We walk into our hotel room and find our luggage has been delivered already. “I have to use the bathroom,” I say, as soon as I see it. Stealthily, I grab the little black daypack from the luggage trolley, and, quickly, sneak it into the bathroom with me. I have to make the switch before she remembers. The dark grey marble bathroom of our moderately sized suite is segregated into three sections: a toilet room, a shower room, and an open area for the sink. I step into the toilet closet and lock the door behind me. I unzip the small front pocket of the daypack, hoping that’s where she stashed it. After a minute of feeling around, blindly, inside the deceptively deep pocket, I pull out the small clear baggie.
As quietly as possible, I pry apart the bag’s seal and remove her baby tooth. I momentarily consider throwing it in the bin next to the toilet, but just the thought of its disposal punches me in the gut. “I can’t throw away her baby tooth!” I scold myself. I have kept every tooth she’s lost – even the one she lost in Indonesia that I had to keep hidden for two months before the fear of her finding it finally forced me to conceal it inside a package and send it home. “I’ll just have to hide this one after she falls asleep,” I tell myself. I put the tooth in the pocket of my sweatshirt. I count out forty yuan, the equivalent of five dollars, and put it into the Ziploc before resealing it. I return it to the backpack pocket, zip it up, flush the toilet, and nonchalantly exit the small water closet.
Bella is lying sprawled out on the bed when I emerge. She is already half asleep, and, luckily, hasn’t noticed a thing. We’re exhausted after a full day at Shanghai Disney. We arrived at eight this morning on a sleepless overnight flight from Bangkok, and I want nothing more than to collapse next to her and pass out. But the mom in me remembers that she hasn’t brushed her teeth in about twenty-four hours, so, I say, “Time to get ready for bed.”
“Ok,” she says, barely able to pull her head off the pillow.
“Go grab your PJ’s out of your backpack and I’ll get the toiletry bag so you can brush your teeth.”
“I have to put my tooth under my pillow!” she exclaims excitedly, remembering the tooth she lost yesterday morning in Bangkok. She bolts from the bed and grabs the daypack. She unzips the pocket and pulls out the Ziploc bag. Her face lights up when she sees that instead of a tooth, there is money in the bag. “The Tooth Fairy brought me money on the airplane last night!”
“Oh my gosh!” I say with mock surprise. “How in the world did she do that?”
“Mom, she’s magic,” she says, practically rolling her eyes at my feigned ignorance.
“Of course she is, sweetheart.” I reply, feeling like the mother of the year for pulling off a Tooth Fairy switch of such epic proportions. We finish getting ready for bed, and crawl under the covers. We have another long day at Disneyland ahead of us.
****
Shanghai is a lot colder than Bangkok, and having only brought clothes for the hot climate of Southeast Asia, we are a little ill equipped for the weather. We each have on a sweatshirt, long leggings, and socks with our sandals—the only shoes we have. Standing outside in the line for the ‘Davie Crocket Explorer Canoes’ is a little chilly, so we’re snuggling up to each other to keep warm. The line is moving slowly, and Bella is trying to talk me into abandoning this ride in favor of an enclosed one.
“No,” I tell her. “I’ve never ridden this one, and we’ve already ridden almost everything else here. Just be patient, it’s not that cold,” I say and rub her back to warm her, and my hands, a little.
“Fine,” she says. She loosens her arms from their lovingly constrictive grasp around my waist, and puts her hands in the pockets of my sweatshirt to warm her little fingers. “Mom, what’s this?” she asks, pulling something from my pocket.
Holy shit, she is holding her tooth! I was so tired last night that I forgot to hide it! As she brings the tooth nearer to her face for a closer inspection, I snatch it, violently, out of her hand and shove it back in my pocket.
“It’s just a pebble I found,” I quickly lie.
“No, it’s not. It’s a tooth,” she retorts. “It’s my tooth! I saw it!”
She saw it. Oh fuck. My mind is suddenly catapulted down a cascading spiral of the terrible consequences of this moment. It’s gone. It’s all gone. The Tooth Fairy, Christmas, Santa, ALL GONE! And it’s all my fault. I ruined it. One stupid mistake and I’ve ruined everything! I don’t know what to do. She is standing in front of me, her eyes frantically searching my face for an explanation, and I have nothing!
I want to cry.
