Teeth in All the Wrong Places

“Ya Big Baboon” by Matthew Fertel

It’s the start of summer 2003 and my tooth has been loose for one hundred and seventeen days. I keep count in the margin of my composition notebook, tiny pencil marks that look like prison bars. Ms. Rodriguez thinks I'm paying attention when I write, but really I'm just tracking time, waiting for my mouth to finally let go of this last piece of being twelve. I can feel it shift when I walk, a little give against my tongue that tastes like metal and possibility. Today it moved more than usual. I'm hoping—praying to whatever saints Abuela lights candles for—that this is the day.

The heat's already thick at nine in the morning, the kind that makes your thighs stick to plastic chairs and turns the bodega's ice cream freezer into the most popular spot on Melrose Avenue.

"Ayo, Za!" Yuki calls from across the park entrance. Her voice cuts through the sound of the Mr. Softee truck playing its endless loop three blocks away. She's wearing a tank top the color of lime, hair pulled back with a fuchsia butterfly clip that catches the light. I pretend I don't feel my stomach do something weird when she waves.

"Don't be calling me out like that," I say when I reach her, but really I love how my nickname sounds when she says it. It feels sharp and cool like the older girls who smoke behind Miguelito's and wear their hoop earrings big enough to stick your fist through.

Esperanza is a dead name. A name for a girl who lives in her grandmother's stories about the Dominican Republic, who eats mangú for breakfast and braids her hair tight enough to give herself headaches. Za is different. Za sounds like someone who might matter.

"Nobody's even listening," Yuki says, falling into step beside me as we walk toward St. Mary’s Park. "Besides, Esperanza mad long anyway."

She's not wrong. My mother named me after some great-aunt who died before I was born, a woman who supposedly predicted the weather by reading coffee grounds and could make men fall in love with her cooking. The only thing I inherited was her name and a birthmark shaped like a crescent moon on my left shoulder that Mami says means I'm blessed. It doesn't feel like a blessing when Jasmine Rivera calls me "Esperanza la desesperada" every time she wants to start beef.

The park opens up in front of us, mottled grass and concrete paths tagged with graffiti I can't read. Kids are already running through the spray from the rusted out children’s park, their screams mixing with bachata bleeding from someone's boom box. The smell hits me first—dog piss and fresh mulch mixed with the sweet artificial cherry flavored shaved ice melting in the heat.

"You got money for ices?" Yuki asks, pointing toward the cart parked under the shade of the only tree that looks like it might survive the summer.

I dig in my pocket and pull out three crumpled dollar bills Papi left on the kitchen counter this morning, his version of acknowledging I exist. "Yeah, I'm good."

"Get me blue coconut?"

"Duh."

We get in line behind a group of eighth graders, girls with pressed hair and body glitter who look like they know secrets I haven't learned yet. One of them has braces, silver brackets catching the sun when she laughs, and I run my tongue over my loose tooth, wondering if losing it will make me look more like them—older, sure of myself, worth looking at.

"Yo, you doing that thing again," Yuki says.

"What thing?"

"With your tooth. You gonna make it fall out right here and swallow it like a dummy."

The ice cream man hands us our cups—shaved ice the color of Windex syrup that will stain our tongues for hours. We find a spot on the monkey bars, metal hot enough to burn but not hot enough to stop us from claiming it. Yuki sits cross-legged facing me. Her knees touching mine, and I feel that weird stomach thing again.

"For real though, how many teeth you got left?" she asks, spooning blue ice into her mouth.

"Just one. The back one." I open my mouth and point with my plastic spoon. "Look."

She leans closer, close enough that I can smell her shampoo—something tropical and fake, like the air fresheners in the bodega. "Damn, that thing’s barely hanging on. How long it been like that?"

"Mad long. Like four months."

"Four months? Girl, just pull it out already."

"It's not that easy." I suck on my spoon and taste the sour sweetness of coconut syrup and spit. "Once it comes out, that's it. I'll have all my grown-up teeth."

"So? What's the big deal?"

"Everything's gonna be different."

Yuki looks at me like I’m losing it, which maybe I am. How do I explain that losing this tooth feels like crossing some invisible line? That every morning I wake up and check it with my tongue, seeing if today's the day I become somebody else?

