Split Tooth

The narrator goes into labor. She does not feel the pain she expected. Instead, the Northern Lights cover her “like a blanket” and make the birth easier (159). When her babies are born, they shift themselves into long, worm-like shapes to pass out of their mother without causing her pain. Helen is horrified, and the Northern Lights use the babies’ umbilical cords to wipe her memory of the birth. The babies transform into regular-looking newborns. The narrator names her son Savik and her daughter Naja. 

The narrator returns home with her newborns. Her mother loves her new grandchildren, but her father is still distant. Savik is a fat baby with lots of hair. The narrator sees her son as a natural protector. Naja is small and has no hair. She is soft and has deep green eyes. Naja and Savik love each other intensely and do not like being separated. Savik transfixes people but feeds on discomfort and pain, so those who hold him for too long become weak and ill. Savik does this on purpose, but the narrator cannot hold it against him. She loves him deeply and knows he would never use his abilities to hurt her. There is an illustration of two babies wrapped in a single blanket.

The narrator’s uncle becomes ill every time he holds Savik. Savik calls to people who hold onto negativity. Naja, on the other hand, is calm and heals the anxieties of people who hold her. She “inhales trouble and exhales solutions like a filtration system” (164). Cruel people do not like to hold Naja. The narrator feeds Naja from her right breast and Savik from her left. Her left breast becomes larger than the right because Savik eats so much more than Naja. She thinks this means there is “an imbalance of pain in the world” (164). 

An untitled poem addresses the need for a “collective shift of consciousness” in the world before it is too late (165).

During the first few months of her children’s lives, the narrator spends all her time with them. They sleep close together as if they are still in the womb. When the house is empty and they know they are alone, they morph and twist their bodies together in their mother’s arms. The narrator cautions her babies not to let anyone see them doing this, though she thinks that deep down, everyone knows that her babies are special. 

Best Boy visits often. Savik and Naja shift their features to resemble his. The narrator and her children spend time with Helen and her family. When the babies begin to crawl, the narrator warns them not to move too quickly, lest they reveal their abilities. The narrator feels deeply connected to her children. She believes they have all known each other before. Everyone in town thinks that Best Boy is the father of the twins, but both know they have never had sex. The twins’ resemblance to him puzzles Best Boy, but he loves them.

The narrator’s uncle grows very sick after spending time with Savik. She is upset because he is her favorite uncle. She wants Savik to stop making him sick but knows she cannot control Savik’s nature. Eventually, her uncle develops liver cancer. Savik drains the last of his life force, growing stronger as the narrator’s uncle dies. Next, Savik begins to feed on the narrator’s father. To prevent her father’s death, the narrator takes Savik and Naja to live at Helen’s house. 

A poem considers the tension between life and death. Some questions can only be answered after death. 

The narrator watches Best Boy sleep. She absorbs his pain and sends it to a classmate she does not like. Naja witnesses and is pained by this action. The narrator acknowledges that she cannot be perfect for her children all the time. Her children have lived many lives together, and she thinks it is “time to heal the cycle” (177). There is an illustration of skeletal remains among rocks.

Savik starts to make Best Boy sick. The narrator loves her son but wants to protect Best Boy. Naja senses the conflict between Savik and the narrator and becomes too sad to use her healing powers. The narrator wishes she could help Savik change but knows his power comes from her “own evil, [her] own hunger, and [her] ancestors’ hunger” (180). The narrator feels doomed to watch everyone she loves die.

One day, Savik bites off the tip of the narrator’s nipple while she breastfeeds him. She realizes there is “no room for him on this earth” and that she must prevent him from continuing to hurt people (180). She holds Savik while he sleeps and begs for his forgiveness and then wraps him and Naja in blankets.

An untitled poem commands the reader to eat and describes two people becoming one being. 

The narrator brings her babies to a deep crack in the ice that opens into the ocean. She places Savik on the ice, and he begins to cry. In anguish, she tries to strangle him, but he fights back, burning her hands. Savik transforms into a baby seal and slips through the crack in the ice. Meanwhile, Naja has died of exposure. Devastated, the narrator puts Naja’s body in the water. It floats down to Savik, who absorbs his sister so that they are finally one being. The seal looks at the narrator and swims away. She has lost both of her children. 

The narrator knows it is time for her to die, too. She lies on the ice and begs the Northern Lights to take her pain. The Northern Lights observe her but do not act. Fear consumes the narrator as she realizes she cannot move. Her ancestors have abandoned her because of “the bottle of pills in [her] hand” (186). Suicide has blocked her access to the spirit world. Her spirit separates violently from her body. She is cold, afraid, and wants her babies. She attaches her spirit to the Arctic wind and goes in search of Savik and Naja. 

When the narrator was younger, her grandmother’s spirit visited her in a dream and told her that she was going to Hell. The narrator would witness endless suffering but stop the souls of the damned from fueling Hell’s fires, preventing Hell from growing stronger. This job would require the narrator to witness and feel the thousands of years of pain and suffering that each soul experienced in Hell. Her grandmother told her she should be honored because only the strongest people could do this job. 

Two final poems discuss forgiveness. The narrator does not “forgive and forget;” she “Protect[s] and Prevent[s]” (191). She forgives herself. She asks for forgiveness, protection, and shelter. She asks for beating and death, followed by love, cleansing, and worship. The final line of the book is an instruction to “start again.”