It’s a Saturday and I’m on vacation, but Momsie still notices as I pass her, lying on the couch and watching EbonyTV. Then I cry.Īfter a tumultuous night of pain-induced dreams, I’m up and dressed before nine the next morning. Once alone in the familiar darkness of my room, I breathe. They exchange inquiring looks, but before they can ask questions, I slam the entrance door closed. When I burst into the compound, her two helpers are already in, rolling up the garage door: short, buxom Alice and lean, hairy Nsika. This is enough time to wrap my head around the things in my mouth. She returns at three to open Shakara-her fashion design and tailoring outfit, run out of the garage-after her clerical duties at the State Ministry of Environment. Home is a rented two-bedroom flat squeezed as an afterthought between two towering duplexes in Jumbo Estate, off Kilometer 7. Leave me alone! My gums throb to the rhythm of my slippers slapping the dust. The lady in the kiosk at the estate gate, she snarls at me for ignoring her greeting, but it only propels my legs faster. I keep my lips clamped tight together on the way home. I swing aside the blinds, open my mouth, and tilt the mirror to gain a full view. I retrieve a dental mirror and move to the only double window, where there’s proper light. I almost leave the room before I remember. There’s streaks of blood caked in the phlegm, but no matter. I wriggle out of the chair, unclamp my mouth, and spit in the bowl. Akpan is not right in the head are confirmed. It’s at this point my suspicions that Dr. Akpan flings the probe and follows, calling her name. “Jesus!” she says, then zips out of the room. The intern tiptoes and peeps into my mouth. Akpan smiles, one that doesn’t extend to his eyes. The kind you have when someone says, Come, I want to show you a snake. She has her palms linked on her chest and there’s a look on her face. He has a young lady in tow, an intern from the looks of it. He simply places the probe on a side table and walks out of the room on what I think are noodle legs.Ī minute later, he returns, slower than before. He doesn’t continue fumbling with my mouth either. Maybe that’s why it seems like ages, the time it takes for him to retrieve the probe. The probe in his other hand clatters to the floor. Asked me to fix the teeth and let him worry about his liver. It was the sugar from the beer, you know? Bad for your liver too, I told him. Your father sat in this chair, you know? I filled six of his teeth, extracted two. He places me in the chair, adjusts it so my blood starts backtracking into my brain, and proceeds to clamp my mouth open. He makes chicken scratches on a pad and takes me to the examination room. I tell him it’s in all my molars, and it started about two weeks ago. Akpan’s practice is two rented shops with a sign that says TeethWise. One room is his consulting office where he, a small bald dentist in suspenders, sits me down and asks questions about my teeth. You think sixteen is too young, ba? To avoid another lecture, I jejely take the long trek down Boskel road, to the pockmarked Aba expressway and down to the vine-ridden colossus that is the Goodbye from Port-Harcourt toll gate.ĭr. Momsie says at my age, she was already supporting her parents. Akpan, whose practice is fifteen minutes away from our estate on the outskirts of town. An hour later, she calls me back and says she’s scheduled an appointment with Dr. She flicks her eyes at me then back to her documents, so I return to my room and curl up like a fetus to absorb the pain. “I’m dreaming every night that people are chasing me.” She has her back on the headboard and her feet buried in documents. She’s seated in bed with her glasses on, her hair untamed, the gray streaks standing clear. I’m home on vacation before final session at Ecclesia Boys, so Momsie is the one I run to. It starts with something as simple as a toothache.
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