Baby Teeth

by Zoje Stage

  “No real inflammation, so that’s the good news.”

  “So the shots are still working?”

  “Guess so. Dr. Stefanski said I was healing well, everything looked good. We couldn’t really figure out why the Imodium isn’t helping anymore. Told him I’ve been a little stressed, could be that. But there are other things to try—he wrote me a prescription for Lomotil. Picked it up before I got Hanna.” She put a tablet on her tongue and swallowed. “I can experiment with how many to take, but should know soon enough if it helps.”

  Hanna scowled. The new pill was tiny and solid and couldn’t be opened and dumped out. And it sounded like Mommy’s insides weren’t going to rot away; she seemed in little danger of dying. Hanna cursed her missed opportunity to fill the capsules with poison. She couldn’t let her make another move—or worse, win another round.

  “How about you, squirrely girl, how was school?”

  She made a sound in her nose and pushed away her plate. Daddy looked at Mommy.

  “Ms. Atwood assured me that they’re really getting to know her, what she likes and doesn’t like. They all find her to be very teachable.”

  “That’s because my squirrel’s so smart.” He reached out to tousle her hair.

  “She is smart.” Mommy seemed happier. Hanna didn’t like it.

  “Did you start your project?”

  “Not really. Well, sort of. Just a few simple sketches.”

  “That’s a good start, right?”

  “I’m not sure what direction to take yet, like, if I should work around a theme.”

  They talked back and forth like everything were normal. Like Mommy had been forgiven for being so bad bad bad. Hanna squirmed, twisting in her chair. She put her feet on the seat and pressed against the table with her knees.

  “Are you finished? You know how to ask,” Mommy said.

  Rules. Everyone and their stupid rules. She put her feet against the edge of the table and made more noises in her nose. She liked the way it vibrated and sometimes she wished her nose had lips and then she’d talk that way. Daddy grabbed her feet and pushed them down.

  “No feet on the table, you know better. You want to be excused? Listen to Mommy.”

  She hated him for a second. But just a second, because Mommy could cast spells, too, and sometimes she made Daddy do things he didn’t want to do. But she had a thought—one she got from Mommy and her sketchbook, because she understood that’s where you put ideas that weren’t fully formed yet. So she got up and stood obediently beside her chair.

  “Thank you,” said Mommy. “Yes, you may be excused.”

  She crawled up the stairs like a tiger, stayed on all fours, and prowled to her room. Once there, she poked her head out to make sure no one had followed her and quietly shut the door.

  One of her cubbies was for different kinds of paper. Construction paper. Origami paper. Tracing paper. Graph paper. She liked the perfect tablets almost as much as her pens and pencils. But just as she had sacrificed two pencils and a crayon for the sake of her now-murdered UnderSlumberBumbleBeast, she was ready to surrender one of her notebooks. She picked the one that was very much like Mommy’s, with a big spiral on the edge and thick pages, and dug through her purple backpack until she found her yellow pencil case. She selected the pencil with the sharpest point.

  In case anyone found her project—like snooping Mommy—she decided to make it in code, like Egyptian hieroglyphs. Then nobody could ruin her idea. The page would look like random marks and no one would know what they really were: ways to hurt Mommy.

  First she drew three small, wobbly circles. That stood for her medication. It worked really fast last time, but she didn’t know how to tamper with the new pills. She drew three dots after the circles which meant: think about it.

  She crossed one leg over the other and gazed up at the ceiling. What else could she do? Maybe Marie-Anne had some ideas …

  Sometimes Mommy sewed a button on a shirt, or a hem on Hanna’s skirts if they started out too long. Sewing looked easy. It would be very nice to sew Mommy’s mouth shut, but there was the problem of getting her to stay still through the procedure. She drew a one-inch line that represented a needle, and next to it a pair of x’s that symbolized Mommy’s eyes—unconscious? asleep? And then three more think-about-it dots.

