Baby Teeth

by Zoje Stage

  Her body relaxed in the plush comfort and her spinning thoughts unwound. It was nothing. Mr. G said he was fine. Her daughter couldn’t have made a voodoo doll because such things were superstitious nonsense. Besides, Hanna was a witch, not a … Shut up. It was a ridiculous waste of precious energy.

  The world cooperated, grew quiet, and disappeared. She slept for hours.

  HANNA

  SHE DIDN’T UNDERSTAND why she was being punished. Every stupid person she’d met throughout the stupid day thought she, too, was stupid. They couldn’t stop asking, “Can you do that?” even though a second later Ms. Stinky Breath or Mr. Do-Goody would add, “I know you can!” They thought she was a dumb baby who couldn’t add or subtract or read. They wanted her to point to cards.

  “Can you show me the color blue?”

  “Which of these has wheels?”

  “What is 3 + 7?”

  “Does one of these words begin with K?”

  “Which one says dog?”

  Early in the day, she tried her stare-and-glare technique, but the questions persisted. Finally, she started slapping at the right cards.

  “Good job!” they said a million times.

  It was maddening enough to make her scream, but she didn’t. Finally, she grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper and wrote Jag kan läsa! in big angry letters.

  That stopped Ms. Atwood for a second. “What does that mean?” she asked.

  Hanna scribbled over a second sheet. Je peux lire.

  “Is that French? What’s this one?” She held up the first sheet.

  Svenska! She wrote over it.

  Ms. Atwood squinted, looking at something inside her brain. She mouthed the word svenska. “Your father … I think Mr. G mentioned he was Swedish? You know Swedish and French?”

  Hanna shrugged.

  “That’s very impressive. And English too. So this is all too easy.” She gathered up the stupid flash cards with the stupid words, the third stupid set Hanna had slapped at that day. If anyone else put cards in front of her, she’d stab them in the eye.

  “And I’m glad to see how well you communicate with writing. Your mom said you’d come really far with your workbooks at home, but she also said you don’t like to have a conversation that way.”

  Hanna crossed her arms.

  “You have done so well today, do you realize that? And I promise you, when we all have a better sense for what you know, we’ll have much more-interesting projects for you.”

  So it went throughout the day. Sometimes she just had to sit there in a circle with a bunch of weird kids and listen to a teacher blather on, reading them a book, or showing them pictures of animals. She practiced lowering the volume on her ears, determined to enclose herself in a bubble of silence. Sometimes she shut her eyes; somewhat to her surprise, no one bothered her or poked her or said, “Hanna, pay attention!” like her mother.

  The worst part of school was she was never alone. Kids, teachers, aides. They hovered like wasps and it didn’t matter how far she ran—they always caught up, buzzing and stinging, and complimented her on her speed. The stupids thought it was a game.

  At lunch, a girl sat beside her and peered into her lunch bag as soon as Hanna unzipped it. “What do you have?”

  She tried to take out Hanna’s sandwich, but Ms. Atwood dashed over. “Remember what we always talk about, Emily? About your things and other people’s things?”

  “I can touch mine but not others’.”

  “Right, and that’s Hanna’s lunch.”

  “Hanna’s lunch.”

  Ms. Atwood sat there at the big cafeteria table with them and supervised, watching as Emily and Hanna ate their sandwiches. Hanna wasn’t used to being watched so closely. She didn’t like it. And Ms. Atwood really didn’t need to worry; if Emily—or anyone else—tried to take her things she’d punch them in the nose.

  In the afternoon, they tried to get her to sit around a big parachute with the other kids and play different games while they gripped it. Hanna hugged herself and jumped in her pouting way until an aide let her sit on the gym floor, away from everyone else. She watched them make the parachute billow up in the air. Sometimes they’d get underneath it and let it fall over them like a jellyfish and they giggled, but she didn’t think it was safe. Jellyfish had invisible stingers, long threads that they sent out into the ocean to paralyze the little creatures they wanted to eat. Hanna thought all the children might die under the parachute, and she started to panic and fret: maybe the tendrils would get her, too. The aide took her to the bathroom and she was very, very glad because she needed to pee, and at home she knew where to go but at school she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do.

