Baby Teeth_A Novel

by Zoje Stage

  She glanced down at the grotesque face that Hanna had pasted beside her own, a woman whose frail body lay succumbing to decomposition. The shape of the woman’s skull was clearly visible with the skin stretched tight across her bony nose and cheekbones. Suzette’s concern evaporated. She reminded herself she was helping her daughter—Tisdale specialized in working with children with individual needs. Let them figure it out.

  Her phone sat on the kitchen counter where she’d left it. She dropped Hanna’s masterpiece onto the floor so she could stand above it, manipulating the camera to get the entire collage in the frame. But in the end, she focused on her sleeping self and the grotesque woman beside her so the point wouldn’t be lost on a small screen. She typed in a message: This is what your daughter did w the pic she took of me. Made a collage of dead people. We need to talk.

  She clicked send. Setting the phone aside, she checked on the salmon that was thawing in the refrigerator. She didn’t really like salmon, but it was Alex’s favorite. She’d make her husband and daughter a salad of organic microgreens, from which she would eat only a few bites. She was just thinking of ways to jazz up the brown rice that would be the bulk of her own meal when Alex called.

  “Hey.”

  “Hej.”

  “You got the picture?” she asked.

  “Yes … She made that?”

  “Yeah, beautiful, isn’t it? Look, I need to catch you up on some things, and I think it’s best in person. Can you come home?”

  In the silence that followed she heard an unspoken “no.”

  “We’re in the middle of fika,” he said.

  Suzette rolled her eyes. Sometimes Alex seemed a trifle too attached to his Swedish traditions. Having an organized daily break for coffee and pastries was great, charming, so civilized—but hardly something he needed to stay at work for.

  “Great, so they won’t mind if you leave.”

  “It’s the one time of day we all get to chat about what we’re working on.”

  She rolled her eyes again. He didn’t have that many employees, and they were the most expressive, congenial, collaborative bunch of coworkers ever—he ran a friendly ship. She knew the truth: he didn’t want to leave the pastries behind.

  “Alex, please—remember what you said this morning? We need to talk about Hanna and school.” She could almost see him through the phone, looking with longing at the steaming freshly brewed coffee, the plate of yummies that he had delivered every day from a local bakery. “Finish your pastry, then come home?”

  “Tack, älskling.”

  She heard the smile in his voice. The whole thing struck her as childish, but at least he was coming home. It was likely he’d hoped to avoid another confrontation, especially so soon after their rocky morning. But maybe she could also ease up on her dessert rules. They rarely had sweets at home, except on holidays—which, come to think of it, was not infrequent in the Jensen household. She and her Jewish mother hadn’t celebrated much of anything. Her mother came from a family that sent only boys to Hebrew school, so she never learned the prayers that accompanied holidays and rituals. Her maternal grandparents—whom Suzette had barely known—had expected her mother to marry a Jewish man who would lead them in their Jewish traditions, but she opted for a goy instead. An unhealthy goy with a bad heart. Her mother’s side of the family kept their distance, and after Daddy died, they disappeared.

  Suzette still remembered seeing, as a four-year-old, her father wrapped in white muslin—like a mummy, a monster. She hadn’t felt sad then, as everyone cried around her, only afraid. But for her maternal grandparents it was the final insult: the muslin was a Jewish tradition, one her mother clung to because she thought embalming was grisly; for her parents, it was a sacrilege. He was buried at Homewood, not the Jewish cemetery, and as he was lowered into the ground Suzette’s mother wept hysterically. She fell to her knees and almost tumbled into the grave. It seemed possible, looking back on it as an adult, that some part of her mother had slipped under the earth with her father, never to resurface.

