Chapter 4: The Test Chapter 4: The Test
Ronny Faber vs The Tooth Faerie
by bkMarcus
That evening, Ronny's mom served him TV dinner. He ate it alone in the living room. The Wizard of Oz was on TV but he turned it off. Afterwards, he brushed his teeth, put on his old red pajamas and got in bed.
He said a standard prayer to God -- Now I lay me down to sleep... -- but he didn't talk to God the way he used to do. Talking to God was starting to make less sense to Ronny. There was no point in telling God about your day, because God saw everything -- He already knew about your day, including the thoughts and questions you might have about what was happening, so why try to update Him? And when Ronny asked God for help, or for advice, God didn't answer. What Ronny wanted advice on right now was whether or not to put Melissa's tooth under his pillow. What do you think I should do, God?
Was there something dishonest about profiting from another child's tooth? Would putting it under his pillow be like telling a lie? Did the tooth faerie care whose tooth it was? It sure seemed that way. It seemed that she (or it) cared plenty because different kids got different payment for their teeth, but maybe his mom and Zack's dad would say that it isn't the child that matters, it's the quality of the tooth. Floyd's teeth didn't seem that bad to Ronny, but what did he know. Maybe to someone who knew teeth, Floyd's teeth were obviously poor teeth. Melissa's tooth was obviously a high-quality tooth, even to a novice like Ronny.
If the tooth faerie cared whose tooth it was, regardless of the quality, then using Melissa's tooth instead of his own would be dishonest, but it also meant that the tooth faerie was completely unfair, even cruel, to black kids and other poor children. If the tooth faerie cared only about the quality of the teeth, independent of the kid's skin-color or how much money their parents had, then using Melissa's tooth would be fine. So it was a lie if the tooth faerie was cruel and unfair and it was a perfectly honest transaction if the tooth faerie was fair. Either way, Ronny felt OK about doing it.
But not tonight. The idea of a faerie sneaking into his room while he slept was still unsettling. He knew he'd have to face it eventually, but not yet, not while he was so drained and confused. To put the tooth under the pillow, Ronny would have to feel ready to face the consequences, and right now, he just wanted his life to be the way it was when he was five-and-a-half.
But what if you didn't need to put the tooth under your pillow. Maybe that was just a tradition, like eating birthday cake. Maybe the faerie would come for the tooth whether it was under the pillow or not, the same way you turned six no matter what you ate on your birthday.
Ronny really hoped the pillow was important. Tonight, the faerie wasn't welcome, not even for a dollar.
He had learned most of his prayers from his daddy -- including the idea that just talking things out with God was a form of praying -- but there was one prayer he learned from his mom, the only one he ever heard her use. As he faced the uncertainty of the coming night, he uttered the prayer.
"Lord, give me strength."
#
If Ronny didn't wake up on his own around seven, his mom would usually rouse him out of bed by eight, but Sunday morning, Ronny woke up well after nine. Mickey's long arm was pointing at the 10 and his short arm wasn't far behind.
When he walked into the kitchen his mom was saying into the phone "I really do appreciate it ... yes, and I'm sorry to have woken you so early ... I do ... yes, I do understand, and I'm grateful. It's a great help. OK, get some rest." And she hung up.
Ronny rubbed his eyes. His left eye lids were partially stuck, upper to lower. His right eye felt gritty.
"Hey, kid."
"Hey, mommy."
"Sandman hasn't let you go yet, has he?"
"Sandman?"
"Oh, no. Never mind. Forget I said anything."
"OK. Can I have some juice?"
"Sure, I'll make you some."
His mom took a cardboard cylinder of concentrate from the freezer and scooped a tablespoon of orange goop into a glass.
"No, make a whole pitcher!"
"We don't have room in the fridge." She poured tap water into the glass and stirred until the water turned orange. She handed the glass to Ronny. He could see the thick orange stuff already sinking to the bottom of the glass. But his mom was smiling at him, and he didn't want to ruin her mood. She seemed almost happy. He sipped the weak yellow liquid from the top of the glass until he reached the sweeter, darker orange juice toward the bottom.
"I just talked to your father," she said.
"Daddy? Was that him on the phone?"
"Yes, I'm afraid I woke him up. It's still early there."
"I wanted to talk to him!"
"He was too tired to talk, sweetie. You can call him this afternoon."
