WHILE I WAS SITTING IN THE QUIET ROOM MRS COCHRANE came and told me that I had to go to the dentist tomorrow, that it is the rules at The Children’s Trust Residence Center. I grabbed her arm and bit her like Carl and she slapped me across the face so I started to scream as loud as I could, “I’m going to kill somebody I’m going to kill somebody!”
She left me in the Quiet Room alone. But when I go to the dentist I am going to kill him. I hate the dentist. At home I have to go. Mom takes me.
The first thing when you walk in is the smell. I get sick at my stomach and it makes me afraid. When you open the inside door a bell rings. There is a window in the wall that you can’t see through and it has a nurse behind it and she slides it open and asks me my name. Then I sit down. Everything is silence except for the aquarium with bubbles in it. Music comes out of the ceiling. On the walls are pictures of children winking at me all happy happy.
The door opens and the nurse says my name all smiley. I have to go in. I go in the room, it has water gurgling, and she sits me in the lay-down chair and pulls it backwards and puts a bib on me and a thing behind my neck.
The drill hangs over me, it has wires and wheels and hoses on it. It bends. There are different tips he puts in it. Each one is to hurt me.
Then I sit there and nothing happens but I hear a child next door screaming. Then the nurse comes in and says “Open.” She talks very quiet. Everyone at the dentist talks very quiet, and it scares me to death. Then she sticks knives in my gums and scrapes my teeth.
Then Dr Stahl walks in very fast, he is in a big hurry and he pretends to be happy happy only I know he isn’t because I kicked him in the balls once. That was when I was five. But I know you have to have good citizenship at the dentist. He has the drill and I don’t. Dr Stahl looks at my paper then looks in my mouth then looks at my paper then looks in my mouth. He has a mirror on a stick and he looks in my mouth (I sometimes pretend I am him with a spoon but it makes you upside down) and I ask him if I have any cavities but all he says is “Open.”
Then he takes out all his tools and makes noise on my teeth and says “Clickity clack on the railroad track.” He is trying to be funny, but it isn’t fun. He says “Let me know if I poke you,” but I can’t because his fist is in my mouth. Then he takes a sharp thing and jams it in my tooth and wiggles it and I have like electricity going through me and I spin it hurts so bad. Then he says “Now let’s look at the downstairs.”
He looks at my paper and makes some marks. I ask him “Please, do I have any cavities, do I have to be drilled?” And Dr Stahl says “Open.”
He screws a metal thing on my mouth with cotton in it and he puts the sucker under my tongue and it sucks up my whole mouth and my tongue and he takes the drill and puts it in my mouth and the noise starts like jet planes taking off inside me and it gets very hot and my head spins and it hurts so bad I think I am going into the ground and he leans way over me and I look in his face and he isn’t smiling anymore. It hurts so bad. I try and ask him to stop for only a second but I can’t because he is still drilling and if I move it will cut open my tongue. I almost stand up it hurts so much, and he holds me with his elbow. Then I hear a siren inside my head, on an ambulance coming for me. The drill goes through my mouth into my head and up to my eyes and my blood inside me is hurting. No one will help me. No one will help me.
When I come out of the office my mom says “Now see, that wasn’t so bad was it?”
And last night at The Children’s Trust Residence Center I thought about the dentist and cried myself to sleep, because I am afraid, and Mommy isn’t here even. I want to go home.
And this morning instead of breakfast I went to the Playroom and looked out the window, because nobody was in there. I watched the traffic go by and wondered if anyone was going to my house. Then I heard the Playroom door open. But I didn’t turn around. I didn’t want to see anybody.
There wasn’t any noise for a while, then I heard singing. It was a man. He sang, “I’ll walk alone, because to tell you the truth I’ll be lonely.”
It was soft. I looked out the window. I didn’t turn around. He sang some more. It was good singing.
