Mama's Smile

I love it when Mama sings me to sleep. Her voice calms me until my body feels like it’s falling down, down through my feather pillow, down through the depths of my water bed, down, down, down, all the way down to dreaming.

I wake up to the sound of Mama. She’s not singing.

She sounds really happy and I wonder what she and Mommy are doing having so much fun this late at night. I like it when Mama is happy, ‘cos she’s usually so serious and Mommy and I take every chance we can get to make her laugh. To see Mama’s teeth when she smiles is like seeing a double rainbow: it doesn’t happen all the time, and I always look forward to seeing it again.

Mama used to smile all the time, and her teeth looked like they belonged on one of those toothpaste commercials. But, that was before she got attacked by the bad man. I was so scared she wasn’t ever coming home from the hospital, but Mommy and Uncle Devin both promised me Mama would be all right and she was. Well, almost.

When Mama came home a few days later, she was missing her front teeth just like me. I asked her what the Tooth Fairy brought her and she almost smiled and said the Tooth Fairy brought her home to me and Mommy. At first, I was glad that me and Mama were both waiting for our teeth to grow back. But then, when my teeth grew back and hers didn’t, I felt bad. Mama said not to worry. She and Mommy were saving money to get her smile back the way it was before.

That was months ago. Since then, Mama’s been staying home a lot more. Mommy says it’s ‘cos Mama’s embarrassed to go out and have people see her missing teeth. I asked Mommy why she couldn’t get Mama’s teeth fixed with her insurance like she did when I broke my arm last summer, and she said it didn’t cover Mama ‘cos they’re not really married. I must have looked confused ‘cos Mommy said she’d explain it to me later.

Anyway, it’s so nice to hear Mama in a good mood right now. Almost as good as her singing, but still good enough to make me fall all the way down back to sleep.