Third and Fourth
Muvs lost the third tooth during that delicate-butterfly age when you weren't quite sure if you were seven or eight years old.
It happened at night, the losing of the tooth, while he munched his cereal. He squealed to himself. His eyes gleamed and sparkled, as he watched the tooth in his newly freed hand.
He'd get to meet the spirit again. The friendstuff they'd do!
Six months had passed since they last met. The most interesting encounter to have happened to the boy - so magical, so everything his daddy called nonsense. He'd liked the spirit, on the spot; how he'd fought to seem so scary, but wasn't, even with his half-eaten nose and long, rat mouth. He hadn't let Arataman know, anyway, that he liked him. All who've known he liked them, went away, or wouldn't like him in return.
However, he had to wait to meet the spirit again. The clock had leaped past nine, and his daddy had come home, doors and gates bolted shut. And his mom cozied up on the couch, dozing off. He dared not wake her.
Like gold or diamond, or love, he wrapped the tooth up in a clean piece of paper and kept it in the pocket over his heart.
Next evening: "Arata tek yu rɔtin tit. Gi mi mi fayn tit" chanted the boy. He launched his offering to the rooftop. And he waited, lightly bouncing on his toes.
A low rumble. A scratching noise. Then there he was, peering down from the roof, eyes like lakes of oil.
The boy smiled at Arataman, flashing him his gaps.
The collector smiled back, one of those smiles at war with the eyes. He took out a purse. He opened it, showed the boy his tooth amongst other teeth. It laid as any of its companions, pearl-white and small.
But Muvs knew it as his, as you'd know your shadow, even if it clung to someone else.
Then Arataman left. Disappeared into the fog.
"But he promised." Sadness knifed the boy's chest. He looked down at the play cards he'd brought with him. He'd hoped Arataman would stay, set him on the roof, and they'd play and talk. At school, he was a misfit and sat alone in class and at lunchtime. At home, an only child. And his daddy was hardly around and, on days he was, he spoke only a few words to him, mostly Nonsense & Stop That, Naughty Boy. And his mom… his mom… sometimes, she loved him very much, but, most times, she didn't, and only shouted and scolded and cried about her life. Muvs had hoped the spirit would stay, you see, so he'd have a friend for a while.
At the fourth tooth, his dream came true.
This tooth had come out prematurely. It had only been loose for a few weeks. But the boy, on one late Saturday's afternoon, up from a nap, laid poking at it with his tongue. He poked too hard. He winced in pain. And he bled. Then the tooth dropped out. He stumbled off to his mom, hand on his mouth.
"God. Just rinse," she told him upon seeing the blood. "Rinse with water." She leafed to the next page of her bible, her new-found love, paying no more heed to her son.
And Muvs rinsed his mouth and cleaned up, and went out to his spot. He said the thing. Then sent a piece of himself upwards.
The lonely roof grumbled, but not due to the stiff harmattan wind - he was coming, and there he was. Arataman displayed to the boy all teeth collected from him, safe and sound. Promise kept. He had almost disappeared again, when he heard it, a whisper, a plea, from the child.
"Stay. Please, Mr. Arataman."
In that whisper, the ancient collector heard pain, loneliness, and a longing to be held. Adults knew of their depression brought on by bills and failed love stories, mid-life crisis. But they all tend to forget of the storm and darkness that could creep on children, too. And even those who had once gone through that storm and darkness grew up only to forget. A harrowing thing. How would the broken children ever be understood, be held? How would the neglected ever be heard, and not called naughty?
Arataman's promise to the kid had been to show him his lost teeth, and do friendstuff. A smile qualified as a friend-thing; a friend-thing you could do from afar.
But the child needed more than just a smile.
So, Arataman stayed.
Next thing, zinc-sheets beneath Muvs boots. He staggered, finding his balance on the roof.
Arataman stooped close by, petting pigeons. "You know: they forget me. I feed them today, they forget and run from me tomorrow," he said, idly.
"Oh," said the boy.
Arataman stretched, unfolded, and faced him. "What's up?" he said, odd, but ready to listen.
And Muvs had much to say.
He'd started a new year in school, and he hated it. He hated how he couldn't see the hills from the classroom, and daydream. And he hated how he was always alone. He hated how his classmates made fun of his ears and how when he'd report to the P.E teacher, Mr. Martins, he'd only say: Ah, baby Muvs, that's just school! He hated that Abdul, his best friend, had gone to a new school. And, sometimes, he wished to skip classes. Though not for all these things he hated. But for Aunty-Mrs. Neville. His headmistress and new class teacher. A short, stout woman, with a potato face and cherry-red cheeks everlastingly blushing.
"She beats. Sneeze too hard, she beats you. Yawn, beats. She has a fat cane and fat arms. Sleep in class, beats. Cry for being beat, beats! I call her Aunty-Mrs. Neville the real devil. But I'm sure the devil takes notes from her! She tells us to call it pensol instead of pencil, beats us if we don't. I'm afraid of her. And she beat me so bad once cause I had no money to buy the meatballs she brings to class!"
"And what did your parents do?"
"Oh. Nothing." Pain echoed in his answer. "My mom only held me and cried. And told me daddy wasn't treating her right, and she was going to leave him. And went on and on about how the witches in her family will be happy now. And, daddy, he said I was lying. And he'd beat that lying out of me."
Silence tarried between the boy and the collector. A dog barked, faint and far, at a passerby.
Muvs continued his laments, as the diamond sun arched on towards the sea. He spoke so freely, but in his short stops here and there, his glancing of the spirit, waiting for a Shut Up, or a Nobody Cares, you could tell too many people had failed him, ignored him.
And in the way conversations flowed, Arataman asked the boy after a while, "What do you love to do? Tell me about that."
"Oh, I love this. Being here, on the roof, and being heard. I love reading books. And playing with puppy dogs. Climbing things. Um…and sweets, eating them! Not much I guess. You?"
"Listen," said the spirit, hoping his words would ease the hurt budding in the boy. "I won't tell you life gets better. But someday you will experience the joy that surpasses all this pain you feel now and will ever feel. You might find it in the little things, like in a girl, or boy. In a book. In a movie that breaks and mends your heart. You may be stuck here for a while, with horrid parents and teachers and friends, all growing pains. But there is so much you are yet to meet. Much more to the world. All these things you love, you are going to love some more. It will not be like this forever. Hang in there, my friend."
Muvs, only eight years old, listened and, young as he was, understood. "Mr. Arataman, I don't know what to say."
"Remember that."
And so the friends lazed beside each other, chattered and bonded over childish talks, as they looked up at the pinking clouds.
Victor Osman Forna is a writer and poet based in Freetown, Sierra Leone.