5 Pieces by Erika Eckart
Baby Teeth
My mother kept mine in a glass baby food jar in her underwear drawer. Before I had my own
children, I thought keeping them was creepy, like the way our ancestors made jewelry out of hair
and bone. But when I saw the over-brewed tea stains stippling the spot where my daughter lay,
the bloody discharge from her baby teeth forcing themselves through the flesh of her jaw while
she slept, I understood why she archived them. They are a marker of time, the salt stain on the
wall measuring how high the water rose in the flood. We keep it there to remember: how much it
hurt, how much she grew, how much those are the same thing. I knew one girl whose baby teeth
were bored black by a benadryl infused apple juice bottle administered nightly. While her mother
was out getting high, she slept and slept and the liquid pooled yellow-brown on the fresh enamel,
like the science demonstration where they place metal in soda pop and when they pull it out it’s
just disfigured lace. They didn’t fall out; they had to be pulled, and when the doctor brought
them out in a medical waste bag and offered them to her new mom, she refused. They didn’t
need to keep them in a jar to remember, how could anybody forget, least of all her. She was
haunted by her own smile in childhood pictures, misshapen, a little maniacal, always a reminder
of how much she was loved.
Grandmother
Once upon a time, I lived in her climate-controlled bungalow, where all of time collapsed like an
archeologist’s dream or nightmare. The combined hum of the television, radio, and humidifier
sang a domestic lullaby. The air was damp and sulphery with cabbage cooking and the churning
in and out of 2 stomachs, always on the brink of too full. I never knew what it was to be hungry.
She had lived through two world wars, a depression, I was her precious thing, an extra child.
There was surplus now, more than we could ever need. She would make me know it. When
fevered, she caressed my forehead; when well, she stroked my cheek. Every night, I slept in her
bed, her comforting billows next to me. And her hacking cough into a million tissues. Each of
them was carrying her out of the house, ounce by ounce until she was emptied of phlegm and
gone. And I was expelled too, with a gnawing in my stomach I had never known, to my new
home: a three-sided corrugated shack. There I was a burden, an extra mouth to feed, obviously a
slut, where are you going dressed like that? On this path, obviously somewhere, I’ve a basket of
nothing, a red cloak, inexplicably a corset and miniskirt. I’m going to find her, to find the feeling
of being full again. And off I was. Hunger with its hands on my back. I searched under bridges,
in thatched huts, in hollowed-out trees but just found grubs and dandelion greens, barely enough
to fend off the stomach acid. Several times as I walked along the path, a wolf approached me.
Would you like to collect some flowers? They’d ask, pulling me off my course. Need a ride? Can
we just talk? Sensing danger in their grip, I wriggled away. I should really get going. I’ve got
someone waiting for me, I lie. And somehow they know it’s not true. You’re so pretty, I want to
be with you, I want to stay with you. Their words dressed them like grandmothers, but they were
clearly still wolves, teeth bared, tufts of fur at the ankles, wrists. They do not mean what they say,
I remind myself, but their soft tones, the stroke of their hand across my brow made my mouth
water. I squint to see what I’m hungry for: a comforting floral pattern, bosom, spectacles, her
bed, the tissue box next to it. I’m interrupted by the wolf’s banter: You are delicious, the words
distorted as their mouths fill to the brim. Excuse me, what did you say? I love you. That’s what I
thought. I’m on to it, of course, the mirage, the sandwich turning to sand in my mouth, but it
feels so good to be full again. I close my eyes altogether, gorge myself, like a sea creature who
feasts on plastic to satisfy the urge to eat and is left with a gut full of want, hungrier than ever.
Changeling
In pre-industrial Europe regressive autism was explained by changelings, fairy replacement
children. Many were killed in the attempts to send them home to their fairy parents, who would
apparently come to retrieve their charge if abused enough.
