Deciduous

By Jessie Carver

Originally published in the 50th-anniversary print issue of Alchemy • June 2024

I am no one’s mother. I once was, but not anymore. Motherhood: an identity lost, a former life receding into the shadows. At night, I dream of the quivering billows of sea-foam lining the edge where the water meets the sand, of seagulls screaming, of a little girl crying.

These days, I inhabit my skin unfamiliarly, like trying on an outfit that doesn’t suit me and that I plan to abandon as soon as I find something more comfortable. I wonder what it’s like to occupy someone else’s body, their mind. It’s lonely to only know my own thoughts, to be the sole guardian of my memories trailing behind me like sinewy ropes of kelp strewn on the beach.

Every January on that day, I make myself a mug of raspberry tea and enter the empty bedroom, open the closet still populated with petite dresses, and reach to the back of the highest shelf for the tiny box tucked inside another like nesting dolls. The tiny one is wooden and hinged and slightly larger than a matchbox. Inside it is a square of red cotton fabric, and concealed in its folds is a constellation of small white teeth. I run my fingers along their enamel curves and jagged roots, pressing them into the cradle of my hand one by one.

“Deciduous” refers to trees that shed leaves seasonally—an oak tree, for example, whose lifespan can be hundreds of years. Human baby teeth are also called “deciduous teeth.” A child typically sheds theirs between ages six and twelve, losing around twenty baby teeth in all. We only made it to seven.