  While it was very easy to think of ways to harm her, it was very hard—even with Marie-Anne’s help—to think of things that wouldn’t immediately give her away. Mommy would see if she pushed her down the stairs, but Hanna didn’t think the fall would do much more than annoy her. She could stab her in the heart while she slept and then carefully wipe her fingerprints off the knife. In the TV show she’d watched with a hapless babysitter, the murderer was caught in the end. She’d tried over the years to think about how it could have been done better, without leaving any clues behind. Worth thinking about.

  She drew what looked like an arrow to represent a knife. Next to it she made what looked like a capital T–which was code for a hammer. She could hit her in the head with a hammer. It might be hard to break through her skull so she’d probably have to hit her hard, a few times. It sounded kind of messy, but she left it on the list as a possibility.

  Maybe if Mommy fell asleep while taking a bath she could drop something in the water and electrocute her. To do that, it would have to be something that plugged into the wall. A hair dryer maybe? She’d have to turn it on right before she dropped it in, because the noise would alert Mommy to the danger. Still not a great idea, but she drew a series of wavy lines to represent both the bathwater and the hair dryer.

  Though Mommy usually used vinegar to clean, there were more-toxic products in the house—like what she used in the toilets. If she could find a way to put it in her food it would make Mommy sick really fast … but even Marie-Anne didn’t know how to cook, and what would they mix the poison with so Mommy wouldn’t taste it right away? And could she keep Daddy from trying it?

  Still, she put a frowny face on her list—which looked sort of like Mr. Yuk. There were green Mr. Yuk stickers on products all around the house—nail polish remover and dishwasher detergent and lots of stuff that lived under and around sinks. She hadn’t been tempted for many, many years to drink from any of these containers, but Mommy and Daddy still had so many stickers that they put them on everything. She’d have to look for them and get more ideas.

  Daddy’s heavy footfalls grew louder as he came up the stairs, so she quickly stuffed everything into her backpack. He poked his head into her room.

  “Lilla gumman? Read before bedtime?”

  She nodded in eager agreement and fished out clean pajamas from beneath her pillow.

  “Want to pick something out?”

  She blinked at him, confused by his confusion, and pointed at the shelf above her bed.

  “I thought you might not want to keep reading that if you were still sad about your UnderSlumberBumbleBeast.”

  Her pajama top was covered with rocket ships and she held it against her chest with her chin, considering Daddy’s words. She was sad, but she wasn’t without hope that she could still have an under-the-bed friend. She point-pointy-pointed to her book again.

  “Sure? You have lots of other books, with lots of other fun characters?”

  She snatched up the book and thrust it out to Daddy. “Okay, then.” He sighed, and it bothered her that he wasn’t entirely pleased.

  She whipped her shirt off over her head and replaced it with the rocket ships, then wriggled out of her leggings and jumped into the rocket ship pants. She liked nightclothes much better than day clothes because they were always comfy and patterned with things she liked: planets and ladybugs and hedgehogs and sea horses.

  They were at the part in the story where the little girl starts to hear noises in the basement. The little girl also had a bad Mommy, who made her clear out all the “junk” from under her bed, but instead of throwing it away, the girl stashed it all in the basement. After that, things were quiet under
her bed, but Hanna already knew what the girl was going to discover when she crept down the dark stairs. Not spiders or monsters, but new configurations of friends called CraggyCellarDragonDwellers. Lollipop Hand was there among them, better than ever, though he’d outgrown his sky-blue knitted shorts.

  She snuggled under the covers so Daddy would finish reading the story.

  * * *

  Ms. Atwood held her hand and dragged her down the hallway. Hanna tried to pull away, tried to pry her fingers off, screeching like a wounded bird.

  “You were told many times. No Google searches when you’re supposed to be doing your work.”

  The other kids liked working on the computers because everything looked like an animated game. But Hanna didn’t like how the rabbits and frogs bounced around on the screen. She closed the program and tried to do some research on ways to start fires. Usually she liked the Quiet Room, but the research was important: Marie-Anne had a great idea.

