Baby Teeth_A Novel

by Zoje Stage

  “How was school?”

  “Promising, actually.”

  “That’s good news.”

  Beatrix popped out of the playroom. “Just checking, heard the door,” she said, seeing Alex. She turned back to the room, to Hanna. “A few more minutes on your own? Is that okay?” Hanna must have nodded, because Beatrix smiled. “Good.” She shut the door and gestured for Suzette and Alex to join her.

  Round two. Suzette settled back on the couch. Alex and Beatrix shook hands and made their proper introductions. Before joining Suzette on the couch, he peered through the one-way glass, where Hanna played with Legos. Beatrix checked her watch as she took a seat.

  “So we only have a few minutes, but—” she looked at Suzette “—I’d like to get Alex caught up.”

  Suzette put her hand on her belly again, trying to keep the heavy thing from churning. Maybe it would sound better, less ridiculous—crazy—coming from the therapist.

  “So Suzette has informed me of a couple of incidents. The dog barking—” Alex nodded. “—which was quite alarming to Suzette, because of how intense it was and she had concerns for her own safety.” Now it was Suzette’s turn to nod. Alex glanced at her, but she couldn’t read his expression. Concern? Regret? Doubt?

  “But Hanna is exhibiting other disturbing behavior as—”

  “What kinds of disturbing behavior?” he asked, annoyed. Skeptical.

  Beatrix continued. “There was an incident where she acted out sexually—”

  Alex snapped his head toward Suzette. She hoped Beatrix read his anger, his unwillingness to believe what he didn’t want to be true.

  “Just because she’s a child,” he said to the therapist, “doesn’t mean she can’t have sexual feelings.”

  “I agree. But the incident Suzette described—your daughter claimed, in that moment, that the devil was having intercourse with her.”

  “What?”

  His face bloomed red as he glared first at Beatrix, and then at Suzette.

  “I told you, she’s … She thinks, or is pretending, to be this witch—”

  “But you know she’s not a witch.”

  “No, she isn’t,” said Beatrix. Suzette looked to the therapist, hoping she had a special technique for smoothing things over, for talking offended fathers down from a defiant ledge.

  “My opinion is that this alter ego is a way for her to break the ice, of sorts. She’s adopted a persona who is allowed to speak, to be demonstrative, in a way that Hanna still won’t permit for herself. It doesn’t mean she’s a witch. But we do need to understand what this behavior means, and what your daughter’s trying to express. She’s a very precocious girl who’s built a wall around herself—and we don’t know why she felt she needed the wall, but I think she’s trying to find a way over it. And right now, this is manifesting in some new behaviors.”

  Thank God. Beatrix and her art of rationalizing. Of being reasonable. Of being clinically professional in the face of deviance. Even Alex relented. His body relaxed. She slipped her hand into his, and was relieved when he squeezed it.

  She should’ve taken that moment to tell them both about the voodoo-doll-potato thing, to hear Beatrix justify it as another attempt by Hanna to find a way over her wall. But the moment felt too precarious, and she didn’t want Alex to pull his hand away. And maybe, after all, Hanna hadn’t made an effigy of Mr. G.

  Beatrix was on top of things. And Tisdale seemed to know how to handle Hanna.

  They left a few minutes later after scheduling another appointment for the following Monday. Hanna monkey-climbed up Alex as soon as she saw him. He carried her to his car, babbling his Good Daddy babble, and she giggled, and both of them forgot about her. Suzette got in her own car, alone, aware of Beatrix standing on the stoop, arms crossed, watching the family dynamics on display. It was just as well. It confirmed everything she’d tried to say. From afar, father and daughter appeared so normal. Because that’s what the daughter wanted everyone to think. Still, Suzette knew it made her look bad, made it seem as if the problem existed only between mother and daughter.

  It was hard to pour endless love into someone who wouldn’t love you back. No one could do it forever.

  * * *

  Alex sat double-parked with his flashers on, waiting so she could pull into the driveway first, and then backed in behind her. On the cramped city street, even with their double lot, they lacked the space for a garage. At the front door, Hanna scuffed her feet back and forth along the welcome mat, eager to get inside. Suzette was afraid he was angry, but he wrapped his arm around her as they crossed the stone-paved walk.

