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Dancing for My
   Mother

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Thomas E. Kennedy
Walter Cummins
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          Your ear ache refuses to go away. That night in a motel your mother blows cigarette smoke into the canal and soothes it, but for two days driving to Colorado, the throb in your ear is always there. After you’ve moved back into the house on Ironton Street, you’re still complaining. Your mother thinks it’s an infection. Probably need penicillin. When she finally gets time to take you to the doctor he examines the ear and says, This boy has a rupture. Your mother tells him that you’re all-boy, always wrestling and playing football and that’s how you must have ruptured the ear. He says it will probably heal itself eventually, maybe another week or two, but if it doesn’t heal the doctor can put a paper patch on it. He asks if you have ringing in the ear. Yeah, you say, it rings. That might go away, but then again it might not. Don’t get water in that ear until after it heals. When you leave his office you ask your mother if you’ll go deaf in your right ear. You are such a hypochondriac, she says. Eventually the ear heals, but the ringing remains a reminder of what a bell clap can do.