Ronny didn't understand how it could be a different time of the day in California than it was in New York, even though both parents had tried to explain it to him more than once. It had something to do with the Earth being round instead of flat, but Ronny didn't understand why the people in California couldn't just set their clocks to the same time it was in New York. Then everyone would go to sleep and get up at the same time and it wouldn't be so hard to reach his dad on the phone when they were both awake.
"Your father has agreed to take you a couple weeks early."
Ronny blinked up at his mom. Information was hard to take in first thing in the morning. "I'm going there early?" This was the first summer that Ronny and his dad had "visitation" and Ronny wasn't yet used to the idea. Again, both parents had tried to explain it to him, but it still felt scary. He remembered their fights when his mom and dad were both living with him, and he definitely didn't want to go back to that, but neither did he feel comfortable living alone with either one. His mom was unhappy all the time and his dad didn't let him watch TV or do anything that was called sinful. Ronny had spent last Christmas in "visitation" and Santa Claus wasn't allowed to visit his dad's house while he was there. Santa dropped off presents with his mom while Ronny was away, but it wasn't the same as opening them first thing on Christmas morning. Ronny and his dad spent Christmas morning in church.
"Does that mean I come back early, too?"
"No," his mom said. "You're going to spend the second half of the summer with your dad. I think you need to spend time with some different kids, and away from the city. You'll fly out on Tuesday."
Ronny prayed silently for strength.
Sometimes his mom told him stuff in a bossy way, and sometimes, like right now, she told him stuff in a pleading way, still trying to sound like she was the boss, but really, she was asking him to help her out. Ronny wanted to give this to his mom, but it was hard. It was hard not to cry or stamp his feet or run back down the hall to his room. He didn't want to go to California. He did want to see his dad -- he missed him a lot -- but it wasn't fun to live with him.
But it wasn't really fun to stay at home with his mom, either. She was getting sadder and angrier and harder to understand, even though she was mostly cheerful this morning. He felt like her voice was still echoing in the apartment from when she came home to Zack's flame-thrower. Ronny felt stuck. Give me strength. Give me strength. "OK, mommy."
His mom suggested he watch TV while she made brunch. Brunch was a meal that only happened on Sundays. It was breakfast food served around lunch time, and his mom would spend most of Sunday morning making it. They didn't have brunch last Sunday because they went to New Jersey to spend the day with Don and Lanie, and sometimes they didn't have brunch because his mom said she had a deadline to work on, whatever that was. But most Sundays, it went like this: Ronny couldn't have more than a yogurt or a small bowl of cereal when he woke up because it would ruin his appetite for brunch, which was his mom's favorite meal of the whole week. Ronny couldn't leave the apartment to go play with friends on Sunday morning, because he might get dirty, or come back late, and his mom wanted him there when she served brunch so it wouldn't get cold. Ronny did agree that cold eggs and cold bacon were yucky, but that didn't leave him with anything to do on Sunday morning but sit in front of the TV, listening to his stomach make noises while he turned the channel knob around and around, hoping that there would be something to watch other than church shows or football.
This morning, when he sat down in front of the TV, something was different. Usually, there was a knob you pulled out of the TV that turned it on. You turned the same knob to raise and lower the volume, and pushed it back into the TV to turn it off. Then there were two knobs that looked the same, but one was marked VHF and one was marked UHF. The VHF knob had channels on it that Ronny watched, and the UHF had mostly static and some channels in Spanish. This morning, the UHF and the on/off/volume knob were where they always were, but the VHF knob was missing. He pulled out the on/off knob and the TV popped and crackled and slowly faded from a black screen to a weak picture of a white-haired man with glasses giving a sermon in front of a giant stain-glass window.
When Ronny told his mom that the TV was broken, she said "Oh, yeah, that finally came off late last night. It's been loose for a while."
"So how can I watch TV?"
"I'll get the pliers."
His mom returned from the kitchen with a pinching tool she used to grab the thing inside the TV that the VHF knob had been attached to. "OK," his mom said. "Now what channel do you want to watch?"
"I don't know," said Ronny. "They're all bad."
She put the pliers into the hole where the VHF knob used to be and turned. Channel, static, channel, channel, static, channel, static, channel, static ... she stopped on a children's program called Davie & Goliath. Ronny hadn't asked her to stop there, but she was right, it was better than sermons or football, neither of which he understood.
His mother went back to the kitchen. She took the pliers with her. Ronny could smell sausages.
