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I have been paying close attention to my baby’s mouth to see if he will inherit whatever it is that has allowed me the good fortune of straight teeth. No braces. No retainers. Just a slight overbite when I smile. 

Growing up, my teeth were something my mom didn’t have any reservations complimenting me about. But like other Vietnamese moms, she knew too many compliments could attract the attention of jealous spirits. So I learned to savor the times my mom told me my teeth were pretty. 

I see the craggy peaks of my baby’s first molars erupting through his gums. I think about the price my family pays for good teeth.

---

When I gave birth, I delivered to my parents their first grandson. That same week, I fulfilled other familial duties. For my entire adult life, I struggled with what it meant to be the first-born of Vietnamese refugee parents. How could I repay my parents for what they had sacrificed for my life here? What was the debt that I accrued even before I was born? What did I owe? 

---

When I was six weeks pregnant, the first of my son’s baby teeth started to form. By the time I was four months pregnant, his permanent teeth were taking shape. I wonder what kind of mood I was in at the time, what kind of music I was listening to, what I was eating. I wonder what I was passing down to him without even knowing it.

---

I suppose these types of questions creep into the minds of many children of refugees or immigrants at one point or another—what did I do to deserve being born in this country? What is expected of me? What is my duty? These questions are heavy enough by themselves, but then there is my brother, my youngest sibling who was born with a type of cerebral palsy that would mean he needed a caretaker for the rest of his life.

With the impending birth of my son, I saw a graceful way to answer all those questions on my terms. With my husband’s support, I optimistically accepted my inheritance instead of avoiding it like I had been for most of my adult life. Days after my baby’s arrival, we moved into a new house along with my parents and brother. I braced myself for what it meant to be a good mother, wife, daughter, and sister all at once.

---

My mom has a hole on the right side of her mouth, a gaping void that catches food like a wide-casting net. She’s tired of chewing on only her left side, so I take her to a dentist here in San Diego. 

“Your mom’s teeth have collapsed,” says a white man in a white coat. “She needs an extraction. An implant is another possibility. At the very least, she needs a bridge.”

I translate what the dentist has said. Through experience and folklore, refugees like my mom have learned to be wary of white men in white coats. 

As my mom’s translator, I ask questions. The role is familiar, but having me at appointments is a luxury she hasn’t had much of since I moved out of my parents’ house fifteen years ago. This time, I’m more shrewd. Less trusting. Better at reading nuances. It looks like a bridge is our cheapest and most effective option, but the final price is still astronomical.

“Wow, four thousand five hundred dollars?” my mom repeats back to me. “I could go to Vietnam and get everything done for under a thousand.”

My mom is the kind of woman who would rather drive 180 miles round-trip to save twenty dollars on a package she’s sending to her family in Saigon. When it comes to price tags, she doesn’t account for the value of ease and convenience.

“Mom, you don’t need to go to Vietnam,” I tell her in Vietnamese. “We can go to Tijuana. I can look it up on the internet tomorrow.” 

She seems satisfied with my suggestion. I thank the dentist and take an appointment card from the receptionist with no intention of coming back. 

---

I had learned to feel ashamed of many things during my childhood. Of not being American enough; of having a brother with a disability; of having parents who didn’t know what to say at parent-teacher conferences. But I had also learned that my straight teeth were something to be proud of, something my white classmates told me they wished they had. It made me feel like I was better than the other immigrant or refugee children.

---

My dad’s teeth are stripped-down stumps that dot the decimated landscape of his gums. His custom partial dentures, which soak in an old cream cheese tub every night, look like a collection of prehistoric fossils vaguely resembling teeth.

---

The morning I take my mom to Tijuana, my dad yells about how dangerous it is, about how there are drug dealers and murderers at the border. He says he saw it on the news. 

It doesn’t occur to me until we start living together again that my dad has bullied me my entire life. He was the type of dad who stood laughing as he saw me being chased by a small dog, pressured me to play the violin in front of his friends and then made fun of my playing, scolded me for asking him to drive me to school because it meant that he had to wake up earlier. My dad’s yelling makes me remember my eleven-year-old self. I have morphed into her. I feel my heart beat faster. There’s a rising in my chest. I feel my brain turn off and all that’s left are these acute corporeal responses. Momentarily, I retreat, but then I attack, remembering that I am an adult now. 

