A memoir

Memoir 4

Naivety is the Beauty of Childhood.

On Mondays I took forever scrubbing my milk coloured teeth, It never got white anyway.

Mondays are for inspection and Mrs. Kosi was such a talented tooth inspector, she takes her time to inspect one tooth after the other, I ThankGod she never died of bad breath.

On one of such Mondays a tooth fell from my mouth straight into the muddy pool in front of me where I stood to brush.

I searched the black muddy pool as far as my iris could travel. No trace of my tooth.

I stood there staring into the muddy pool with a cup and brush in hand.

I lost my tooth!!!

It was a tradition to throw your tooth on the roof for recycling that’s the only way a new tooth will emerge.

Aloni told me throwing them on the roof top allowed God to see it and replace the lost one’s.

When I couldn’t find my fallen tooth, it meant God wont’t see my tooth and no Reminder will be sent for replacement.

That morning I cried, not of the pain of a broken tooth.

But the pain of losing a broken tooth.

The children teased me of the window in my mouth and how it will forever remain open.

Mr. Lumo, Papa’s friend asked me the following morning if I gave out my tooth in exchange for Akara.

I believed all the stories for as long as I could remember, I was depressed for quite sometime.

But… Today there are no windows, just a diastema sitting in front.