Cutting Teeth: A Novel

by Julia Fierro

  Her favorites were the phrases that sounded like one thing, but meant another. Over the moon. Promise the moon. Once in a blue moon. Many moons ago.

  Nicole had lined the dining table with the most precious cups Tenzin had ever seen. Thin glass globes that sat in the palm of a hand and long-stemmed ones that made Tenzin think of lilies. It was as if the liquid in each glass, like red and gold shifting seas, absorbed the candlelight of the living room. The mommies held them fearlessly but Tenzin had refused a glass offered by Tiffany. She was certain she would break so fine a thing. As if God himself had blown it with divine lips.

  It had been Tiffany who had scratched at the door of the bedroom Tenzin was sharing with Leigh and the children, insisting Tenzin come down and join everyone else. Tenzin had whispered no, no, no as Charlotte and Chase’s snores hummed like tiny motors, but Tiffany’s desire burned brightest of all the mommies. Tiffany hated to be refused. Tiffany wanted Tenzin to be her bosom buddy.

  Now, as the candlelight stretched their shadows up the walls, Tenzin watched Tiffany as she sashayed from one group to the next, like a princess in one of the Disney movies, greeting the guests at her great big party. It was as if all the mommies and daddies were dancing in celebration of the children’s absence. Tenzin understood the adult mind needed a rest from the busy-ness of children. She had three of her own. And, as the Dalai Lama himself says, Love is the absence of judgment.

  The mommies’ and daddies’ voices reminded Tenzin of glass bells, ringing loudest when someone made a joke. Startled, they froze—peering up the stairs. On pins and needles. Then, the dance resumed. The rhythm of the mommies’ chitchat was the music of Tenzin’s American life.

  This was the first thing she had learned. The Americans, especially the wealthy, educated ones, it pleased them to talk. About the things they loved and the things they did not love, the people they knew, and the people they dreamed of knowing. They very much liked to talk about what they imagined the people they knew (and even those they did not know) were thinking and feeling. As if they could read the mind, as the ancient Tibetan shamans had read dreams to reveal past lives. Tenzin saw how the mommies and daddies delighted in the stories they told, especially the stories about before. Before Chase, before Hank, before Wyatt, before Levi and Dash and Harper.

  Tenzin circled the room slowly, smiling at each drink-flushed face that looked at her kindly but without invitation. She knew how to appear as if she understood. She lifted her chin and gave a soft nod when a pause cued. She was able to grab a phrase here and there, peeling the shell away until the translation was clear. Like the thin skin that wrapped a piece of tangerine.

  “Out of sight, out of mind,” a pink-cheeked Susanna said, and the circle of mommies and daddies giggled. As if pleased with their naughtiness, Tenzin thought as she smiled along.

  “I know I’m not supposed to say this,” Nicole half whispered. “But the foie gras there is to die for.” Nicole’s eyes lifted to the ceiling. As if in prayer, Tenzin thought.

  What could this mean? It sounded essential.

  To die for. Tenzin thought of that morning’s news—the two monks who had self-immolated in protest at the Chinese embassy in Qinghai Province. She had just finished packing the children’s things for the trip to the beach and had asked Leigh if she could check her e-mail on the family’s home computer. When the images appeared on the Tibetan news site, the computer monitor even bigger than the TV she shared with her roommates, Tenzin had recoiled. It was as if the flames would leap from the screen and wrap around her. But as she had sat there, fingering her prayer beads, asking for Buddha to bless those brave souls, the longer she stared at the men ablaze, the more they seemed like two wax statues aflame.

  Those monks had desired so little. Taken so little. Suddenly, the ringing of the mommies’ and daddies’ laughter made Tenzin feel tired.

  She rubbed the prayer beads she kept tucked in her pocket, passing the wooden balls under sea-softened fingertips until her skin burned. She imagined the Dalai Lama’s face, his ever-laughing eyes.

  Hatred is like a fisherman’s hook. We must not be caught by it.

  Leigh appeared from the kitchen, a plate balanced in each hand.

  Poor Leigh. Leigh played the part of the sad princess, the one who did not know she was a princess. Not until her glass shoe was returned. Not until the good-looking golden-haired prince unlocked the tower door. Despite the smile on the pale woman’s face, Tenzin could see the Cinderella-sadness pooling behind her good employer’s damp blue eyes.

