Baby Teeth

*The following is a fictional short story.*

The house was cozy and smelled like leather and garlic and white wine and lemon. The spare bedroom off the kitchen was my favorite room in the house, probably because I was the only one that wanted to spend much time in it and it gave me a sense of quiet and privacy. There was a closet that stored endless rows of my Aunt Beth’s work shoes and miscellanea with sliding mirrored doors that were always falling off the track. The house buzzed with the sounds of family and friends and music and cooking and beers cracking open. The buzzing became muffled and out of focus when I entered the spare bedroom and closed the door. Once in the room, I would carefully slide back the closet door and try on my aunt’s work shoes. My favorite was a pair of black patent leather slingback pumps from maybe Dillard’s or Macy’s. I put them back gently, trying to return them exactly to their designated spot. Although I did not get the impression that Aunt Beth cared which spot they were in, or much for that spare room in the first place, it was important to me to appease her. I remember Aunt Beth offering for me to take some of the shoes I liked one time. This embarrassed me. I was always so embarrassed at that age. I politely declined, regretting it later. 

During one of our visits to my Aunt Beth’s house, I stepped out of the spare room, prepared to be social. I took a few steps down the narrow hallway to the living room. Caroline was perched on the couch. She gave me a soft, closed-lipped smile. It felt like a secret and I was honored to be part of it. The living room was blue and peppered with glass and porcelain figurines and picture frames atop dark wood furniture. Caroline’s face was framed by the window behind her and when she smiled at me, the sunlight caught her hair. In that brief and quiet moment, she saw me and I saw her. 

My socks feeling the slick hardwood floors beneath me, I padded through the dining room and onto the screened-in porch and backyard area. Outside was concrete and gasoline, but there was softness too—citronella and velvet. The swing was simple yet sturdy. Sitting on it, I feared splinters but quickly forgot these anxieties as I flew back and forth, the tree limbs above me and the dirt beneath me feeling too close but also miles away. I remember the tingling feeling at the base of my skull as I sailed farther back than I meant to. This is one of my first memories of losing control. 

I thought of Caroline’s secret smile often once we lost control. 

****

In the summer of 1999, we celebrated the 4th of July at Aunt Beth’s house. The whole extended family was there. We ran barefoot in the backyard. Aunt Beth filled up a small plastic pool for us and we splashed and played. The grown ups sat on the patio drinking Corona with lime and white wine with ice. They ate chips and salsa and reapplied sunscreen and bug spray on the kids as the sun moved to the center of the sky. 

The women as they snacked, their hands sheepishly covering their lips while they chewed: “I shouldn’t be eating this. We are about to have so much food.” 

They played country music on a Boombox. Aunt Beth’s boyfriend, Rick, took us on slow rides on the back of his motorbike around the neighborhood. Aunt Beth could usually be found in the kitchen or at the grill. Her thick brown hair was tied up out of her face with a giant clip, baby hairs gently curling around her face, glistening with a light layer of sweat. She wore high-waisted Levi’s cutoff jean shorts and a white t-shirt, no shoes, red toe polish, Chanel No. 5, and a pair of tiny gold earrings. She refused to take any photos until she had a chance to “freshen up,” which it seemed she never had time to do. I thought she was beautiful.

****

That year, the grown ups talked in hushed and worried voices about Y2K and computers crashing. Caroline and I were preoccupied with other matters. For me, 1999 was American Girl Dolls and Nickelodeon and play dates. I had straight across bangs and wore pajamas laid out by my mother. I felt babyish and self-conscious around Caroline, who was growing tall and picking out her own outfits and going off with her friends. 

Through Caroline, I had access to the world of teenage girls before I became one. Against Caroline’s will, I was allowed to tag along with her. Many of the things Caroline wanted to do were in fact conditioned on my attendance. My parents might have thought that my presence would minimize the trouble she might seek out. I think this worked until it didn’t. 

