Frostwriting

T.F.

by Kaitlyn Tucker

For three years I had a nightly correspondence with the tooth fairy.
It began, as you can suspect, with my loosing a tooth. I was in first grade, taking a standardized test that would reveal my egregious lack of aptitude for spatial relations. As I contemplated the rhombus, trapezoid, I chewed on my number 2 pencil—a Ticonderoga, I remember, the Cadillac of pencils. While contemplating mirror images, suddenly my elbow slipped, and the pencil that I had been nervously gnawing on jabbed my front tooth, which had been wiggly for several weeks. I felt a swift pain, heard an odd tearing noise, and instinctively spit out a wad of tooth and gum onto the test booklet.

I could feel the blood swirling in my mouth. You are not allowed to speak once the test has begun.  I raised my hand. Mrs. Larkin sat reading a romance novel. I waved both hands, panic mounting. I was doing a dance that resembled the YMCA by the time Mrs. Larkin finally looked up. She rushed over. “I lotht a tooth,” I gurgled. Blood spurted everywhere. Mrs. Larkin, a seasoned teacher, swiftly handed me tissues and the nurse’s pass and whisked me out the door.

The nurse gave me gauze to chew on and a pink glittery plastic molar-shaped case on a green string that I wore around my neck and sent me back to class. I realize, in hindsight, that the school’s faculty was very efficient at the tooth losing business. I bounced back down the hallway, smiling to show off my gauze pipe to the measly kindergartners who stood lined up along the hallway. As I would soon learn, any kind of injury is a recipe for instant celebrity in elementary school, particularly when that injury has an element of gore. As I re-entered the classroom, it was to cheers of “Gross! Cool!” Mrs. Larkin sat trying to wipe off my answer sheet. Be sure to erase completely, avoid all stray marks. My sheet was modern art, a constellation of graphite orbs pocked with rusty, red smears. 

At the end of the day, I ran off the bus, lunchbox swinging behind me, eager to show my Mom my trophy. I smiled proudly, jutting my chin to emphasize the gaping whole. “You’ll have to remember to put it under your pillow tonight so the tooth fairy can come,” she said. I nodded vigorously.

  When I woke up the next morning, I groped under my pillow and found a ten-dollar bill and a note from the tooth fairy, congratulating me on my first tooth, a real milestone. At breakfast, I sat absentmindedly swirling my Cream of Wheat, preoccupied with visions of the tiny nymph who flew around, collecting bloody baby teeth and exchanging them for surprises. This was cool.

But exciting though the discovery of this mythical creature was, I was disappointed by the fact that the show, so to speak, was over.  I wanted her to come back! I felt my other teeth, trying to see if any were showed promise of being loose. All hard as rocks. But then I had a brainstorm. I would write the tooth fairy a thank-you note, like Mom was always telling me to, to be polite. Then she would have to come back to reply to my note! It was brilliant. Brilliant!

I told my mother of this plan, mainly for brownie points. My mom was never a stickler for etiquette, but one standard she insisted upon were hand-written, personal thank you notes. Growing up, I came to resent this, as the rest of my generation sent generic, party store pre-inscribed thank you cards, and as technology progressed, thank you emails. However the rule for me was always the same: one whole handwritten page.  I figured I could score some points with my mom if I informed her that I was, on my own accord, writing a thank you note to the tooth fairy.

The tooth fairy, then, was probably just trying to solidify my good thank you note writing habits when she responded to my note with a note of her own. She could not have foreseen the nightly ritual this would become, the era of my childhood she was ushering in. 

*

The box arrived yesterday. I went to pick it up at the front desk of my dormitory. Next to the UPS label, in my mother’s even script: To KT, Love TF.

I opened it immediately. On the floor, in the lobby. I have yet to acquire the adult restraint of opening packages calmly; and to be honest, I doubt that I will.

I had asked her to send it to me so that I could remember it exactly. Because I couldn’t recall the details; just that I wrote to the tooth fairy every night for a while when I was little. And that I sometimes made her presents. And that she always wrote back.

Of course, she had saved the letters.  And of course she sent them, when on a November day my junior year of college, I had asked for them. And of course there was a tin of homemade scones in the bottom of the box. Because she is my mother.

