Rebecca Watkins has earned an Honorable Mention in Streetlight’s 2024 Essay/Memoir Contest
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from a troubled dream, he found himself changed in his bed to some monstrous kind of vermin.”
—The Metamorphosis
***
It was winter, 2021 when my first Nespresso machine, Helga, died. I am not the kind of person who names my personal belongings, but I figure it would be more enjoyable to read “The Story of Helga” instead of “The Story of the Nespresso Machine,” so I am calling her Helga. I had noticed, once or twice on my way into the morning kitchen, that roaches were gathering on the counter near Helga, and scattering back to the wall when I turned on the lights. I ignored it, probably too comfortable with the cockroaches that lived in my kitchen, and I continued making my lattes as usual. Around the same time, I started casually talking to a biology PhD student I met on Tinder who I’ll refer to as Jared because his eyes reminded me of Jared Leto. We would meet once a week for dinner and casual sleepovers. He had just gotten out of a serious relationship and was not looking to seriously date. Jared and I became interested in trying new places to eat around Tallahassee, watching movies together, going Kayaking, taking walks, and sometimes even studying together. When he came over for study dates, I would proudly serve him lattes. A couple of days before winter break, he came over and I made him a latte, only to discover little legs floating in the foam. I did a double take, hoping it was just a gnat, and picked it out. This unmentionable discovery was a clear sign to me that roaches were living in Helga and that Jared and I had possibly been consuming cockroaches for who knows how long.
***
I moved to Tallahassee, Fla. in the summer of 2019 to begin a writing program. My parents and I filled an extra-large Penske trunk with my furniture, clothes, books, pots, pans, coffee mugs, and most importantly, my new Nespresso machine. We caravanned my little red Yaris and the Penske rental truck from Indianapolis to Tallahassee through the night after having packed all day. When we got to the apartment complex the next morning, the manager told us that we were not allowed to see the apartment until I signed a contract. I hadn’t slept for over twenty-four hours and my cat had to pee. As I sifted through the lease papers, the Florida heat dripped down my forehead. I knew that I could not sign these papers without seeing the apartment I would soon call home. My mom, who was also caught off guard by this impossible rule, came to my aid and muttered (loud enough so that the manager could hear) that we should look elsewhere. We soon became “an exception” to the rule. Once we got inside, we realized why he had wanted us to sign so quickly. The apartment was filthy. There were crumbs in the drawers, food stains in the fridge, dog fur all over the carpet (and somehow also in the fridge), a missing closet door, and a wet musty smell. We told the manager that I could not move into such a dirty apartment, and they reluctantly brought back the cleaning lady.
We probably should have looked elsewhere.
The next day we put some furniture together, hung some frames, had a meal and then my parents flew home. I was alone in a new state for the first time in my life. I settled quickly into the apartment and was soon busy with classes and new friends. Still, I found after the first week of living alone that I was incredibly lonely. I had never really lived alone. I had either lived with siblings, roommates or in my parents’ carriage house. I created routines to stave off loneliness. I lit candles, rearranged my furniture every few weeks, baked chocolate croissants, and made iced lattes to enjoy in the mornings while I read on my screened lanai. I belted my favorite Broadway songs, painted canvas, embroidered, and wrote in the evenings. At times, I loved being alone, talking to myself or my cat, and cooking strange meals like fried Nutella shortbread or Hot Cheeto salads with no fear of judgment. Other times, the loneliness kept me awake watching X-Files or Sabrina the Teenage Witch reruns.
***
Cockroaches suffer from loneliness, too. They need physical touch to sexually mature and tend to stay in groups. In my first year of living alone, I called my parents and siblings nearly every day. I had weekly movie-watching sessions with my parents over Facetime. We would turn on an episode of Downton Abbey or Mrs. Maisel at the same time and mute ourselves. But it was important that I could see them on my phone, propped up next to my TV. Following the first semester of my graduate studies, Covid-19 hit, and classes were soon virtual. I was home more often and only saw my friends at the pool, where we sat in the sun and read, six feet apart, sucking on margarita popsicles. It is a strange thing to get a PhD during a global pandemic; what is meant to be a social experience, with face-to-face workshops and new writing buddies, turned into email thread workshop responses and computer screen faces.
During these days, my apartment was either totally disheveled or sparking clean—there was no in-between. But an apartment that is often dirty, and rarely really clean, tends to retain an inside layer of filth—a smudge that never really lifts. I am not the cleanest, tidiest, or most organized person you’ll ever meet. Nowhere close. I clean only when it becomes too overwhelming not to. I am sure my standards for overwhelming are much lower than the average person reading this.