Davie & Goliath was a show about a little boy named Davie and his dog, named Goliath. They looked like they were made from Play-Do, but they moved and talked. Even the dog talked and he knew more about God and The Bible than the little boy did. As much time as Ronny spent talking to God, he still didn't like having other people talk to him about God. It felt like those people wanted Ronny to feel bad.
Today's episode was about envy, which The Bible calls coveting. Ronny didn't covet his friends' toys, or their money -- even though he did feel it was unfair that some people had much more money than they needed and other people, including his own family according to his mom, didn't have enough. If there was anything Ronny coveted, it was having a mother like Floyd's who bounced you on her big soft lap or parents like Melissa's who lived together without fighting or crying. The Bible also said to honor your mom and dad, so coveting someone else's parents broke two rules at once.
When the episode was over, they played a show where a preacher gave a sermon. As Ronny walked to the kitchen to ask for the pliers, the phone rang. When he got there, his mom was at the stove with a spatula in one hand and the phone in the other. She held the phone out to Ronny and said "It's for you but you can't talk long because brunch will be ready in two minutes!"
"Is it daddy?"
"No, it's your little friend from the party."
Ronny took the phone from his mom and held it to the side of his head. "Floyd?"
"No," said the voice inside the phone. "It'th Melitha."
"Oh. Hi."
"Are you thtill my boyfriend?"
"I guess so." Ronny wondered when this boyfriend thing would catch up with him.
"Geth what!"
"What?"
"I got my dollar anyway!"
"What? How?"
"That's enough," his mom interrupted. "Go sit at the table. Tell Melissa you'll have to talk to her later."
"My mom says I have to talk to you later. She's about to serve brunch."
"What did Melissa want?" His mother was scooping scrambled eggs on to Ronny's plate.
"She wanted to tell me she got a dollar for her tooth."
"A dollar!?" His mom put the serving spoon down too hard. It banged against the egg dish. "Are they crazy?!"
"Yeah, and she didn't even have the tooth anymore." Ronny decided not to tell his mom why Melissa didn't have the tooth. "But even though she, um, lost her tooth, she still got a dollar from the tooth faerie."
"A dollar!? Her parents are out of their minds!"
"Why?"
"That's way too much money!"
"But why does that make her parents crazy?"
His mom stopped talking. She stared at him for a moment. She knew something, he could tell. Why was she keeping it a secret?
"Tell me," he said.
"Look, sweetie, I think Melissa's parents gave her that dollar to make her feel better about losing her tooth. Her parents aren't crazy. They're just rich. Hard for me to tell the difference, some times." She served herself some eggs. "I just don't know why they have to give a little girl a dollar for a lost tooth but --"
"Well, that's what the tooth faerie gave her for the last baby tooth that came out. They couldn't give her less than that."
His mom stared at him again.
"What? Tell me!"
"You're probably right, Ronny." She returned the serving dish to the table. "How many sausages do you want?"
#
He napped after brunch. He was tired, even though he'd already slept late that morning. When he woke up from his nap, his mom was already cooking dinner. Sunday dinners were smaller than other nights' dinners because brunch was so big, but still, it felt like most Sundays were just for eating and sleeping and watching bad TV.
At the dinner table, Ronny asked his mom if there had been a tooth faerie when she was a little girl.
"Of course, Ronny. How old do you think I am?"
"What do you mean how old are you?"
"It has a long history. Me, and your grandparents, probably their grandparents. Children have been getting coins under their pillows for a very long time. And apparently it's dollars now." She shook her head.
"Have you ever seen her?"
"Seen the Tooth Fairy?"
"Yeah, do you know what she looks like?"
"No, I haven't actually seen her, but I'm sure she just looks the way fairies look -- you know, with wings and a wand."
"Like Tinkerbell."
"Well, maybe not as sexy as little Tinkerbell, but yes, more or less."
"And how much money did you get?"
"I got tuppence per tooth," she said.
"What does that mean?"
"Tuppence is a kind of English coin. It's worth two pennies. Tuppence means 'two pence'."
"'Pence' means penny?"
"Right."
"But it's just one coin?"
"It was. The British have revised their currency."
Ronny stared at his mom. She smiled back at her son. "'Currency' means the kind of money a country uses. American currency is dollars. The British have pounds. And then there are different names for the smaller coins that are worth less than a dollar or a pound."
"Why don't they just use dollars?"
"Dollars are only good in America. The British have a different system of money."
Ronny wanted to ask why the British didn't just use dollars and then everyone would know how much something cost. "Is it like how it's always three hours earlier where daddy lives?"