  “You need to keep me fully apprised of what’s going on. I felt so stupid, not even knowing—”

  “I want to, it’s not that I don’t want to.”

  He unlocked the door. Hanna barged past, kicked off her Keds, and slunk off to her room. Alex and Suzette slipped out of their shoes, too, leaving them in a tidy row by the closet.

  “Some of the things that happen…” She tried to figure out how to explain it. He patiently waited. “I find myself … I get so caught off guard, so freaked out. I know how crazy it sounds. And I don’t want to cast Hanna, in your eyes, as crazy—or myself.”

  His fingertips sought hers and for a moment he seemed intent on reading her through touch. But before he could say anything, a high scream, as piercing as a Klaxon alarm, shattered the air. Startled and terrified, they both followed the noise, charging up the stairs to Hanna’s room.

  “Lilla gumman?” Alex said, tearing past the corner into her room. “What’s wrong?”

  Suzette pushed in beside him.

  Hanna stood there holding the half-mashed legless potato in her hand. As soon as she saw her parents, the scream turned into a wail. Tears cascaded down her cheeks.

  Alex fell to his knees. His hands wandered over her, making sure she wasn’t injured. “What happened?”

  She held up the potato and scooped up the pencil legs and the flower hat, crying as she had never cried before.

  Her daughter’s pain punctured Suzette’s chest, sending panic through her veins. Hanna uttered breathless, open-mouthed wails—the kind that turn a child’s face scarlet and wound a parent’s heart.

  “Your UnderSlumberBumbleBeast?” Alex asked.

  Oh God. Regret sliced through Suzette as efficiently as an executioner’s ax. She’d forgotten about the creatures in Hanna’s favorite book.

  Hanna’s head was almost too heavy for her to nod. She tried to show him where the legs went, where the hat went. She picked up the red crayon and tried to stick it back in its broken hole. The horrible keening noises she made sounded like a dog that had been hit by a car. She threw the useless appendages back onto the floor.

  “I don’t understand what happened.” Stricken and desperate, he sat on the bed and pulled Hanna onto his lap, trying to comfort her. She squirmed away on her hands and knees. Alex looked to Suzette and she, too, gaped in horror. Hanna had never thrown such a fit, and her breathing was so erratic, and the noises so fitful, so agonized.

  “It was me—it was me.” Suzette fell to the floor, scrambling. She wrapped her arms around Hanna, rocking her. “It was me—it was Bad Mommy.” Alex looked confused. “I found it and it scared me,” she told him. “I didn’t know what it was, I thought maybe it was a voodoo doll.”

  Hanna fought her way out of her mother’s arms and crawled to her father. He scooped her up and cradled her, but his hard eyes stayed on Suzette.

  “It’s from the book we always read. It was her friend—she made it!”

  “I didn’t know, I forgot. I’m sorry. At school, Mr. G—the principal—had an eye patch, over the same eye as…”

  “As a potato?”

  “I wasn’t thinking, it was the first thing that came to mind and—”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I know! But she said she was a witch. And she drew blood, dripping out of its eye…”

  Hanna held the ruined beast
clutched to her heart. Alex gently encouraged her to show it to him. She pointed to the red marks she’d drawn on the potato, then gestured to her own tears. Then pointed and gestured again, imploring for her father to understand. But even Suzette grasped it: they were tears, not drops of blood.

  Suzette collapsed into sobs. She hadn’t meant to destroy something precious. She hadn’t meant to wound her child. They didn’t know the rage it had triggered, how she’d screamed and thrown her own tantrum. Jealous of Alex’s sympathy for Hanna, she questioned if he would have comforted her in that moment, when she’d been so overwhelmed. She read condemnation on his face as he held Hanna like a baby, rocking her as her wails subsided to hiccupping sobs.

  “Sshh, lilla gumman … Daddy’s squirrely girl…” He cooed so softly Suzette couldn’t hear everything he said. But Hanna quieted. She looked so tiny in his arms, a rag doll.

  “I’m so sorry.” Suzette steepled her hands against her mouth. She knew she looked pathetic, on her knees, guilty, beseeching their forgiveness.