"Tell me about the other ones," she says instead. "How'd you lose all them?"

"The first one?" I shift on the hot metal, remembering.

 ***

It was at my cousin Gloria's quinceañera. Back when I was seven and still believed in tooth fairies and fathers who came home happy. The Grand Concourse hall smelled like church incense trying to cover up Saturday night sins. Gloria looked ridiculous in her pink dress, all puffy and rustling when she walked like a walking cake.

"Esperanza, ven acá," my mother had said, forcing me into pantyhose even though it was July and my thighs were already chafing. "Don't embarrass me."

They had this candy table because Gloria's dad owned that party supply store on Fordham, the one with the piñatas hanging in the window like colorful corpses. Crystal bowls full of Mary Janes and those hard candies wrapped in cellophane that old people keep in their purses forever. I grabbed a red one. Cinnamon.

My parents were on the dance floor doing that thing where they pretended they still liked each other. Mami kept fixing Papi's collar while he stepped on her dress, both of them moving to Marc Anthony like they weren't counting down the days until one of them cracked.

The candy was harder than I thought. I bit down expecting sweetness. The tooth came out with a sound like stepping on a twig in Pelham Bay Park. Blood mixed with cinnamon, tasting like pennies dipped in Red Hots. I ran to the bathroom, spit red into the sink with a sign in Spanish about employees washing their hands.

When I came back, my parents had stopped dancing. Papi was at the bar talking to Tío Miguel about the Mets like they weren't losing to everybody. Mami was fixing her lipstick in her compact, not even looking at her reflection because she knew exactly where everything went wrong.

"Mami," I said, holding out my tiny tooth like an offering. "Mira."

She turned, saw the blood on my chin, my white dress with the stupid bow now looking like a crime scene. "Coño, Esperanza. Your dress!" Not: Does it hurt? Not: My baby's growing up. Just: Your dress.

I kept the tooth in my pocket all night, feeling it through the fabric while I watched my parents orbit each other like two planets that forgot they were supposed to share gravity. The DJ played all the songs that made the old people cry and the young people grind. My tooth grew warm in my palm.

***

"That's mad fucked up," Yuki says, blue tongue making her look sick or magic. "My moms would've been taking pictures and shit."

"Your moms is dead though."

"Facts. But she would've been all over that. Ghost paparazzi."

This is why I fuck with Yuki heavy. She doesn't make her dead mom all holy and precious. Her mom died pushing her out, bled to death in Lincoln Hospital while Yuki took her first breath, and Yuki talks about it matter-of-fact, just another girl from the block who moved away to somewhere you can't visit.

"What you do with it?" she asks. "The tooth?"

"Put it under my pillow."

"How much the tooth fairy hit you off with?"

"Fifty cents."

"Cheap-ass fairy. That's not even a honey bun from the bodega."

We finish our ices and walk deeper into the park, past the basketball courts where the boys are running shirts versus skins, trying to be And1 mixtape legends. The sun's getting higher, making the air shimmer like heat waves off a car hood. A group of girls our age are jumping double dutch, their feet moving so fast it blurs into rhythm and possibility.

"We could play," Yuki says, but neither of us moves. We're in that weird space where we're too old to just join in but too young to have a good reason not to.

"Tell me another one," she says instead. We find a bench that's not too janky, metal slats warm but not burning. "The worst one."

I know which one she means without asking. The one that makes my stomach feel tight whenever I think about it.

"You know Jasmine Rivera?" I start.

"That light-skin trick with the good hair?"

"Yeah, her. She the reason I'm missing this one." I point to my front tooth, the one that grew back a little crooked so I look like I'm always about to start something. 

*** 

Fourth grade. I was nine and thought the world was fair if you followed the rules. Me and my girl Destiny were next on the handball court. We won it fair and square from these sixth-grade boys who thought we were food until we cooked them 21-7, left them looking stupid in front of their friends. We'd been playing all morning, hands red from slapping the ball, when Jasmine rolled up with her crew. Three girls who followed her around everywhere, bootleg Destiny's Child to her Beyoncé.

"Move," Jasmine said. Just like that. Like she owned the court, the park, the whole damn Bronx.