  Maybe Alex was overcompensating, but he liked to celebrate everything. He bought books about the Jewish holidays, which they honored alongside their own slightly less consumer-oriented versions of Christian holidays, as well as his beloved Swedish ones, like Midsummer. They even did their own version of Walpurgis Night, which they’d celebrate in less than two weeks. They couldn’t have a bonfire in the backyard, but they’d set up the portable copper fire pit and sing songs to welcome in the spring. She wasn’t much of a baker, but every October 4 they celebrated Kanelbullens Dag—Cinnamon Bun Day—and she baked accordingly from her mother-in-law Tova’s time-honored recipe. Maybe she should indulge her family in more than treats of chocolate covered fruit or nuts or nondairy ice cream. They ate healthily otherwise and might like it if she learned to bake. It wasn’t as if Suzette didn’t love chocolate chip cookies.

  It was suddenly easy to imagine them both getting fat someday, if Alex spent less time at the gym, or she relented to the call of the doughnuts and cupcakes and fried onion rings that, ironically, were easier to digest than raw vegetables and whole grains and every other consciously healthful food. She knew better than to ever try becoming a vegan; one navel orange, devoured over the winter with slurping glee, landed her in excruciating pain and another round of tests. That’s when they found out how bad the narrowing in her intestine had become. Sometimes she struggled with resentment watching her family eat a meal that she’d prepared. People took eating and shitting for granted, like the continuous beating of their hearts, the inevitable protection of their skin. They didn’t think about their intestines doing everything wrong, fucking up the basic process of digestion. Sometimes food was a marauding enemy, threatening and bludgeoning. She couldn’t tell Alex how cheated she felt sometimes, or jealous. She looked normal and he accepted her near-normality.

  She slipped back upstairs and put a big hot-water load of towels in the washing machine. The sound of the wash cycle, the rhythmic churning and frothing, always comforted her. She lingered there, her hand on the machine, taking in its faintly oceanic vibrations.

  Hanna came out of her room and spotted her in the laundry alcove. She thought the girl would have changed into something more comfortable, the leggings and T-shirt dresses she liked. But she still wore the skirt and cardigan from their morning outing. She gazed up at her with the expression Suzette had come to learn meant “I’m bored.”

  “You could play outside for a bit? It’s a nice day.”

  She wriggled her face around, apparently weighing the merits of the suggestion, but then looked up with her slightly hopeful “anything else?” look.

  “I’m still irritated with you, you know. About that picture. But I have to say, you constructed it very well.”

  Hanna gave one sharp bob of her head in agreement.

  “You are a smart and capable girl…”

  Hanna reached out and placed her hand on the washing machine, a mirror of her mother. Suzette read the question on her face.

  “I like the way the vibration feels. Someday … You don’t believe it now, and I’m sorry if you’re afraid, but once you’re in school—”

  The girl let out a vicious bark.

  “—things will be so much better. For you, us.”

  Hanna snarled and yipped, growing more and more savage. Suzette stood there, passive and unimpressed.

  “I should have brought my phone up, so I could record this—a little more evidence so Daddy knows who you really are.”

  Hanna stopped barking but held her mother in a hateful stare. She whipped her head toward Suzette’s extended arm, opening her mouth as wide as she could.

  Suzette pulled her vulnerable arm in and instinctively pressed her other hand against her daughter’s forehead to keep her at bay.

  “We do not bite! You know better!”

  Hanna clacked her teeth together, biting the air, twisting her head against her mother’s resisting arm.

  “Stop
it!”

  She made growling noises in her throat: rabid, dangerous sounds. Grabbing Suzette’s arm, Hanna tried a new tactic in her fight to get close enough to bite her.

  Suzette jumped out of the way, flailing her arms, trying to swat her away. “Hanna! You fucking little…!” She thought she’d be strong enough, should the need arise, to overpower her. But she was afraid—afraid she was wrong and afraid of feeling her daughter’s teeth breaking through her skin, clamping onto her bone. She recalled a story, splashed across the internet, of a woman and her dog. One night, after drinking too much, the woman passed out, and while trying to lick her awake, her pet dog became anxious and manic. The woman lay unconscious and the dog kept licking. Her skin became raw, her nose started to bleed. Excited by the blood, the dog ate her entire face.

  She could almost feel Hanna biting through her skin, tearing off a long and bloody strip of her flesh. The girl-dog kept advancing and she retreated, slapping at her.