  Alex planted kisses on Hanna’s tear-streaked face. “We’ll go upstairs to Daddy’s room?” Hanna nodded. He eased the ruined potato out of her hand and held it out for Suzette.

  With her head bowed, she had no choice but to take it. The punishment. The reminder of her foolishness. He carried Hanna away and she couldn’t look. She heard him climbing the stairs, mumbling something. Probably about getting away from Bad Mommy.

  Bad Mommy wiped her nose on the back of her hand. She gathered up the detritus she’d discovered under the bed. She considered what to do with the pencils, the flower eraser, the broken crayon, aware that they weren’t just objects, but body parts.

  Once, in second grade, she’d taken one of her beloved stuffed animals to school. Baby Bear was actually a mouse, but she’d named him as a three-year-old and no one corrected her. He spent most of the day at the bottom of her backpack, and when she got home she realized Baby Bear’s face was streaked with blue ink stains—scars from a leaking pen. She tried to wash them off—gently with water and a Q-tip, and then more vigorously with a soapy washcloth—but the stains wouldn’t come out. Holding back the tears, she went to her mother, parked in front of the TV, and asked for help.

  “It’s just a stupid toy,” her mother said.

  But Baby Bear wasn’t stupid, or a toy. In fact, young Suzette ascribed to him more empathy and nurturing capabilities than the human she lived with. He watched over her. He cared about her feelings. She’d damaged Baby Bear and, consumed with guilt, could do nothing but curl up with him on her bed and cry.

  A good mother would have known what the UnderSlumberBumbleBeast was. A good mother would have recognized how, in a child’s eyes, it might be a cherished friend.

  She left the little body parts in a neat row on the shelf above Hanna’s bed. She carried the rest away, cupped in her hands like a delicate bird that might yet come back to life.

  HANNA

  THEY HAD A party on the open sofa bed. She’d always been intrigued by it because it looked just like a couch, but when Farmor and Farfar came, it transformed into a bed. Now it was an island where she and Daddy were the only inhabitants. He laid a blanket over it so they wouldn’t get crumbs everywhere while they ate their open-faced sandwiches and watched episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation on his laptop.

  When Mommy came up, Hanna dived into the ocean and hid, treading water while itsy-bitsy fish tickled her toes and ankles.

  “Mango sorbet?” She handed two bowls to Daddy. “How’s she doing?”

  His big shoulders went up and down. “That was way not cool.”

  “I know … If only she would show you her witch side … Maybe you’d understand how I get so creeped out.”

  “We’ll talk later.”

  Mommy nodded and left, and Hanna climbed ashore. She wanted to tell him about the baby fish, who had such bright colors and flashed to one another like Christmas lights. She didn’t know why the words, so clear in her brain, always stopped in her mouth. She just couldn’t. And the more she thought about it, the worse it became. In that regard, she was a little jealous of Marie-Anne.

  They gobbled up their mango sorbet.

  “Yummy yummy.”

  She agreed. She and Daddy had a secret language like the fish and their flashing lights. He always saw her, no matter how lost she was in the dark, and figured out what she meant.

  * * *

  At bedtime Daddy didn’t make her go to her own room. She tugged on his arm and he understood.

  “Okay, I’ll sleep up here too.”

  She curled up with a smile and closed her eyes, even though she wasn’t that tired yet. They would sleep side by side, like a married couple. Like they would all the time when it was just the two of them. Daddy turned off one of the lights, and the bed jiggled as he sat beside her and stretched out his legs. She heard him turn the pages of a book. She was just starting to plot her revenge against Mommy when she came shuffling up the stairs with her scaly feet.

  “You aren’t coming down?” she said in a whisper from very near the island.

  “I told her I’d stay.”

  Mommy exhaled through her nose. “Aren’t we going to talk?”

  She couldn’t see how Daddy responded, but it wasn’t with words. Mommy didn’t give up. “I called Dr. Stefanski’s office. They said to double up on the Imodium, which wasn’t helpful because I’ve already been doing that, and I’m going in on Thursday.”