(I am good in Music at school. Next semester I will be in Glee. Miss Allen promised. Once we had a song, “The Three Billy Goats Gruff,” and Miss Allen chose three special boys to sing it for assembly. It was Kenny Aptekar, Gary Faigin, and me. I got to miss Science twice. Also we have a song, “Drill Ye Tarriers Drill.” At the end it goes, “and drill, and blast, and FIRE!” You are supposed to yell out FIRE real loud because it’s capitalized, but everyone is afraid to yell because if nobody else does then you look like an idiot. But Miss Allen is easy. One day I was in Music, a few days after the assembly with Officer Williams, and we were singing “Peace I Ask of Thee O River,” and I was the only one who could sing the harmony part. So Miss Allen made me stand up and sing it alone. Harold Lund laughed at me and called me a sissy and I was embarrassed. Then somebody walked into Music. It was Jessica, with a note from Miss Verdon the Art teacher. Miss Allen told me to keep singing while she read the note. Then I did something. I started to sing “Heartbreak Hotel.” It is cool, man, it is Elvis, I can imitate him perfect. I sang it louder and louder and closed my eyes. When I opened them Jessica wasn’t even looking at me, and I stopped. But when she left she looked at me and smiled like.)
I remembered this when I was looking out the window in the Playroom, and then the person who sang said something.
“Would you care for some bubble gum?”
It was the red-haired man. I didn’t say an answer.
He sang again. “I’ll walk alone, because to tell you the truth.”
The cars passed outside the window and I thought I saw our car and I started to bang on the window but it wasn’t.
“I’ll be lonely.”
I watched it go, and I thought, Maybe it is our car but my parents don’t want me anymore because of what I did to Jessica.
“I said, would you care for some bubble gum?” said the red-haired man.
“No,” I said. And then I didn’t hear any more singing. I didn’t turn around though. But I heard him blow a bubble and it popped and he said shit.
“You aren’t supposed to swear,” I said. “It’s not good manners.”
“You aren’t supposed to chew bubble gum either,” he said. “Except without it how would I ever get any cavities?”
“It gives you cavities.”
“That’s what I said.”
I turned around. He was sitting in a little kid’s chair.
“But you’re not supposed to get cavities,” I said.
“Says who.”
“You aren’t.” I got real mad and turned back around to the window.
Then the man whispered, “I know, I know.”
I sat down in the little orange chair by the window, and kicked some kicks in the rug, which sometimes gives you electricity.
“I like getting cavities,” said the red-haired man. “I want to get all my teeth filled as soon as possible before it’s too late. My dentist won’t be around much longer. He’ll be killing himself fairly soon now.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why is he going to kill himself?”
“Oh,” said the red-haired man, and popped another bubble. “Because he’s a dentist. Wouldn’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, everybody hates the dentist. Even dentists’ sons. This guy’s son hates him, but for another reason. See, when he was little, the dentist decided that he would pretend he wasn’t a dentist, so his son wouldn’t hate him. He told his son that he was a professional baseball player. He went and had a Tigers uniform made up, and every day he wore it out the door and wore it when he came home, only then he’d stop on the way home and get it dirty. He had phony newspaper articles written up about him and slipped them into the Sports Section. But when the kid started school, it seemed that no one ever heard of his dad, so the dentist had all these phony baseball cards printed up and brought them to the stores and slipped them into the bubble gum packs.
“Finally he made friends with Ozzie Virgil, the Tigers’ third baseman, took him and his wife out to dinner, did his kids’ teeth for free. He got Ozzie to play along with the scheme. So when the kid was eight years old, the dentist finally took him to a game. The kid was very excited. They went right to the dugout, but unfortunately they were too early and Ozzie Virgil hadn’t showed up yet, so they wouldn’t let him in and then they ran into Ozzie on the way out and the first thing Ozzie said was, ‘Hey, Stan, Joey broke a filling, could Gladys bring him by later today?’
“That was five years ago. The dentist’s son hasn’t spoken to him since. It’s only a matter of time before he kills himself.”
I walked across the Playroom to the toychest. There was a doll in it, a girl who had brown hair with ribbons in it like Jessica. She didn’t have any clothes on and I got a stomach ache. Also I was afraid of going to the dentist.
“I have to go today,” I said to the red-haired man.
He nodded with his eyes closed, like he already knew. “By the way, Burt, my name’s Rudyard.”
