“You have to put your tooth under your pillow for the Tooth Fairy,” said the mother.
“I want to keep it,” said the boy.
“Ha ha,” said the mother. “What are you going to do with an old tooth?”
“Just keep it,” said the boy.
“The Tooth Fairy might not give you money,” said the mother.
“I still want to keep it,” said the boy, and he raised a Ziploc bag to his eye, as if staring into a fishtank, and there, in the bag, was a solitary, polygonal, pink tooth.
* * * * *
THE TOOTH FAIRY (loosely translated): I would eat teeth, I would, but my skin would flee my body, from the pleasure of it, even the edible fantasy frightens me, to indulge in it, to daydream it, it’s like standing next to a crocodile, the vision of it, of two teeth chewing a third, top and bottom, bottom and top, the offsetting, escalating pressures, tickling the three bellies of those three teeth, the communal squeeze, mounting, mounting, until they breach some, some, some mathematical drum, maybe, and explode through the outer eggshell of the chewed tooth, and dive at its heart, like a hatchet through chocolate, like biting a vanilla grape, or a bead of icing, or a macaroon. I wake wanting teeth and I sleep wanting teeth and when I think I think in the language of teeth, which I have thirty-four words for, and I know no time when I didn’t crave teeth, and I can think of no world in which I don’t desire teeth, I don’t know how to not desire teeth, I cannot speak in concepts that assume the non-desiring of teeth, it may even be that the desire preceded myself, and sculpted a body to bear it—myself. T-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t! The sound of my teeth, humming against my teeth, at the anticipation of new teeth. Some hours I sit on my hands, to stop them from mutinying, and pulling my own teeth from my own gums, just to feel that exquisite dimple, the weight of a tooth on the crown of a fingertip, like the Pearl of the World on a fresh crust of bread, crackling and domed and divine, lightly bowing my hand toward the Earth.
And this world is littered with teeth. Littered. They fall out of the mouths here, constantly and unendingly, my personal fountains of bone, geysering, geysering, my soft slot machines, winning, winning, winning, winning—what a world. I used to believe that the heads holding these teeth—my raison d’etres; my mother birds—were just organic, unplanned growths, maybe fungal, which happened to generate teeth, and I would guess at the reason: they were the pits of digested fruits; they were seeds; they were excrement. Sometimes I would flatter myself and imagine that the teeth were offerings, and that the growths worshiped me, me, in their own way, but no god would value an offering more than the offeree, the act would upend the relationship, the god, delighted to distraction by a gift, would become the worshipper, and the worshipper, seeing the god debase itself before the offering, would hate the god, in some alcove of their heart. So I couldn’t be a god, and the teeth couldn’t be sacrifices, but I don’t care, I would never trade my river of teeth for a godhood, I’m already as happy as my mind will allow, becoming a god would just risk that, like a tutu outgrowing its waist, and not a waist outgrowing its tutu, or I’d be a god that’s as happy as her mind will allow, which would be no different than me already being as happy as my mind will allow—what a world. To exist now, to be born, thigh-deep, in a spilled cornucopia of free teeth, rising, rising, until I drown in them, with teeth in my lungs, at the pleasant end of the world—what a world. What rapture.
My uncle sees this, and he says that I’m impossible, that nothing can be constantly happy, there would need to be some contrast, somewhere, or what I meant by constant joy would just be bald existence, unthinking, like a cube of soil exists, like not existing, but he didn’t think I was a cube of soil, so I couldn’t be constantly happy. “But I am,” I say, and I argue that my cousin, the Color Red, is constantly red, and happily red, without contradiction. “But,” says my uncle—a black mountain with white hands—“red would mean nothing if it wasn’t for the other colors, and a red universe, with nothing but red, would not be red, it would be nothing. So you can’t be constantly happy,” says my uncle. “But I am,” I say.
Then, as if to disprove me, my uncle tells me that I only love small teeth that are both unwanted and drop from their skulls, he says, and he emphasizes that last condition, as if to hint at the existence of some other species of small tooth, which I don’t collect, and which should undermine my happiness. According to my uncle, what he calls baby teeth can still be fixed to a jaw when they become unwanted, and that he collects those teeth, not me, “Like they’re jacks,” he says. But I’ve never seen a mouth full of unwanted teeth, and I will never be able to, it would stand outside the pale of my duties, which marks the pale of my experience, so I will never need to refute my uncle, and I tell him that, and I tell him that I could never fear a tooth that I will never meet, and I laugh, and I fly away from him, to my next mouth.
And so I am impossibly content, like a stone sitting within a stone, sitting within a stone sitting within a stone, I just pursue my trade, incessantly, I flicker from dark room to dark room, and I stand before an unending parade of sleeping mouths, and I draw, from the pillows under those mouths, resplendent teeth, they lie there on the pillow of my palm, and I ripple with joy, my bones flex with it, and then I flit to the next tooth, and I repeat; and the next tooth, and I repeat; and I repeat; and I repeat; and I repeat, in a state of never-cresting, but never-ebbing, relentless, relentless, relentless joy.
I should say, though, that on occasion, while in between windows, and far from my uncle, I make a cup with my hands, and I whisper into it, and I confess to myself that there is one tooth that I love above all others, and which might prove that I’m not a cube of soil, but not because I’m not happy (I would tell my uncle), because my happiness can apparently exceed itself, like a flaring sun. But as soon as I think this, I remind myself that, no, each tooth is as celebratory as the previous tooth, each tooth is its own apogee, and catharsis, and crescendo, its own peak of its own mountain, but I do remember this specific tooth. I do.
One evening, years ago, I heard the song of an abandoned tooth, and I flew to it, and I found myself in a kitchen, maybe, but one of the walls was pocked with small doors, ceiling to floor, and in the kitchen were multiple, sleeping bodies, on beds with wheels, who were all draped in blue sheets, to the hair. Under one of these sheets was a mouth, and a head, but it was creased, it was cut and furrowed, as if it were upholstered in excessive flesh, or it had melted, like a candle, and it was larger than a customary head, and the body extending away from the head was longer than it should have been, and stiller. Curious, I pulled the head’s lips apart, and I saw that the mouth was growing only beige, broad, full teeth, glaring and long, like a bad fence, and I dropped the lips. There was no pillow under the head, and no tooth, but around the head’s neck was a locket, and inside that locket was the tooth, crying to me, I could hear it, pleading to come home, after so many years abroad, after so many years imprisoned, after so many years divided from me, its birth-pool, it was miserable, it cried, it was lonely, it cried, it missed its sisters, it cried, so I ripped that locket from that neck, with a pop, and I freed the tooth, which was pink and polygonal, and the tooth wept and sang in the air, ecstatic, and I held it above that covetous mouth, triumphant.
Miles Greaves is an attorney living in Sleepy Hollow, New York, with his wife and two young boys. A story of his won first place in Zoetrope: All-Story’s annual short-fiction contest (winter 2018–2019), and others have appeared in Tin House Online, Jersey Devil Press, Storybrink, Curlew New York, and Wallstrait. In addition to writing, he enjoys playing basketball, birdwatching, and trying to convince his kids to enjoy birdwatching.
Image: lisaleo,morguefile.com
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