in my gums
by Kelly McElroy
The first one is the easiest. It happens painlessly, on a field trip, at the hands of a Granny Smith apple. All it takes is one bite, and when I pull the fruit away from my mouth I see it there: my front tooth, lodged into the green skin. There is barely any blood, and no tears. My classmates celebrate and my teacher gives me a sticker. I wear it proudly on my pink t-shirt. When I get home, my mother whispers to me like I’ve just been accepted into the coolest club of all time:
“Now, all we have to do is put this tooth under your pillow tonight, and maybe, if you’re lucky, the Tooth Fairy will come and bring you a gift.”
The excitement that glows in my chest as I lay in bed that night is rivaled only by the joy I feel the next morning when I look under my pillow. My tooth is gone, and a crisp five dollar bill rests in its place! I don’t understand yet that this will need to happen 19 more times before it is over. For the time being, I can only wonder at the ease with which this hole in my mouth appeared, and happily stuff the bill into my piggy bank.
—Age 7—
I don’t lose any more teeth for a whole six months, and when my mother brings me to the dentist, he tells her that my adult tooth is ready to come in even though my baby tooth hasn’t fallen out. She makes an appointment at the front desk that means nothing to me until she is dragging me back to the too-bright office with its too-clean smell and I am having my teeth ripped from me against my will. I beg the dentist for apples. I tell him that apples will make my teeth fall out on their own, that I don’t need him to do it for me. He doesn’t listen.
When it’s over, he offers me a green plastic treasure chest the size of a marble and tells me that my tooth is inside. I don’t want to see it, but I take the chest anyway and close it in my palm. There are dry tears on my cheeks and my hands are wet and somewhere between the dentist’s chair and the car I lose my grip on it. I cry on the ride home.
“How will the Tooth Fairy know?” I sob. “What if she doesn’t come?”
“Of course she’ll come! She’s magic, she knows everything,” my mother says. “She’s just like Santa Claus.”
There is a hole in my mouth and the dentist has folded up a small piece of cotton to rest in the spot where my tooth used to be. I can’t feel my cheeks, or my jaw, or my tongue, and I wonder if he took those from me, too, while I wasn’t looking. Was there another treasure chest back in the waiting room filled with more stolen parts that we were meant to take with us? I keep touching my face but I can’t convince myself that anything is still there. I fall asleep in the backseat with the taste of blood in my mouth, and dream of Granny Smith apples and green treasure chests filled with long lost gold.
—Age 10—
My mouth tastes like someone else’s hands. The fluorescent bathroom lights are bright in my eyes and the linoleum floor is cold under my bare feet and my tooth is sitting on the counter. The worst of it is supposed to be over but for some reason I am still standing here in my purple pajama pants and my dad is looking in my mouth again.
“This one is loose, too,” he says, inspecting a tooth next to the hole he just left behind.
“What? No, it’s not.”
“It is, I’m wiggling it right now.”
“Seriously, Dad, it’s not,” I insist, speaking around his fist. “Please get your hand out of my mouth.”
“My dad would’ve just tied a string around it, tied the other end to the door knob, and slammed the door. Easy-peezy,” he says. Is that supposed to be encouraging?
“Please don’t do that!”
“Stop pulling away and just let me take it out.”
Some force from outside of my ten-year-old body wills me to stop fidgeting just long enough for him to rip another of my baby teeth from my gums. He gives me a cup of water and tells me to rinse out my mouth, but I am too upset now to care about the taste of blood.
“That one wasn’t even loose, Dad!”
“Stop crying. The Tooth Fairy doesn’t like kids who cry.”
He puts my two teeth into my shaking, clammy palm and I run to my room and slam the door. The Tooth Fairy? He expects me to care about the Tooth Fairy?
I put my teeth in a tissue and bury them in the garbage can under my desk. I wish they never existed, and I never want to see them again. The hole in my mouth feels like a cavern, like my father has hollowed out an Olympic swimming pool in my gums that will never be filled. The space where my teeth used to be is squishy and red and my hands are tingling and I think I might throw up but what if that knocks out more of them? Will my whole mouth become a bloodied wasteland? I think I might never speak or eat again. There’s really no reason to risk opening my mouth at all.
I don’t remember falling asleep, but when I wake up I check under my pillow by instinct. There’s nothing there.
—Age 11—
As soon as I open my eyes I can feel that something is different in my mouth than it was the day before. I quickly take stock of my teeth, lightly touching each one with my tongue. From left to right, the top row is intact. I start on the bottom row. Only three teeth in from my back left molar I feel it. There is a loose tooth. It’s still there, but who knows for how much longer? It was fine yesterday, but now it has almost certainly begun the journey toward falling out. I close my eyes and will myself to fall back asleep, as if that could transport me back in time to before this tooth had somehow been knocked loose. It doesn’t work. I reluctantly drag myself out of bed.
Downstairs, my mother tries to offer me a bagel.
“Dad got them from Bagel Street. You want one? I can fry an egg on it for you.”
“I’m not hungry,” I reply.
She stops washing the dishes and looks up at me, concerned. “Do you feel okay?”
“Yeah, I’m just not hungry, Mom.”
“I’ll save one for you in case you change your mind.”
My stomach grumbles, but I can’t afford to eat anything that might loosen my tooth any more, let alone something that might knock it out entirely. I grab a glass of water and hope Mom makes something soft for lunch.
Later that night as I stand in front of the mirror, reality fully sets in. All I’ve eaten today is a cup of yogurt. Mom is convinced that I’m sick. She calls the school and asks if any other students have had the stomach bug recently. She thinks that’s the only possible reason for my not wanting to eat.
I begin the practiced regiment of brushing my teeth. The key is to be light and gentle, and to skip directly over the loose tooth to avoid making it any looser. I brush my teeth this way any time I have even the faintest feeling that a tooth could be loose. It’s the safest way to ensure that my teeth stay mine.
My parents can’t know that I have a loose tooth, or they’ll immediately try to pull it out themselves. Somehow, this is even worse than when the dentist does it.
Everything I do becomes a ploy to keep my teeth in my mouth, out of reach of anyone who might try to take them from me. I’d rather have them here, cracked and broken and rotting in my gums, than give them away to some green treasure chest or lose them at the hands of my father. This is the best place for them—the safest place for them.
—Age 12—
I am back in this ridiculous chair. I am back in this place where my face and mouth are numb but the rest of the world is painfully sharp and clear. The bright blue latex gloves on the dentist's hands, the steel pliers in his grip, the vibrant picture of a sunflower on the ceiling above the headrest.
As the minutes tick by I grow more and more lost in that photograph, placed there intentionally so unfortunate patients have something forgiving to look at while a stranger roots around in their gums.
“I’ve got two out and two more to go. Halfway there! You’re doing great!”
I am counting yellow petals and big, floppy leaves.
I don’t even understand how that’s possible, I hear my mother’s voice in my head. He said your tooth fell apart. Inside your mouth! Four pieces, he said. Your tooth is in four pieces in your mouth and you’ve just let it happen. How long did you plan to keep this up?
43 petals. Is that right? I start again, hoping the chorus of numbers in my head might be loud enough to drown out the menacing whir of drills in my mouth.
When it’s over, I leave without a treasure chest of tooth shards. Maybe the dentist knows that I am far too old now for silly gimmicks and post-procedure prizes. Maybe he doesn’t think I’d want to keep a tooth that isn’t even in one piece. Maybe he plans to throw them straight into the tin trash can in the corner of his office. As we drive home, I leave behind those fragments that sat protected in my mouth for months on end. I wonder if they already miss my swollen gums.