THE CHILD WHO KEPT HER MOUTH SHUT.

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.