Strong Roots Hold Us

It’s been years since I first met Jeff properly – where I learned his name after he asked mine, I mean. He’s a person I see when I’m out and about in my neighbourhood. He’s usually sitting out front of the fancy grocery store I sometimes frequent.

He’s got a cup in his hand.

Jeff looks like me, and he comes from another island originally too, and he still has an accent that is familiar to my ears. I’m pretty sure he’s younger than I am, but he’s missing too many teeth, too soon. We often chat about politics, but this year it’s all about Pandemic Things, and he asks how my kids are doing with school being so weird now, and he thinks all the measures are bananas anyway because nothing works. I nod at him from behind my mask and wonder where he’s sleeping these days, but I don’t ask. This island we both call home now has us in very different places.    

His tongue dances over a loose front tooth while we’re talking, and I just know I’ll worry about it peripherally for days. A tooth that isn’t even mine.

I don’t feel hard-pressed about dropping coins into anyone’s cup, but I never seem to have any cash on me these days. Seems like I haven’t for years really, and especially not during the Now Times, when actual cash feels both unsanitary and unnecessary, and we do so much with plastic instead. And since I seldom use paper money anymore, I get no change back with my receipt… so, I pass people sitting on the sidewalk with nothing much to offer but a smile.

But we’re all wearing masks now, aren’t we? I wonder if they can see me smiling.

I feel like a bit of an asshole while leaving the fancy store on the corner, with my baguette and fresh flowers sticking out of my attractive re-useable tote bag. I’m often carrying two such bags at a time, but Sorry no, I don’t have any spare change.

Jeff doesn’t look me in the eye for very long when we talk, and often one of his knees jangles back and forth while he’s seated on his bench, and his head cranes around looking up and down the street at nothing in particular. I asked him once if I could get him a sandwich, and what kind he’d like, and he stopped moving and stared at me for a second.

Well, I don’t eat pork, he said plainly. And I hate turkey.

I smiled, and said, Okay… and, to drink?

I like ginger ale, he said with a half smile.

Good to know, I said. And while I was inside the fancy store, I chose egg salad on sandwich bread, because I thought it would be easiest on his mouth.

Dreaming about loose teeth is said to signify difficulty in transition, or in making a decision about something. Lost teeth can signify the loss of someone close, or an opportunity missed.

I hate thinking about teeth. I wonder what it means that I’m dreaming about other people’s dentition. Widening gaps in pink gingiva. Smiles where white sprockets have gone missing, like fallen soldiers to the muddy earth.

Once it’s on the ground, whose tooth is it?

* * *

One time I bought a bag of kettle chips from a basket near the cash register to give to an elderly woman who had her hand out at the front door. I’d never seen her before, but I felt a guilty pang of privilege when I put my tulips and boxed cookies in my bag, so I grabbed the nearest thing. When I handed them to her outside, she gave me an enormous, and almost-entirely toothless smile in return, and I realised I’d just chosen the exact worst snack you could give a person who was mostly gums.

When I offered to exchange them for something else, she leaned away from me and clutched the bag close to her chest, and in French, she told me she’d just suck on them.

I felt stupid in the moment, but I couldn’t have known.

I’ve not seen her since, but I see her gaping mouth sometimes when I sleep.

* * *

Robert asks me outright if I would please get him a couple of beers, and I do whenever I can, because I can see his hands trembling at 11:30 in the morning, and I think that must feel wretched. He’s got a gash on his forehead from a fight he got into the night before at the shelter, and he tells me how much he hates that place because the people are gross, and he’s tired of getting lice. He shows me pictures of his only toddler son who had cancer. The one he buried three years ago.

He’s thirty-seven years old and he’s only missing a couple of molars so far.

I keep forgetting to drop a spare toothbrush into my purse to give him. We have several in a basket under the bathroom sink at home. Parting gifts from the dentist we all visit every six-to-nine months without fail. Mini tubes of toothpaste I will never use. More floss than you can shake a stick at.

But I haven’t seen Robert in months. And I haven’t seen my guy Michel either, in a solid year if not longer, but I worry about him less because even though he’s a little older, he’s got teeth and a smile just like Joe Biden’s.

I’ve been running into David since my kids were tiny, and we have sons the same age. He has the palest blue eyes I have every seen, almost like glaucoma-eyes, but they’re not because he’s too young for that. But he does need new eyeglasses, he tells me. Everything about him just seems kind of washed-out and faded.

Over the years when he’s inquired about my children, I downplay how they’re doing because my kids are just fine. They’re thriving, but I don’t want to gush. He told me years ago how his son had some learning disabilities, and more recently he told me his child reads much better these days, but he’s not certain of where he is right now because his son is in the system. I nod and pretend to know what he’s talking about, but I really have no idea, and realise I am lucky not to know.

He has a very loose bottom tooth that wiggles in his mouth as we chat for these few moments, and I wish I didn’t notice it, but of course I do.

I know giving a spare toothbrush does nothing to bridge gaps – not in our mouths, and not in reality – but we do what we can. Give what we can, be it means, or time, or conversation. Or smiles. They all count for something because care is care, and we are all in transition of some kind. Opportunities get missed. Could happen to any of us somewhere along the way, maybe. If we’re lucky, we might have deep roots to hold onto.

Or sometimes we’re just born with good teeth.

On my short walk home, just blocks from this corner where we all convene from time to time, I remember how nothing in this life is certain, and it’s better if we all try to hold each other up.

And I remind myself to floss before bed.