We sang along to our favorite songs like Blue by LeAnn Rimes with a dramatic flair as if I understood the trauma of unrequited love. Caroline laughed and encouraged me to sing louder. I loved making her laugh. We came up with elaborate dance routines that could be performed while buckled into our seats (mainly arm motions and head turns). We often ended up at CVS and walked up and down the aisles with great care and thoughtfulness, not wanting to miss anything. With furrowed brows and deep concentration, we analyzed endless metal rows of Bonne Bell lip smackers, Herbal Essence shampoos and conditioners, Bon Bons nail polishes, and St. Ives body scrubs. Once we made our beauty selections, we hit up the sweets section to stock up on the essentials—Pixie Sticks for Caroline, Big League Chew for me. Caroline picked up what I considered to be grown up items like deodorant. I made a big show of steering clear of those aisles and my ears burned red whenever Caroline made reference to such things or when the cashier touched them at check out. Caroline rolled her eyes and told me to grow up.  

I now know that around 1999 was the last time we would be okay, Caroline and me. I now know that when she first told me about Ryan, the pit in my stomach was my body telling me that the person I loved the most in the world was slipping, ever so slightly, out of my grip. 

We had just gotten back from the 11:00 AM church service. Sundays were my favorite day of the week. Something about: getting to dress up; the groaning organ that was so loud I could somehow feel the sound in my teeth; the smell of wood and carpet and flowers; the preacher’s inflection that went up and down in a melodic-type way; the feeling of the course paper program in my clammy hands. And then: the satisfaction of a big lunch at home immediately afterwards (often hot dogs prepared in a huge pot of boiling water on the stovetop loaded with sauerkraut and mustard and ketchup); football on the TV when in season; Mom finding something that needed to be organized; and me changing into blue jeans after carefully putting away my church clothes. The routine felt safe and controlled to me. 

I cracked open the door to Caroline’s bedroom, hoping, praying, that she would be in a good mood and want to hang out with me. God answered my prayer on this day. She was laying on her stomach on her bed with her legs going in a windshield-wiper motion, back and forth, flipping through the glossy pages of Tiger Beat. 

She caught my eye then flipped over to lay on her back and let her neck and head rest on the side of the bed so that her hair almost touched the ground. 

“Have you ever laid like this? It feels weird.” 

I scooted towards her and matched her pose next to her. The blood rushed to my head. “That does feel weird. What if we stayed like this for a long time and then got super dizzy. Mom would be like, what is wrong with you guys?” She laughed at what I said and I felt whole. 

She let me know that she had big news, which was that she had a boyfriend named Ryan. Caroline noticed that when she talked to Ryan in school this year, it was different than last year; her entire body felt like it was buzzing. 

She couldn’t have known then that a few years later, Ryan would change his mind about loving her and that when her heart broke, she would feel it physically burn in her chest. She couldn’t have known that she would take it so hard. She couldn’t have known what true loneliness would feel like. I couldn’t have known that her advice about relationships would later be, “As soon as you start to feel like you’ve lost the upper hand, walk away.” I couldn’t have known that she’d become so cold and distant that I’d feel like I had to choose between being there for her and finding happiness for myself; that being around her would feel like walking on eggshells, a twisted mindgame where no one wins. And I couldn’t have known that in choosing myself, I’d wonder forever whether I had done the right thing. 

Closing Caroline’s bedroom door after that talk felt like I was exiting a space where I did not belong—a space meant for adults and romance and kissing and hand holding. I padded down the hall to my own room and shut the door, taking in a space that felt like a relief from all of that—white bedding with tiny pink flowers on it, American Girl dolls lined up in a neat row on the windowsill, and a soft white rug where I could sit still and brush their hair while the sun streamed through the window. I ran a small brush through Samantha’s long, shiny brown hair and pictured, just for a moment, what it might be like to be in love the way that Caroline was. I pictured a boy who was abstract, but handsome—tall, muscular, brunette (later this abstract crush would be materialized in the form of Benny “the Jet” Rodriguez from the 1993 film, The Sandlot). I pictured hugging him and holding his hand. I smiled and felt excited for all of that someday, but the thought was fleeting; it exited my mind almost as quickly as it came once I noticed Samantha needed a jacket.

