Porcelain Mom

There are worse things than throwing up potato chips. Try telling
that to a five year old as she clenches cold white porcelain with
barbeque-flavored bile coursing and stinging her nostrils, her throat,
her tongue. Wretching and heaving. Wretching and heaving. Sweating and
spinning like a drunk.

I can't hold it all in my mouth. Any minute now it will seep through my
eyeballs, and she'll realize that my shrieks foretold my "imminent
demise". Surely seeing the sharp edges of regurgitated snacks
scratching my retinas and filling my eye sockets with fresh blood will
anesthetize her exasperation. Otherwise, those rough munchies could
then very well rupture my eardrums, leaving hot puke to pour freely out
of the holes in my head.

She stands there, sympathetically unsympathetic to my predicament. I
cry and scream and heave and gag harder. With any luck, the next
contraction will send forth a major organ.

I'm going to die. I'll probably collapse in a heap against the frosty
blue marble ceramic tile wall, and watch her favorite little plastic
decorator fishes crash to the floor.

She spots the fishes over my shoulder and stares, focused and
unwavering, ready to catch any that might be jarred from their secure
and carefully measured positions in the midst of all of this
nonsense.