  It was an exhausting day.

  At two-thirty she put her head on her desk. After Ms. Atwood got the other kids settled, she came over. She led Hanna to the corner where there were some big beanbag chairs, and Hanna curled up and took a nap until it was time to go home.

  * * *

  Mommy and Ms. Atwood lingered by the door talking about her-Hanna-she-her-Hanna when all she wanted was to get out out home out away away home! But then Mommy reminded her that they weren’t going straight home. Beatrix was expecting them, and Daddy would meet them there later, and it struck Hanna that this new routine was very, very bad and wasn’t going to work. She’d tried her hardest but she just didn’t have the vim to do that every single day.

  In the car, Mommy gave her a granola bar and some cherry juice. Mommy looked a little different than she had in the morning. She’d put on some makeup and her favorite necklace. Hanna liked the necklace, too—a yellowy disc on a fine chain. Daddy said it was amber, but to her it looked just like a butterscotch candy. Every time she saw it, she wanted to rip it off and pop it in her mouth.

  Mommy blathered as she drove away.

  “… is so nice and it sounded like you had a very good—”

  “One of them will have to die.”

  She met her mother’s startled gaze in the rearview mirror. “Excuse me? What did you say? Hanna?”

  “Je suis Marie-Anne.”

  Her mother flicked her eyes between the road and the mirror and didn’t say anything right away. Her hands tightened on the wheel, but she surprised Hanna.

  “Excusez-moi, Marie-Anne. I didn’t hear what you said.” Her French sounded exaggerated, like the puppets on Sesame Street.

  Hanna sighed impatiently. “If you make me go there again, I will cast a spell on one of them. One of them will die.”

  In the mirror, her mother chewed her lip, weighing how to respond. “Which one?” she finally asked as they inched along Forbes Avenue.

  Hanna glanced at the shops outside her window, bicycles and shoes and ice cream. That was a good question. It might not be such a bad idea to put a spell on the parachute, turn it into the jellyfish it so resembled, and let it devour a class of eight all at once. A teacher and a couple of aides might perish, too.

  “I’ll pick them off one by one,” she said. “It will be your fault.”

  “If you end up in jail it won’t be my fault—that’s what happens to people who hurt other people.”

  “A jail can’t hold me.”

  “Okay, if that’s what you want. Personally, I think school is a better option than jail.”

  Her mother’s responses weren’t what she was expecting. It felt almost good to talk back and forth, but that was enough. Marie-Anne tucked herself away, and Hanna made her face look unaware, disinterested.

  “So, Marie-Anne, I’d love to know how you make one of your spells. Do you need a big pot—a cauldron? And toads and bats and eyeballs?”

  What a foolish woman. Hanna let the words float out the window. They were meaningless; Mommy knew nothing about being a real witch.

  Mommy tried a few more times to continue the conversation. Hanna wiped a dribble of juice from her chin, then licked it off the back of her hand. Mommy kept talking to herself. She went on and on. “… mumble mumble … grumble grumble…” Like
a crazy person.

  * * *

  Beatrix lived in a big house on Wightman Street. They went to the side entrance where she had a rectangular sign the color of a dirty penny with her name and a bunch of letters that didn’t spell anything. Beneath it was a doorbell. Mommy pushed it and then Hanna pushed it again, because she wanted to.

  “We might be a little early,” Mommy said, checking the time on her phone.

  A woman with black hair, bony like an insect and older than Mommy, came to the door with a smile.

  “I think we’re a little early,” Mommy said, fretting in her Mommy way.

  “No, good timing, come on in.”

  More introductions and Hanna wouldn’t look at her: she already knew her name was Beatrix. They walked down a hallway, and Beatrix explained if she were busy she would just buzz them in and they could sit in the chairs by the door until she came out. She led them to a windowless room that, shockingly, was filled with toys. Games on the shelves. Arts and crafts stuff on a cart against the wall. A low table sat in the middle, surrounded by small chairs. Stuffed animals and giant cardboard building blocks were scattered around the floor. On one wall was a blue nubby sofa, and on the opposite wall was a big mirror.