  “I’m so relieved,” Leigh said, handing Tenzin a plate. “There’s food for you. I forgot to tell Nicole you were a vegetarian.”

  “No worries,” Tenzin said, and patted Leigh’s bony knee.

  “I hope this is okay,” Leigh said. “I mean, I don’t know if it will be enough. You might still be hungry. But tomorrow you can take the car and go to the supermarket.” Leigh spoke quickly. Tenzin could see she was nearly out of breath. “Oh, wait. Shoot. I forgot. You can’t drive.”

  “There now,” Tenzin said, as if she were hushing a frightened Chase. It was a phrase she’d heard the mommies use to comfort the babies. She put an arm around Leigh’s shoulders and felt the woman’s slight frame bend under her own thick arm.

  Leigh laughed. “Yes, no worries. You like that. It’s your favorite thing to say.”

  There was a slight quiver in Leigh’s chin, and Tenzin was certain the mommy felt a near-bursting terror, like a river pushing against a dam.

  “No worries,” Leigh said. “I’ll try.”

  How different the mommies were from the little children, Tenzin thought. When the children fell, skinning a knee or scraping the meaty part of their palms, they hopped to their feet, eager to rejoin the game.

  Tiffany slid into the seat next to Leigh, curling her legs under her. Like a little girl playing shy, Tenzin thought. Tiffany was the mommy the other mommies liked to complain about the most. Tiffany was too this, they said, Tiffany was so that.

  Tiffany leaned over Leigh and linked her long white fingers in Tenzin’s. The woman’s rings, one on every other finger, were warm against Tenzin’s skin. Tiffany gave off heat like an infant.

  Tiffany sighed, and said, “I love you, Tenzin. Like, really. We’re so lucky to have you. Aren’t we, Leigh?”

  There was a blurriness in Tiffany’s voice that made Tenzin think of one of her old employers, the mother of an excitable two-year-old, who’d had cases of alcohol delivered to the family’s town house each month, the glass bottles a brilliant blue.

  “Of course we’re lucky,” Leigh said.

  Leigh pointed to the two pools of creamy puree resting next to a piece of triangle-shaped bread. “That’s hummus,” she said, “I think. And the bread is gluten-free.”

  Free, Tenzin thought, as in freedom, which was what she had left her family to seek.

  “This no meat? You sure?” Tenzin asked.

  “Yes,” Leigh said. “I promise. Vegetarian.”

  She was relieved when Leigh understood, as she so often did, without explanation.

  She scooped some of the hummus with the bread. The tangy paste stuck to her tongue.

  “Mmmm,” she said, nodding, not wanting to insult.

  Leigh’s relieved smile was worth the lie.

  Tiffany stroked the long braid hanging down Tenzin’s back.

  “I think it’s so wonderful that you’ve given up meat. You know, in sacrifice for asylum?” Tiffany said. “But can I just say, personally? I think you’ve sacrificed enough.” Tiffany’s voice fell to a whisper, “And if you do get asylum at the next hearing, and you do end up eating meat again, I wouldn’t beat yourself up if I were you. Life’s no picnic.”

  Beat yourself up. No picnic.

  Leigh interrupted with a quick bark of laughter. “Well, you’re not her, Tiffany. And it’s probably … I mean I’m just guessing”—her eyes searched Tenzin’s face—“it’s probably impossible for us to imagine what Tenzin feels.
”

  Tenzin interrupted, “No, I am all done with meat. Okeydokey with no meat.”

  How could you feel anger, she thought, when Tiffany was so much like a child?

  “So,” Tiffany asked slowly, “no meat? None? Forever and ever after?”

  “I think that’s what she said, Tiff,” Leigh said, eyes lifting up. Making a joke out of it, Tenzin thought.

  “Happily ever after,” Tenzin said.

  “Every. Day,” Tiffany said, leaning close, her breath warm and spicy, “I think about what an amazing woman you are, Tenzin. A true earth mother. A pinnacle of revolutionary woman-ness!”

  Tiffany continued, “Not like us pathetic American mommies. With our whining. And our bitching and our oh-my-life-is-so-fucking-hard.”