  “Listen.” Ms. Atwood stopped. She put her hands on her knees so they were face to face. “I know you need your breaks throughout the day. I know you like your quiet time. We’ll have to come up with a way—you and me—to signal when you want some alone time. We don’t need you acting out or doing things you’re not supposed to be doing. We can behave like civilized people and find a way so you, in your way, can say ‘Hey, Ms. A, I need a little break.’ So let’s work on that.”

  Hanna listened to her very intently. She couldn’t deny it was a reasonable suggestion.

  “I think we have a deal.” Ms. Atwood ushered her into the Quiet Room, where the aide, Kenzie, was sitting on a pillow beside the boy with the red helmet.

  “Room for another one?” Ms. Atwood asked.

  “Of course, Hanna and I are getting to be old friends.”

  Hanna didn’t share her opinion. To her, Kenzie was a mere fixture of the room, of significantly less interest than the shelves full of books or the big pillows. At best she registered with the ugly rug or the unfortunately bright overhead light. A female blob in tight jeans with sticky-out hair.

  “See you in a bit.”

  Hanna didn’t wave. She got a book off the shelf, right where she had left it, her bookmark still in place.

  “This is Ian,” Kenzie said. “Ian, this is Hanna.”

  Neither of the children looked at each other. Ian was sitting on her favorite pillow—the red one. She moved the blue one so it was far away from him and sat on it as if on a nest. She opened the book to where she’d left off and tried to read, but she was curious about Ian. He distracted her. In her peripheral vision, he ran his hand over the wall, touching the knobbly, paint-covered cinder blocks. Then he tapped his helmet against it a few times. He must have liked something about it—the way it felt or the way it sounded—because he smiled. But Kenzie wasn’t amused. She knelt beside him.

  “Hey. Ian?” He stopped tapping his helmet against the wall and looked at her. “None of that, that’s not a good use of your energy. Are you ready to go back to class?” He shook his head. “Do you want something to read?”

  Ian glanced at Hanna, sitting so perfectly with her open book. He opened his mouth in a wide grin, revealing gummy walls with crooked tombstone teeth, and nodded. Kenzie went to the bookcase. “Come and help me pick something. What do you want to read?”

  The boy pointed toward the open door. Hanna couldn’t help looking toward the hallway beyond the door, trying to discern what was of so much interest to him. Helmet Head was a fascinating specimen.

  “What’s out there?” Kenzie asked.

  “My book my book my book!”

  “Did you leave your book on your desk?”

  “My desk my desk my book.”

  Kenzie knelt to address both of them. “Okay, I’m gonna leave you two for one minute. One minute equals sixty seconds. And then I’ll be right back with Ian’s book. And you’ll both be on your best behavior?” Ian nodded happily. Hanna just stared at her. “Okay, I’ll be right back.”

  Hanna turned to Helmet Head the second the aide was gone. He pointed at her.

  “Hanna Hanna Hanna.”

  She barked in reply and he dropped his hand. She got on her hands and knees and faced him, snarling. Wide-eyed with fear, he pushed himself back against the wall. And started banging his helmet.

  An idea came to her and she smiled at him for a moment. Then she inched forward and unfastened his helmet. She lifted it gently off his head and tossed it aside. His face fluttered with confusion.

  She sat back on her haunches and studied him. Then she unleashed the dog—snarling and yapping. Helmetless Head opened his mouth but no scream emerged. He knocked his bare head against the wall. Pleased with his response, Hanna lurched forward, growling, lashing out as if to bite him.

  The boy whimpered in terror, bashing his bare head against the wall.

  As the dog became more and more threatening, gnashing its teeth within inches of his face, the boy worked himself into a frenzy. Slobber drooled from his mouth and he struck his head against the wall again and again.

  Hanna glanced toward the open door, unsure of how much time she had. Satisfied as Helmetless Head continued thrashing and moaning, she returned to her pillow and crossed her legs. She was just opening her book when Kenzie raced back in.

  “I heard a dog…!” She flung Ian’s book aside and scrambled to him, pulling him away from the wall. “Peter!” she called toward the hallway. “Peter!”

