I’m more forthcoming with the hygienist than with most strangers. I’ve driven sixty miles to the single dental practice in Georgia that accepts my insurance, and I can’t imagine how the hygienist could know my ex, his attorney, anyone involved in my relocation case.
When she asks why I’m moving, I say that I’m escaping, and she says, They should’ve given us fake baby daddies in high school instead of fake babies. The men are the rough part, not the kids. She goes back to scraping my crevices.
I’ve been worried about teeth for weeks. I’ve never had a cavity, but I brush too hard. A decade ago, a dentist told me I was scrubbing away my own flesh. The head of my toothbrush is like a thicket of tall grass where a dog has rolled. Now I worry about my children’s teeth because the pediatric dentist says they have six new cavities between the two of them, this after I already agreed to have one crown installed for my eldest: silver. White enamel was too expensive. We call it the robot tooth, but now everyone can see that I didn’t clean my children as I should have.
I’m skeptical about their new rot, though, because after the first crown, I have brushed and flossed the children’s teeth even more maniacally than I did before. I am a true fanatic, alarming in the viciousness with which I scour them. I don’t give them candy. I told this to the pediatric dentist, who shrugged and said, Genetics.
I don’t think he’s right about that. I don’t remember my ex having cavities. His smile was largely what substantiated the nickname he gave himself: Breezy, which he wrote on the knives and socket extenders he took to work. I haven’t told him about the cavities. He’s already petitioned to take custody of the children rather than let me move with them, and now a court-appointed lawyer is investigating me, specifically my parental fitness and if I should be allowed to have both a career and children at the same time and in the same place. Decomposing baby teeth are irrefutable evidence of my inadequacy.
I have my dad’s teeth. He was out of college before he saw a dentist for the first time, and he has never had a cavity, although I inherited other forms of decay from him, like despair, the same despair that killed his mother when I was six. So when my ex pointed a gun toward his own head, I was prepared to do anything to save him: stay, wait, keep my children in the corrosion, corrode.
We have strong teeth, my dad told me growing up.
We have good teeth, I told the pediatric dentist. He pointed to the x-rays, as though to say Rot is to be expected.
This is the same dentist who installed an enormous metal apparatus into my younger child after a rocky fall during visitation fractured his tooth and it had to be extracted. The dentist said my three-year-old wouldn’t learn to talk properly without a pediatric denture: a bright acrylic incisor hung from wires running along the roof of his mouth. Medicaid considered this a cosmetic procedure. You wouldn’t want him to have a speech delay, the pediatric dentist said. Now he says the six new cavities should be filled and crowned right away. He has appointments available at the end of summer. I hope we will have moved by then, but I schedule them anyway, in case.
It’s easy to convince me that my children’s genes are rotting them. I’m vulnerable to any explanation that simultaneously blames me and locates the root of my deficiency in the marrow of the past, too deep to ever correct. I’m inclined toward guilt that is predetermined, determinative: white guilt, mom guilt, the guilt of having loved an abuser, the guilt of having an abuser’s babies.
My ex always said I would damage my children: Lyme disease from sleeping outdoors, pneumonia from the rain and my insufficient umbrella, removal by child protective services when my fear grew too loud. Now I fail in floss and fluoride, by not scrubbing my children hard enough.
In the last days of summer, after months of investigation, the court allows us to move. I find a new pediatric dentist right away. I apologize to the scheduling clerk over the phone. I tell her I tried to be diligent, but my children have bad teeth and I don’t know why. This new dentist reviews their Georgia x-rays, x-rays them again, says their teeth look fine. They are fine. There is no rot. The first crown may never have been needed; the miniature denture and its stiff metal arms can be removed.
On the internet, I read about the pediatric dentists in Georgia who run scams on Medicaid patients. They know x-rays are illegible to parents. They know the shame we carry in our mouths.
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Illustration sourced from Getty Images
