THE BOOK: The Superior Act of Presenting Your Teeth to Strangers
PUBLISHED IN: 2021
THE AUTHOR: MD Marcus
THE EDITOR: Ericka M. Arcadia
THE PUBLISHER: April Gloaming Publishing is a nonprofit independent press based in Nashville, TN that aims to capture and better understand the Southern soul, Southern writing, and the Southern holler.
SUMMARY: In this gripping memoir, we walk alongside MD Marcus as she follows orders, stands in line, and bides her time during a couple stints at a mental health facility. In the halls, she witnesses what it is that those who are deemed “crazy” or “unsafe to themselves or others” are subjected to undertake: group therapy, announcing ridiculous delusions-lying to make it seem like they are ready to go home. Unable to get her shoelaces back until she asks, MD Marcus then lets us into her mind’s deepest, darkest secrets. A place that may be too real and honest for some readers to stomach, especially when her mental state becomes most challenged by her sister’s cancer diagnosis. But in the truth lies healing, and in healing lies a way forward. By the end, we are ready to travel home with her, at long last, and continue forth, anew and enlightened.
THE BACK STORY: My memory does not always serve me well, so I am a chronic note taker. I am also an extreme introvert, so while I silently observe my internal world and the world going on around me, I pay particular attention to all the odd happenings some folks might miss. As I found myself in and out of mental hospitals, in and out of therapy, and experiencing the profound sadness from my sister’s illness, I also found myself surrounded by words; sticky notes in my purse, a few lines jotted down on a scrap paper, quotes written in a notebook, and so on. Collecting all these stories and documented events, I pieced them together to give them sense and order. As a working, single mother of 3, trying to get another degree, in and out of a mental hospital (I mentioned that already), my time and mental energy to spend on writing was limited to a sweet spot in the late-night hours right after my kids went to bed and right before I crashed out. Due to these time and life constraints and adding a little extra for the tough emotional processing, writing this book only took me 10 years.
WHY THIS TITLE?: This is actually the title of a poem of mine that is not related to my memoir at all. While he was a freshman in high school, my son’s very best friend in the world was hit by a train and killed. I remember going to a clothing store trying to find something for him to wear to the funeral, and I felt utterly lost. I barely knew how to pick out clothes for a teenage boy period but dressing him for this occasion felt like an out of body experience. While I went through the motions of digging through racks of clothes, making room for other people walking the aisles, standing in line, and checking out, I remember the effort it took to just operate as a human. What stood out to me most notably was feeling obligated to offer a societally expected politeness to each person I came into contact with. Smiling at them, aka presenting my teeth to strangers, truly felt like a superior act that day. I think the same concept lends itself to my struggles with mental illness and grief, so I borrowed the title of the poem this experience inspired and gave it to my memoir.
WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT TO READ IT? “I used to think I was the strangest person in the world but then I thought there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do. I would imagine her and imagine that she must be out there thinking of me, too. Well, I hope that if you are out there and read this and know that, yes, it’s true I’m here, and I’m just as strange as you.” — Frida Kahlo.
REVIEW COMMENTS:
“It takes courage to face our own deepest wounds, to look pain and loss right in the eye and refuse to blink. Perhaps more courage than most of us ever muster. And yet, in her debut book, MD Marcus does exactly this. In what proves to be as much a poignant, poetry-laced memoir as it is a permission slip for the rest of us to disbelieve our worst circumstances are the last word, Marcus is never glossing—and never without hope.” –Steve Daugherty, author Experiments in Honesty
“MD Marcus’ unflinching memoir bravely examines the intersection between depression, single parenthood, anxiety and grief, culminating in a beautiful story of loss, and love.” — Cinthia Ritchie, author of Malnourished: A Memoir of Sisterhood and Hunger and Dolls Behaving Badly
“This memoir is a brilliant balancing act of storytelling. Not only does it balance time, it balances prose and poetics, openness and control, and the reciprocal relationship between writer and reader. The writing moves with an honest intentionality. It is not a giving over of a narrative. It is a welcoming into a space we get to be exposed to but that is still undoubtedly the writer’s. We are grateful for the invitation and thankful for what we gain from the experience. We leave excitedly waiting to be invited back again sometime soon.” — Dasan Ahanu, author of Freedom Papers, Everything Worth Fighting For: an exploration of being Black in America, and Shackled Freedom
AUTHOR PROFILE: I’m a mother, a poet, a lover of Jesus and the color blue, I collect keys and tattoos, I may or may not be obsessed with Dolly Parton and Freddie Mercury, and I hope to speak French someday. My poems and essays can be found on my website (mdmarcus.com) which stays *mostly* up to date. But I especially enjoy visiting other people’s visual worlds and connecting with them through mine on Instagram (@md.marcus).