"It's not exactly the same. Things are just different for different people, honey."
"Like for black people and white people?"
"Sometimes. For rich people and poor people, for British and American people. I'm sure it's confusing for a six-year-old boy. You'll understand it better when you're older."
Ronny doubted it. Each time he sought new information, the picture got more complicated rather than clearer. It seemed to Ronny that things would just keep getting more complicated the older he got.
For instance, everyone thought the tooth faerie was a pretty little lady with wings and a wand, but no one would say they'd seen her. They thought she looked like Tinkerbell, but that's because they only knew about the Tinkerbell-kind of faerie, the cute little things that were sort of like butterflies and sort of like curvy women in little dresses -- but Ronny now knew that there were many kinds of faerie, and some were dark. Some were tall and had pointy ears and they were called elves, and some were hairy and had sharp teeth and they were called goblins. And maybe some kids had the little Tinkerbells visit them and take their teeth, and other kids had other kinds of faerie come for theirs. Maybe that's why different kids got different amounts of money for their baby teeth. There were so many kids in the world, it didn't really make sense for one winged lady to take all their baby teeth. Did different faerie races attended to different human races, and the ones who took black kids baby teeth only paid a nickel, while that little goblin thing paid white kids a quarter?
"Do you think there's an English tooth faerie in England and an American tooth faerie over here? Or maybe there are different faerie for different kinds of kids?"
"What kinds of kids are you talking about?"
Ronny knew, for instance, that Santa Claus didn't visit Jewish kids like Zack, but his mom got upset when he talked about that. "Like a faerie who takes care of rich kids' teeth and maybe a different kind of faerie who takes care of poor kids teeth?"
His mom stared down at her plate for a while. She didn't seem to be mad at him, but sometimes Ronny couldn't tell for sure.
"Sweetie, why are you trying so hard to figure this out?"
"I just want to understand. It doesn't make sense yet."
"Can't you just think of it as magic?"
"I know it's magic, but I'm trying to understand how it works."
"But you're not supposed to try to understand how magic works. That's why it's magic, and not science."
Ronny didn't know what science was, though he had seen scientists on Felix The Cat and other cartoons. It seemed to him that scientists and magicians did pretty much the same sorts of things, but science guys needed machines to do what magic guys could do just with magic.
"I don't understand."
"I know, and some of that is because you're still a little boy and there are some things you need to be a grown-up to understand. Like Santa Claus and like the Tooth Fairy."
Ronny hadn't mentioned Santa Claus. It was his mom who had made the connection. "So you don't think it's a bunch of different kinds of tooth faerie? Just one?"
"There's only one Tooth Fairy and she uses magic to do what she does, and I don't think I can tell you anything else, sweetie. It will ruin the magic."
"Why won't you tell me?"
"Sweetie. Just, wait until you're older, OK? This will all make sense to you eventually, but try to enjoy being a little boy while you can, please? Don't struggle so much."
To Ronny, this felt like the part of an argument when his mother would say "Because I'm The Mommy, that's why!" Which didn't really answer any question, it just ended the argument by saying that the argument was over. His mom was saying "Because it's Magic, that's why!" and Ronny knew that he wouldn't be able to get anything more out of her.
But he had learned one thing, at least. There weren't races of different tooth faerie, all attending to different children throughout the world. There was one tooth faerie. And Ronny was pretty sure that that faerie was not a little Tinkerbell, but a hairy little goblin with sharp teeth and fiery eyes.
But so much was still unanswered. Why did the tooth faerie give dimes to some and quarters to others, why give only nickels to black children and two pennies to English children? Why would the tooth faerie deal in local currency at all? Wouldn't it use coins from the Faerie Kingdom -- or gold dust, or flower petals? Something magical. Or natural. Not something that belonged to a human tradition like dollars or pounds.
But a kid couldn't spend gold dust at the candy store. If the faerie wanted kids to turn over their teeth, easily-spendable money was the most straight-forward reward.
It suddenly became clear to Ronny how vast the scale of the tooth faerie operation had to be -- to harvest the baby teeth of all the world's children, rewarding them each in the appropriate money for where they were, tracking whose teeth were worth more and whose less. For all he knew, there were children in the world whose teeth were so bad, the faerie passed them over completely. There were probably kids who were so poor they didn't even have pillows to put their teeth under at night. Even though he had never thought of it before, he was immediately certain: there were children who never got any money from the tooth faerie, and those children were already the poorest and sickest children in the world. The tooth faerie may be magical, as his mother insisted so strenuously, but not all magic was good magic. For each good witch in the Wizard of Oz, there was a wicked witch for the remaining points on the compass. The tooth faerie wasn't out to take care of little kids. It was out there for its own reasons, collecting human baby teeth for some purpose that neither Ronny nor his mother understood.
