had to make a mammogram appointment which means I have to disclose the breast implants which means they have to ask how long you've had the implants which means the nice person on the phone is doing some mental math before asking, you were HOW old?
"Sixteen," I say, because I don't remember if it was sixteen or fifteen, because it was around my birthday. I offer, unprompted, or prompted only by silence: "I haven't spoken to my mother since I was 17."
This is, technically, a lie. I spoke to her exactly once, last Christmas, to tell her she was right about my father, to more or less indicate, if not my forgiveness, then my regret. Regret being a less directional emotion.
"I'm sorry, just--WHERE did they do that to you?" asks the nice lady on the phone, understanding my implication, my unnamed unwillingness.
"South Florida," I say, because this is part of why this place is so mythic for me, why it is a land of dreams and nightmares where you have enemies and allies and bad things happen at home.
Or at the plastic surgery clinic, where you cry literal actual tears over how you don't want to be there, but oh, your mother booked the appointment, and we all know mothers love their children.
And she did, is the thing, I think. In her way, as she understood it.
"They do a lot of that down there," I say, vague. Plastic surgery? Child medical abuse? Who knows?
"I try not to think about it," I tell the lady on the phone.
"You're being very nice about this," I add, because she is. At this same healthcare provider I spoke to someone else with her job once who heard the same story and called me a liar and a bad daughter and then also switched my ethnicity answer on my paperwork. She only called me a liar because she knew it was unprofessional call me a slut, which is what she meant.
I do not burden Phone Lady with this, for many reasons, one of which is that she seems a little baffled by my sincere gratitude.
"I appreciate that," she says. "But anyone would be."
But no. They wouldn't, won't, don't, aren't.