"We got next," I said, still bouncing the pink Spalding we'd been using.

"I said move, ugly."

Destiny was already backing up. She knew what was good—her brother Ray-Ray sold nicks to Jasmine's cousin, and in the Bronx that's basically family. But I was hard-headed, thought claiming next meant something.

"Nah, we won this court. Wait your turn."

The first hit wasn't even a punch. She grabbed my kinky needs-Blue-Magic-and-a-hot-comb hair and yanked. My head snapped back and I saw sky, all white and dizzy. Then we were on the ground and she had her knee in my stomach, still pulling my hair while her girls stood around recording everything on their Sidekicks like this was pay-per-view.

"Look at this nappy-head bitch," she said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Looking like a whole monkey. Black-ass booty scratcher."

The words hit harder than her fists. I bit her. Not even on purpose, just opened my mouth to scream and her arm was there and my teeth were in it. She shrieked and when she pulled back my front tooth came with her, dangling from my mouth by a bloody thread.

Tony the super pulled us apart. He looked like a human fire hydrant, all short and thick, wearing that same wife beater he'd had on for three days. Jasmine was crying, holding her arm like I'd tried to eat it. I wasn't crying. I was using my tongue to push my tooth back in place, tasting iron and shame and the specific flavor of losing in front of everybody. Nobody called my parents.

I walked home with blood on my Power Puff Girls shirt, tooth finally falling out when I sneezed by the bodega. Caught it in my palm, a piece of myself I'd never get back.

When Mami got home from her shift at the nursing home, she looked at the gap in my smile and sighed. "Now you look like your father's family. Dios mío." Not: Who did this? Not: Let me call that girl's mother.

***

"Yo, that's wild," Yuki says. "I would've fucked her up worse. Bite a whole finger off."

"She still got the scar," I say. "Seen her at the pool last week and she was acting like she didn't want to get her arm wet."

"Good. Bet she don't run up on nobody else talking crazy."

The park's getting crowded now. Families setting up for cookouts even though the grills are technically not allowed. Music from different boom boxes overlapping—salsa from the old heads, reggaeton from the teenagers, and that new 50 Cent hit from somebody's car speakers. The sounds layer like the neighborhood itself, everything mixed together.

"One more," Yuki says. "Then we bounce before my pops gets home."

I check the time on the bank clock visible over the trees. Two-thirty. Her dad gets off his janitor job at the hospital at three, and we both know to be gone before he shows up smelling like Pine-Sol and Presidente, looking for reasons to be mad at the world.

"The molar," I say. "The one I swallowed."

This is the one that still wakes me up sometimes, the feeling of something going down wrong. 

*** 

Second grade. The tooth had been loose for weeks, and I'd been working it with my tongue until my jaw hurt. It was a Tuesday night in February, the radiator clanking like it was trying to escape the apartment, and my parents were in the kitchen having one of their whisper-fights that were worse than the yelling ones.

I sat at the table doing long division homework. The tooth was barely holding on, and I kept poking at it while trying to figure out how many times 7 went into 56.

"She needs a tutor," Mami was saying, voice tight like a guitar string about to snap. "Look at these grades."

"With what money, Carmen? You want to pull it out your ass?"

"Don't be vulgar. Maybe if you didn't spend every Friday at Yankee Tavern—"

"Maybe if you didn't play your numbers every damn week like you gonna hit and save us all—"

Back and forth, their voices getting sharper. I bit down on my pencil, nervous habit, and the tooth just... gave up. Popped out clean. I was so surprised I gasped, and down it went. I could feel it sliding down my throat, a small hard truth my body wouldn't let me spit out.

The fighting got louder. Mami threw something—his boot, from the sound—and Papi locked himself in the bathroom. The toilet seat slammed and I heard the click of the lock. I sat there with my hand on my throat, wondering if the tooth would grow in my stomach. If I'd become a girl with teeth in all the wrong places.

Mrs. Rodriguez upstairs started banging on her floor with something, probably her broom. The tooth was gone. The math wasn't getting any easier. My parents weren't getting any happier.

I never told them about the tooth. It disappeared inside me, just another secret my body kept while the adults around me fell apart.

***

"Damn," Yuki says quietly. "That's some heavy shit."

"Yeah."