So what were its reasons? That was the question he'd been scared to face: why did the faerie want human baby teeth in the first place? All those zillions of little teeth from children throughout the world and throughout history... Ronny tried to picture the size of the tooth faerie's collection -- a mountain of baby teeth, high enough to pierce the clouds -- with a hairy little sharp-toothed faerie crouching at the mountain's peak.
#
Somewhere between Sunday night and Monday morning, Ronny dreamt of a war -- of battlefields filled with flame, the Earth scorched to the horizon. He and other children were dressed like the soldiers in black-and-white, World War II movies. The children were shades of gray. The flames were in color.
Ronny didn't know how to operate his gun. He didn't know who the enemy was. He didn't know what he was supposed to do. What he did know was that retreat was cowardice! Bombs exploded in the distance. He heard bullets tear the air around his head. Children died, silently. He stood helpless.
One of the bullets hit him in the chest. In the dream, Ronny didn't die when he was shot. He fell onto his back and closed his eyes. A heavy weight pressed down on his chest where the bullet had gone in.
The sounds of the dream faded, but the weight on his chest remained. Ronny was afraid that if he tried to open his eyes, he would die, both here and in the waking world. Staying in the dream was keeping him alive.
But eventually, Ronny did open his eyes. He looked straight up. It wasn't full dawn yet, but enough light came in through his bedroom window to cast shadows on the ceiling.
The weight on his chest shifted.
Ronny tried to lift his head, but couldn't move. He tried to wiggle his toes. They didn't move. His arms and legs, his middle, his neck, they were all dead weight. But he could move his eyes. He looked down toward the pressure against his heart.
The goblin crouched on his chest, staring down into Ronny's mouth. Ronny could hear a long high sound spill quietly past his lips, but he still couldn't move. Anything anything. A leg, an arm. Nothing. His body lay limp in his bed.
The goblin shifted and leaned in closer. It stared down into the hole from which Ronny was failing to scream.
It had the same hairy outline it had had in the New Jersey window. Its eyes burned the same hellfire red as in Zack's comic book.
It put its sharp little hands, cold and dry, to the bottom of Ronny's neck and leaned in closer to his mouth. Ronny felt like he was shaking violently inside, but outside, his body just would not move.
The beast looked up, met Ronny's gaze. Fires burned in those eyes, grew in heat and intensity, grew in size. Ronny fell into the flames, through and past them into a cold blackness.
When he awakened again, the goblin was gone. His room was filled with morning light. How many hours had passed? He tried to move his arms and legs. They were heavy, slow. He coughed and coughed until his mom came into his room, where she found him sobbing.
When he told her what had happened, she told him it was just a dream. When he told her that it was the same creature in the window last weekend, she told him that proved that it was a dream. When he told her it looked just like a drawing he'd seen in a faerie book, she told him she didn't want him looking at those kinds of books. Ronny told her it wasn't a dream, that he knew it wasn't a dream because he had been awake and in his room, that he had awakened from a dream. That he was awake and aware, and he couldn't move anything but his eyes.
"Oh, Ronny. That wasn't a goblin. That was the little hag!"
"What little hag?"
"Now I know what you're talking about. That used to happen to me in England when I was a little girl."
"What's a little hag?"
"She looks like an evil old lady with a hooked nose and a shawl."
"No, it looked like a dark faerie goblin with hair all over."
"OK, well, whatever is in your subconscious, I suppose. In Northern Europe, they called it the little hag. It's a specific state of sleep -- I can't remember what it's called. Part of your brain is awake and part is still asleep. You can't move your body, except for your eyes and at the periphery of your vision you see the hag -- or the goblin in your case -- crouching over your mouth. They used to say she was there to steal your breath. It's very scary, I remember. But it's not real, sweetie."
"It was real."
"No, it's a creature out of your half-asleep brain. You are aware of your surroundings but you are effectively paralyzed and you're hallucinating. What you saw wasn't real. It's just your brain playing tricks on you. It's nothing to be scared of."