  Tiffany waved toward the room, and red wine splashed across the coffee table.

  “Oh, oh,” Tiffany said, and Tenzin had to giggle with her. “Don’t tell Mommy Nicole.”

  Leigh gripped Tiffany’s freckled shoulders and turned her toward the kitchen.

  “Come on, Tiff,” Leigh said, “let’s find some paper towels.”

  Tenzin knew the mommies and daddies thought her simple—her enthusiasm with the children silly. She could tell. But all that mattered was she had done her duty that day. Her best. This karmic certainty was the blanket she wrapped herself in each night, thick and warm, in place of her husband’s arms, in place of her children’s bodies, in place of her mother’s small figure, with whom Tenzin, even as a married woman, had shared a bed most nights of her life. She and her husband Lobsang had their time together each week, but she returned to her mother’s bed after, her husband’s seed trickling down the inside of her thigh as she curled into her spot on the mattress, still pressed with the shape of her body.

  She could barely grasp the memory of wet warmth, the shiver inside her, the taut veins in her Lobsang’s arms as he arched above her, but as she watched Tiffany pour another glass of wine, liquid sloshing over the rim, Tenzin’s thighs flared with heat.

  Tenzin watched as Nicole stepped outside the cluster of mommies, tap-tapping on her phone. The mommies and daddies loved their phones and were made very happy by the things they read on the glowing screens, the pictures they took, the clever things they wrote on the Facebook they mentioned so often.

  She would miss her computer these few nights away.

  The night before, when Tenzin had Skyped with her family, her husband and sons and daughter coming to life on the monitor, she had felt the swell in her throat and the croaking cry escaped.

  Lobsang had surprised her by begging she come home.

  “This is too hard,” he said. “Four years is too many.”

  The three round-cheeked children she had left behind had vanished. Her daughter was a woman. Her oldest son’s voice would soon change, and what if she couldn’t remember what it had once sounded like, as clear and high as a bell? He walked out of the small square screen when she began to cry, and she wanted to pull him back, to feel the new stubble on his cheeks, to lock him in a room with her until it was her time to die.

  “No,” she said to Lobsang as she wiped her face dry with the heel of her hand, “we are too close. No pain, no gain.”

  Her second asylum hearing was in two months, three weeks, and four days, and if she did her duty, if she did her best, as the Americans were fond of saying, soon they would be together. Leigh and Tiffany, and even Daddy Rip, they were always saying, You are the best, Tenzin! What would we do without you? Surely that would be enough to make the officials at her next hearing grant her asylum.

  As she watched the mommies and daddies enjoy themselves, their backs arching in laughter, their arms waving as they impersonated other mommies and daddies and told silly stories, she thought of the children asleep upstairs, holding the dolls and stuffed animals the mommies called loveys. The mommies had made it clear to Tenzin that the loveys should never be lost. But how was Tenzin to protect the loveys when the children begged to keep them close? The cuddle-worn plush puppies, limbless dolls, and ragged blankets accompanied them to playdates, to story time at the library, even to the playground. The loss of the loveys was a terror looming over Tenzin every minute of every working day. There was always a part of her watching, for Mr. Nuk-nuk, Kittyface, and Blue, keeping an eye on these soft pastel objects, just as she did on their miniature owners.

  She thought of climbing into bed with Chase, but knew she wouldn’t tonight. Not with Leigh sleeping in the same room.

  She had never slept alone, and on the nights her employers stayed out late, Tenzin spending the night in the big drafty brownstone, the warmth of Chase’s body replaced the memory of her mother’s heat.

  Of all the American children she had cared for, she knew her Chase had the best heart. It was her duty to guide him through the betrayal of his body that told him to grab, hit, bite, that robbed him of his peace. And that of his mother. Tenzin knew he was a child of God. Full of light. He greeted her each afternoon with I missed you, Tenzin, and when she left at night, her legs throbbing from housework and piggyback rides, Chase stood at the tall parlor window, watching her standing on the street, so they could mime great big hugs. Chase was her silver lining.

  “I can’t believe she’d stab you in the back like that.” Tiffany’s voice rose like a siren.

  “That’s why they call them golden handcuffs, dude,” Rip boomed.

