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The tooth had fallen out that morning when she was eating her breakfast toast. As she chewed the buttery bread, she felt something hard and spat it out onto the plate. “Caitriona”, said Mammy. “What are you doing?” “I don’t know,” Caitriona said. “I didn’t mean it. There’s something funny in my mouth and – well, it’s not in my mouth any more, it’s sitting right there on the plate. Yukk!” she screamed, “Look, Mammy, look there, all gooey in the middle of the bread.”
“Don’t be silly, Caitriona,” said Mammy. “You have made a right mess. What on earth came over you?” and she started to clean the table. “My goodness!” she said when she saw what was there. “You are right. There is something there and I think I know what it is.” And Mammy started to laugh, that lovely tinkely laugh that Caitríona loved to hear.
Mammy grabbed the mirror off the wall and held it up so that Caitríona could see herself reflected in the glass. There, in the middle of her little mouth was – well, nothing! There was a big gap where her tooth should have been. She felt it with her tongue, and then stuck her tongue right through the hole and looked at it in the mirror – it was all pink and wriggly. “Oh, I do look funny.” She started to giggle, and Mammy laughed again. “Your certainly do!” she said. “Put that tongue right in again, Miss, or I won’t be able to stop laughing at you and then we’ll all be late for school.”
At the mention of school, Caitríona stopped laughing. “I can’t go to school,” she said. “Everyone will laugh at me. They’ll say I look silly.” “Of course they won’t,” said Mammy. “Yes, they will,” said Caitríona. “They always laugh if there’s something different about you.” “But all the girls in your class are the same age as you,” said Mammy. “Some of them must have lost a tooth before now.” Caitríona thought for a few minutes. Yes, of course they had. Chloe had an even bigger gap in her teeth, where two had popped out, one after the other, only last week. And Michele was missing a tooth. Even Diane, the biggest girl in the class, who always laughed at people and teased them unmercifully if they had the wrong colour socks, or forgot their shoes for Irish dancing, had no front teeth. ”And,” said Mammy, with a knowing smile, “they’ll all be jealous because it is your turn for the Tooth Fairy to pay you a visit.”
Caitriona hadn’t thought of the Tooth Fairy. She had heard girls talking about it, of course, but, never having lost a tooth herself, she hadn’t paid much attention. “What does the Tooth Fairy do?” she asked. “Oh,” said Mammy. “The Tooth Fairy comes when you’re fast asleep. She collects baby teeth that girls don’t need any more, and washes them and shines them up and gives them to new babies.” “Does she really?” “Well,” said Mammy. “That’s what people say, anyway. And you know your little cousin Oran doesn’t have any teeth yet. That’s why he has to drink a bottle all the time. He can’t eat proper food like you until he gets some teeth.” Caitriona had been to visit her little baby cousin only last week, and she knew that he certainly didn’t have any teeth, because when she was let hold him for a while, he had been trying to eat her finger and it hadn’t hurt one bit.
So off to school went Caitríona, quite proud of herself. Mammy gave her a little shiny box (one that she kept her best earrings in) and put in a lining of white tissue so that Caitríona could bring her tooth in to school to show her teacher. And nobody at all laughed at her. Not even Diane, who admitted that she had never seen such a lovely box for a tooth before.
So, now it was bedtime, and as Caitríona lay on her lovely soft pillow, in her own comfy little bed, she looked at the little tooth in a glass on the table that she didn’t need any more because there was a brand new bigger tooth already growing in her gum. One that would last her until she was a big lady like her Mammy – maybe even until she was really old like her Nana - if she kept it brushed and clean. Tomorrow when she woke up the Tooth Fairy would have taken the little tooth away to the Fairy Factory, where all the little elves worked hard polishing and shining baby teeth for recycling. And her cousin Ryan, who was a big boy, four years older than her and knew everything, had told Caitríona that very day, that sometimes the Tooth Fairy, when she collects a little tooth, leaves you a present of a shiny One Euro piece, just to say “Thank You”.
The light from the moon outside her window was shining on the glass, and as Caitríona’s eyes closed she thought to herself that she would ask Mammy to bring her to visit baby Oran on Saturday, when there was no school, and see if the tooth was sitting there in the middle of his mouth. Wouldn’t he look funny!
Joan O’Flynn
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