One morning, I awoke to a kitchen crawling with roaches. My new routine was disrupted; a new fear unlocked. I called maintenance and they called the spray guy to come to my apartment. I called my parents, and they told me to go to Target and look for roach repellent, so I spent over fifty dollars on sprays and traps before the bug guy even got there. I stayed on the porch with my cat while the spray guy did his thing, figuring it may take a while. When he waved goodbye after only two minutes, I was concerned—there was no way it would take so little time. I had imagined, naively, that the spray guy was going to use toxic chemicals and even potentially fumigate or tent my apartment. I called the apartment manager to ask what the protocol was for spraying, and he said they only sprayed the kitchen. My roach problem did not go away. I began researching how much tent fumigation would cost and if I was allowed to have that done in an apartment complex.
My apartment neighbors also admitted to having a roach problem and we discussed our various extermination strategies, but no matter what we tried, no matter how clean I attempted to be, the roaches wouldn’t leave or die. I bought traps and sprays, boric acid, and wall plug-ins that make a loud annoying sound only small creatures can hear. I tried to block out possible entrances and hiding places with sealing paste. I used essential oils, bleach, and anything else the internet said might help. Nothing worked.
I drove to Indiana for winter break and decided, despite having seen the roach legs, to take Helga with me. I was hoping that the infestation was all in my head—one unfortunate event, not a series of them. It didn’t occur to me that I was potentially bringing my roach problem to my parent’s home—during COVID-19, no less. On the twelve-hour drive home, I noticed that my hands, arms, and scalp were covered in what looked like eczema spots and itched like chicken pox. I had chicken pox as a kid but never had eczema. I went to the doctor, and he told me it was contact dermatitis and asked if my environment had changed at all.
After about one week home, my dad approached me in the kitchen as I was making my way to Helga for my morning latte and told me that he’d seen a cockroach scurry from the machine earlier. He told me that Helga was secured in a trash bag outside and that he was hoping the snowy cold would freeze the roaches to death. Helga never worked after that, and while we had no real hope for her to come back from the dead, I still took her with me back to Tallahassee, and stuck **her in the freezer for a couple more weeks, just in case. Helga’s frozen corpse was trapped in the tropical paradise-scented trash bag, taking up more space in my freezer than the ice cream I hoarded during Covid, and I wondered if the cockroaches thawed out the day I finally took Helga, in her body bag, to the dumpster.
***
The german Cockroach (Blattella Germanica) is not as great a pathogen threat as people think it is. However, they are, in large numbers or perhaps when frequently consumed, a source of allergens. Were roaches the cause of my contact dermatitis? Could they have been the environmental change my doctor inquired about?
Roaches are hated possibly more than any other insect crawling around in our homes. They are fast, ugly, crunch when stepped on, and—yes—invade our most treasured appliances. When I worked as a barista, one of my co-workers casually mentioned to me that there are traces of cockroaches in ground coffee sold in stores. This, like my cockroach latte, is hard to stomach. I once discovered a mouse crawling around under my blanket while masturbating in the attic of my childhood home and I still hate cockroaches more than mice.
My colleagues and friends informed me that there likely wasn’t a single apartment in town that didn’t have a roach problem. Roaches love Florida. Could this be true? Are the Florida roaches impossible to escape? Is it not that I am a hopelessly dirty person? What great and terrible news. Roaches tend to thrive in Florida because of the warm and humid environment. And of course, roaches do not exist only in Florida, but to me and my friends who had just moved here and were facing this problem for the first time, they were Florida bugs. When I lived in Indiana, I never saw roaches, only large ants that crawled on the kitchen countertops during the summer months, but they didn’t invade our coffee pots and were much easier to kill. This doesn’t mean that Indiana doesn’t have cockroaches, but I was trying to convince myself that roaches were a Florida problem instead of a me problem. I wanted to believe that my introduction to cockroaches was related to climate and not my poor cleaning habits.
I was raised to be clean and tidy. I did my assigned chores because I had to, or because I got a weekly allowance. I cleaned my room when I was told, but it never occurred to me to pick up after myself each day. Cleaning has always been a hassle and a bore. I threw fits when I was told to pick something up. I still throw fits when someone tells me to pick something up. When I lived in a house during college, my parents would visit and carefully inspect the house for messes—as if no matter how clean I thought it was, it would never be clean enough—evidenced by that rat we found behind the stove that chewed through the wires and well, you know.
The association of being a messy, dirty person has been sewn into the very fabric of my being—I cannot say when this became a characteristic of me, but it is, and it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere fast.
My partner, Jojo, is equally messy, so we often run into issues around cleaning. But being messy isn’t the same as not wanting something clean—we truly wish that our space was pristine, we just cannot keep it that way for long. We recently moved in with his parents to save some money and wait out the nightmare 7% mortgage rates. While Jojo and I are equally responsible for our mess, his parents assume it is his mess, not mine. Perhaps to preserve our early in-law relationship, they nod my way, laugh at his boyish filth, and applaud me for keeping him in order. As a girl, I am assumed to be clean and neat; as a boy, he must be a slob. But my parents and closest friends know the truth, and Jojo’s parents are catching on. I am the only person in my family with this label—my three siblings are all tidy, Type A people and while they accept me for my messiness, they do not understand it. My living in an apartment plagued with cockroaches only confirmed this embarrassing attribute. Would the roaches disappear if one of my siblings lived there? Are roaches drawn to me? These are questions I wish I didn’t have to ask.