  “Do you think you can find something in here to amuse yourself with?” Beatrix asked.

  Hanna went into the room, alone, and looked around. Not bad. Nice colors and stuff to play with. And no children.

  “I’m going to be in the next room, talking to your mom—right there, on the other side of that mirror. So if you need one of us, just wave and we’ll see you, okay? And you can play with anything in here by yourself for a few minutes, is that all right?”

  Finally, she’d be alone. She found a tub of Legos on the shelf and took them to the table. The door closed behind her and for the first time that day it was quiet. The jangled-up day—colors and noises and words and people—slowly disintegrated, like white paper dissolving in a puddle of blue ink, and her heart returned to normal. Soft bumps instead of hammering thumps.

  Better better better she chanted silently, fluttering her tongue like a snake.

  SUZETTE

  THE COZY OFFICE had one big window flanked by two gargantuan tropical plants. Beatrix crossed behind her desk to pull the curtain closed and dim the room. Then she raised the blinds that revealed the playroom. They could see Hanna, framed within the window, stacking Legos—something she enjoyed doing in Alex’s study, where he didn’t mind her leaving pieces all over his floor.

  Beatrix came back around her desk and joined Suzette in the living-room-like area where Suzette had taken a seat on the couch next to a bright decorative pillow. There were also two armchairs and a solid Craftsman-style coffee table with a box of Kleenex and a bowl filled with cat’s-eye marbles. The walls were decorated with watercolors, mostly of landscapes with trees and cerulean pools of water.

  “Did you make these?” Suzette asked, studying the artwork.

  “Yes. A hobby I’ve been doing for many years.” She sat in a chair with the draped window at her back, and glanced at Hanna through the one-way glass at her right. In form and posture Beatrix looked like a ballet dancer, but her sharp movements lacked grace.

  “You’re really good. They’re quite beautiful.” Simple and clean. The word haiku came to mind, as if the paintings were also poems.

  “Thank you.” She crossed her legs and angled herself toward Suzette. “I always like to talk with the parents for a short time during each session—”

  “My husband will be coming a bit later. Do you talk to Hanna”—she pointed toward the playroom—“in there?” The therapist held a Moleskine notebook and a pen in one hand. Suzette noticed the thin gold wedding band and wanted to ask her if she had children of her own, but didn’t.

  “Sometimes, it depends on the child. Some prefer this room. While I’m talking with her I’ll have you wait by the entryway. I do honor the children’s privacy and I won’t reveal the specifics of what we communicate together. That trust needs to be there between me and Hanna—”

  “Of course.”

  “—but I also will keep you and your husband apprised of anything that you need to be aware of. And based on things I learn from Hanna, I might sometimes need to talk to both you and your husband. I view the family as a holistic unit and you’re all affecting one another. So, in a way, this isn’t just a process for Hanna but for all of you.”

  “No, that’s good. I feel like, as a family, we’re really isolated. Like, we look a certain way when people see us, who don’t know us, but what happens at home…”

  “So…” Beatrix breathed in and relaxed, smiling at Suzette. “How have things been since we talked? Better? Worse?”

  “Okay. I haven’t been feeling that well, so Alex was with her most of the weekend. And she started school today.”

  “How did that go?”

  “According to her teachers? Pretty well. Maybe a little better than expected. She actually wrote something out on a piece of paper, which she doesn’t do with us. I guess she was really frustrated. She wrote one sentence in Swedish, and one in French. But then, on the way here…” It almost struck her as funny. “She told me, as her alter ego Marie-Anne, that she wanted to put a spell on one of the kids at school and kill them.”

  “She’s just started talking—you said within the last couple of weeks?”

  “Yes, as this other person.” Suzette found herself resorting to old, anxious habits—twisting her purse strap. She pushed the purse away, but doubted it was far enough to quell the temptation.