We sit there for a minute, watching some little kids chase pigeons that keep coming back for the same dried-up bread crumbs. The birds know something about persistence. About coming back even when the world keeps trying to scare you away.

"My dad broke my mom's favorite mug last week," Yuki offers. "The one with the butterflies. He said it was an accident but I saw him throw it.” A ragged breath shakes through her before continuing. “He always said she loved that dinged up cup. It was the only piece of hers he ever kept around."

"What'd you do?"

She shrugs. "Swept it up. Threw it away. Pretended I didn't see nothing."

“That’s messed up,” I say.

Yuki looks at me sideways and I nudge her knee with mine.

The sun's getting lower, painting everything orange like the world's on fire. My tooth throbs with my heartbeat.

"You know what?" Yuki says suddenly, jumping off the bench. "We gonna get that tooth out."

"How?"

"The old-fashioned way. String and a door."

"That doesn't work. That's some Tom and Jerry shit."

"It works if you do it right. If you're not scared." She's looking at me with this expression I can't read, challenging and soft at the same time. "Saturday. My pops is going to Atlantic City with his girl. We'll have the place to ourselves."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. We'll do it right. Make it mean something."

The way she says it makes me feel like maybe losing this tooth won't be just another thing that happens to me. Maybe it can be something I choose.

"Okay," I say.

"For real?"

"Yeah."

She smiles, and I feel that weird stomach thing again, stronger this time. Like my body knows something my brain hasn't caught up to yet.

We walk back toward our block as the streetlights start buzzing on, those orange halos that make everything look like an old photograph. The Mr. Softee truck makes one last pass, the music distorted and slow like the batteries are dying. Kids are getting called inside for dinner in two languages, three if you count Mrs. Liu yelling at her sons in Chinese.

"Saturday," Yuki says again when we get to her building. "Don't punk out."

"I won't."

She goes inside and I stand there for a minute, running my tongue over the tooth. One hundred and seventeen days. By Saturday it'll be one hundred and twenty. A round number. A good number for endings.

I walk home thinking about string and doors and Yuki's hands in my mouth. 

*** 

The days before Saturday pass like sleep when the power goes out—sticky and too slow. I spend the week testing the tooth obsessively, until my jaw aches and Mami tells me to stop making faces at the dinner table. The days blur together in that midsummer way where time feels thick and lazy, like honey poured from a jar.

Thursday after summer school, me and Yuki sit on her stoop sharing a bag of Takis, our fingers turning red from the powder.

"You ever wonder what happens to teeth after they fall out?" I ask.

"What you mean?"

"Like, where do they go? All them baby teeth. That's mad teeth just... somewhere."

"Probably in the garbage with everything else."

"Nah, but think about it. Every kid loses like twenty teeth. That's billions of teeth just floating around."

"You be thinking too much," Yuki says, but she's smiling. "That's your problem."

"I got a lot of problems."

"Yeah, but that's the main one."

Her dad's girlfriend comes out, carrying a laundry basket. She's younger than my mom, wears her jeans tight and her eye shadow blue. I wonder if she's still trying to be noticed. She looks at us like we're in her way even though we're not blocking anything.

"Yuki, your father needs you to clean that bathroom before he gets home," she says.

"I cleaned it yesterday."

"Well, clean it again."

She clip-clops down the steps in her heels, and we watch her go.

"She trying too hard," I say.

"She think she grown but she only like twenty-five."

"That is grown, though."

"Not grown enough to be acting like my mother."

We finish the Takis in silence, listening to the sounds of the block settling into evening. Somebody's playing Aventura loud enough to share with the whole neighborhood. A baby's crying in the building across the street. The usual symphony of people living too close together.

"Two more days," Yuki says.

"Yeah."

"You scared?"

"Of a tooth? Nah." But I am scared. Not of the tooth or the pain. Scared of what happens after. Scared that when this last piece of my kid self falls out, I won't know who I'm supposed to be.

Friday night, I still can't sleep. The tooth feels enormous in my mouth, like it's taking up all the space. I lie in bed listening to my parents watch TV in the living room, the blue light flickering under my door. They're not fighting tonight, which almost feels worse. The silence between them is louder than any argument. I get up and look at myself in the mirror over my dresser. Open my mouth wide, try to see the tooth that's been holding me back. It looks so small, just a regular tooth. Nothing special about it except it's the last one standing. I can’t help thinking, What if nothing changes, even when it’s gone?

