My Ma’s Hatred Grows Cavities Every Summer

She told me to be a dental hygenist. People will always hate someone, said my ma as she pressed a knife against my collarbone, the nice Swiss Army blade that Uncle Ric gave teenage me for my birthday after I started spending more time in the kitchen. I smiled and nodded and the motion nicked my skin. I made a mental note to wash the knife before the next time I went camping. The calculus was simple enough. My preferred major: finance, classified as “too masculine” by my ma. Her alternative: dental hygiene, a perennially popular and well-advertised career path that conjured images of smiling women bunching hairnets over their copious locks. My ma had the knife and the college funds. All I had was a dedicated parking space in the world’s proverbial closet, festooned with crop tops and fuchsia bows.

***

I was hired fresh out of school by a sprawling clinic on Sixty-Third Street whose loyal clientele had included my ma for fifty-four years. Each wall was painted a subtly different shade of beige. The tools were sharper than those I’d practiced with—higher-quality, the dentist told me. His name was Cairn. Just Cairn, he said when I asked if I was expected to use an honorific. When I attempted to make small talk, he informed me that my short hair “gave clients the wrong impression.” 

I decided I did not like Cairn.

***

Dental hygiene school focused on practical matters: painting sealant, operating the x-ray machine, and how to pull a tooth, in that rare eventuality. No one mentioned the emotionally grueling torture of scraping hate-plaque off the molars of the old man down the street who’d paid me to mow his lawn since fifth grade.

I withdrew my scaler from his mouth, and he swallowed visibly. I could hear the spit sloshing in his mouth.

“I swear, those rainbow ——s will be the death of my teeth.” He rolled his neck with a discomforting crack; his mouth easily shaped the slur.

I forced a smile. People used to believe sugar caused cavities, but that wasn’t true. Plaque was formed from the hatred that collected in your mouth every time you spat an insult or a slur, or let your jaw twist in disdain. Those bitter emotions were behind the ugly buildup that decayed the edges of your oral bones.

“Mint or raspberry for today’s polish?” I asked.

He grunted his usual response—raspberry—and settled back against the headrest.

Mouth agape, eyes closed, the man in front of me didn’t look capable of hating anyone, let alone me.

Then again, teeth told all sorts of unlikely stories.

***

My ma went to the dentist twice a year: in May and in September. In May, my colleagues always informed her that her teeth were typical and well-brushed, the thin tracery of plaque easily removable.

By September, she had, without fail, developed a cavity.

I asked her one time what she hated so much about the summer. She seemed to think the very question was a funny one. That was one of her good days.

“June,” she said, and I said, “Of course.”

Of course a celebration of joy and pride would cause toxic bitterness to materialize within her jaws.

She smiled, like she was glad I understood.

***

I waited until I was in my thirties to tell her I was transmasc, a week after I’d been offered a job three states away.

My ma straight-up laughed at me. “Do you truly think I haven’t known for years?”

“Excuse me?”

“Oh, sorry—was I supposed to act surprised? You’ve never brought a boy home. You wanted to major in finance. Clearly, you weren’t normal. And I’d appreciate some thanks, by the way—for steering you onto a better path.”

“Should I be thanking you for making me hate myself, too?”

She raised a trembling hand to my mouth, cupping my cheek with a false tenderness I detested even more than her ever-perfect smile. “My dear, have you no regard for your teeth?”

The knife, in her hand. The college funds, withheld. She’d decided, fully cognizant of what I was, to sentence me to a future spent experiencing the depth of other people’s hatred of people like me.

I removed her hand from the side of my face.

“Believe me, Ma, I have all the regard in the world for my teeth.”

***

When my ma arrived for her next dental appointment a week later, I volunteered to be her hygienist. She smiled when I entered the room. I made small talk.

“A special gift for you, to reward all the support you’ve given me.”

The month was May, but her teeth were coated in hardened tar. I scraped it painstakingly out of her mouth and into a narrow glass jar. I cleaned my tools. I set the jar aside.

I said, “Another appointment in August?”

***

I would not be home when she made coffee the next morning, but I knew what would transpire.

She would note more chunks than usual in the grounds but attribute the inconsistency to a bad batch. The scent would be as bitter as ever. The first sip would not raise concern.

On the second sip, she’d start to taste the hate. Her hate.

Her worst vitriol, distilled into a single drink.

I believed that the liquid would burn. That her eyes would bulge as she coughed, coffee spilling out over the table. She wouldn’t be able to purge that hate from her throat, though. Wouldn’t manage to eliminate that stink of rot and ice.

She would get a terrible, terrible glimpse of the pain she’d forced onto me every day.

And after that?

I could not say that I cared.

***

The next time I saw my ma, she was standing outside my new dental practice, the one where my colleagues called me by my real name, a male name. An umbrella shielded her from the rain. She smiled, and in her open mouth I saw only gums.

I’d heard of the hate-plaque growing so thick that pulling a tooth was the only solution. I’d never seen someone’s hatred infect their entire mouth. Black residue outlined the edges of her lips, almost dripping out of her jaw.

She was holding my old knife.