I never smiled with my teeth

 

Do you think you can threaten me with pain? Before I could even speak, my mom mutilated my flesh, pierced with a white hot needle because "I won't even remember" and she was right, I don't. But the scars are permanent and I can embellish them with earrings. Pain for us is constant, is ever present. Before our first period we already suffered physical pain alien to yours. Our scalps being pulled by hours, cute little shoes that rip the flesh from our Achilles' tendon, clothes so uncomfortable and prickly, the glitter is hard on our skin. All of that without losing our smiles. You know about pain from the other side, from the screams that pierce through the mist of the unknown. You are scared of those screams because you don't know about pain. About our pain. So the external shouts we sometimes are allowed to shout reach you and you think those are a siren's song. A song from the unknown. But you can't threaten me with the unknown because I'm not a man. Pain for you is mysterious that's why you fear it. I am not afraid of that unknown for pain is my next of kin.

 

I never learnt how to smile with my teeth

Since I left my mother's arms, I had trouble smiling. I was always sucking my thumb, playing with the nail between my teeth and with that I paved my way to torture, as the dentist would later say. At six years old my parents took me with a dentist near Morelos Way. Laurentino was the name of the doctor and his office was above a taquería that started as a street car and then became a whole chain. Each visit was double torture for me. First of all because of his fingers, squirming inside my little mouth, with drills, mirrors and brushes that rotated and tasted sour. Secondly because after my visit, my family would eat downstairs. It was the torture of watching them eat tacos, smell the sauces, the limes, the meat and the inability to take a bite because of the treatment. "It's not that bad" they said, "you don't eat that much anyways" and I couldn't reply because my mouth was sore.

"This is not gonna hurt" they always told me. They always lied. At 9 years old they upgraded the torture. A new device, now external that went from my chin to my head. "You can't look like this" they said, regarding my so called defective jaw. Years of social isolation got worse because of the machine. My best friend draw me in it. "Please don't get mad. Please don't get revenge" I couldn't fall any deeper. After months of taking to school my mom's "Clinical Embryology" book, my reputation was already tarnished. That only worsened it. "Freak", "weirdo", "Frankenstein". But the dentist said this wouldn't hurt and there I was, crying and having lunch at the school's library, with my chin's skin burning, itching.

13 years old. "I know it's gross but I like you" Just a sentence but then I learnt that even if they like you, it doesn't mean they respect you. "Look at your arms! You're a she-wolf" So I asked my mother to help me bleach my arm's hair. She conceded. I can't picture her doing the same with my brother. Enabling two hours of pain and itch just to look pretty. Then again, she never pierced his ears either. This pain was for me. Only for me. That's why when the dentist suggested years of painful apparatus inside my mouth, she accepted. "All for her looks" or maybe she rationalized it by thinking it was for health reasons. "Beauty is health" after all.

Then I was fifteen years old and for my quinceañera the dentist took the braces out. "You should look pretty for your big day" And my normal days were what? Little days? I hadn't even kissed someone but now I was introduced to society. I didn't understand too much but I thought I did. I did smile in those pictures. Just with the lips. My mother scold me. After all those years and money spent in dental treatments I should've smiled more. With my teeth. I never learnt how to relax the lips. Then a guy, six years older than me taught me how but before going too far I got cold feet. I felt like I was being sacrificed. They always sacrifice the virgin and by design, you're always before your first time.

Funny how anesthesia works. You think of the weirdest things. Words come and go, and surely people will tell me local anesthesia does not works that way but when half your face is full of tiny needles and your flesh feels fat and useless, I'm sure you think different. "Give the cotton pads, no, that's not the one I need. I will do it, leave it" Dentists always have an assistant. How is the process of all that all women are assistants but all men are dentists? I've never had a female dentist. Just men's hands have ripped, pulled my teeth out and modify my smile. "You should smile more" and they have my teeth in their hands to achieve it. "After this you're gonna look like you had botox injections" and then I had to sign a full responsibility paper. "It's not my fault if you lose your teeth"

"It's not my fault if you believe we were a couple" but for three (or was it six?) months I was treated as if I was. "This is not gonna hurt" but then it did and it humiliated me and only me because that's why I get from going out without my parent's permission. "What would you think happens if you suck your thumb since you were a toddler?" I expected to be hurt a lot less.

And finally after years and years of pain and suffering, after years of diagnosis, of hands in my mouth, of the pain of the anesthesia, heartburn because of the painkillers and the sour taste of tylenol, I lost my teeth. The machines that since I was 9 years old got me hurt and the devices that made me pray at night before school for something to happen to avoid it, nested in my mouth. Forever a strange object in it. They say it's trauma, that I'm traumatized. They will say it with scorn just when they say "you don't trust men". But the flesh remembers. Pain can be forgotten but the flesh scars.

I still can't relax my lips.

I still can't smile with my teeth.