Payment Plan

by Claudia Smith

Blows to the face, jaw, or mouth can damage teeth, gums, jawbones, or nerve tissue in ways that are not always obvious at the time. Fractures or cracks might not show externally, but inside they can damage the pulp, leading later to tooth death or infection.

Yeah, I’ve been punched. It could be from the punchings, which are far away now and I’ve settled into a different life, then yet another different one, and still now, another. I was one man’s wife, and then another’s. At the end of the first, I went to have my wisdom teeth pulled as I mistakenly believed I would be under dental coverage before moving into a different life. A young man scolded me, he spoke to me in third person, he said “I don’t know why these people don’t care for their teeth.” He said the back teeth were riddled. I said nothing. I was tired. The dental assistants, all middle aged and women, like me, were kind. Christian Christmas music played. Well, most Christmas music is Christian, but this was from a Christian station and the songs were unfamiliar. The sign in front said, “We accept CHIPS.” This was not a spa dentist, not a West University dentist, not an Olmos dentist. This was a dentist, I believed, who said “these people.” And I was now, I was these people. But my teeth were pulled, and my son brought the roots to show and tell. They were deep, deeper than I expected and reminded me of something wild and fierce. My four-year-old was impressed. I had to go under for the bottom teeth, and when I woke, my face was wet. “It happened to me too,” the dental assistant said and I only nodded. She walked me out to the SUV, where another mother waited for me, children in the back, watching The Iron Giant together.

I was proud, when ten years later, my gainful employment provided dental insurance to myself, to two children, in a different life. They would have decent teeth. Once a month, on Fridays, the only day I could take off, I would drive my son across town to Lovett Dental for adjustments. It was satisfying, like wiggling a loose tooth, to pull out my TexFlex card and hand to the kind assistant, to watch the payment plan go down, down. It’s as satisfying as holding out the long, curved root of my wisdoms in the palm of my hand, presenting to my little son. Here is part of me, wild and fiercer than you knew.

My teeth are fine. Never whitened, brushed with an electronic sonic. I was twenty when I paid an orthodontist to take my braces off, braces that had done half the work because the payment plan was only halfway there before there was no more. But they look fine, and I am careful now to floss, to brush twice a day until the timer goes off. My daughter, 13, brushes too and she will not need orthodontics, only one tooth is slightly askew, nothing that would hurt her bite and only cosmetic, her dentist says, she might want to fix it later. This dentist is not from a center, and she travels every year, for a kind of dentist without borders program. I trust her. She keeps birds fed outside the window and identifies them for my daughter. Bright red cardinals, Carolina Chickadees. And look! Oh, look. If you look carefully, sometimes, a Painted Bunting will visit.

Claudia Smith‘s essays have appeared in LitHub, The Rumpus, The Texas Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of two flash fiction collections: The Sky Is a Well and Other Shorts, winner of the inaugural Rose Metal Press Short Short Chapbook Competition, and Put Your Head in My Lap (Future Tense Books), and the short story collection Quarry Light (Magic Helicopter Press).