  “Their oldest son just got the diagnosis,” Grace whispered. “He’s on the spectrum.”

  “Well,” Nicole said, “the warning signs can differ from kid to kid. But they usually start with a sore throat.”

  “And I was like, no way!” Tiffany’s face was shiny with sweat.

  “There’s always strings attached, man,” Michael said.

  “I’d give an arm and a leg for a country house,” Susanna sighed as her swollen fingers drew circles around her belly. “Someday.”

  The mommies lived in the future, Tenzin thought. Ever after. Where they imagined they would have all they wanted. How could they when they wanted more and more? Their list of wants was a teetering, tottering tower, just one want away from crashing upon their pretty heads, the hair they had painted at the beauty shops with so many colors like the palette of the sun.

  It was not for her to judge them, she reminded herself. She, like all men, was just one observer. It was not her place to tell them, as the benevolent Dalai Lama says, Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.

  She walked up the stairs into the cool, still silence of children dreaming.

  Strings attached. No picnic. An arm and a leg. To die for … to die for …

  silver lining

  Rip

  A more-than-buzzed Rip tiptoed into the dark guest bedroom, the light from the hallway spilling onto the bed where Hank and Grace lay, Grace’s lustrous black hair fanned over Hank’s rising and falling chest. Rip closed the door slowly until he heard the click of the lock echo in the hallway, cursing under his breath when Hank moaned in his sleep. The only light in the room was the white pillow under his little family’s heads, glowing blue in the moonlight filtering through the thin shades. Rip peeled off his clothes, trying not to stumble despite the darkness and the spinning of his head. Why had he stayed behind with Michael after the rest had gone to bed? Why had he downed those shots—one after another, he and Michael toasting irreverently to: health insurance! twenty-four-hour sushi delivery! the good old days!

  Down to his boxers, Rip climbed into the cot next to the bed. The coils screeched under him, and he froze. The alcohol churned in his stomach, and he clutched a pillow against his gut. Their family doctor had diagnosed his nightly discomfort as irritable bowel syndrome. Grace’s mother had diagnosed it as—translated from Korean by Grace—nervous American stomach. His stomach felt extra nervous tonight as memories of that afternoon in the kitchen returned. The beads of sweat on the back of Tiffany’s neck as the steam had billowed up from the sink. He had wanted to taste them.
The wet pop of her lips parting as she gasped. Had she gasped, he wondered, trying to remember, trying to hold on to consciousness, and as he crept into that netherworld of half sleep, half memory, he grew hard and hoped he would cross into a dreamworld where all that had not happened in the kitchen that afternoon could and would.

  The dewy Tiffany-scented scene cracked with a high-pitched little-boy voice. Rip opened his eyes to the cool, still darkness, and Hank’s moon-shaped face looked down at him.

  “Sleep with me, Daddy,” Hank demanded.

  “This is a teeny tiny bed, buddy,” Rip protested, even as he was pulling back the thin blanket, making room for Hank.

  Hank climbed in, and Rip was comforted by the familiar scent of jelly sandwiches and fruity shampoo.

  “Pacis,” Hank demanded.

  “Come on, now,” Rip whispered into the boy’s neck. “We talked about this. Pacis are for babies. Are you a baby?”

  Rip knew Hank was thinking. The boy was silent, his breathing slowed.

  “No. I a big boy.”

  “And who uses pacis?” Rip asked again, adding gruffness to his voice.

  “Babies,” Hank said before he hiccuped.

  Rip knew a wail was imminent.

  “Okay.” Rip sighed. And then added, his lips tickled by the soft fuzz of Hank’s earlobe, “Don’t tell Mommy.”

  “’Kay, Daddy. Cross your heart,” Hank said. Rip heard the pacifier-anticipating glee in his boy’s voice. He knew Hank was smiling.

  Rip rolled off the bed, crawling around the dresser until he found the diaper bag, and, at the bottom, the plastic baggie he’d hidden with the three pacifiers he’d sterilized before they left home. One for Hank’s mouth, one extra (just in case) and one for Hank’s nose. Hank liked to pop one in his mouth and half suction/half balance another on the bridge of his nose, switching the two until he fell asleep—a ritual Rip found both odd and ingenious.