Quite Normal (2020)
“I’ve always been haunted by the idea that my brother and I robbed the calcium from my mum’s teeth – that as babies, we were parasites (and for many years afterwards I strongly suspect!). Even today, mum fears the dentist, having had her crumbling back teeth removed at a time when dentistry was a more medieval interaction. Of all the different elements combining to tell this story, it was this detail about teeth around which everything coalesced with a satisfying snap. It was the symbol I was looking for, the visual means by which to tell a story about the various invasions visited upon women by baby-making in all its phases.”
We can all hear it, the drill. We’re pretending we’re too busy reading these magazines to notice. I wonder why these other women are here? I wonder if that nice-looking woman in the expensive hat and gloves ate too many sweets as a little girl and now her mouth is frightful with fillings? Maybe she eats them now, boxes of chocolates hidden under the settee? Maybe she’s a filthy drunk? All that sweet sherry can’t be good for your gums. True, she doesn’t look the type. She looks quite respectable, but then don’t we all?
I wonder what they’re thinking about me? I smile. I nod my head. I look at something else. I look at these magazines. Anyway I know what they’re thinking. Doesn’t she look tired. Well, I am tired. I’d do anything to sleep.
In just a few minutes, a man I hardly know is going to lay me down in his clean-smelling room and take out all of my back teeth. He’ll need pliers probably and something to keep my mouth open. No one tells you your baby will steal from you. These magazines didn’t tell me and I read enough of them. Mother didn’t tell me, but then mother didn’t tell me what happens between a man and a woman on their wedding night. Mother called it ‘his business’. He’ll want to do his business, she said, and he did.
The dentist said, it’s quite normal in a mother. He said, your baby has leeched the calcium from your molars. Leeched – that was his word, not mine. I nearly took the dentist’s hand. I nearly said, ‘Yes! That’s the very thing. That’s the very thing exactly!’ Honestly, I don’t know where these silly thoughts of mine come from. I hardly think the woman in the expensive hat and the gloves if having silly thoughts like mine. I don’t suppose for one minute when she looks at her baby she worries like I worry. I don’t suppose she’s fretting about the size of its head and all the horrid weight of it, or about the hungry way it latches onto you with its little red mouth.
Sometimes I poke the tip of one finger into the folds of fat behind my baby’s knees. I don’t know why I do it. I can’t stand it. I could scream. I really could. That awful noise again. It doesn’t stop, does it? I can’t make it stop. I’m afraid I’ll make it stop. In a few minutes, a man I hardly know is going to lay me down in his clean-smelling room and take out all of my back teeth.
But it’s quite normal in a mother, the dentist said. All of this is quite normal - isn’t it?
