Viper Tooth

by Lindy Biller

I step into my son’s bedroom and find his skin crumpled on the maroon carpet.

For a second I can’t breathe. Lungs constricted, limbs tingling.

He didn’t tell me. What happened to my sweet boy, the curly-haired preschooler who came to me for help, who opened wide and held perfectly still while I filed down each new set of fangs?

Teenagers, I remind myself. It’s okay. You can handle it.

I pick up the papery husk with kitchen tongs. He should know better than to leave it out in the open for anyone to see. The skin goes in a black plastic trash bag, and the trash bag goes straight to the curb. Thank goodness it’s garbage day.

We’ll need to talk when he gets home, and my son is happier when fed, so I gather ingredients from the cupboard. Flour, sugar, cardamom pods. My phone goes off, a series of long, shrill beeps—I silence it without looking.

Sweetheart, I practice, sifting flour into a bowl, is there anything you need to tell me? Anything at all?

There was a time when he told me everything. Almost too much. Mom, what does pussy mean? and Mom, this kid punched Carter in the face, and he got away with it, too, it’s not fair, and Mom, I’ve been having these dreams—my mouth opens up, bigger than my whole body, and I swallow everything. Raw meat and animals and even people. That’s weird, right?

I always try to stay nonjudgmental. His therapist has warned me not to demonize my son’s feelings, his primal impulses.

Though, of course, his therapist doesn’t know the whole picture. How could she? From the day he was born, my baby asserted his dominance. He squeezed until my chest ached. He latched, and I could feel venom pumping, my milk gone sour. The cat, my trustworthy companion of almost ten years, hissed from under the bed, slinking out only when my son was sleeping.

But still, those days were precious. I long for them now, how my son used to coil up on my lap. How I pressed my face into his cornsilk hair and breathed him in—a mix of burnt honey and baby shampoo and something rotten, like carrion.

His first molting was at six weeks. I found the shriveled, translucent tube in his crib and panicked, thinking it was something alive, trying to suffocate him. When I finally understood, I worked quickly, peeling back the rest of his sloughed-off skin. It felt brittle, like dead leaves. I couldn’t look at it. Where was my baby, how had he grown so fast, why did his tongue flick in and out between his lips?

The cat was gone, too. I missed her, but what could be done? I prayed to her at night, asking her forgiveness. I buried her bones under the hydrangeas.

When my son was four, he lost his first two baby teeth. I told him about the tooth fairy, because that’s what good mothers do. I hope she doesn’t get hurt, he said, in his small, husky voice. While he slept, I used tweezers to slide each fang out from under his pillow. I still have them, hidden in my closet—it seemed dangerous to throw them away. What if I forgot how small he was once? What if I believed him when he told me he was a monster?

In second grade, my son begged for a pet. It was boring playing by himself, he said—all his friends had big families. Even the neighborhood bully, the one who would later punch Carter in the face, had a fluffy white terrier named Chipper. And here was my son, no siblings, not even a dad.

I pitied him, my sweet demon spawn. We started small—a guinea pig named Sugar. My son loved her, held her, stroked her soft orange fur. It happened so fast. First Sugar was there, and then she wasn’t.

What happened, he said, again and again, where did she go?

His tears were black, like tar. I dabbed them with a towel, careful not to get any of it on my skin. It wasn’t his fault. It was instinct. He was doing his best.

And now, all these years later—now, we try again.

“Hey,” my son calls excitedly, from the front door. “Mom, did you make cookies?”

“Cardamom cake,” I call back.

My son drops his backpack by the door, kicks off his shoes in the living room, tosses his jacket on the kitchen floor. Always leaving a trail behind him. Always shedding.

“So,” I say delicately, as he digs in with his fork, “anything you want to talk about?”

There was a time he told me everything. Almost too much.

“Nah,” he says cheerfully, wiping crumbs from his mouth. “I’m good.”

He disappears to his room, and soon I hear him playing scales on his violin. My phone alarms again—I check it this time, already knowing what it will say.

Amber Alert: local teen missing, last spotted a few blocks from here, his parents worried sick. There’s a photo of a familiar-looking boy hugging a fluffy white terrier and beaming at the camera. All his teeth are small and human.

I turn off my phone and pull out a slab of raw steak for dinner.

My son deserves the world. It’s not his fault, what he is.

Later that night, while I’m chopping onions, my son comes back downstairs. His fangs have regrown, longer and sharper. Without a word, he plops down on a chair and unhinges his jaw. His mouth falls open, a dark, gaping hole.

I realize I’m still holding the knife, shards of onion clinging to the blade.

I tilt my son’s head back. His hair is so soft, like cornsilk. His eyes closed and trusting.

“Hold still,” I tell him.

I pull on my rubber gloves. I file his fangs down, smaller, smaller.