AUTHOR COMMENTS: On the whole, I write of mental illness, motherhood, poverty, racial injustice, and the universal experience of love lost. In telling my stories whether through poetry, essays, or my memoir, my hope is and has always been to make other people feel less alone.
SAMPLE: Copied below
LOCAL OUTLETS:
Barnes & Noble
Quail Ridge Books
WHERE ELSE TO BUY IT:
April Gloaming Publishing
Amazon
PRICE:
$16.99
CONTACT THE AUTHOR:
www.mdmarcus.com
https://www.instagram.com/md.marcus
https://www.facebook.com/MDMarcusWriter
mdmarcuswriter@gmail.com
SAMPLE
To enter the hospital, you must walk through a double set of glass doors. Upon going through the first set, you are required to wait in a glass box until the receptionist sitting across the room behind more glass presses a button on her desk that unlocks the second set of doors. You’ll understand this security precaution is more essential from the reverse side of that door. Ensuring that if a crazy manages to get through the labyrinth of the hospital, out of all the other locked doors, and somehow finds their way down to the first-floor lobby, there is still one last barrier protecting the public from them.
Obviously, my mom had to take me on this trip. I was a minor and her presence and consent would be needed. The drive and wait in the lobby were as uncomfortable as an extra smedium wool sweater. But we both did what we had to, signed in, and then sat waiting until an Intake Specialist would see us.
These intake people are tricky. I had no idea then, but I know now that it’s best not to be completely honest with them. I used to think it was counterproductive to not have full disclosure about your mental health, but it’s too dangerous to be absolutely honest or forthcoming. This makes their job much too easy. The intake person was responsible for writing that big fat lie in my file that stated how I wanted to run my car into a tree when I came there looking for help the second time around. Just in case I hadn’t been clear before, I NEVER said this!
Anyway, back to my first rodeo, the main entrance, reception desk, and waiting area are all in one small section off a short hallway full of doors on either side. Whatever rooms or offices lay within these doors must have all been tiny because the number of doors to hallway length ratio made is seem quite impossible that all of them could actually have a working function.
We were called to enter one of these doors, and indeed the room was a tiny square. The tiny square contained a rectangular table filling most of the space. Surrounding the table were three burnt orange vinyl and dark wooden chairs. There was a heft to their look that said they could not have been easily lifted. We took our seats, and with all things essential to the preservation of the human condition, began the paperwork.
Some questions were easy like; Do you find that you cry easily and often? Yes. Do you sleep more than normal? Yes. Do you hear voices? Um, No. Do you fantasize about hurting yourself or others? Myself, Yes. Others, No.
Others were slightly more complicated. Do you feel an overwhelming sense of guilt? Do you have difficulty falling and staying asleep? Have you had weight loss or changes in appetite? Hopelessness? Loss of interest? Hear or see things others do not? Feelings of worthlessness? Difficulty concentrating? Making decisions? Do you believe others are plotting against you? Have you considered suicide?
Unsurprisingly, there were enough Yeses for me to be admitted.
After going back to the waiting room and sitting for a short period, I was collected to be escorted into the interior of the hospital. I discovered the admitting section was like the small mound of crumbly dirt atop an ant hill. All the real action was further inside. It took place deep within two solid wooden double doors. These two doors, the color of a number 2 pencil, were the gateway to this nucleus. One side had a big metal bar across it that must be pushed for it to be opened. But a person’s strength wasn’t the only thing needed to enter. There was a small black plastic rectangle mounted to the wall next to the door that had the push bar. There was a credit card like slot running vertically through it, and a small light shone a constant red at the top of it. Stop. Do Not Enter.
The sentry began to break apart. Like Charon silently ferrying towards Hades, they were opening to collect a new soul.
Though there weren’t many people in the room, everyone who was there, including the receptionist, stopped and turned their heads towards the doors. They continued to swing open at the same time but in opposite directions. A man dressed in tan scrubs a couple sizes too big for him walked out and went down the hall. After gathering the necessary information and papers, he called my name.
My mom looked tired as she left the hospital. I wonder now how much she slept that night.