  “Stop!” Suzette howled again and again. “You’re going to end up in a fucking mental hospital, is that what you want?”

  The girl-dog vanished as suddenly as she’d appeared. Suzette struggled to control her ragged tear-choked breathing. Her heart screamed in her chest. The word “hate” formed in her mouth, but she didn’t give it a voice.

  “Why? Why are you doing this to me?”

  Her daughter’s slight shoulders drooped, her head tilted a little to the right. She almost looked sad.

  “Je suis Marie-Anne. Je m’appelle Marie-Anne!”

  She sounded so desperate, begging to be understood. She also sounded, to Suzette’s ears, so perfectly, natively French. But what could she know beyond a few words from the French computer game she’d refused to play? Impossible.

  They faced off for a moment, before Suzette snatched her daughter’s arm. She gripped her tightly and dragged her down the stairs. Hanna tried to wrest free, digging at her mother’s clenched fingers, but Suzette asserted her superior size, her superior strength.

  Down the steps. Across the great room. She opened the door that led to their enclosed garden and practically tossed the girl outside.

  “Go play!”

  She slammed the door and locked it. Hanna glared at her from the other side of the glass. She tested the door, confirming that it couldn’t be opened. Unflustered, she set her hands at her waist and jauntily walked off into the yard, like the queen of Nothing Matters.

  Suzette breathed in and out, a bull deciding whether to charge. She flicked the lock open and stuck her head outside.

  “I’ll be right here watching you! And Daddy’ll be home any minute!”

  Hanna looked back at her long enough to shrug, then went to her stash of toys that they kept in a storage box alongside the house. Suzette reclosed the door and locked it.

  She could kill Hanna.

  No, she couldn’t.

  She could.

  She’d never.

  She might.

  Once, only once in her life had she ever wanted to tear someone apart. It lasted only a moment. Scrawny Ira Blumenfeld thought it was funny one day, before their sixth-grade art teacher came in, to snip off an inch of her hair. Was she supposed to laugh? Were the other boys? She’d always been friendly with Ira—she was still healthy then, still had friends. But the rage it set off in her. Because her mother butchered her hair once, too lazy to take her to a salon? Whatever the reason, she grabbed scrawny Ira Blumenfeld by his neck with both hands and nearly threw him across the room.

  The shocked look on his face extinguished her rage, and for years afterward she remained puzzled and guilt-ridden by her outburst of violence. But now, she felt it again.

  Hanna was safer on the other side of the glass.

  * * *

  In her reliable rubber gloves, she used a clean cloth and window cleaner and worked her way across the glass wall. For a while, Hanna played with her Hula-Hoop in the middle of the yard as the two of them kept careful watch of each other. Now, the Hula-Hoop lay forgotten and Hanna stood just on the other side of the glass, inching along as Suzette sprayed and rubbed, stepped to her right, sprayed and rubbed. With a certain glee she was able to spray it on Hanna’s face without actually damaging her. But a sense of disappointment remained that with all her effort and rubbing, she couldn’t make her daughter dissolve with the dust and oily smudges.

  It registered on Hanna’s face before Suzette even heard the door open behind her: Alex was home. She lit up, grinning, and ran for the door. She tugged it, but it wouldn’t open. Suzette peeled off her gloves and met Alex in the center of the room. As they kissed, Hanna banged on the glass.

  “Don’t bang on the glass, lilla gumman,” he called out. She tugged ferociously on the door and he understood. “Is it locked?”

  “Yes. She’s fine. Let’s just talk while she’s out playing—”

  “She wants in.” He brushed past Suzette and unlocked the door.

  “—please, Alex, we can’t talk if she’s in—”

  Hanna ran into her father’s arms and Suzette swallowed the rest of her plea. It was such a defeat to see him on his knees, and her, so sweet, kissing his cheek, hugging him around the neck. What had he done that was so much better, that earned him all of their daughter’s love? Alex fussed over her and she giggled.

  “How’s my squirrely girl?”

