Under the Tongue

The tooth appeared beneath Amaka’s pillow on the third morning after her daughter’s funeral.

Small, white, perfectly clean.

Amaka stood over the bed in yesterday’s clothes, staring at it while rain worried the windows. Elsley had lost her last baby tooth two years ago. Amaka remembered because Elsley had swallowed it with a mouthful of cereal and cried until Amaka promised the tooth fairy accepted extenuating circumstances.

At the funeral, Elsley had been buried whole.

Amaka picked up the tooth.

It was warm.

She dropped it into the bathroom sink and turned on the tap. Water struck porcelain. The tooth clicked around the basin, stubborn as a beetle, then lodged against the drain.

Amaka left it there.

That night she dreamed Elsley was standing beside the bed.

Her yellow raincoat shone wetly in the dark. Mud filled the seams of her little shoes.

“Mummy,” she whispered.

Amaka tried to wake herself. The sleeping pills held her down like deep water.

“Mummy, I forgot something.”

“What?”

Elsley opened her mouth.

There was only blackness inside.

Amaka woke choking.

Something hard rested beneath her tongue.

She staggered to the bathroom and spat into the sink. A second tooth landed beside the first, flecked with blood. One of Elsley’s front teeth, the one that had grown crooked after she fell from the climbing frame.

Amaka knew every part of her daughter.

She knew this tooth.

By noon, she had called the cemetery six times. On the seventh, someone answered.

The groundskeeper spoke gently at first. No, there had been no disturbance. Yes, he was certain. The ground was wet; footprints would show. Perhaps grief counselling…

“I want the grave opened.”

Silence.

Then, faintly, behind his breathing, Amaka heard a child singing.

Not words. Just four wandering notes.

Elsley’s toothbrushing song.

“Who’s with you?” Amaka asked.

The line went dead.

She drove through the rain.

The cemetery gates stood open. The parking lot was empty. Water streamed between the headstones, turning the paths to pale rivers.

Amaka found the groundskeeper’s hut unlocked. Inside, a kettle screamed on a hot plate. A chair lay overturned. On the desk sat the framed photograph of a smiling boy.

Every tooth had been scratched from his mouth.

The singing came again.

Outside.

Four notes, carried through the rain.

Amaka followed them to Elsley’s grave.

The earth had not been disturbed. Flowers from the funeral sagged over the mound, their brown heads bowed. The little stone was already in place.

ELSLEY VALE
BELOVED DAUGHTER
SLEEP TIGHT, LITTLE STAR

“Mummy.”

The voice came from below.

Amaka fell to her knees.

“Mummy, please.”

She clawed at the earth. Mud packed beneath her nails. She dug until her fingers split, until she struck the coffin lid with a sound like a knock.

From the other side came three answering taps.

Amaka screamed for help, though she knew no one would come.

She found a shovel beside the hut and beat its edge against the lid until the wood buckled. A smell breathed through the crack, not decay, but Elsley’s strawberry shampoo.

“Mummy,” Elsley sobbed. “It’s dark.”

“I’m here.”

Amaka tore at the broken boards. “I’m here, baby.”

A small hand pushed through.

It was cold and grey, the nails rimmed with soil.

Amaka seized it.

The fingers tightened around hers.

Too many fingers.

They poured through the opening, jointed and pale, unfolding like spider legs. They gripped her wrist, her sleeve, her hair. Amaka tried to pull away.

Below her, Elsley stopped crying.

In the sudden quiet, a man began to laugh.

The groundskeeper rose from behind the grave.

Or what was wearing him did.

His jaw hung loose. Blood glazed his chin. When he smiled, Amaka saw that his mouth was empty.

“No,” she whispered.

The hands dragged her face toward the crack.

The darkness inside the coffin shifted hungrily.

The groundskeeper knelt beside her and placed something small and white on Elsley’s headstone.

A tooth.

“Everybody leaves something behind,” he said.

The hands pulled Amaka under.

By morning, the grave looked untouched.

The rain stopped. Sunlight spilled across the wet grass, and the cemetery opened at nine.

At ten past, a woman came through the gates carrying flowers. Her little boy skipped beside her, splashing in puddles. As they passed Elsley’s grave, he stopped.

“Mum?”

“What is it?”

The boy bent and picked up a clean white tooth.

It was still warm.

That night, his mother dreamed of Amaka standing beside her bed.

Mud filled Amaka’s mouth.

When she spoke, her voice came from very far underground.

“Please,” she whispered. “I forgot my daughter.”