The Girl with the Teeth
Pretty girls smile with teeth.
At school they called her the girl with the teeth. Her teeth were straight and white but they jutted out over her upper lip when she was concentrating. They were by most standards normal teeth– but then, they didn’t call her the girl with the yellow teeth or the girl with the crooked teeth or even the girl with the bad teeth. Just the girl with the teeth. Her name was Jane but her parents still called her Janey, and her greatest sorrow in life was that she could never be a professional ice skater because ice skaters had big white smiles and Jane always smiled with her lips pressed together. Smile, Janey-girl, her mother always said. Pretty girls smile with teeth. On the morning of her eighth-grade photo Jane got up before dawn. By the light of the Minnie Mouse night light that she’d had since she was eight she put on mascara and sparkly blue eyeshadow and red lipstick like ice skaters wore. But the mascara collected in tiny black clumps below her eyes and her eyelids just looked bruised and her lips a bloody mess. She leaned forward so that her nose was an inch from the mirror and pulled the ugliest faces she could think of. She wrinkled her nose and gnashed her teeth. She bit down on her tongue and tasted blood. Then she scrubbed the makeup off her face and rinsed her mouth out. Remember, with teeth, her mother said when she dropped her off at school. See you later Janey-girl. She had to wait for her photo forever because her last name started with a V. The children in front of her flashed wide toothy smiles. Taylor. Thompson. Vasquez. Finally it was her turn. Big smile, said the photographer. Smile like a cute boy just asked you out. Smile like your daddy bought you a brand-new hair straightener. With great effort Jane pulled the corners of her mouth up high and curled down her lips. But when she turned back to the line she saw the next boy staring at her, a boy with floppy hair, something Williams or was it Wolton. The boy with the hair laughed and stuck two fingers in front of his mouth like buck teeth. As he turned back to his friends to see their approval, Jane lunged. By the time they pulled her off of him, she had already knocked out a front tooth and an incisor. The pale fragments lay on the floor like pieces of classroom chalk. Her classmates circled around and began to chant. TEETH! TEETH! TEETH! TEETH! She looked down at the shocked face of the boy, blood staining the corners of his mouth, and inside her body a laugh built until it was hysterical, and she did not care that her teeth were on full display as they pulled her from the room. Smile, Janey-girl, pretty girls smile with teeth. Poke the bear and the teeth come out.
Hannah Ratner is a Boston-based writer. Her work has been published in Pithead Chapel, The Boiler, Meniscus, and elsewhere.
