8:45 AM Dentist Appointment

Each time she placed rubber gloved hands inside my mouth I gagged, my teeth’s chattering barely controlled by the light pressure of her hand. “You’re pale today. Are you feeling okay?” but how could I confess the source of my hypervigilant gag reflex and my gentle trembling with her hands between my jaws, reclined in this chair with the spotlight on my mouth? I blinked away tears hoping she was focusing on my teeth. Cleanings are too hard to reschedule for day sleepers, even on the morning I found her, naked, tanning bed tanned, blonde, blue, petite and pierced. She who I’d warned: “Place your loyalties with your sisters in humanity” had been discovered, trembling with the fear of my reaction under a comforter in our closet. “Ha a cole las week, still kinda pale,” I lied. Then it was silent except for the scrape, scrape of metal on tartar and enamel, the Oldies radio station playing “My brown-eyed girl”, and the distant, intermittent squeals of a drill. Until you, the convicted, showed up with our daughter. Her first cleaning at the age of four: the thoughtful receptionist suggested that she watch “Mom” first, “so she’ll know there’s nothing to be afraid of.” I looked into your mournful eyes sharply, your face was pale, too. A bubble of vivid images, hidden by my calm exterior and trivial small talk, gushed suddenly free while she flossed my molars landing on the tray of metal utensils and blood dabbed gauze: a pile of Pepto Bismal stained vomit.