The longer her sentences were, the fewer words he understood. It had always been this way. But what he did understand was that she thought he had dreamt up the goblin, even though she said she knew he wasn't dreaming. And he also knew that she was wrong. He'd been awake and he'd been paralyzed, and that thing from New Jersey had come for something in his mouth.
He reached in and felt around.
"Mommy, I think another tooth is loose!"
"Already?" She watched him wiggle his remaining front tooth. "Well, OK, I guess you'll have another quarter soon."
"I think that thing was the tooth faerie. I think it came too early."
"Sweetie, the Tooth Fairy isn't a hairy little goblin."
"Did you know that a goblin is a kind of faerie?"
"Who told you that?"
"It was in Zack's book."
"Zack," she said. "Ronny, I really, really don't want you reading scary books. They give you nightmares."
But he was sure he was right. The goblin had appeared the night he lost his first tooth. It was the only thing that made sense, and yet -- and yet Ronny had a hard time picturing that evil little beast leaving him any money for his teeth. It didn't seem like it was there to trade. It was there to take. And it crouched heavily on his chest with impatience for the newly loose tooth in Ronny's mouth to come free.
This Faerie business was like a jigsaw puzzle -- not one of those ten-piece children's puzzles either. Reality was like a great big grown-up's puzzle, where no single piece revealed the whole, nothing looked like what it would eventually become when all the pieces were slowly fit together. But he was so close. He couldn't see the whole picture, but he could see the general outline of something, and he saw where the picture was coming together, and where the puzzle still had great big gaps.
His mom decided that Ronny needed to relax. That was OK with him, because the difference between "calm down" (which is what she usually said) and "relax" was the difference between being scolded and having a great big bubble bath.
#
He came into the bathroom naked except for the shark's tooth pendant. His mom turned off the water. "Did you see that your friends melted part of the shower curtain?"
Ronny shook his head.
"Little vandals."
He pretended not to have heard what she said.
"What's that you're wearing?"
"Shark's tooth."
"Where did you get it?"
"Birthday present."
His mom lifted the tooth away from his chest. She was looking at the magic writing. "What's it say?" he asked.
"It says 'Coney Island'."
"Does that ward off evil?"
"'Ward off evil'?"
"That's what Floyd's mamma said."
"I don't think it will ward off anything, but it might poke a hole in your chest if you fall on it." She reached behind his neck and unclasped the chain. "I'm putting this in your room. I don't think you should wear it unless it's over a shirt." She walked out and left the bathroom door open behind her.
Ronny sat in his bubble bath and wiggled his loose tooth. It didn't feel anywhere near ready to come out.
Tomorrow he'd fly across the country and spend the rest of his summer with his dad. The tooth wouldn't come out before he left and it wouldn't stay in until he got back. He was going to lose his second tooth in California, and the tooth faerie would never make it in to his father's house.
He wondered what it was his dad did to keep Santa and the faerie out. Did he have something to 'ward off evil' or was there something his mom had to do to invite magic creatures in? If she was doing something, he knew she wouldn't admit it. In his mother's mind, telling her son how the world worked would 'ruin the magic'.
But how she invoked the beast wasn't what mattered at this point. What mattered was that the creature came here and that it didn't go there. If Ronny was going to figure this out, he had to act fast.
But even thinking about the goblin made him scared. He remembered its first appearance in New Jersey, how he would have pissed his pants if he hadn't already been empty. He thought of the sound of his voice, both then and this morning, his paralytic fear in the face of the beast. What he felt right now, soaking in the warm soapy water, was not fear and it was not relaxation. What he felt was shame.
Sissy.
What did she think of her son now, knowing how scared he was ... of a faerie?
The tooth faerie was like the policemen on Riverside Drive: you're supposed to think of them as good guys, as there to help little kids, but they were bullies and thieves. Even Zack who knew how to make and use fire was scared of them.
So this was his test. It wasn't a puzzle and it wasn't a problem. It wasn't something he needed to figure out -- it was something he needed to confront. His dad talked about God testing him, about faith and strength and doing the thing that was most scary to you.
Yes, the test involved his mind, but the scary thing, the thing that was the test within the test, was going to have to involve his body.
While it was tempting to seek his father's sanctuary from these creatures, to hide for the rest of the summer in a home from which magic was banished, Ronny knew that running away was something little boys did.
He'd have to set a trap. And the bait, of course, would have to be a tooth. It would have to be a baby tooth, and it would have to be under his pillow, and it would have to be tonight. Maybe Melissa's tooth would work -- he hadn't tried it yet -- but tonight was his last chance and he couldn't risk doing it wrong. He would put Melissa's tooth under his pillow, yes, but his own baby tooth would have to sit next to it. It didn't feel loose enough to come out, but staying put was no longer an option.