*

The letters are of every shape and size. They are written on construction paper, stationary, postcards, leftover classroom Valentines, hotel memos, yellow legal notepaper. They are all slightly crumpled, attesting to the fact that they were once placed under my pillow, and then swiftly extracted so as not to wake me from my light slumber.  I pull them from the box, handful after handful, and assemble them into a jumbled heap. Glitter sprays the floor.

The earliest ones are the simplest. In shaky print, they inquire and declare, alternatively. Dear TF, Were you a brownie? I am. Love, KT.  But soon the print steadies, becomes more uniform, evolves into cursive. The questions become more complex, contemplative. Are you the only tooth fairy? Do you have relatives? Are fairies mammals?

There is a good collection of shameless pleas for more contact: Please wake me up when you visit. I want to talk to you! Can I see you? With my eyes?  A fair amount of venting: I hate brothers!  Some genuine appeals for advice: What can I do to make Monica my friend? But the focus of most of the letters is a simple chronicle of my elementary school life.

Today we made cards for the American soldiers in Bosnia. I am being Amelia Earhart for Halloween. I have poison ivy. There is an invitation to my second grade geography bee, my first horse show, several school plays. There is a letter mourning the death of my guinea pig, Hampton, featuring the lyrics of “There are places I remember,” and a magazine cutout of John Lennon.  A Valentines Day letter has chocolates glued on. 

As I leaf through the pile, I pick up one crinkled piece of notepad paper, and intake sharply.  Dear T.F., Can you write to my friend Sandy? She wrote to you tonight too. She is in the sleeping bag next to me. Thanks. Love, KT.  I realize in hindsight that this was just about the time Sandy, my best friend from childhood, was diagnosed with Neurofibromatosis, initiating a ten year valiant struggle with the disease. Her letter is next in the pile: Dear T.F., I am sleeping over at Katie’s. Today we saw Free Willy 2 at the movie theater. We each ate a whole bag of popcorn. From, Sandy.  She passed away last summer.

I fold the letter and put it back in the box, an action I’ve perfected. I tuck it in beside a miniature bed, made of neon green pipe cleaners twisted into a frame—a present I made for T.F. There is a quilt, too, a sloppy seam just barely affixing patches of fabric left over from our kitchen curtains.

I remember that I loved making her presents; I loved imagining ways I could make things miniature, T.F.-sized. The box is full of these fossils: tiny bead bracelets, a miniature Christmas tree made from beeswax, chairs made of seashells, a tepee.

I would bake for her too. Or rather, I would help my mother bake, and insist on a “T.F. batch” – a miniature version of the Linzer Tart, pumpkin pie, biscotti she was baking for my homeroom class, the neighbors, the stream of foreign exchange students we hosted throughout the years. We would rack our brains to find ways to miniaturize these treats, repurposing my brother’s lego-men as cookie cutters.

Dear T.F., Happy Birthday! I made you a cake, but I left it at your house because I couldn’t put it under my pillow. Love, KT.  I remember the house. I made it out of Lincoln Logs, and placed it in the corner of my room, near the window. I wanted T.F. to have a place to come and rest if she had a busy night of tooth collecting. And I remember that T.F.’s birthday was May 1. And that the first year I began writing to her, she was 16 years old in fairy years. She told me that there were seven human years in every fairy year, and then she asked me how many human years old she was. I was just learning to multiply.

There are several letters from T.F. in the box as well, although those, on the whole, have been lost at a far greater rate, as I, the recipient, generally kept them, hoarding stacks in secret places. In my early teen years, several years after the T.F. phase, I would happen across these bunches of letters, and embarrassed by the childishness of my not too distant past, would surreptitiously throw them out. But a few precious specimens survive.

There is one that documents T.F.’s family tree—describing the different elvin duties of each one of her 9 siblings. Another describes the elvin educational system. One explains why it is important to study for spelling tests. One recommends ways to avoid getting angry with younger siblings, describing T.F.’s conflicts with her younger brother, Moondust. (Moondust, coincidentally, was five years younger then T.F., exactly the same age interval between me and my younger brother, Robbie.)

I smiled when I read that one.

She was so graceful.