What if the mother got attached, either knew he had been this way all the long or maybe liked
this one better, saw something of herself in it the way he writhed, burbled, moved into the corner
behind the chair to be hugged by the wall. Her own mother had suspicions about her, that she had
been swapped when no one was looking, so she had left her in the forest many nights hoping the
fairies might come and take her back. She said she couldn’t take the icy gaze anymore, that this
had to be a fairy or demon, surely could not be hers. She was quite old the last time her mother
tried to send her back, nearly seven, it was probably no use at this age. That night in the forest
all was still and something seemed to dance over her, some protection, some net of stars that kept
the wolves at bay while she was tied to a tree. In the morning her mother returned, loosed her,
gray with cold. The girl’s gaze was still glassy, but she, the daughter, was keen on what was
happening and gave her mother a little smile, a nuzzle on the walk back knowing that is what she
wanted, just a reassurance that this one belonged to her. And she was saved. No more nights in
the forest or meals in an eggshell. So when her child, just three, lost speech, seemed to be with
them and then leave, a plant that was about to blossom and is suddenly just a sprout again, and
the elders, including her husband, ordered her to beat and burn their toddler to summon his fairy
parents, she faked it. The shovel she put him on was hardly warm, the switch hit to to the ground
instead of the boy’s thighs, told them this is definitely the real one now, but when he wailed and
spun again and wrapped himself in a blanket and covered himself in hay and was nearly stabbed
by a pitchfork, the father said he would do it himself this time, the sending back of the child. She
overheard him with the elders that night, discussing if the oven or the river were a better strategy,
more sure to rid them of this burden. There is too much want in the world to be yoked by a fairy
child, they said. They must drive him out. As she rocked him, wrapped tightly as he liked and
listened to the ways they would drive her boy’s life from his body, she thought they know
nothing about how much want is in the world. She imagined her life without orbiting his, and a
wave of pain like nothing she ever felt washed over her. She remembered that night her mother
left her, how she felt abandoned, yes, but also cradled by the forest. So she and the boy escaped
into the thick of trees. They ate berries and nettle and what she could steal from farms in the
night. She learned his language, and they burbled to one another as they tucked in corners of
their small den of logs. After surviving a few winters in this way with the protective net of stars
keeping the predators at bay, even when she left the boy alone to forage, the mother wondered if
maybe they had magical parents, and in their way they had come for them both after all. The
villagers were sure they were fairies now: luminous, immune to cold and want, almost invisible.
They left food out for them as tribute, so they wouldn’t come for their children next.
Bargain
His body is hurtling forward, his feet nearly adult size, but his struggle to use language is pulling
him back. It is disorienting. He is being thrown all over the space time continuum. His mouth
and eyes in one plane and his legs and arms in another; it is time travel and dimensional change.
Yesterday, when we attempted to give him a shot even though I was restraining him, he kicked
two nurses down. He is only nine. After, one of them said mournfully “he’s so strong,” which
normally with boys everyone says in the most fawning way. But no, she said it like it was a
damn shame. Her downcast head shake said even more: if we don’t get his behavior to match his
size, then like an overinflated balloon he will be wrenched from our grasp, too powerful for us.
Like the deal in Rumpelstiltskin, by the time the king got back this straw better be gold or else,
that’s how it is with him. We have to take what we have and make it into something more prized
by kings or they will take our baby. I’m reading fairy tales to learn the secrets of those mothers,
how they kept the troll’s maw from the feet of their babies. How they got to keep and cuddle
them undisturbed. It seems it is all about deals, cutting a good one. As I watch him on the floor
of the 10 by 14 doctor’s office all animal brain, kicking the wheeled stool in my direction, the
rubber band of his spine arched as if 1,000 volts are moving through it, I wonder what bargains I
can make, how can I trick the troll into looking the other way while we make our escape? I
would give anything to keep him: my bones, my teeth, contracts for future babies, but my stachel
is empty, all the enmagicked stones fell out when I wasn’t looking. There is nothing I wouldn’t
trade for a doorless tower, or magic chalk, to draw a door here on this ancient oak, walk through
to somewhere outside the king’s dominion, in the land of the giants where he can grow as big as
he pleases and we can stay together, always.
IV. Ladies and Gentlemen
As part of our act, we invite you to ask a question. To prove it is not all rehearsed. As you see,
my son is on my knee, my hand supporting his back, but no speakers, no funny stuff. You there,
what’s your question? “Does he like ice cream?” you ask? So, son do you? Uncomfortable
pause. “icecreamyummyyes,” he finally answers without spaces between the words, a wall of
sound stitched together, a burst of light more than communication. Damp applause. I might even
call it patronizing. This is the part where you are supposed to gasp, folks---the nonverbal boy
talks! No one thought it was ever possible! Marvel as he tells you his age, his grade, regales you
with a story about construction worker clowns (I promise that’s all him, folks. Who could come
up with that?)! We are only five minutes in and we are both dripping in the heat of the spotlight,
the top hats and bowties are stifling (is anyone else having a hard time breathing?) and our
cheeks ache from our plastered smiles. Our jokes are shopworn, the stuff you find on popsicle
sticks and the bored audience looks for the strings, the recorder, the voicebox, begins to heckle,
screaming “what else have you got?” “ Is that really all?” One disembodied voice in the back (I
can’t see who with the light in my eyes) yells: “Do you really think that is going to be enough to
save him?” The room gets quiet. All at once, I see the meltdowns, the oncoming traffic, the faces
screwed up against him everywhere. I’m sorry, folks, it appears we are all out of time. I cue the music, close the curtain, pray the giant cane pulls us to safety.
Erika Eckart is the author of the tyranny of heirlooms, a chapbook of interconnected prose poems, (Sundress Publications, 2018). Her writing has appeared in Double Room, Ghost Ocean, Quarter After Eight, Quick Fiction, Nano Fiction and Quiditty, and elsewhere. She is a High School English Teacher and mom in Oak Park, IL.