Born with a Tooth Read Free

days are getting longer again. Michael and I don’t go out for coffee much anymore. People in town started talking, asking why the teacher and a seventeen-year-old half-Indian girl were hanging out so much. Michael ran into Lucky and thought he was a big bearded lumberjack come to chop him down. Lucky says he didn’t say a word to him. Just looked. When we do meet for coffee, this teacher doesn’t look at my eyes anymore, just mumbles into his cup and watches out the window, then kisses my cheek and leaves. I wanted to tell him he was the first, but I can’t now.
    Sunny days leave the ice highway slushy and dangerous to cross. I only asked Michael about my wolf one time, a little while ago. I tried to sound casual and like I didn’t care, but my voice came out squeaky and tense.
    â€œThat pelt, the damaged one?” he said. “I sent it out on the mail plane to my woman friend in Toronto. She loves northern stuff.”
    I try not to think of my wolf anymore, sent to hang in that woman’s house.
    Michael calls me today after the first freighter canoe race of the year, the one from Moose Factory to Moosonee celebrating the spring. He asks me to meet him at the usual place.
    â€œI’m leaving, back to TO,” he says as I stare out the window at the river and people on the water taxi dock. The treeswill bud soon. He lights a smoke. “I thought I might want to renew my contract and stay through the summer. But I’ve got business to take care of back in the city.” He smiles. A casual smile. “Besides, I hear the blackflies drive you crazy in spring. Don’t worry, though. I’ll write. Maybe you can come visit me sometime.”
    He always talks too much. I light a smoke and look him in the eyes. He looks back for a second, then looks down and plays with his cigarette pack. I stare at him till he gets up and leaves.
    The last night he visited me a few months back, I knew my wolf could smell the evil in the air. He was jumpy and his yellow eyes looked dull. I was tired and didn’t want to get out of my warm bed. But I knew he was there, looking up at my window from his shadows at the tree line. I knew he wanted to see me. There was no food to offer so I poured him a bowl of milk and went outside. He sneaked up to me, then looked over his shoulder. He sniffed at the saucer but let the milk freeze. I wondered what he had done all day, if he had caught a hare or run from his enemies. Half awake and not thinking, I reached out to scratch his torn ear. I lazily ran my fingers over his scruffy head and scratched his neck. Just as I realized what I was doing, he nipped at my hand and walked away, looking back over his shoulder at me until he disappeared into the dark. He had the smell on him.
    I don’t like coffee anymore, but I still go to the coffee shop and drink it. When Michael left, Lucky said that the city fuck was worried the blackflies might chew his cock off if he stayed any longer.
    My stomach’s getting puffy so I try not to smoke, but it’s become a habit. It won’t be long before Mom and Lucky notice. It won’t be good. I’ll have to tell them soon.
    When it comes, the pain will be like that night with him, and worse. I will open my legs wide and scream and curse and howl. Then the midwife will back away, muttering prayers and crying. My baby’s grey furry head will enter this world. He will bare his white teeth and gnaw through our cord. He will look at me and smile with black lips and yellow eyes. He will run off into the bush, and he will cross the ice highway.

SHAWANAGAN BINGO QUEEN
    S pringtime brings the blackflies. Clouds of biting gnats that dig into your ears and nose and scalp swarm to the reserve in the first warm days to feed on us and keep us indoors for the four or five weeks that they eat and mate and die. You might not be able to see their teeth or even their little bodies crawling in your hair, but when blackflies