When I was a kid I would put my pulled teeth under my pillow and find coins there the next morning. My aunt Ruthie (Actually Ruth Elaine, I found out as teenager) gave me a special tooth holder. It was a small soft tooth with a smiling face on the front and a pocket in the back just big enough to hold a tooth. How my mother got the tooth fairy to return the teeth for her (so I could have an asprin bottle of my baby teeth to marvel at even to this day) I still haven't figured out.

How this relates to permanant teeth and the year 2002, well after my gums have replaced the kiddie versions with more permant ones, has to do with my Flemish class and a fellow classmate from Poland.

It's not easy to make friends in a class that is made up of people that hardly have a common language. English would be the common language, rather English mixed with Flemish here and there--conversations worded in phrases that we can manage.

Today Monika, from Poland, arrived to class late because she went to the dentist. That is all that we could manage in our conversation during our break. Later on though, when I sat down next to her on the tram, she talked about her Indian boyfriend and how strange it is to be in a relationship where neither of the parties is speaking in his/her mother tongue. They have opted for English. She went on to talk about her current job. She lives here illegally, and is working long hours for a family who pays her very little, and is looking for a change. She's taking Flemish classes as well as English classes, and wants to get a work permit so she can find a real job.

I felt ashamed. I take it for granted that I can live here legally by going to school, am finding freelance jobs rather easily, and that I am confident that Eva and I will manage to work the system to our benefit one way or another.

As our conversation took this slap-in-the-face turn, she took a little bag out of her purse and showed me her tooth. Still bloody from its being forcefully removed, we marvelled at the length of its roots, the blood itself, and the dark spots of cavity. "It's so ugly and big," she said. "The roots are huge, aren't they," I continued, "and to think that they sit so far down in our jaws!"

We laughed, and for a time nothing else mattered.

The tram lurched to a halt at my stop, I smiled at her, and patted her on the shoulder. "Take care of your mouth and take it easy!" I said. And she smiled back, grimacing from pain of having an gaping hole where just a few hours earlier a tooth had been.

Maybe the toothfairy will bring her a couple of Euros, or maybe not. I'm holding out for a toothfairy covering as an imigration officer complete with the appropriate papers. She doens't really want a couple of Euro cents under her pillow, she wants a real job. Though she is homesick for Poland, and rattling on to her friends in her native tongue, she'd settle for becoming Belgian.

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