I walked to the man in the baggy scrubs, and he offered me a smile. I suppose it was meant to be a smile that told me not to worry, everything would be okay. But instead it told me he was tired and was just going through the motions. There was somewhere else he’d rather be than chaperoning crazy kids around this place, and it showed in the parenthesis punctuating his lips.
Having swiped his badge through the credit card slot, the double doors ceremoniously opened again beckoning me in. I would be going through them this time, and I’d have no way back out, at least not tonight.
The hallway through the doors was long and winding. I’d imagine it’d be really disorienting walking through these passages alone. There were many doors and elevators and adjacent hallways, none of which we took. The lights inside these doors were off because it was the middle of the night when people ought to be asleep, and the lights above our heads glowed a dim yellow casting everything in a sickly haze. It could have easily been the setting for a scary movie, and I hated scary movies. After walking what felt like a half mile, we came to another elevator and went up to the third floor.
Stepping off the elevator we entered a unit shaped like an ill formed upper-case T. The line going across the top was proportional in either direction and consisted of patient bedrooms with each door wide open. A nurses’ station sat where the line perpendicular to the horizontal top line should began to come down. But the vertical line shooting off from it was too squat and short to form a proper letter T. This severed would be line contained a room full of chairs, a couch, a love seat, a TV mounted high on the wall, and a large conference table.
Even through the gloomy lighting, the primary colored painting above and around each doorway, which served as a border throughout the unit, could be easily made out. It was the same color scheme found in most daycares.
Like the rest of the hospital, the floors here consisted of large plain laminate tiles that captured the sound of footsteps and made them almost disappear. Unless of course you happened to drag your feet when you walked and then the noise was all squeaky like the screech of sneakers on the hardwoods of an indoor basketball court.
Without a word, my guide left me with the same distant smile with which he had received me. Perhaps now he would get to physically go wherever he had already been mentally.
The nurse who reviewed my intake forms went over some safety provisions with me. This is when I lost my shoe strings. When she was finished checking my pockets, she led me to a room two doors down from the central location of the nurses’ station.
The inside looked like a cheap motel room but was considerably smaller. When you entered, there was a tiny bathroom immediately to your left. It was all white with no additional décor or coloring. There was a small sink, toilet, and shower/tub combo. The only thing worth noticing about this bathroom was that there was no mirror above the sink and no lock on the door.
Inside the room were two twin beds. In the bed nearest the door a girl lay asleep. I didn’t want to disturb her, less from the worry of interrupting her sleep and more because I had no desire to meet her or talk to her. Quietly I went passed her bed and sat atop the comforter of the second which was nearest a large window looking onto the street where I entered the hospital. It’s probably a safe assumption that the window contained a particularly reinforced type of glass.
Staring out of this window, I made a mental note to remember the tree that was directly below. It was a tall tree between the street sign and a small bush with tiny white blooms. It lined the street of the main entrance to the hospital. Hundreds of people must pass that tree every day and fail to notice it, but I would always see it. I promised myself that I would always give it a small internal recognition if I happened to pass by. It would serve as a sort of symbol or a personal monument. It would serve as a reminder of a time I vowed never to forget. Probably couldn’t forget even if I tried.
Sometime between my making promises to trees and the sun rising, I had fallen asleep. Now, I was being woken up much too early by an unfamiliar woman. She was standing over my bed and softly calling to me. It was time for breakfast and meds. All I wanted to do was go back to sleep. I didn’t want to have to talk to anyone I didn’t know. I didn’t want to have to meet other crazy kids. I didn’t want people staring at me.
I got up to use the bathroom and could think of only one thing. Facewash. Man, I wish I had my facewash. I despised the thick sheen of a dirty face. It made me uncomfortable like I was dirty all over. Now a greasy, stinky, shiny oil coated my skin like a layer of film atop a cooling soup. They didn’t have any facewash there, so I had to use bar soap which is horribly drying and counterproductive. But beggars can’t be choosers and the grease had to go. No makeup either, it wasn’t allowed. Not that I wore much then, but I did like to fill in my asymmetric eyebrows especially the left one with the triangle shaped scar where hair no longer grew. This scar was a gift from a childhood friend who accidentally swung her green plastic National Geographic box (which held informational cards about various animals) hard landing right above my eye. I remember screaming “I hate you!” as I ran bleeding inside my house.
Besides filling in my scar, I liked to wear mascara sometimes too, but there was nothing to be done about that now. I stepped out into the unit common area raw.
Snowflakes in a Blizzard 