Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

“Come on, Levi,” Susanna said, taking the sniffling boy by the hand. “Let’s get you cleaned up. You can go potty before Mommy and Mama leave.”

“Oh,” Levi hiccuped. “’Kay.”

The screen door thwacked shut, and Allie swiveled to face Dash. He had a metal car in each hand and stood with his legs apart, knees bent. As if ready to run.

“Give me the cars.”

He backed away until he was flat against the seawall.

“Okay. Then give me Levi’s car.”

She motioned toward his right hand, which held the car Levi had named Hawk because a purple Mohawk-like fan rose from its hood all the way to its tail.

“Now, Dash.”

Hawk was gone. It happened so quickly she wasn’t certain it had happened at all, until she saw Dash’s empty hand. He ran from her and she caught him, peeling back his sweaty fingers. Nothing. She leaned over the wall. The tide was coming in, stray waves bumping into the boulders at the base of the wall, exploding into foamy spray.

“Did you throw Levi’s car in there ?”

Dash looked at her blankly. That same fixed stare of rebellion. When had this happened? It was like looking at someone else’s child.

“You did it now,” Allie mumbled as she swung one leg, then the other over the wall, possessed with the goal of retrieving Levi’s car. If not, there would be official proof that she couldn’t even handle part-time motherhood. Her back pocket snagged on the concrete and she felt it tear as she scrambled down the rocks. A wave slapped against a boulder, drenching her. Her eyes stung with saltwater.

She called up to Dash, “Stay there! Don’t move!”

The drumming of the waves, and the smack of the water into the wall, drowned out any response he might have made. The rocks were slick, and she gripped with her toes so not to slip. As the water tumbled back out to sea, she spotted something shining in the rolling pebbles a few feet out. She jumped onto the beach, underestimating the drop, and landed on a turned ankle.

“Fuck, fuck,” she yelled as she hobbled forward. The water grew darker, colder, and deeper with each step. Something slick wriggled over the toes of her left foot. She held her breath, tears rising.

No fucking way was she going to blubber. She could feel them behind her, the others; the mommies and daddies, and she wondered if this was some orchestrated practical joke. A let’s laugh at the geeky hipster moment. She knew they resented her for not carrying the baby herself. She could feel it when they stared at her when they thought she couldn’t tell, and in the way they spoke to Susanna. As if she was the playgroup charity case. Poor Susanna —married to such a selfish woman. Surely, they would jump at the chance to humiliate Allie. And would it really be surprising if Susanna was in on the joke?

She slipped on what felt like a seaweed-covered rock, and her sole stung with what she knew was a gash, but she didn’t dare stop or look back. Motherfucker, motherfucker. When the next wave came, she waited until the water rolled back out, and reached down and grabbed the gold car before it was sucked out to sea.

By the time Allie had climbed back up the rocks and practically thrown her body over the seawall, the water had risen to at least three feet, the waves slamming into the rocks, the spray jumping the seawall and splattering the paint-stripped picnic bench.

The surge of relief, of triumph even, washed over Allie’s goose-pimpled skin despite her soaked clothes and the chill that arrived with the first hint of pink sky. She lifted her foot, and sure enough, there was an angry red cut in the white meat of her sole, watered-down blood seeping out.

Dash was gone.

She hobbled to the back door.

“Hey,” she called through the screen, “is Dash in there?”

Grace, Leigh, and Nicole sipped wine. The kids huddled around an iPad, watching an episode of Yo Gabba Gabba.

“No,” Nicole said. “He hasn’t come this way.”

Even through the screen, Allie could see Nicole’s eyebrows peaking with worry.

Allie ran to the seawall and scanned the rocks below. Wet, black, and half-submerged, they looked ominous. Would she be able to see Dash if he was down there? If he was stuck in a crevice between two rocks? If he had fallen headfirst, his head was underwater, and … She couldn’t finish the thought. Should she call to the others for help? What if Susanna heard and came outside and freaked out and went into early fucking labor way out here in the middle of nowhere?

She ran to the end of the deck that looked out on the length of beach, dotted by the occasional beach house, each with its own seawall-and-boulder barricade. No boy-sized figure running across the sand. She ran to the other end of the deck and saw movement by the wooded state-park entrance.

That little shit. She ran along the side of the house to the front yard, jumping through the sun-ravaged cypress trees that stood guard along the path to the beach.

“Dash,” she yelled, as branches scratched her arms and face.

She slid down the dunes. Sand stuck to her wet clothes, slipping into the waist of her pants, into her underwear. She ran down the beach, shells jabbing her bare feet.

Dash was sitting on a rock at the park entrance. Like one of Waterhouse’s painted sea nymphs. That same satisfied smile skipping across his lips. The woods behind him were shadowy and nightlike. Fairy-tale woods, she thought, as the green flares of fireflies flashed. Red Riding Hood woods. She thought of the mommies with their jewelry and highlights, their platform sandals and push-up bras. Yes, even she — butch Allie — was once a little girl who knew the names of the little girls who’d been lost in the woods.

“You,” Allie said, leaning over, her hands on her knees, as she tried to catch her breath. “Look, kid. I’m only trying to keep you safe when I tell you not to do things. It’s not like I have a freaking agenda or something. I don’t even want to be here!” Her voice echoed against the trees that loomed tall and black behind Dash.

Before she could say let’s go back, before she could reach for him, take his hand and lead him back to the house, he was off. Into the narrow path someone, long ago, had hacked into the woods.

“Dash! You stop this right now!”

She ran faster than she knew she could, into the claustrophobic confusion of so many branches overhead and on all sides.

She was on him, grabbing him, whirling him around so he faced her.

“You are being so bad, Dash!”

“ You’re bad,” he shouted, his voice small and weak after her roar. “Harper said so.”

Her vision shuddered as the ethereal light of dusk settled.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not our real mommy. Mama is.”

He bowed his head and drove his upper teeth into the top of her hand. She howled and pulled away, trying to shake him off, but he wouldn’t let go. His teeth drove in harder, and she swung back and slapped him across one cheek. Hard enough to turn his head so he was looking at the ground. She saw the spot at the nape of his neck where hair never grew. His beauty mark, Susanna called it. She felt the wetness of his saliva on her palm as she drew her hand back, cradling it against her chest.

There was only the sound of nature, and the silence — after so much noise all day — was a relief. The snapping of branches. The distant waves like a sleeping child’s heavy breathing. Dash looked up at her, his head shaking as if he were cold. His tiny nostrils were pulsating, in-out, in-out. No one had ever looked at her with such ferocity. Like he could devour her whole.

“I just wanted to play a game,” he said, and his voice broke, the little boy returning. “Pirate treasure.”