I applied for a writing workshop held entirely online due to COVID-19 and was excited to have the opportunity to meet and talk about writing with one of my favorite authors. The workshop took place over a week and included full days of seminars, group writing and talks. I did not leave my apartment for the entire week. I didn’t want to miss a minute of the workshop and needed to use the extra time I had editing the essay I would read on the final day. On the last day of the workshop, I heard a knock on my door. I was in the middle of a seminar and figured it was maintenance. I thought that if I ignored it, they would just go away. After a few seconds, the knock returned, so I put on my mask, cracked open the front door, and stuck just my head out to hide my outfit: ruffled blouse, running shorts, socks, and crocs. The knocker turned out to be my downstairs neighbor. He had moved in a few months prior and always waved to me on his way in if I was reading on my porch.
“Uh, I don’t know how to say this,” he said, “but maggots are falling from your landing.” I turned on my outside lights and we both looked down to find that the trash bag I left on my landing all week was swarming with maggots. There were maggots in and on the bag and maggots that had already migrated away from the bag, onto the wall and floor, dripping down below.
“Oh my god. I am so sorry,” I shrieked. “This is beyond mortifying.”
Brent let out a little laugh, “Yeah, it happens. I just wanted to let you know. I was unlocking my door and felt one on my head, looked up and saw a bunch of them falling and figured I should tell you.”
I apologized profusely. I told him about the workshop as an attempt to prove that I really hadn’t left my apartment in days and jabbered on about what a tough year it has been.
He smiled and said it was okay and I slowly backed into my apartment, signaling the end of this horrifying encounter. I closed the door, found two fresh trash bags to contain the maggot-infested one, grabbed roach spray, a pair of boots for stomping, a broom, gloves, and I cleaned up my maggot problem.
At the end of the night, I wrote Brent a note apologizing for the mess and thanked him for being so kind and understanding. The next morning, I woke up to find a Barefoot Bubbly Moscato bottle on my placemat with a sticky note from Brent thanking me for the letter. I consider myself to be a decent human, but if I were Brent, there is no way I would have given me that Moscato. I would still be reeling from maggots falling onto my head, so he wins Best Human of the Year award in my book.
I am a messy person, but I do not want to be like this forever. So far, my messiness has followed me from home to apartment to apartment to house—each time I move, I imagine that the new place will transform me and motivate me to change. In 2015, when I bought my first car, I told myself that this was an opportunity to become the kind of person who keeps her car clean, but as I write this, my car is in desperate need of a detail. There is mildew on the passenger side floor because about a month ago the AC unit had a clog and water spilled out that I never dried or cleaned up. My mother is coming to town and asked me to borrow my car. It is a problem, but at least it is motivation to clean. Why does it take the presence of other people to “get clean”?
While I am not a true fan of punk music, Jojo is. One of his favorite artists, Pat the Bunny, wrote that “a clean floor is nice to walk on . . . and someday we may even be able to sweep the floor because we respect the dignity of our feet.” I wonder at what point I will choose to clean for me and for the dignity that comes with a tidy, clean home. I am working on these habits, but I fear I cannot sustain a clean life.
I try to convince myself that my messiness is related to my creative side—I keep art supplies, notebooks, pens and pencils, inspiration boards with pinned quotes and phrases I find particularly stunning, art in mismatched frames, candlesticks, books, and a ton of other weird stuff that must remain on display because it makes me feel like me. My space, clean and tidy or not, is chaotic and full. I am a maximalist—a trend that found its way into my Instagram algorithm, likely when my older sister sent me an image of a beautifully decorated home with overflowing bookshelves, overgrown plants, walls covered in art or busy wallpaper, knick-knacks, and old furniture, and said it reminded her of me. Sure, I have a cockroach problem and have had maggot problems, but I also have a collection, like Ariel, of neat stuff that distracts my guests from looking at the floor.
While I hate cockroaches with a passion, I still find them to be extraordinary in their resilience and adaptability. They can survive almost anything—except a stomp of the foot. Cockroaches have been around for 120-130 million years.
***
Valditermes brennae and Cretaholocompsa montsecana are the oldest known cockroach fossils, found somewhere between the end of the Jurassic and beginning of the Cretaceous. Perhaps all I need to do is adapt like cockroaches do—to evolve with each new challenge or life stage.
Perhaps I will wake up tomorrow a modern Gregor Samsa, human metamorphosed into insect, though hopefully not meeting the same fate. Maybe this adaptation for me looks like building a cleaning routine like my impressively type A siblings. Perhaps it looks like making the conscious choice to scrub out old dishes before the mold grows. But more so, maybe it means finding an apartment that doesn’t already have a roach problem—if that exists in Florida.
They say that cleanliness is next to Godliness. If so, cockroaches must have a place in heaven because they eat up my crumbs. If so, I suppose it’s also safe to assume that I am going straight to hell.
Share this post with your friends.