“It is not a tooth. How on earth would a tooth get in my pocket? It’s just a little pebble,” I say, as calmly as possible. I am praying there is still enough childish naivety behind those eyes to just believe my flimsy lie.
“No,” she says insistently. “It’s a tooth. I saw it.”
“Well, I have no idea how a tooth would get in my pocket. And it can’t be your tooth; the Tooth Fairy took your tooth and gave you money.”
The little wheels in her head are spinning, trying to make sense of what I’m telling her.
“Ok. Maybe it is a tooth. Maybe someone else lost a tooth and it got stuck to something I put in my pocket.” I really have no idea what I’m saying at this point. I’m just reaching for anything that can explain a tooth in my pocket, without giving away the fact that I am the Tooth Fairy.
This explanation, however, did not have the intended effect. Her face shifts from questioning to horror and shock. “What if this is some kind of gross game kids play in China. What if some Chinese kid put a tooth in your pocket?” She is scanning the faces of people in line with us for probable suspects. “Oh my gosh Mom, I touched it! Ewwww! Am I gonna get a disease?” We are now at the front of the line and getting into one of the canoes as she is really starting to freak out. “You have to get rid of it, Mom. It’s so gross!”
Fully in the canoe and floating out into the river now, no receptacles in sight, and a panic stricken child about to jump overboard and swim to shore to get away from the mystery tooth, and out of China, I do the only thing I can think to do—I throw the tooth into the water. So much for keeping all her baby teeth.
“There, it’s gone!” With the repulsive thing gone, she seems to be calming down. But I can see her mind still reeling. I have to come up with a better story or she is going to be frantically guarding her pockets against mischievous teeth, and be terrified of everything and everyone in China.
As I row down the manmade river in the middle of Shanghai Disney, I am racking my brain trying to come up with an explanation that my ten-year-old, who is too smart for her age, will buy. Then again, instead of thinking up a lie to cover up a lie, maybe I should just tell her the truth. She is ten, and I have been hoping she would come to the conclusion on her own… No! I can’t do that. I can’t be the one to ruin it all for her—at Disneyland, no less! No, I have to make this right.
“You know,” I say, testing out a new angle. “I bet it was your tooth and the Tooth Fairy put it in my pocket.”
“Why would she do that?” she asks, skeptically.
“Maybe she made the switch during some turbulence. She could have dropped the tooth, and it landed in my pocket.”
“But you were wearing your hoodie and the tooth was in my bag,” she responds, not at all convinced.
“Well, maybe she just wanted me to have it then.”
“Why?”
She really isn’t buying it, and I’m losing her. Suddenly, I remember a conversation we had about China being a communist country and how Christianity and Christmas were illegal until recently. Then it hits me.
“You know what? I bet the Tooth Fairy isn’t allowed in China, just like Santa. So, she had to do the switch on the plane. We were probably already over China when she got to us, so she wasn’t allowed to take your tooth because she would get in trouble for violating Chinese law. But she wanted to give you money for it anyway!” I tell her with so much conviction that I’m sure she’ll believe me.
“Why wouldn’t she just leave the tooth in the bag?”
“She probably didn’t want you to feel bad about getting money when she couldn’t take your tooth. So, she left the tooth for me, in my pocket, where I’d be sure to find it.” It seemed to be working, but she was still skeptical.
We reached the end of the ride and the attendants pulled in the canoe and held it steady so we could disembark. While Bella was thinking my ‘theory’ over, I decided to do a quick google search to see if I could find anything that would support my idea. By sheer luck, I found a blog post about Chinese baby tooth traditions that confirmed there is no Tooth Fairy in China! Instead, to encourage their permanent teeth to grow faster, Chinese children throw their bottom baby teeth on the roof, since they point up, and their top teeth in the garden, since they point down. I show her the article and her face lights up.
“Well, that must be what happened then!” she says excitedly, the magical essence of childhood once again shining in her eyes. “But now I feel bad for throwing my tooth in the river. I should have thrown it on a roof, or just kept it.”
“Yeah, that is too bad. But you’re probably the only person with a tooth in the river at Shanghai Disney,” I respond.
“You’re right!” she says. “That’s so cool!”
“Yes. It is.” I agree. Holding hands, we walk away from the river towards another ride. My mother of the year status, and the Tooth Fairy, fully restored to their former glory.