He ate candy. Sticky stuff too, Reece’s peanut butter cups and taffies and suckers. Not that I minded candy much. I was human, I ate candy too.
But one time Freddy walked into my room chomping on a sucker, grinding the pieces of rock-hard sugar into his molars. I tried to take the sucker from him so he could sit in my reclining chair and get his teeth cleaned like any other client. But he refused, saying he wanted to finish his sucker first. And his momma let him.
At least, I assumed so. He adamantly proclaimed that she would want him to finish his candy before I did anything, but I didn’t know. I’d never set eyes on his mom at that point. It was only my second appointment taking care of his teeth, and things didn’t really get interesting until the third.
It was all his very own idea, that he’d done on his very own self.
That’s what he told me after I discovered it and started asking questions.
I’d gotten him in the chair, but he wouldn’t let me put the paper bib around him because those were “for babies!” He was almost eight years old, so I had to agree he wasn’t a baby, but after all, the bib was in case I made a mess, not him.
That didn’t matter. It just started him on a tangent bashing the dental hygienist profession. Freddy wore a red Power Penguins shirt and tiny cargo shorts, and he crossed his skinny dark arms over his chest. “You’re all wrenches!”
Now, I knew he meant wenches, so I snorted in laughter, which wasn’t the right response as it turned out.
Freddy put two hands on his slim hips and stuck his tongue out. Then the precocious kid said to me, “Then why do you wear scrubs? You know no one can resist the opposite sex in uniform!”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I scanned the room and grabbed the readiest weapon I had available. I held up my water nozzle, the kind that’s got a long silver tube I stick in a patient’s mouth to rinse it.
“Do you want me to spray water in your mouth?” I asked. So he stopped opening his mouth to talk, lay back, and opened it wide for the spray tube. I sprayed along his gums while he made gurgling sounds. Water droplets dripped onto his Power Penguins shirt without the cloth to catch them, but I was done fighting that battle. I pulled the nozzle free and stuck the suction tube in his mouth.
He clamped his lips over it and puffed up his cheeks as water spun through the tube. He went cross-eyed looking down at it and held it tight between his lips even after water stopped coming from his mouth.
I pulled it free and he wrinkled up his face. Then he spoke, spitting with each word. “It’s like a squirt gun for teeth.”
My mouth dropped open and I turned over the tool in my hand. He was right. He was so right I’d stop and smile every time I used it from then on, thinking about how I used a squirt gun for my job.
I didn’t only use a squirt gun in those days, I also used a pressure washer on our backyard fence. It was just like cleaning teeth. That night, I came home and told my husband I’d be in the backyard pressure washing for a few hours. It was summer, so the humming mosquitos, the cicadas, and the humidity kept me company.
He came out after the first 30 minutes. “Who was it?”
I sprayed the last foot of the fence spindle I was cleaning before I answered. I turned off the nozzle then, fixing my eyes on mud as all the water I’d been using drained to a low spot in the yard to our right. I wrenched the words from my mouth. “Freddy Freeman.” My husband groaned. “Any root canals this time?”
I dropped the pressure washer by the side of the muddy fence and led him to the back patio. I collapsed in a muddy green metal patio chair, my legs splayed in a way that made me think of grasshoppers.
My husband sat in the chair across from me at the dirty patio table. His hair stood on end as always. Several strands of yellow pollen pods and a stick with one leaf attached decorated the tabletop. I should pressure wash this next.
I sighed and focused on my husband. “When I finally got his mouth open enough to look inside, he had homemade gold caps on his teeth.”
My husband blinked. “Out of what?”
“You remember those gold coin candies? The ones with the gold foil wrapped around each piece?”
My husband snorted, then pulled a straight face.
I put my face in my hands. “He used those. Crushed them between his teeth and then drank superglue, as far as I can tell.”
I couldn’t very well call child protective services when I found them, because he was African American, and it was racist to call child protective services on an African American family. And anyways, who calls child protective services about teeth? Only a very new dental hygienist, who hasn’t seen everything yet.
But Freddy told me he had swallowed some of the gold foil and super glue he’d used, so we nabbed his mom in the lobby. She’d flipped through half the magazines on our table and left the ones she’d already read in a pile on the seat next to her. The open page of Better Homes and Gardens on top of the slippery stack covering the boxy gray couch read “Neater House, Better Behaved Children.”
Dr. Macintosh had come with me to add credibility to our intervention. Dr. Macintosh had us call her by her first name, Suzie. We’d left Freddy behind in the chair.
“Denise,” Suzie perched on the chair at the head of the seating area.