My phone buzzes. Text from Yuki: tomorrow 2pm dont be late

I text back: i'll be there

She sends another: wear something u dont care about

why

might be blood

that's crazy

ur crazy

yeah

I get back in bed, phone warm in my hand. Think about Yuki planning this like it matters. Like she knows this is bigger than just a tooth. 

*** 

Saturday morning Mami's at work and Papi's asleep on the couch, still in his work clothes from yesterday. I make myself a bowl of cereal, careful not to chew on the left side. The tooth feels looser than ever, like it knows what's coming.

I put on my oldest pair of basketball shorts and a t-shirt I got free from the health fair at school. Check myself in the mirror one more time. Still me. Still twelve. Still waiting.

The walk to Yuki's building feels longer than usual. Every step makes the tooth wiggle. I pass the bodega where Mr. Martinez is setting up the fruit stand, the beauty shop with its chemical smell drifting onto the sidewalk, the empty lot where they're supposed to build condos but never do. Nothing is different but everything feels charged with energy today, like right before it rains.

I take the stairs to 3C two at a time, heart beating fast. When I knock, Yuki opens the door immediately like she was waiting.

"You came," she says with a grin. The sight of it makes my stomach tighten. I ignore it.

"Said I would."

She's wearing jean shorts and a wife beater, hair in a messy bun held up with a pencil. The apartment smells like Fabuloso and emptiness and something else—mold, probably. "He left an hour ago," she says, meaning her dad. "Won't be back till tomorrow." I follow her to her room, which is exactly how I imagined it. Bare walls except for a poster of Alicia Keys. Mattress on the floor with sheets that smell like fabric softener. A dresser with one drawer that won't close all the way. She's got the string ready on her nightstand, white and thick like for sewing up a turkey.

"Dental floss would be better," I say.

"Well, this is what we got." She sits on the mattress, pats the spot next to her.

I sit, and we're close enough that I can see the beauty mark by her ear, the one she usually hides with her hair.

"Open up." I open my mouth. She leans in, studies the tooth like she's reading my fortune in the lines of my gums.

"Yeah, that's ready to go. You feel it?" I nod. She picks up the string, makes a loop with her fingers. "This might be weird."

"Everything's weird."

"Facts."

Her fingers in my mouth are gentle but sure. She wraps the string around the tooth twice, ties it tight. I taste her skin—salt and Takis and something sweet like the lip gloss she steals from Duane Reade.

"Okay," she says. "Now the door." We go to her bedroom door. She measures out the string, ties the other end to the doorknob. I have to stand close to the frame, so close I can see where the paint is chipped from her dad slamming it when he's mad. "When I count to three, I'ma slam it. You gotta stand still."

"What if it doesn't work?"

"It'll work."

"But what if—"

"Za." She puts her hands on my shoulders, and they're warm and steady. "Trust me."

I look at her face, serious and beautiful and so sure of everything. "Okay."

"On three. One..."

The string pulls tight. My heart's beating so hard I can feel it in the tooth, in my whole head. Yuki's hand is on the door, ready. Her other hand finds mine, squeezes once.

"Two..."

Before I know it, she yanks the door hard. There's a pop and a sharp pain and then—"Three!"

The tooth is gone. Dangling from the string on the doorknob like the world's smallest surrender flag. Blood fills my mouth, warm and metallic, and I'm laughing and crying at the same time.

"Holy shit," Yuki whispers. Her voice gains volume. "We did it—we actually did it!" She unties the tooth from the string, holds it up to the light from her window. It's smaller than I expected, yellower. A piece of me that used to be important but isn't anymore. "Whoa. You're bleeding mad heavy," she says. Her pointer finger scoops up a line of blood trying to escape from the corner of my mouth and shows me.

"I know."

It’s wild, but all I can do is laugh. A light spray of blood shoots out when I do and I swear. She runs for a washcloth from the bathroom, runs it under cold water. When she presses it to my mouth, her face is so close I can count her eyelashes.

"How you feel?" she asks.

