day care, like the one Bronwyn goes to.”
“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
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—”
Ma butts in. “Dad, this is Jack.”
He shakes his head.
But I am Jack, was he expecting a different one?
He’s looking at the table, he’s all sweaty on his face. “No offense.”
“What do you mean, ‘no offense’?” Ma’s talking nearly in a shout.
“I can’t be in the same room. It makes me shudder.”
“There’s no
“I’m saying it wrong, I’m — it’s the jet lag. I’ll call you later from the hotel, OK?” The man who’s Grandpa is gone past me without looking, he’s nearly at the door.
There’s a crash, Ma’s banged the table with her hand. “It’s not OK.”
“OK, OK.”
“Sit down, Dad.”
He doesn’t move.
“He’s the world to me,” she says.
Her Dad? No, I think the
“Of course, it’s only natural.” The Grandpa man wipes the skin under his eyes. “But all I can think of is that beast and what he —” “Oh, so you’d rather think of me dead and buried?”
He shakes his head again.
“Then live with it,” says Ma. “I’m back—”
“It’s a miracle,” he says.
“I’m back, with Jack. That’s two miracles.”
He puts his hand on the door handle. “Right now, I just can’t —”
“Last chance,” says Ma. “Take a seat.”
Nobody does anything.
Then the grandpa comes back to the table and sits down. Ma points to the chair beside him so I go on it even though I don’t want to be here. I’m looking at my shoes, they’re all crinkly at the edges.
Grandpa takes off his cap, he looks at me. “Pleased to meet you, Jack.”
I don’t know which manners so I say, “You’re welcome.”
Later on Ma and me are in Bed, I’m having some in the dark.
I ask, “Why he didn’t want to see me? Was it another mistake, like the coffin?”
“Kind of.” Ma puffs her breath. “He thinks — he thought I’d be better off without you.”
“Somewhere else?”
“No, if you’d never been born. Imagine.”
I try but I can’t. “Then would you still be Ma?”
“Well, no, I wouldn’t. So it’s a really dumb idea.”
“Is he the real Grandpa?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Why you’re afraid—”
“I mean, yeah, he’s it.”
“Your Dad from when you were a little girl in the hammock?”
“Ever since I was a baby, six weeks old,” she says. “That’s when they brought me home from the hospital.”
“Why she left you there, the tummy mommy? Was that a mistake?”
“I think she was tired,” says Ma. “She was young.” She sits up to blow her nose very noisy. “Dad will get his
