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THE CHILD WHO KEPT HER MOUTH SHUT.
The child kept her mouth shut and did not
smile in photos. When she daydreamed and her mouth fell open, her
father tapped her under her chin.
“Careful or you'll look like a
half-wit.” he said.
He meant it kindly. He kept his chin up
and his top lip stiff. He was never rude or unkind to those he
considered half-wits though he would get very angry with employees
who behaved like half-wits.
When she wasn't daydreaming she made sure
her mouth was shut because though she was nine years old she only had
one front tooth. The other children in her class at school had sung
to each other, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth!”
Soon they all had two front teeth.
She would whisper, “All I want for
Christmas is my other front tooth.” but it did not appear.
Her baby teeth had all become loose one
after another. They had wobbled in an interesting fashion when she
pushed them with her tongue but they hung on by tiny red threads of
flesh. Her mother had suggested using string.
“Tie one end to your tooth, tie the
other end to the handle of an open door. Slam the door shut quickly.
It won't hurt.” She had smiled. It was her joke.
In the end all the little teeth had come
out one by one, as easily as pearly orange pips. Only a couple had
little black spots of decay. Each had to be treasured in her sticky
palm, then it went into a spare matchbox for safe-keeping till
bedtime. It would be carefully tucked under her pillow. Her father
always forgot to give the tooth fairy the silver coin she needed to
pay for the tooth and he had to hand it to the child at breakfast.
Perhaps it was this casual neglect of the tooth fairy that prevented
one of her front teeth from growing. All she knew was that if she
smiled a grown-up would ask.
“Ooh! What has happened to your front
tooth?”
So she didn't smile and they simply said,
“What a solemn child!”
Then she was ignored because solemn
unresponsive children are dull.
At last her watchful mother took her to a
dentist whose surgery was on the third floor of a dark building. To
reach the surgery her mother shut them into an iron cage with doors
that expanded, then clanged. It groaned all way up and squeaked
faster all the way down. The dentist's room seemed to be all made of
dark brown sagging leather with shiny lumps and bumps. Behind the
white-coated dentist, there was a machine like a giant dissected
spider's leg. In front of him was a metal tray with detached silver
spider’s fangs arranged on it. The dentist and her mother talked
together for a time and then they both looked at her for a while.
They put cheerful smiles on their faces. She even had a hard machine
pushed into her mouth to take an x-ray. The dentist explained that
she had an extra little tooth in her mouth and it had stopped her
adult tooth from developing as it should.
“I will have to cut the extra one
out,” he said. “I will give you an injection so you won't feel
anything.”
After the appointment with the dentist,
the child's mother took her hand and they crossed over the road to
the office of the Christian Science Practitioner. The Christian
Science Practitioner was a nice lady with tight curly hair, teacups
and sugar cakes, spectacles, tight clip-on earrings and tight
stockings.
“It’s mind over matter.” she said,
“If you have the right thoughts in your mind, you will feel no
pain. I will pray for you.”
The child however, was very frightened
and her mind did not win over the matter of the pain. The injection
hurt and its numbing effect did not seem to last very long but she
sat very still while the tears ran down her cheeks and the blood ran
down her chin. Her mother and the practitioner didn't look cheerful
at all.
The ordeal ended of course, her mouth
healed, and the child put the matter out of her mind. One day when
she and her father were in the town, a man in a bow-tie and tweed
jacket came up and greeted them.
“Hello, how are you?” he said to
her. He had a kind smile. The child had no idea who he was but she
did not smile at him because she still had no front tooth. Her father
looked at her surprised.
“Don't you recognise your dentist?”
he asked.
“No.” she said, also surprised.
Two years later she was no longer a
child, but a girl in her first year at boarding school. She still had
no front tooth. She still kept her mouth closed. She even looked
serious when she was daydreaming. Daydreaming meant that she was
often last in the line for going to classes or even for going into
meals. One day she was so late that all the other girls were seated
at their supper tables when she stepped through the door. The teacher
on duty was a plain, shapeless, almost young, woman who could not
remember what it was to be a child or to be happy.
“Stand up!” she ordered the girl.
“How did you get to be so useless and toothless!”
The girl kept her mouth closed as her
father and her life had taught her. She knew that no grown-up worth
their salt would ever be rude or unkind to someone without a tooth.
Besides she knew that her tooth had begun to grow. She could feel its
razor-sharp edge against her tongue and she knew that one day the
spicy bite of revenge would be hers to savour.
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