  They couldn’t see her face, buried in the pillow away from them, so she smiled. Mommy was getting sicker. She deserved it. But then Daddy got up and waded to shore, and she was afraid he was breaking his promise, betraying her to go downstairs with Mommy. But they only went to the top of the stairs.

  The whispering continued.

  “Did he think it could be the surgery? You just need more time to heal?”

  “I don’t know, I only talked to the nurse. I’ll do my blood work tomorrow so they’ll have the results.”

  They went quiet. Maybe Daddy was thinking of pushing Mommy down the stairs. But there weren’t any screams or blumping bumps, and then Daddy started talking again, a little louder than a whisper.

  “I want you to write out every single word she’s said as Marie-Anne.”

  “I already have—I wrote it down for Beatrix. I’ll send it to you.”

  “And tell me every time it happens again. I need to know.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  “Okay. And maybe … Try to stop being afraid of her—she’s trying to communicate with us, with you. Frankly, I’m kind of envious. And you’re not even appreciating—”

  “It’s hard to appreciate, the way she does it. I don’t think you’d really like it.”

  For once, she had to agree with Mommy. Daddy hadn’t done anything to deserve Marie-Anne’s wrath. And if ever she could find a way to speak as herself, those words would all be for Daddy.

  “I have a hard time accepting that.”

  “Clearly. But Alex … You could give me the benefit of the doubt. I take care of her all day. This is beyond fussing or whining or some little temper tantrum.”

  “Beatrix said it was a process. A process that took time to develop and will take time to undo. I know you’re having a hard time, but I don’t want you losing patience with her.”

  “I’m trying. I think we did better today. And Beatrix. And Tisdale’s going to help.”

  Pissdale most definitely was not going to help. She needed, with Marie-Anne’s assistance, to step up her game against Mommy, and they could make Mommy’s life more difficult if they were at home. She had to figure out something bad enough to get her expelled from a school for bad children. And the murder of her UnderSlumberBumbleBeast hurt like her heart had been tossed in a blender. Mommy needed to know what that felt like.

  “I like Beatrix,” Daddy said.

  “Me too.”

  They smoochy-kissed. Then Mommy went away and Daddy slipped back into bed beside
her. She wanted—so wanted—to stay awake and enjoy his company and ponder all the things that she needed to ponder. But sleep stole her, the greedy thief, away into the darkness.

  * * *

  The next couple of days were school and more school. The Bouncy Room wasn’t nearly as much fun with other people there—mutant children and clownlike adults with painted smiles. She didn’t like being in regular classrooms where all the surfaces were too hard and, ideally, she was to remain seated. She couldn’t understand why she was supposed to be a robot and follow endless hours of obeying an evil master’s routine—even more rigid than Mommy’s. She wanted to be master of her own schedule, decide on her own when and where she sat. To think that children everywhere sat at similar desks in similar rooms following similar routines like they were all supposed to grow up and become the same person.

  Her only good discovery was the Quiet Room. It was intended to be a punishment, a place to go when she needed to “collect herself.” She had tried sitting like a statue, unmoving and unresponsive, but they didn’t like it when she ignored everybody—the robots were supposed to follow orders, not play dead. But sometimes she went too far in the other direction and jumped and waved her hands and made noises. If she couldn’t settle down, they escorted her to the Quiet Room, which wasn’t, in her mind, a punishment at all but a reward. They let her sit on the big cushions and read a book. Usually an aide stayed with her, but sometimes they ducked out and for a moment she got to be alone. She tried to have at least two to three outbursts a day.

  Ms. Atwood and the other stupid-heads were unimpressed by most of her efforts to ignore or get away from them. And other students made equally disruptive noises. One boy would vocalize only as a police siren. One girl liked to imitate animal sounds and went way beyond barking: she quacked and mooed and snorted and trumpeted like an elephant. Hanna hadn’t figured out—yet—how she was going to get thrown out. Maybe Marie-Anne would come up with something.

  She had a setback with Mommy, too. She spotted a rosy bruise on Mommy’s forearm where a needle had poked her, sucking out her blood. Hoping it was terribly painful, she pressed on it, but Mommy just slapped her hand away. She told Daddy at supper what they’d found—hadn’t found—lurking in her blood.