go to the dentist, who will have to drill into your teeth before he can fill in the holes.”
    The comparison to God is not so apt, though, since Cavity and Bacteria are real, basically, and there are real consequences if you don’t brush. With God there are never any consequences. God doesn’t see everything or punish anything—because there is no such thing as God. Liza has so thoroughly internalized the importance of brushing her teeth that sometimes, when it’s really late and I am inclined to lay her sleeping body in bedfully clothed, she wakes with a start and goes to brush her teeth because in her paranoia she thinks she’ll wake up with loads of holes in her teeth. All the better. She’ll thank me one day—or probably not. When friends of ours with kids the same age tell us that their children have cavities, I act as if it’s totally normal. But in reality I’m thinking,
Oh, God, what a terrible mother she is!
I get off on the fact that my child has no cavities. All because of me and me alone! Ha!
    Then we go into her room and I lie down next to her and read. Right now we’re reading
Gulliver’s Travels
.
    She asks, “Mama, why are you whispering?”
    No idea. I have to think about it myself. Why indeed? “Um, to make it more suspenseful?”
    “Stop it.”
    I continue reading, without whispering. Then I stop at an awkward point and allow myself to be persuaded to read a little further. I learned that from Jan-Uwe Rogge. You should be hard and follow through on things, but once in a while you should also show children that they can convince their parents to change their minds, using charm and a good argument. They should learn to convince people, to change their minds. Liza learns that from me.
    After reading, I sing the two songs that I’ve sung to her since she was nursing. Just so she has constants in her life—something I never had. The first song is