"Different."

"Good different?"

"I don't know yet. Gimme a minute."

We sit on her mattress, me holding the washcloth to my mouth as she holds my tooth up to the ceiling light like it's precious, one hand refusing to let go of my arm. We had never spent this much time in close quarters and the unfamiliar contact sends a warm jolt through my body. It’s just the adrenaline, I tell myself. The apartment is quiet except for the sound of sirens somewhere far away—always sirens in the Bronx, always someone needing to be saved. Yuki breaks the silence.

"What you gonna do with it?"

"I don't know. What do you think?"

"Keep it. Put it somewhere safe."

"Why?"

"So you remember."

"Remember what?"

She looks at me with those dark eyes, and I think she's going to say something important. Instead, she looks down and considers the tooth. "That I was here. That we did this together."

Eventually, the bleeding slows. The hole in my mouth feels weird, like a door that won't close. But I'm not twelve anymore. Not with all my baby teeth gone. Not with Yuki looking at me like I'm someone worth remembering.

"You want to watch TV or something?" she asks.

"Yeah."

With the rush of our plan behind us, we shuffle awkwardly to the living room to sit on the couch that smells like cigarettes and her dad's cologne. She finds a bootleg DVD of Spider-Man, the one that came out last year. We watch Peter Parker learn about power and responsibility while I hold ice to my jaw and she keeps my tooth safe in her pocket.

At some point in the movie she takes my hand. Doesn't say anything, just laces our fingers together like it's normal. Like this is what happens after you help someone lose their last baby tooth.

The afternoon fades into evening. We order Chinese food with the twenty her dad left for groceries. We eat lo mein straight from the container. She shows me how to use chopsticks, laughing when I drop noodles on my shirt. And everything tastes different with a hole in my mouth. Sharper. More real.

When it's time for me to go, she walks me to the door.

"Thanks," I say.

"For what?"

"You know."

She smiles. Presses something into my hand. The tooth, wrapped in tissue. "Don't lose it."

"I won't."

I walk home with the tooth in my pocket, my tongue finding the empty space over and over. The streetlights are coming on, turning everything orange and strange. Kids are playing in the hydrant spray one last time before dark. Music drifts from open windows—merengue, top hits, hip-hop, all the sounds of the neighborhood settling in for the night.

When I get home, Mami's making dinner and Papi's watching the news. Normal Saturday night things. Nobody notices I'm different. Nobody asks about the blood on my shirt or the way I'm smiling with my mouth closed.

I go to my room and hide the tooth in my jewelry box, the one Abuela gave me that plays "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" when you open it. It looks small next to my communion rosary and the earrings I never wear. But it's mine. The last piece of the girl I used to be.

That night I dream about teeth growing in impossible places. In my palms, my stomach, my heart. I wake up tasting blood and something sweet like blue coconut ice. I run my tongue over the empty space where the tooth used to be. It's already starting to heal, the edges softening. Soon a new tooth will grow in, an adult tooth that will stay until I'm old. But for now, there's just this gap. This space where something used to be.

This place where Yuki touched me and made me new.

About the author

Emely Taveras is a queer, disabled, first-generation Dominican American who writes at the intersection of chronic illness, sexuality, and inherited grief. Once a wedding photographer, she now finds peace through images in essays and on the canvas. She loves loud feelings and talking about the hometown she escaped. Her work appears in ExPat Press, Black Petals Magazine, and elsewhere.

about the artist

Matthew Fertel is a Sacramento-based abstract photographer who seeks out beauty in the mundane. His work focuses on capturing the usually unnoticed minutiae we all encounter in our daily lives. Common objects get framed in ways that draw attention away from the actual object and focus on the shapes, textures, and colors, transforming them into landscapes, figures, and faces. He has worked in the Photography Department at Sierra College since 2004. Before that, he was a fine art auction house catalog photographer in San Francisco for over 10 years. His photographs have appeared in various publications, including Peatsmoke Journal, Red Ogre Review, Wild Roof Journal, About Place Journal, Mud Season Review, Kitchen Table Quarterly, and many others. More of Matthew's work can be seen on his website and Instagram: https://mfertel.wixsite.com/matthewfertelphoto https://www.instagram.com/digprod4/