The Light in her Mouth

A short story about labor, exhaustion, and beginnings of desire

For a year, I woke early to mix cream cheese and slice tomatoes. My parents owned a small cafe, and I’d help prep the kitchen. We rose at four to catch the early crowd, when the sky was violet and starless. At the cafe by five, yawning. I packed my books and homework so I could walk to school after the doors were open. My father would wipe down the two tops and the counter and fill the prep station. Mom would start the brewers. The little office desk in the back was piled with receipts.

We opened at six, but often regulars came early. Knocking on the glass and waiting with their hands in their pockets. Looking around at the empty buildings. Collars up. They’d sit at the counter as we turned down the chairs and brought up the lights. Mom poured coffee. Everyone looked tired.

Most were men on their way to laborious jobs. House painter and crane operator. Barney had two bagels and a cappuccino. Jim, just a coffee to go. That sort of thing. The cafe was not upscale. We’d build the counter from planed yellow pine two-by-sixes. The tables came from the district, where they’d languished in the old refectory for a decade. Bought for a few dollars a piece. Almost everything was scavenged and refurbished, except the hood system over the cook station. That cost my parents dearly. All their wealth and much more tied up in two thousand square feet of commercial space. I was only twelve and gave it little thought.

At six-thirty, I’d walk to school and wait in the asphalt lot for the bell. The entire campus was surrounded by chain-link fencing capped with concertina wire, a kind of battlefield perimeter. Metal detectors at the doors. The listless instructors within. After school, I’d return home to sleep for a while. Then out with friends after dark. We played basketball under the water tower. We rode our bikes to the Mobile refinery to race down enormous gravel piles. Or out to Billingsport, to steal Magic cards.

In the evenings, my parents wanted dinner around the table, as a family. But they were tired. They’d bring back bagels and cream cheese. Sliced tomatoes. We were all sick of it. One night, I woke after midnight. I could hear them talking in their bedroom, and I snuck downstairs and stood in the kitchen, eating a raw slice of bacon. I wasn’t even hungry.

The next morning, a new customer came in. She sat at the counter and drank an espresso. A twist of lemon. She chatted with my mother, and I watched her in a way I’d not watched a woman before. Her hair was tied back, and her eyes were dark with mascara. Glitter on her face and hands. Beneath her long coat, a sheer pink halter and skirt. She was probably in her early twenties, delicate in her movements, and confident. Smiling beside the middle-aged men in their Carhartts and ball caps. Her eyes an aching blue.

The next morning, she ordered lox with her espresso. I brought it out, the warm plate smelling of salt. She told me she’d not had it in years, and when she spoke, I saw the glimmer of something on her tongue. A tiny bead of light, like a little eye looking out.

“What’s in your mouth?” I asked.

She seemed surprised and laughed.

“Hold on,” she said, leaning forward in an aura of floral perfume and alcohol.

She held her ponytail to one side and opened her mouth. Her tongue was pierced with a stainless steel bar, each end tipped with polished spheres. She worked the bar between her teeth. Click, click.

“Pretty cool,” she said, sitting back. “Do you have any capers?”

I brought her one of the opened jars, and she spooned the little buds onto her plate.

“Did it hurt?”

“Oh, yes.” She saw me watching her mouth. “Do you want to see it again?”

I nodded, and she showed her tongue a second time and leaned close.

“Touch it,” she said, voice muffled by her strange gaping posture.

“Go ahead, you can touch it.”

I brushed the end with a finger. My tiny, distorted reflection looking back from the mirror finish. Smooth. Warm. Wet. Her silken tongue trembling like an eel, pinned on a diver’s spear. She said she got it on her eighteenth birthday. A lifetime ago. I asked if it was hard to chew. Hard to do a lot of things, she told me. She said I looked older than my age, that I was sweet and more confident than most grown men. I just listened and watched her eat.

She left with her coat open, her pale legs sparkling in the dawn light. The sky outside was red and gold. My father pulled me aside and asked what she and I had talked about. He clapped my shoulder when I told him, and the men at the counter smiled. Little Casanova. Can’t beat a free show. Boys got instincts. I filled their mugs, and they ruffled my hair. By then, it was six thirty, and I washed my hands and shouldered the school bag. Mom kissed me goodbye.

I waited months to see her again, watching the door each morning, but it was too late. The following spring, my parents closed the cafe. They couldn’t afford the taxes. The numbers didn’t work. It’s hard to give people what they want, and we moved south to be with family.

For years, I thought of that little light and her open mouth. Living in the darkness of it. The image marked me. Her soft and creased lips. Her glossy, white teeth. The way she moved and looked at me. But I never saw her again.

Except in my dreams, where she lives forever.