There was another doll in the toychest, it was blond with no ribbons. I threw it at the wall and the arms fell off. My stomach hurt so bad I could hardly stand up. It was like freezing inside my tushy, up inside me. And I had to go to the lavatory.
I was starting to have tears in my eyes, I bit my lip. I looked at the red-haired man, at Rudyard, and he looked at me with his eyes. He got up and walked over to me and took out a handkerchief and wiped my eyes very soft.
“Dusty in here,” he said. “Allergic to the dust in here.”
I started to cry and he put his hand on my head.
“Rudyard, I have to go to the lavatory, there is something wrong inside my tushy. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of the dentist.”
He did this to the back of my hair, he squeezed me a little on my head and put me against him and he smelled like my dad.
“Rudyard, I have to go to the lavatory only I have never been down here, I don’t know where one is here.”
“I do,” he said. “It’s a good one too.”
I was crying.
“Rudyard, something is wrong inside me. I am different than everybody else.”
Rudyard squeezed my head and did this to my hair and I pushed it against him.
“Me too, Burt. Let’s go.”
Today I got a letter. I thought it was from Jessica, but it wasn’t.
Dear Burt,
I just got off the phone with Dr Nevele and he told me that it would still be a little while before the first visiting day at CTRC, so I decided to sit down and write a little note instead, while I’m still thinking about you.
How is everything, Sweetheart? Both your father and I (and Jeffrey!) miss you very much and can’t wait for you to come home. We know that you are anxious to come home too and that’s one of the reasons I am writing this little letter.
Dr Nevele sure sounds like a terrific guy to Dad and me, Burt, and we think it would really be a shame if after all the hard work and time he’s put into helping you, you didn’t decide to help him too. It’s only fair, Burt. He really does want to help you. He knows a whole lot about little boys and what makes them do the things they do, and it would be a shame to waste his time, don’t you agree? We’re sure you do. We all know that you are truly sorry for what you did and want to make everything right as soon as you can, and so you will decide to help Dr Nevele real soon to find out what’s wrong inside you and then you can fix it right away and come home. Won’t that be terrific? We’re sure it will be, and we know you want to do everything in your power to make it happen.
You know, Son, you’re not the only one who needs help finding out why you did that horrible thing to Jessica. Your father and I are going to see a doctor too. Someone that Dr Nevele recommended, to ask him if he thinks it’s something Dad and I might have done, some way we failed as parents. It turns out that Dad knows this doctor from the club, so we’re all going to have lunch some time next week and talk about it. Won’t that be nice? We’re sure it will.
Jessica’s mother came to see us the other night again. She’s still very upset. We asked her to stay to dinner but she wouldn’t. Guess she is still very angry about everything. Jessica is out of the hospital now. She mentioned writing you a letter, but her mother told her she couldn’t, so please don’t be disappointed if you don’t hear from her. We’re sure you understand, you’re just such a terrific young man. Actually, your father and I don’t think it’s such a good idea for you to see her again, either. Her mother is enrolling her in a private school as soon as the new term starts, and we think maybe that’s all for the best. We’re sure you understand because you’re such a smart little boy.
Oh, by the way! Kenneth came over this morning and he brought you some baseball cards that he said you have been wanting. How about those Tigers! We don’t know if you can watch the games there at CTRC, but they sure are going great guns this season! Last week Dad took Jeff to a game and they had a terrific time! It was the best time they ever had! They’re going to go again next week, and this time they’re going to sit in Uncle Paul’s box seats. Isn’t that great? Too bad you can’t be there. Some other time.
Dr Nevele said it wouldn’t be such a good idea to send the baseball cards now, so we’ll keep them for you for when you get home. There’s no one to trade them with there, so they’ll be waiting for you right here at home. Also, there may be a few other presents waiting too! Remember that dinosaur you wanted at Maxwell’s? Dad and I agreed to get it for you! So if you be good and help Dr Nevele it’ll be waiting for you too when you get home.
Well, that’s about all the news from here. Please think about helping Dr Nevele so you can come home and get your toys. Won’t that be terrific? Sure it will!
Love,
Mom and Dad