  She took Ian onto her lap and gingerly examined his head. She glanced at the smears of blood on the wall, at the helmet near her feet. At Hanna.

  “What happened? I heard barking!”

  Hanna continued reading her book. Another young aide rushed to the doorway. Peter quickly scanned the scene: the thrashing boy in Kenzie’s arms; the blood trickling down the side of his head, dribbling along his jawline; red smudges on the wall.

  “Call nine-one-one and get Mr. G!”

  Peter dug a phone out of his pocket and darted back out.

  “What did you do?” Kenzie asked Hanna.

  She calmly turned to the next page and pretended she was sitting atop a giant mushroom, in the middle of a magical forest.

  SUZETTE

  SHE COULDN’T EVEN look at her husband, so she stayed focused on Mr. G, who—no-nonsense, no longer so friendly—had introduced himself to Alex as Dr. Gutierrez moments before. He still wore the black eye patch. Alex sat like a wary lion about to rise and annihilate a spindly-legged gazelle.

  That they were both called was an indication of the severity of the situation.

  “I think you need to state some substantive facts before you claim that my child is beyond hope,” roared the lion.

  “I didn’t say—” Mr. G flicked his eyes—eye—toward Suzette, who couldn’t muster an emotion beyond fear.

  What had Hanna done now? Could they get a second chance?

  “I said we weren’t the right school for her. A boy was injured while the two of them were in a room together. He struck his head against a wall, repeatedly, and we’ve known Ian for three years…” He stopped himself and took a slow breath. When he resumed speaking his voice was less steely. “Three years. And he has never removed his helmet on his own. It’s like his superhero costume, he would never take it off. And Kenzie—Ms. Johnson—said she heard Hanna, barking like a savage dog, when she was coming down the hall.”

  She glanced at Alex. A vindictive part of her rejoiced: he’d have to believe her now. Their daughter was capable of savagery; other people had witnessed it. The beast of prey in him retreated a little.

  “Why were they alone?” he asked.

  Mr. G considered his folded hands. “That’s something we’ll have to address internally. It was just for a moment, and we’d seen no signs previously that Hanna was violent—”

  “She’s not.”

  “—or might provoke violence. This was very unexpected, for all of us.”

  Suzette said, “We still don’t know, not really…” Both
men turned to her. “She might not have meant to hurt him, maybe she was curious about his helmet. She might not have known what would happen if he didn’t have it.”

  “Still can’t prove she even did it,” Alex muttered.

  Mr. G grew even more serious. “Mrs. Jensen … Knowing the intelligence of your daughter, it seems likely that she was trying to find out. That she understood on some level—between the removal of the helmet and the barking—that she was provoking a reaction. Ian needed stitches. He’s still at the hospital, with a possible concussion.”

  “I’m sorry.” She felt badly for the injured boy but worse for herself. She feared Hanna was saving the real anger for her. Hide the scissors.

  “So … She needs more supervision. She shouldn’t be left alone. This isn’t entirely her fault.”

  “I agree,” Mr. G said to Alex. “And we will likely alter staff policy because of this incident. But a child has been hurt. And your daughter…”

  Alex was already shaking his head. But Suzette knew it was too late to try to defend Hanna. She shook her head, too, desperate to stop Mr. G from announcing his conclusion.

  “… requires a type of therapy and supervision that we can’t provide. We know kids lash out sometimes, spur of the moment, but we’re not prepared to manage children with severe … This was a calculated incident and I don’t think we can give your daughter the help she needs.”

  Alex burst from his chair. “She isn’t violent! You make it sound like she’s a psychopath.”

  “Please, Dr. Gutierrez. She was doing so well here.” The thought of having her home, all day every day … Suzette couldn’t, not anymore. Her nerves were singed, her patience obliterated. “We’ve started taking her to a therapist—this is something we can work on. Please!”

  “I’m glad, that’s good, I’m glad Hanna is getting help. I know how incredibly difficult it is for parents, with a child who has violent outbursts. And I’m sorry, because I know it limits where—”

  “Please, I can’t—”