Room_ A Novel - Emma Donoghue [81]
“I want to see Bronwyn. May you go us please to the kid place, where the kids and Bronwyn my cousin are,” I say to the driver.
He doesn’t hear me.
“The dentist is expecting us right now,” says Ma.
The kids are gone, I stare out all the windows.
The dentist is Dr. Lopez, when she pulls up her mask for a second her lipstick is purple. She’s going to look at me first because I have teeth too. I lie down in a big chair that moves. I stare up with my mouth wide wide open and she asks me to count what I see on her ceiling. There’s three cats and one dog and two parrots and—
I spit out the metal thing.
“It’s just a little mirror, Jack, see? I’m counting your teeth.”
“Twenty,” I tell her.
“That’s right.” Dr. Lopez grins. “I’ve never met a five-year-old who could count his own teeth before.” She puts the mirror in again. “Hmm, wide spacing, that’s what I like to see.”
“Why you like to see that?”
“It means . . . plenty of room for maneuvering.”
Ma’s going to be a long time in the chair while the drill gets the yuck out of her teeth. I don’t want to wait in the waiting room but Yang the assistant says, “Come check out our cool toys.” He shows me a shark on a stick that goes clattery clattery and there’s a stool to sit on that’s shaped like a tooth too, not a human tooth but a giant one all white with no rot. I look at a book about Transformers and another one with no jacket about mutant turtles that say no to drugs. Then I hear a funny noise.
Yang blocks the door. “I think maybe your Mom would prefer—”
I duck in under his arm and there’s Dr. Lopez doing a machine in Ma’s mouth that screeches. “Leave her alone!”
“Is OK,” Ma says but like her mouth is broken, what the dentist did to her?
“If he’d feel safer here, that’s fine,” says Dr. Lopez.
Yang brings the tooth stool in the corner and I watch, it’s awful but it’s better than not watching. One time Ma twitches in the chair and makes a moan and I stand up, but Dr. Lopez says, “A little more numbing?” and does a needle and Ma stays quiet again. It goes on for hundreds of hours. I need to blow my nose but the skin’s coming off so I just press the tissue on my face.
When Ma and me go back in the parking lot the light’s all banging my head. The driver’s there again reading a paper, he gets out and opens the doors for us. “Hank oo,” says Ma. I wonder if she’ll always talk wrong now. I’d rather sore teeth than talk like that.
All the way back to the Clinic I watch the street whizzing by, I sing the song about the ribbon of highway and the endless skyway.
• • •
Tooth’s still under our pillow, I give him a kiss. I should have brung him and maybe Dr. Lopez could have fixed him too.
We have our dinner on a tray, it’s called beef Stroganoff with bits that’s meat and bits that look like meat but they’re mushrooms, all lying on fluffy rice. Ma can’t have the meats yet, just little slurps of the rice, but she’s nearly talking properly again. Noreen knocks to say she has a surprise for us, Ma’s Dad from Australia.
Ma’s crying, she jumps up.
I ask, “Can I take my Stroganoff?”
“Why don’t I bring Jack down in a few minutes, when he’s finished?” asks Noreen.
Ma doesn’t even say anything, she just runs off.
“He had a funeral for us,” I tell Noreen, “but we weren’t in the coffin.”
“Glad to hear it.”
I chase the little rices.
“This must be the most tiring week of your life,” she says, sitting down beside me.
I blink at her. “Why?”
“Well, everything’s strange, because you’re like a visitor from another planet, aren’t you?”
I shake my head. “We’re not visitors, Ma says we have to stay forever till we’re dead.”
“Ah, I suppose I mean . . . a new arrival.”
When I’m all done, Noreen finds the room where Ma’s sitting holding hands with a person that has a cap on. He jumps up and says to Ma, “I told your mother I didn’t want