Lost Teeth by Kelly Jeske
“borderlands of identity: transracial adoptee, biracial, queer moms”
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It’s after school, after aftercare, after I’ve crammed as many things into my day as possible. My kid’s been at school for an impossible nine hours. I walk into the afterschool care classroom, into the warm rush of small bodies urgent with building Legos, rubbing crayons, cutting paper, and performing elaborate stories. She’s in the middle of a cluster of girls on the carpet, all of them talking at the same time, waving bright-haired, tiny-clothed dolls. She sees me and flings the toys aside, leaping to her feet and throwing herself in my direction. “Mama!” she yells, and we collide, soft belly to soft belly, her in my arms despite the fact that she’s recently eight-years-old. My heart flutters, I hold my breath waiting for these moments.
We could, we should, go home for dinner. I should cook protein, green vegetables, we should sit together in our small kitchen, light the candles so she can blow them out like she loves to do. But I’m too damn tired and there’s nothing in the refrigerator anyway, and there’s no fucking way I can handle dishes before bedtime. Instead, we go across the street to Rose’s for hot dogs and tater tots and homemade ice cream after. She picks a red vinyl booth for us, we push into the pink bathroom to wash our hands, then we stand in front of the bright glass cases to taste ice cream flavors while we wait for our dinner to come. She tells me she ate a whole cone of the black licorice when she was here with her other mom last time. Today, we both like the lemon custard, the egg nog, and especially the pink peppermint.
We slide into our bench seats, across from each other at first, but then she wants to sit beside me. She presses her long body against my side, her cheek rests on my shoulder, as she shows me how to work the miniature push-button water basketball game she’s playing. We make up challenges, see how many baskets we can make, take turns counting to ten. As she plays, I notice a woman sitting in the booth beside us, facing us, watching her. The woman is brown-skinned, with a close cap of combed-out curly black hair, gold earrings, glasses, a buttoned-up sweater. Her gleaming black purse sits on the table in front of her, her hands folded on top. She’s waiting.
Right away, my breath shortens and my attention shifts. The sweetness under my tongue takes on the slightest tinge of bitter. My palms moisten and my chest tightens. I study the woman’s face. Is that amusement or derision in the lift of her eyebrows? Are the corners of her mouth turning up or pulling down? What is she thinking about us?
I look at my daughter and I worry that I’m failing her. Her curls are busting out of her puffs, the short hairs on top of her head frizzing into a fuzzy halo. Are the woman’s lips pursing as she thinks: “What is that white woman doing with that child’s hair?” I notice that she’s smudged around her mouth with playground dirt adhered to stickiness from lunchtime. Is the woman clucking her tongue, fuming: “How’d she get that baby away from us? No business, no business, I say.” My kiddo is squirming all over the place, bouncing in our vinyl seat, talking nonstop, babbling and singing and playing. We go to the counter to order our ice cream and my kid dances, shaking her hips, jutting out her chest, shimmying her shoulders. Does the woman narrow her eyes as she thinks: “Look at the way she’s so wild. What’s that woman doing? Doesn’t she know a girl that big should act better at a restaurant?”
I tell my daughter to eat a few more bites of her hot dog before dessert. I tell her it’s not time for dancing. An edge creeps into my voice as I ask her to sit more still while we’re eating dinner. I remind her to use her napkin. My face is tense. I say I’m done with the basketball game.
Sure, my kiddo knows that she’s adopted, that her birth mom is black, that the mothers raising her are both white. We’ve done the “right” thing and we have an open adoption; she looks at pictures of her birth mom on the walls in our apartment everyday. I tell her stories about the things I know about her first mom, the ways her own expressions and intonation remind me of her. Still, I’m parenting across difference and the facts of our family push her into the borderlands of identity: transracial adoptee, biracial, queer moms, divorced family. Some of these she might claim as her own, maybe none of them.
It’s not just white guilt that ignites my anxiety. I’m sure that’s in there, too, but it’s also about my rage, my vulnerability, my desire. Rage exploding in my belly about white superiority that reigns supreme across this country in classrooms, board rooms, courtrooms, living rooms, prison cells, and squad cars. Vulnerability in moving through the world as a queer, fat, chronically-ill femme. Desire to own my privilege and to support my daughter in finding the words and ways to understand and embody her own skin, her own history, her own identities, her own stories.
The woman with the purse is waiting for takeout. She may be thinking nothing at all about my afro-puffed, disheveled, beautiful daughter. She may not give a rat’s ass about me as her white mother. But I care. I care so much that my bones ache with longing: Let me not impede your path to yourself. In this world where oppression leers around every corner, let me be an antidote, at least some of the time. Even across our difference, let us recognize and inspire each other as you grow.
I take a spoonful of pink ice cream into my mouth, the peppermint freezing my tongue with its bite. I push its clinging cream around the inside of my cheeks, use my tongue to find a small bit of crunchy candy cane. I hold it out on my tongue and say: “I lost a tooth.” My daughter’s laugh starts low and picks up speed and breath as she goes, until it’s a squeal. We lean into each other, heads touching and hair mingling, showing off the tiny pearl teeth that are falling from our gums. We’re loud, laughing with abandon, licking our spoons and scraping our bowls. I look up to notice that the woman is gone, purse and dinner out the door with her. I snuggle into the moment with my kid, all of it, perfect and flawed. Just like us. Just like all of it.
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Header image courtesy of Feliz Paloma Gonzalez. To view a photo essay of his work, go here.
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Kelly Jeske is a queer femme, mama, and social worker living in Portland, Oregon. Her writing appears in Who's Your Mama? The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers; Storied Dishes: What Our Family Recipes Tell Us About Who We Are and Where We've Been; Queering Motherhood: Narrative and Theoretical Perspectives; and Performing Motherhood: Artistic, Activist, and Everyday Enactments.
