The working of a child’s mind is often complex. No one actually knew why four-year old Annie Jane was not enjoying herself that Christmas morning. Usually a rough-and-ready, happy-go-lucky child, she sat studying the used wrapping paper that littered the living room floor, after the two sisters and their parents had opened all their Christmas gifts.
“Hey, Annie Jane, why the long face?” Sara, her older sister asked.
Annie Jane said nothing.
Then her mother tried, “Don’t you like your teddy bear?”
The little girl nodded a yes and hugged the furry bear closer.
“ Well, whatever is bothering you will get better, if you think hard enough about it and give it a second chance.” her mother said.
Her daughter was not so sure. Most of the afternoon, Annie Jane and her teddy bear looked out the picture window and watched the snowflakes pile up, covering the sisters’ footprints of the day before. Mostly her eyes focused on a thin red slab of color that strung itself across the snowbank, fading into a pink tinge beside the snow shovel. By the time the falling snow had covered the yard, she turned away from the window, whispering secretively into the teddy bear’s ear.
That night her mother heard a faint, persistent clinking sound coming from Annie Jane’s bedroom. There, with the teddy bear propped up by her side, the little girl sat in the dark on the edge of her bed, intensely tapping her front tooth with the handle of a stainless steel knife.
“Annie Jane, what in heaven’s name are you doing?”
“I’m gettin’ another tooth,” she beamed, “Yesterday, Sara knocked this one out on the shovel handle.”
She grabbed her bottom lip and yanked it down to show the toothless hole. “ But I couldn’t find it in the snow. The more I looked, the more lost it got. Sara told me not to tell or the Tooth Fairy wouldn’t come. And I didn’t tell. Not even anyone,” she confused.
“But how would the Tooth Fairy know,” her mother asked, “ If you don’t have a tooth?”