I stood just behind her right shoulder. The television spat out stories behind me and the squirrels outside the glass windows in the heavily wooded area hiding us from the parking lot listened at attention before Freddy’s mom closed her magazine. When she did, the covers flopped into her lap.
She was a shapely woman, with hips and thighs and all the rest of her curves revealed under her spandex. Her spandex were a lighter brown than her skin and complemented her golden dangle earrings. Those earrings put me in mind of waterfalls, as small balls of gold on tiny gold strings cascaded from around a gem on each ear. I coveted a pair for myself.
Suzie folded her hands in her lap. “Denise, we need to talk about something that concerns your son’s safety and well-being.”
“M’kay?” Denise threw one leg over the other and raised an eyebrow at Suzie. Her dark eyes flicked up to meet mine for a moment.
Suzie straightened her shoulders. She had mulch-colored skin with chin-length straight black hair. “It seems Freddy constructed gold caps for his own teeth.” She chuckled. “He used tin foil from those gold coin candies and super glue to attach them to his canines.” Suzie paused. “And he says he swallowed some of it. Super glue isn’t that harmful, but foil in his stomach can cause some serious issues. We recommend you take him to the nearest urgent care.” Denise flicked her eyes up to me again, concern softening them but her face twisted with uncertainty. “Aren’t ya’ll gonna clean his teeth first?”
I don’t know if I shook my head or what, but the next thing I knew Denise stood less than a foot from my face. “No.” She put her hands on her hips. “I brought him here to get his teeth cleaned and you’ll do that before ANYTHING else happens. M’kay?”
Suzie rose from her chair. “Denise, our only concern is for his safety.”
“You let ME worry about his safety, m’kay?” Denise jerked her head with the last “m’kay.” Cowed before her, I returned to the office.
Suzie followed and we paused in the doorway. “You find me the second you’re done. We’ll get him out of here as fast as possible.” It was a bigger sacrifice than it sounded, because in order to be available the second I finished, she couldn’t start drilling any cavities.
I stepped into the room, already pulling on my gloves.
“My tummy hurts,” Freddy whined.
Suzie and I made eye contact. She squeezed my shoulder and left, a crisp angry clip in her stride. I rushed my teeth cleaning and sent Freddy on his way. By then he’d started whining about a stomachache and his mom agreed that she’d take him to the doctor straightaway. I almost wondered if Freddy would ever come back after that visit.
I understood that his mom felt like we were cheating her somehow, taking over her role as a parent, or messing with her cleared schedule, but would she really never come back? Six months passed with no word, and I felt an itch in the back of my mind every time I thought about it. On the seventh month, he walked into my room with chocolate smeared across his face and hands. I don’t know whether the sound that escaped my lips was a sigh or a groan.
But something changed over the years. He got a mohawk, morphing into a ‘fro, which morphed into an intensely neat ‘fro. He stayed skinny, one of those beanpole boys.
By the time he turned fourteen, he tucked in his shirt. It was a school uniform shirt, white collared button-up with slacks and a tie, and every nook and cranny of his teeth shone. That was the last time I cleaned his teeth, because of scheduling conflicts. As he left my office,
tooth-printed plastic bag with goodies in his pocket, I stopped him with a hand on his shoulder, a half-inch below my shoulders at that point.
I cleared my throat. “You know it’s okay to eat candy, right?”
His brown button eyes met mine, a touch too cold for the life I remembered burning in them when he was seven.
“Sure.” He bobbed his head and walked out.
I saw him in and out of the office every six months after that, but Suzie and the dental hygienist stopped sharing stories of his visits. He’d turned into a normal patient. From the glimpses I’d seen of him with his shirt tucked in too tight, his posture erect, and his mouth in a firm straight line, he hadn’t taken my words to heart.
Until one day I walked out the door on my way to lunch with my husband, and there he was, sitting on the wall outside the office, munching on a candy bar. I hadn’t known he was on the schedule for that day and I started at the sight of him.
He raised his head. “Hey.”
He still wore his school uniform, but he was a senior by then, with a fast maturing face and the top buttons of his collar unbuttoned. No tie today.
“Hey,” I repeated. And I smiled.
He showed his teeth in return, revealing chocolate-smeared gums. His school was only a few blocks away, so he must’ve snuck here during his lunch period.
I chuckled as I passed him, feeling as if I’d seen someone raised from the dead; shaking free the dirt of expectations he’d been buried in and reclaiming his spark so that he could truly live.
And eat candy again.
This was a very interesting story! I’ve never read anything quite like it :)
Great story, Vella!