Page 24

magical realism memoir

one time, in the dentist's office…

Sitting here in this hot and cramped dentist’s office, mindlessly flipping through People magazine…

flipping through — gossip is boring.

flipping through- I don’t care who wore it best.

flipping through — oh, I like that lipstick color. I must buy it!

there’s a game I used to play with my mom when I was a kid. whenever we were in a waiting room, we’d pick up a magazine. she couldn’t read English, so picking up a magazine was usually just for show. but not when we did it together. we’d play the game. we open a random page three times -

chat, shtime. sholosh

on the third try — whatever image your finger landed on -had a meaning.

it was a fortune. a future. a foreshadowing.

this memory makes me miss my mom.

then again, so does that Lily in the vase, the purple waste basket and the potted Chinese evergreen in desperate need of water.

sitting here alone in the cold and cramped dentist’s office, I play the game

chat, shtime. sholosh.

my finger lands on a face.

the face of a happy woman in a canoe on a lake holding up a tube of Colgate toothpaste and smiling at the camera. She has wonderful teeth, naturally. I wonder if she had years of braces like I did. I wonder if the braces cost more than what they are paying her to be in the ad.

I hope she at least broke even.

but what’s my fortune? I guess after my cleaning, my teeth will sparkle. ugh, what a lame fortune. maybe it’s something else. maybe I will travel someplace beautiful soon. maybe I’ll get to relax on a sunny day in a canoe. wouldn’t that be nice? to get away.

I look down at the ad again. I notice now it’s not happy in the Colgate Lady’s eyes — it’s fear. her lips begin to move. she’s mouthing something at me. it looks like, Save me.

I throw the magazine away from me- it lands next to a mother and her infant in a carriage. the baby LEAPS out of the carriage and retrieves the magazine. he Bugsy Malones it back to me, “Ya dropped this.”

the page is still open to the Colgate Lady only now I can hear her too, SAVE ME! she pleads.

the Lily in the vase stretches out to slap my face with its petals, “Don’t be a litterbug!”

the puffer fish in the exotic fish tank sing in unison, “……The whole day long, I laugh with the song and paddle me own canoe…

now the expression on Colgate lady’s face has morphed into sheer panic, ‘SAVE ME!” she screams.

paddle me own canoe -paddle me own canoe…

the front desk lady behind the glass wall is laughing hysterically

paddle me own canoe -paddle me own canoe…

the room smells like a circus,

my heart sounds like a brass band,

why is it freezing in here?

paddle me own canoe…

the coffee table bursts into flames

now I see — the glass wall isn’t glass — it’s ice — it cracks and crumbles, filling the room with blocks of frozen cubes.

the front desk lady laughs louder.

I scream at the Colgate Lady in the magazine- “No, YOU save ME!”

she flashes her pearly whites with a blinding smile, crashes her hand through page 24, grabs me by my neck, and pulls me into her canoe.

I look back through the other side of the magazine into the waiting room and see the baby looking back at me,

“Don’t forget ta floss,” he says, as he closes the ma-