  “It’s really … I know from your perspective it’s probably not fascinating, but I can almost see how, after not talking for so long, that this is protection for her, on some level. Hiding behind someone who can talk, so her identity of herself as someone who doesn’t talk is still intact.” She finally opened her notebook and jotted something down.

  “It doesn’t sound at all frightening when you put it that way. It’s still only to me. She doesn’t pretend to be a witch with Alex. I tried to handle it a little better this time; I tried to engage her instead of freaking out.”

  “How did that work?”

  “Not bad. A weird conversation, but I guess that’s what it was.”

  “It may not seem like progress, but it sounds to me like she really is trying to reach out.” Suzette winced. “No? You don’t interpret it that way?”

  “It’s the other things. The savage dog, the weird acting like the devil’s fucking her—I never told my husband about that. I even looked for porn on his computer, to see if that’s where she saw, or found out about sex, but…” Conscious of the therapist’s intense, evaluating gaze she fought the urge to drag her purse back over. She pressed her hands tightly together instead.

  “Are there a lot of things you don’t tell your husband?”

  She considered the question. What did she tell Alex? The easy things, mostly. “Maybe, I guess … Early on we shared everything, but over time … From his perspective, I think he’d say he has everything. A fulfilling career—meaningful, runs his own business, loves his coworkers. A good relationship with his parents. A beautiful house, a devoted wife, an adorable child. He has enough money, and still has free time—goes to the gym, does what he wants. He loves me, and I love him … But … I can’t do this without him, and sometimes … You know, it’s just important … I don’t want him to lose faith in me.”

  “Why would he lose faith in you if you told him everything that’s going on?”

  “Because he doesn’t see it. I’ve always been the one who’s home with her all day—taking care of her, feeding her, schooling her, trying to keep her entertained. Keep her safe, healthy, well behaved. I bear the burden for raising her, really. Alex loves her—deeply, deeply loves her. But he only has to do it for tiny spans of time. Make her giggle. Read her a bedtime story. Maybe play with her a little on the weekends. She loves everything she does with him, and he feels like a hero—he feels her love.”

&nb
sp; Beatrix nodded. “It is the curse of the caregiver. But surely Alex recognizes the important work you—”

  “Yes, absolutely. But this—” She threw her hand toward the glass pane. “I seriously thought she was going to attack me, and bite me.” Suzette told her the rest—putting Hanna in the backyard to cool down, the marks on her arm, Alex’s hostile response.

  Beatrix jotted down a few more notes. “Would you be uncomfortable if we talked about the sexual incident with Alex? I’d like to hear his thoughts.”

  “He’s going to wonder why I didn’t tell him.”

  “Maybe. Might be a chance, in a safe place, for you to talk about it.”

  * * *

  Suzette hadn’t expected to feel like the one on trial. She worried about what Beatrix had written in her notebook, what conclusions she was drawing. That she was abusive. A bad mom. A bad wife. A liar. Another broken, dysfunctional family hiding behind the façade of better-than-average accessories. Waiting by the door in one of three matching chairs, she pressed on her stomach, on the thing that was turning over and over, getting thicker and harder with each revolution. She felt it vibrating, threatening to rupture. It didn’t matter what she did, it was always the mother’s fault. She had vowed to do better than her own mother—had been certain, for a long time, that she was earning a passing grade. But every time she talked about what was going on … Insanity dipped around her like a swarm of frenzied bats.

  What were Beatrix and Hanna doing in there? Would the therapist ask her yes and no questions, prying information from her child’s vaulted mind? Would she ask her to draw a picture? Would Hanna do it? Would she nod yes and no like she did when she wasn’t being Marie-Anne?

  A door buzzer announced Alex’s arrival. She stood and peered through the window. On time as he’d promised, he smiled and kissed her when she let him in.

  “Hej, älskling.”

  “Hey.”

  He glanced at the chairs, the hallway.

  “She’s talking to Hanna right now.”