His mom had pulled the first tooth out with string and a door knob.
Ronny climbed to the edge of his tub. The bathroom door was still open, but he could hear his mom vacuuming at the other end of the apartment. He scrambled up onto the sink and opened the medicine cabinet. Inside he found what he needed.
He held onto the hand-towel rack at the side of the sink and reached his leg out to hook the bathroom door with his foot. He pulled the door over to him and pushed it closed. His mom would kill him if he locked the door during a bath, but he didn't want to leave it standing open either. He couldn't have his mom walking in on what he was about to do.
Ronny couldn't tie good knots yet -- grown-ups had to tie his shoes for him -- but he knew that if you wrapped string around and around and around something, it would hold for a while as if you had tied a knot.
He looped the green dental floss around the cabinet door handle twenty times, then around his loose tooth ten times. It was faster to wrap the handle than it was to wrap his tooth, because even loose, the tooth offered only a small gap between itself and its solid neighbor one space over. He sat back on the edge of the sink and slammed the cabinet door.
Shock of light like a flash bulb popping. Pain shot up into his head. His eyes were open, but he could see only white, then gray, then brown, then edges and shadows. He could make out the shape of the medicine cabinet, and the outline of his own reflection in the cabinet mirror.
The pain settled down and throbbed behind his nose. He was bleeding into his mouth, but the tooth was still holding to the gum.
Lord, give me strength.
His eyes teared up, but he stayed quiet. The pain flowered behind his face, but he couldn't stop now. He'd get in trouble if his mom found him like this, and he still wouldn't have a tooth to offer up. He had to finish what he started, even though he could feel his heart beat inside his whole head and could taste the blood dribbling down his tongue and into the back of his throat. He needed to get the tooth out first, before he could worry about the pain and the bleeding.
He braced himself against the sink, holding onto the faucet so he wouldn't fall backwards and down onto the tile floor. He closed his eyes and squeezed the edge of the cabinet door. He needed to slam it. He needed to. His hand shook. His whole body shook. He needed to do it. He whimpered.
That sound. The sound of his fear, beyond screams or tears, that raspy hollow whimper. That shameful thing.
Calm descended. Ronny stopped shaking. Nothing had changed in his situation. What was true before was true now and his pain and his fear couldn't change it.
He stared at himself in the mirror. You ugly little baby...
He slammed the cabinet again.
He felt the solid tug against his upper gum and felt the pop of the tooth pulling free. It skittered out into the sink, bounced around several times and slipped down the drain. Ronny jammed his little fingers in after it, but it was too late. Too late. It was gone it was gone.
He had to think. Everything hurt.
He opened the cabinet again and found the children's chewable aspirin, pink pills in a clear glass bottle. He squeezed the tabs and turned the child-proof top off. His mom gave him two pills when he had a headache, but this wasn't an ache. This was pain. He shook five pills into his wet hand and sucked them into his mouth. They tasted like soap, but he didn't care. He chewed them with his back teeth, crushed them into a tangy powder and swallowed. Then he took five more. Then he recapped the bottle and put it back in the cabinet.
As he climbed down from the sink to the tub, he slipped. He fell first onto the protruding handles, banged off the edge of the tub itself and splashed down into the bubble bath. He bumped his face on the bottom of the tub and tried to cry out, but the soapy water filled his mouth and slipped down his throat.
This makes sense, he thought. I've failed.
#
His mom pulled him out of the water and shook him. He could see her lips moving, but he couldn't hear her. It still sounded like he was under the water. Her eyes were crinkled like they'd been when he cut himself on the juice can. Her face was red like it had been when she came home and saw her bathroom filled with flame.
She put him face down on the bathmat and pushed down on his back with both hands. The bathmat was clammy. The tile floor was wet. She kept pushing down until he gushed bathwater out of his mouth and across the tiles.
Now he could hear her. "Oh Jesus, Ronny, Jesus Christ, tell me you're OK."
He was still facing the floor, but he could hear behind him that his mom was crying.
#
She was on the phone with the Baby Sitting Pool. If she noticed that he was now missing both his front teeth, she didn't say anything. The Baby Sitting Pool was a bunch of different mothers in the neighborhood who took turns looking after each other's kids. Ronny's mom was calling to cancel an afternoon babysitter that Ronny hadn't even known about.
