Baby Teeth
by Lauren Cassani Davis
The doors to the Cancer Ward were sponsored by McDonalds. It was almost September—school started in two weeks, and I wasn’t ready. Every summer I tried to quit, but lost the will. Whiffs of my last cigarette clung like suspicion.
“I’m his old teacher,” I told the nurse behind the desk, though she didn’t ask. A stuffed bear smiled vaguely past me, a balloon tied around its wrist.
Daniel knew more synonyms than any fifth grader I’d ever taught, and was in perpetual need of a haircut. He drew bones on the backs of his hands, elongated carpals that matched his own, as though he could see straight through the skin. His scraggy handwriting invaded our classroom posters. Under “pretty,” he wrote beautiful, appealing. Under “die,” he wrote expire, pass away.
His parents let him stay up late, browsing without a filter. His constant fatigue always seemed to me like the weight of knowing things a 10-year-old shouldn't. He loved Rick and Morty. He loved the Monty Python sketch about the dead parrot.
“This parrot is deceased!” He’d fling skinny arms open and cackle. “It is no more!”
Two weeks before the end of the year, when Dan wrapped the window-blind cord around his neck, his mom called it a joke, a prank. The overwhelmed counselor didn’t answer my emails. Another teacher said it’s seasonal: kids do stupid stuff in June.
Those few mornings we had left, I blocked the classroom doorway when he arrived, trying to pry him open.
“How are you feeling, Dan?”
“Ecstatic.” He’d sidle left and right, not meeting my eyes. “Thrilled. Exquisite.”
Then he’d squeeze past, nimble as a shadow.
After summer had started, Daniel’s parents shared the diagnosis. Leukemia. He was young, so the odds tilted toward survival. Still, when they emailed, inviting me to visit during his inpatient treatment, I couldn’t respond for weeks.
What makes the dead parrot sketch funny isn’t the jilted customer, or the prop bird with its stiff, glued wings. It’s the pet store owner’s failure to see something so obvious.
The clown in the elevator didn’t have on the traditional makeup. Instead, she wore glittery green eyeliner. Atop her rainbow wig stood a miniature bowler hat. The whole getup seemed to mock me. Even she had a clear purpose here. What could I offer? I wasn’t even Dan’s teacher anymore.
Funny—bizarre, strange, killing.
I riffled through my purse for gum to conceal the smoke on my breath. I’d bought patches, started jogging, downloaded a meditation app. Still, in my nightmares, I kept losing teeth. One by one, they spilled into my hand until there were too many to hold.
I fumbled with my purse more forcefully, and the strap slipped from my shoulder. Wallet, tampons, Marlboros scattered. The clown bent down and gathered them up wordlessly. Her eyes were kind. I prayed she wouldn’t get out on the same floor.
Daniel’s dad emerged from the room, bearded with exhaustion.
“He’ll be so happy to see you.”
He handed me a mask and escaped to the cafeteria, claiming he had to make a call. Daniel sat in a chair by the bed, glued to a sleek laptop. Bald and pale, he’d grown somehow both older and younger.
“What are you playing?” I asked. Blue light flickered over his face. His eyelashes were gone.
“Watch this.” He mashed keys. Onscreen, a bomb detonated. Pixels flew. “Exterminated!”
“Annihilated,” I agreed.
“Obliterated.” He shot me that smirk, the one that meant he’d figured out the answer before anyone else. “Hey. You know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“If I didn’t have cancer, I wouldn’t have this new computer.”
A nurse entered with a transfusion bag flopping in her hands. She hooked the IV into Daniel’s chest, while he pulled French fries from a paper bag beside him.
“Want one?”
I gestured to my mask.
“Aww, c’mon.” He pressed the tip of a fry to his lips and took a drag, hoping to provoke disapproval—he’d caught me, once, leaning on my car after a parent-teacher conference. Only, his heart wasn’t in it. His hand fell. Dusky circles ringed his eyes. The nurse was gone.
What was I supposed to do? I took a fry and slipped it in under my mask. It tasted old, chemical. For a quiet moment, as we munched, I remembered suddenly that Dan had given me one of his books, near the beginning of the year. He’d scrawled a note in the inside cover. For you! I’d never read it.
Then Dan grabbed his throat. He was coughing violently. The rest of the fries tumbled from his lap to the floor. Prickles of panic darted into my chest, the soles of my feet. Before I could call for help, he folded forward and spat into his hand. Amidst the wad of half-chewed potato was something white, hard, jutting up like a thumb. My pulse leaped and skittered.
“What? What’s so funny?”
He was giggling. He picked the tooth out and held it up. “This parrot is deceased! This is a late parrot!”
“Jesus, Dan.” Then I realized I was laughing, too. The bag of blood, still draining into his chest, quivered with us. We laughed like that until the room fell still.
“Don’t worry, Miss.” He poked the protruding root. “I think it’s a baby tooth.”
Ten minutes later, the doctor came in. Relieved—consoled, eased, dismissed. In the parking lot, I paused beside my car and lit a cigarette. I inhaled as much as I could, pressing that hot, sharp air between my ribs. It was almost September, and I hadn’t checked the roster. Twenty-nine new names. Before I could prepare to lose them, I needed room for them to grow in.
Lauren Cassani Davis is a writer and teacher based in New York. Her work has appeared in Monkeybicycle and The Atlantic.
