My family dentist said it’s clear I’ve been flossing, that I made his job easier. Keep it up! The cellophane covered chair reclines.
The TV is mounted in the top corner, off, and wrapped in more cellophane; but I remember the days when it used to be on. Me, a little girl, flipping through those channels like pages in a magazine, and time passes so.
The blazing dental lamp shines its reckoning upon my open, vulnerable void of a mouth: a Brita filter, shelving the gunkiest parts of myself. They are hidden like deep treasures behind my closed lips. But, like a rubber band, he’ll stretch and pry them open—wider, wider, wider. Enter the retractor. A cave of bones, ready to be mined and probed. Can’t back out now, can I? Shove those blue latex fingers down my throat, how they squeak and grit against my porcelains. They! search deeper and deeper until they find something worth reaping. Enter the little mirror that reflects the faults I can’t see. Gazing up, counting off the squares on the fluorescent ceiling light, I let him carve, probe, and scalp away my impurities.
Between my canines, maybe he’ll find some sort of proof that I eat my greens, or that I indulge in the most evil, irresistible sugars. You eat a lot of sweets, don’t you? A calculated question, probing me to rethink last night’s endeavors, gargling a pint of ice cream in front of the glow of Real Housewives. But that’s not the worst of it, no. Sedimented and exposed in these bones are my most wretched habits and sins—whispers of my being, mortified through the stench of my own breath. It’s disgusting, I can’t take it.
SCRAPE, DRILL, POLISH THEM AWAY!
A confession made secular, through taste rather than words; but aren’t we all tasters of soil? Don’t the books say that we are all derived from one Man, fermented and born of literal dirt and sludge? And Woman—born of his own bone, blood already on her hands—who tasted the fruit that ruptured the course of our morality. Is that why the doctor sits here, inspecting and judging the remnants of my mouth, my deeds—not for anyone else to see but me? Damn the Woman. Damn me. Damn my dirty, damn mouth.
Enter the silver hook; deeper, deeper, deeper. It grinds against the wrong tooth, clawing at the cavity of secrets. An icy pain pierces through my gums. My eyebrows scrunch in agony. He can’t find out more; I won’t let him. I want to bite his finger off, stop him from discovering more relics of my misconduct. I can’t say what I want; there’s too much shit holding me back, or should I say,
OPEN.
OPEN…
I’m way too open. I can’t say “stop!” so I release a slight groan instead. The probe lifts briefly. The doctor apologizes and moves on, promising to be more careful around that tooth. That yellowish, liable, sensitive tooth, cradling my last gram of dignity. Please, carve out anything but that tooth. Please, instead, scrape away my wrongdoings, please.
DRILL
into this raunchy testament to my character. The ten servings of gummy bears I ate in one sitting. The plaque of drunken nights and cigarette ash scraped away, polished, and spat out.
Suction out the echoes of the visceral, livid words I screamed at my mother after a senseless argument about lost keys. Lost fucking keys, and the everlasting debt shoved and buried down the throat of a daughter of a daughter of a daughter. Rinse away that ugliness so I have prettier stories to tell. Absolve me of my sins through that cheap mouthwash in a little paper cup. Turn this sinful cave back into an altar, so I can smile with purity once more. I smile in the mirror; my teeth are now shinier, still stained with the xanthous tinge I’ve always hated. Man, fuck the purity.
Cavity-free! The doctor says. If I were still six, I would’ve been directed to the magical toy box at the end of the hall, and maybe gotten a dinky plastic fairy for my troubles. But now, all I get is cool-minted penance: one shitty free toothbrush, a travel-size mouthwash, and a plastic tongue scraper in an unused poop bag. They know I’ll return, and they know my soul needs this more than some polyethylene doll. I’m a stone-cold sinner, after all.
SO MUCH FOR FLOSSING EVERY NIGHT.▲