"He's fine," she said into the phone. "We're both still a bit shaken by it, but he's fine. I just want to keep an eye on him this afternoon."
Ronny could hear a tinny voice on the other end of the phone. He couldn't make out words, but he could usually tell if it was a man or women, or if someone was laughing or asking a question or yelling.
"No," she said. "I can catch up on my work once he's with his father."
#
His mom didn't leave him alone all morning. She said she wanted to "drink in" her remaining time with him, but she startled at noises, and followed him with her eyes. She stayed in the room with him while he ignored the cartoons on TV and tried to play with Lite-Brite. More than once, she'd approach him wordlessly and hug him to her chest. Ronny didn't want to be hugged. Being hugged made him want to bury his face in her shirt and cry, and Ronny wasn't going to cry anymore.
#
By the afternoon, she seemed less jumpy. Time was slipping away. He couldn't even remember his thoughts. Sitting across the table from him at lunch, his mom watched him eat his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She even cut the crusts off the white bread. Normally, she'd tell him the crusts were good for him.
She leaned toward him and said, "Ronny, smile for me." He didn't feel like smiling, but he tried to do what she asked. She said, "Did you lose another tooth?"
Ronny nodded. "I lost it." It's lost. It's gone forever. How could I do that? Why didn't I close the drain first?
"When did you lose your tooth?"
"In the bathroom." Ronny felt the vertigo of awareness that small events could change everything. If he'd closed the drain, he'd have his tooth. All that pain would have been meaningful, the final test before the prize. A different life would follow from that success than the life he would have to live now.
"I guess you'll be getting another quarter."
"I don't think so."
"Oh, of course you will. Just put it under your pillow and the Tooth Fairy will leave you another quarter before you leave for Daddy's."
Ronny looked up from his sandwich. Could that be right? Was she teasing him, or could there actually be one last chance? His mind felt thick, but he pushed his way quickly through what he knew and what he didn't know. He didn't have a baby tooth to offer up to the faerie. But Melissa had gotten her dollar without giving over her tooth. But his mom said that the money had really come from her parents. But now his mom was saying she was sure the faerie would come tonight. His mom knew how it worked, but she was only willing to tell him small pieces. Would it work without his tooth? Could he offer up Melissa's instead? Ronny didn't want to tell his mom what had happened to his own tooth this morning. Even if he didn't get in trouble, she would be very upset. The situation felt delicate.
"How do you know that the tooth faerie will come?"
"If you put a tooth under your pillow, the Tooth Fairy comes for it. That's how it works. Just make sure to tell me first."
Ronny finished his sandwich while he thought. His mom was still talking, but he couldn't hear her. He had a plan, but he didn't trust it. He went over it again and again. There couldn't be any forgotten drains. But this time, his plan was simple. If his mom could summon the creature, Ronny would have his chance for redemption.
When his mom took his plate, she said, "Sweetie, are you alright?"
He looked down at the tears on his plate, among the bread crumbs and jelly stains. More tears. But these were different. These were OK. "Yes," he told her. "I'm very alright."
#
He sat in his room and watched his mom go through his clothes. He wore Floyd's shark tooth and Zack's fireman's helmet. Did he want to take this? Should she pack that? He shrugged. Did he want her to send these things through the mail? They were too big for him to take by himself.
He'd be traveling alone. He'd done it at Christmas. Stewardesses gave him coloring books and pinned plastic wings to his shirt. Different smiling women at each stop greeted him by name and walked him to the next place he had to be. From the moment he woke up, to the moment he was delivered to his father, one grown-up or another would be holding his hand, talking too loud or too soft, always smiling, rushing him along.
Tonight was his last chance to act. His mom was keeping a close eye on him, but he didn't have any choice. He would have to gather what he needed while she was making dinner. Part of him was still scared, but he ignored it. He knew what he had to do.
#
It would end tonight. He knew the Pookha would come. The ritual had been followed and the lure was in place. He had put the tooth under his pillow, the valuable tooth -- a stronger lure for the demon. It was pearly white, smooth, straight on three sides. His own tooth -- what he'd seen of it as it slipped away forever -- had been crooked and bloody.
Ronny Faber sat back on his mattress, the pendant around his neck, the helmet on his head, a full can of Raid in one hand, Zack's push-button lighter in the other. He was tired, but he knew he'd stay awake. Tonight the goblin would burn and tomorrow Ronny would return to his father.
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