Cutting Teeth(3)
“Okay,” Rhea answers carefully. “He was a chunky baby. Now he’s growing like crazy.” Her son has beautiful brown skin and thick, brown shoulder-length locks. If Rhea had a dollar for every person who asked if he’s adopted, she could afford the down payment on a house.
“For sure. One hundred percent. I just wanted to point out that it’s noticeable compared to the other children and I—” Miss Ollie wrings her hands like she’s getting ready to break up with a boyfriend, but feels really badly about it. “Restrictive diets can have a number of health benefits, I know—but in adults.”
“Excuse me?”
“I see his lunches. The dried seaweed and purple cauliflower and vegetable grits. He’s hardly eating any of it. I know you want him to eat healthfully. I just wonder if it would be better, you know, for Bodhi, if he had a few more normal, higher-calorie options day-to-day.”
“Better … for Bodhi?” Rhea’s not hard of hearing, she just wants to give this twentysomething a chance to run that back. Better for Bodhi. Did she really just say that?
Rhea gives nothing away. She is the still pond. She is the tree trunk, unruffled by the wind. She is the horizon in the distance. But underneath, Rhea feels undulations of rage crashing at her seams. Who the fuck does this woman think she is?
“You know,” Miss Ollie continues like this is all just occurring to her, “it might be worth including Bodhi’s father in this conversation.”
“I can talk to Marcus just fine, thanks.”
She knows most people, her friends included, refer to Marcus as her “ex,” though ex-what she has no idea. When she got pregnant with Bodhi, she had only just started a new type of birth control, a last-ditch attempt to curb the chronically vicious menstrual cramps that had been wrecking her world. She chalked up her missing period to the new pills for longer than she might have otherwise. She didn’t get cramps anymore. But she got a baby.
And mostly, single motherhood suits her. She makes what she wants for dinner. She decorates the apartment to her taste. Lets Bodhi watch television or doesn’t, her rules. She starts a business, her money.
“Right.” Miss Ollie chews her lip, waiting for Rhea to make this less awkward. She’s going to be waiting awhile. “I could provide a list of easy lunch ideas. I just want to be a—” But right at that moment, it’s as though the ground beneath her sentence crumbles. Her whole demeanor transforms. “No!” she bellows, jumping from her chair. “No! No! No!”
Rhea whips around at the same time as a single, panicked cry of agony splits the room. A small pile of children writhes on the story mat. An empty shoe flops out of the mess. Rhea’s eyes dart to every corner—where’s Bodhi? Where is Bodhi?
“Where’s my son?” This time out loud.
A girl whines. Then— “You’re hurting him.”
“Mommy.” His voice is small and muffled. The word throbs inside her. “Mommy?”
“Bodhi? Bodhi!” Rhea drops to her hands and knees and crawls toward the fray. Her own sandal loses its grip between her toes and she slips out of it. The stiff carpet dimples the thin skin over her kneecaps as she stretches an arm into the tangle of tiny limbs. The willow tree disappears within.
A distinct growl from somewhere in the broil and Miss Ollie’s face goes red as she heaves a toddler by the armpits. “Off! Off! There are grown-ups here!”
The two kids remaining scatter, but the bottom one stays put, shaking uncontrollably with silent sobs.
Bodhi.
His long hair fans out around his head. He still clutches the large plastic bus in his arms as blood soaks through the cotton collar of a sky-blue T-shirt. Rhea drags him up and pulls him tight to her chest. “Shhhh, shhhhh, shhhhhh,” she soothes. “Mama’s got you.”
“Teeth are not for biting.” Miss Ollie’s voice seesaws as she crouches down to eye level with Zeke Tolbert, a chunky biracial boy with a tight fade and striking, crystal-blue eyes. “You know better.”
“I didn’t do anything,” says Noelle as she plucks her giant pink bow from the floor and clips it back in her curly blond hair. “I told Zeke he better stop it. Also I need a Band-Aid.” She holds up her fingers, which are red from being squished.
“Bodhi wouldn’t share his bus and he’s gotten a super long turn. Like, super long.” George Hall, who is always dressed like a tiny golfer, limps to retrieve his lost club loafer.
Rhea feels an earthquake coming on. Her hands tremble as she pulls her son from her body to examine him. A ring of puncture wounds where Bodhi’s neck meets the curve of his shoulder leaks an angry shade of red, leaving behind a Rorschach test of spots on her linen tunic.
“Oh-kaaaay” is all Miss Ollie manages for a handful of seconds. “That’s—okay. We’ll—everyone’s okay.”
Rhea glares over the top of her son’s head. “I’m sorry, what now?” She feels the heat in her hands first, that sensation of warmth spreading through her veins, shooting up toward her head. Her voice trembles; the sight of her son, her sweet, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly baby boy oozing blood from an attack in his own classroom makes her feel as though she’s been sliced open herself. She’s waiting for Miss Teacher-of-the-Year over here to show the same degree of horror she’d reserved for Rhea’s cauliflower just two minutes earlier, but look who’s all laissez-faire now. Maybe she deserves to get bitten, see how “okay” she feels about it then.