****

Once the sun sank down behind the trees and the black sky revealed itself after that long day of celebrating America’s independence in 1999, we ate hot dogs and cheeseburgers and filled up on more chips. The music got louder and so did the grown ups. They sang along and hugged and laughed and sank lower into their plastic chairs. I sat in my mom’s lap to watch fireworks and I felt her warm, soft chest against me. She wrapped her thin arms around me. I felt her heartbeat. Her voice sounded muffled when I placed my ear against her chest. I wondered if that is what her voice sounded like to me when she was pregnant with me. Aunt Beth interrupted our moment of quiet when she shouted from the kitchen window for someone to come help her with the dessert. 

My mom shifted in the chair and shooed me along. She went inside and came back out with Aunt Beth, holding the door and making way for a lemon tart with blueberries and powdered sugar. My mouth watered. I re-situated back on my mom’s lap and bit into the tangy, soft treat. I pulled the fork out of my mouth and saw red. A baby tooth fell out. Everyone cheered. I stuffed napkins on my bleeding gums and felt triumphant. 

When the grown ups ran out of things to talk about and Rick stumbled in to put himself to bed, we decided to call it a night. 

“Let’s go,” my dad said, motioning a “wrap it up” signal with his hand, “get your sister.”

****

Once the years slipped by and the damage had been done, I wondered often: how did Caroline and I turn out so different when we grew up in the same house? Experienced mostly the same things? Processed the same world events? 

We’d had the same parents and extended family, went through the same schools and churches. We both got pulled out of school on a perfect fall day because evil people from far away crashed planes into the Twin Towers; both packed emergency kits afterwards to keep in our lockers; both saw them every day wondering if we’d ever need to use them. As we got older, we both fell in love and got hurt and made friends who betrayed us. We both betrayed ourselves by starving our bodies when the numbers on the scale got too high. We’re both left-handed and get migraine headaches. But she would go one way and I’d go another. Then things would get lost in translation and we’d say things we couldn’t take back. And we still can’t seem to get it right. 

But at Aunt Beth’s July 4th party, 1999, as we ran around in our bare feet and applied blue and silver glitter to our eyelids and giggled as we changed the boombox to The Backstreet Boys’ New Millennium to show the grown ups our new choreography, we couldn’t have known any of that. 

****

I climbed the front stairs and cringed as the screen door slammed behind me. I always forgot to brace the door so it wouldn’t slam. The kitchen enveloped me with the smells of a long day of cooking. I called for Caroline and got no response. I walked through the house and knocked on the bathroom door. “Caroline?”

“One minute.” 

I waited. The door stayed closed.

I wailed because the hole in my gums was starting to swell and hurt. “Come on, it’s time to go.”

“Come in here.”

I opened the door slowly and she was squatting over the toilet. “EW!” 

“No, shh, close the door.”

I did as she said. 

“Do you know what this is?” She unwrapped a tube in bright yellow paper.

I lied: “Yes.”

“It’s a tampon.” 

My ears burned red. 

I lied a second time: “I know.” 

“Mom showed me how to use these. I’ll be done soon.”

I looked in the mirror and tried to play it cool. I focused on everything except for Caroline to avoid embarrassment. I observed the blue bath towels hanging on the acrylic rack. The off-white tile floors. The gold frame on the mirror. The toothbrush holder and tissue box on the counter. The faint sound of late-night news coming from the family room. Car doors closed outside as everyone packed up and headed home. 

The toilet flushed and Caroline stood and zipped up her shorts. She pushed me aside and washed her hands. It felt like hours had passed since I first walked into the bathroom. 

“OK, let’s go.”

In the car, as I dozed off, I gripped the small box Aunt Beth gave me to carry my tooth and I wondered if I would still get money for it if we didn’t make it home before midnight. I knew the tooth fairy wasn’t real. But I also knew that the longer I pretended I thought she was real, the longer my parents would tip toe into my room at night and leave me a few bucks under my pillow in exchange for my lost teeth.