  At his question, Hanna turned sheepish, frightened eyes toward Suzette, then turned back to her Daddy. Wincing as if she was in pain, she tugged up the sweater sleeve on her left arm.

  Suzette couldn’t see exactly what she revealed, but horror dropped onto Alex’s face. And he turned that horrified face to her.

  “What is it?” She felt fear brewing once again in that fragile place inside her, the place that could soften and fail and destroy her equilibrium.

  “Did you do this?” he asked.

  “What?”

  She stepped closer, and Hanna, wearing a pout, extended her arm.

  Four screaming red bands, already bruising, marred her delicate skin.

  Suzette gasped, concerned for her daughter’s injury. She became aware of both of them looking at her, condemning her, escorting her onto the gallows and nodding for the hangman to drop the floor. She swung before them, jittery and unable to beg for her life.

  “I didn’t…!”

  She saw in their faces: they didn’t believe her.

  Had she made those marks? When she yanked Hanna down the stairs and across the room? She didn’t think she’d gripped her so forcefully. And it hadn’t been for more than a minute. Could she have caused such damage to her child?

  “Alex, I swear…”

  Hanna pointed at her, but looked at her father. The fire in his face. He’d do worse than let her hang. He’d gather the kindling and strike the match himself.

  Suzette shook her head. “You don’t know what she was doing! She was trying to attack me. She tried to bite me, she was growling and biting—”

  “Lilla gumman, I need you to go to your room while I talk to your mother.”

  “—I only took her by the arm, it wasn’t … I didn’t…” She tried to take hold of her daughter’s arm, gingerly, to examine it further, but Hanna hugged it against her body. “I’ll get you an ice pack.” She hurried to the freezer, aware of Alex lobbing fireballs at her back.

  “I swear, Alex … I don’t know what happened.” She wrapped a reusable Freez Pak into a dish towel. She tried to hand it to Hanna, but he took it from her and placed it gently on their daughter’s swollen arm. He picked her up and carried her upstairs.

  “Only leave it on for a few minutes at a time, otherwise it’ll get too cold,” she called to him.

  He didn’t acknowledge her.

  “Make sure there’s enough fabric against her skin…”

  “We’ve got this.” He disappeared without looking at her. His condemnation reverberated around the room.

  She pressed her fingers to her lips and for a moment forgot to breathe.

>   Did she do it?

  She was sure she didn’t.

  Almost sure.

  Pretty sure.

  The cracks formed and doubt broke her open.

  She couldn’t remember.

  What had she done to her daughter? In that moment when her hatred blacked out her reason?

  Nothing.

  She’d done nothing to Hanna.

  It was Marie-Anne Dufosset. She was the problem.

  That fucking little French witch.

  HANNA

  SUPPER WAS WEIRD. Fishy fish and Mommy and Daddy with a wall between them, thicker than the garden glass that had separated her from Mommy. Daddy gobbled up his fish like a hungry bear while Mommy picked at hers like the pink flesh was human meat.

  “I think we should talk about what happened,” she said in a sad cartoony voice. “What preceded—”

  “Not in front of Hanna.”

  She perked up, interested. It had turned out even better than she had planned, and she really truly didn’t mind if they wanted to talk about her. It would be like watching a very good game, like what no one but Daddy called football where the men ran around in such a hurry, kicking and chasing after a ball that would explode if it stayed still for too long.

  “It affects Hanna, and she was involved—”

  Daddy glared at Mommy as she put her cheek against her palm. Her head looked heavy enough to break her wrist.

  Hanna fought the urge to smile. She ate her rice one tiny grain at a time, wedged between the tines of her fork. So it went for fifty-two grains. Mommy kept glancing at Daddy, but he’d never seen anything more interesting than his plate of food. He took a second serving of salad.

  “She wasn’t accepted at Sunnybridge,” she said into the silence.

  He kept his chin down but tilted his eyes up, making him look a bit evil. “Not now.”

  “Don’t you want to know why? Hanna knows—there’s no reason not to talk about it in front of her. I wish she would tell you herself. Or show you—”