I was separated from my father at fourteen. When it happened, I did not know how to deal with the loss, so I tried to fill the role he left open. But I wasn’t a good fit. My voice was thinner. My clothes were smaller. I wasn’t tall enough.
My dentist mentioned that a person’s teeth generally stop developing at fourteen. At fourteen I lost my father, and after fourteen, my teeth stuck with me. Their asymmetry became a comfort.
Inheriting a parental role is no dental filling. As political injustice dissected my family, my teeth became the silent witnesses to a shifting role. Each crooked tooth became the narrative of a hardship; a defiant way I wore my story. They became my revolution.
Still, there was a vacancy in the family, and as my share of covering it, I started looking for money. This was an eighty-dollar search, and quickly became shifting, too. The lady I babysat for, her oldest nearly as old as me, did not leave me with her kids. Instead, I was kept busy with the dishes and laundry that had been sitting for days. The grease on the pans, the heaviness in the air, the smell of detergent stuck. My teeth witnessed.
Over time, my teeth became the representation of something fleeting. They became a locket for my missed childhood. They became the shelter for a kind of resilience that could only live in bone. In a shifting world, my teeth became my sanctuary.
My teeth remained permanent, but their meaning for me did not. What was once a witness of my misfortune eventually became a symbol of my power. Today, I wear my teeth as an accessory of strength. Every curve carries a struggle, and every smile drips determination and survival. I seek pride in their permanency and declare their shape as my premium. My teeth are crooked, but I have never lost one.
I am yet to reunite with my father. I still live in a foreign country, and adopt a foreign kind of responsibility for a daughter. But this is my part in the shift. My responsibility in a fierce environment has been an exercise of resilience, and the constant nature of this struggle has made me a skilled wielder of this power. To stop trying would be to betray my teeth’s shape, and having given it a try, there is one thing I am sure of: braces aren’t the look for me.