“What’s the matter, Dad? Why are you yelling?” I shout, trying to bully my dad harder than he is bullying me. 

“Your mom’s teeth are still good,” my dad hollers. “I can’t fuckin’ eat anything.” 

“Dad, Mom’s teeth are not good,” I say in my limited Vietnamese. “And your teeth are even worse. You both need to fix your teeth. But today, I’m going to help Mom fix hers. You don’t want me to help Mom?” 

“She doesn’t even need it.” 

“Okay, Dad, well, she has a passport and you don’t.” 

He has no rebuttal, and for a moment, I feel satisfied. My mom and I slip out the door to catch the next trolley down to the border. The whole way down to Tijuana, I replay the argument in my head. I feel guilt for yelling at him—I know that’s not what good daughters do. But I also feel anger, too—why can’t he see I’m being a good daughter?

---

My brother can’t sleep. Sometimes, he’s up three, four nights in a row. His insomnia is accompanied by unsettling, guttural groans and wails. This is happening more often and with no clear reason. I try to think about this in practical terms—is it because his bed is uncomfortable? Does he need sleeping aids? Are his seizure-afflicted muscles aching?

My dad insists our house is cursed. He has been saying that since relocating over a year ago. I can’t be sure, but I believe that picking up his comfortable and settled life in Modesto, his home for more than three decades, and moving down to San Diego has spun my dad into a months-long nervous breakdown. Any misfortune or discomfort—a day that’s five degrees too hot, a letter from the Social Security office, too many flies in the kitchen—was proof of this. According to my dad, this cursed house was going to cause his premature death. 

Of course this was not the reason my brother had trouble sleeping. It all made sense when I attended the annual meeting at my brother’s adult day program to discuss his new Individualized Education Plan for the year. The meeting was with Sue, the service coordinator at the San Diego Regional Center, and Barbara, the director of the day program. This is the kind of thing my parents used to do. But since they moved down here, this is my duty now.

Throughout the meeting, there was an urgent and pleading look in my brother’s eyes as he drove the palm of his dominant hand repeatedly up into his jaw. Suddenly, his whole body slouched as if he had surrendered to the weight of three sleepless nights. Then he put his hand in his mouth, something I had never noticed before. 

“Oh,” Sue said. “Maybe it’s his teeth?”

---

Have I inherited my dad’s trauma? What he went through over six years in a reeducation camp after Saigon fell to the North? The three years in a refugee camp in Thailand? Starting all over in a new country at thirty-eight? I’m not sure, but I do know the trauma I have from being his daughter. 

There was the one time when I was six, and I walked home from school—a three-block, L-shaped path. When I turned the corner, there was a Rottweiler that seemed as big as me. Even from afar, I could see that this dog was agitated, his canines flashing as he barked at cars passing by. He snarled. He paced. It didn’t matter that he was behind a metal fence. I was petrified. To avoid walking by him, I walked around the block to my house. When I arrived home, my dad was angry and waiting, long wooden chopstick in hand. I knew what this meant. 

My dad had gone to pick me up but didn’t see me. He was worried, and I was being disobedient by taking a new route home. I had to pay the price for this, even though I wasn’t trying to disobey him. This is when I learned to grit my teeth and accept what was coming. 

---

My brother is sedated. He’s sitting in a dentist’s chair with a white fleece blanket across his lap. His perpetually bent knees are still almost at ninety degrees, but the rest of his body is limp. I approach slowly. 

A tube is coming out of my brother’s nose. A clamp-like tool keeps his jaw pried open. A suction device sticks out from the left side of his mouth. I am startled by how his teeth are outlined with a thick line of blood. The dentist tells me his gums are extremely inflamed. Hardened plaque on his teeth exacerbates this condition. 

The dentist pushes her dental probe down on each tooth to show me how precarious each one hangs onto the gums. I think about the trauma that has happened in my brother’s mouth all these years. For as long as I can remember, he has clenched his jaw so hard that veins pop out in his neck. His constant teeth gnashing sounds like cicadas in the summer. When my brother is mad or frustrated, he drives his palm against his chin. This is the only way he can communicate his feelings to us since he has never been able to speak. Years of violent crashing have been absorbed by his mouth. By the time my brother shakes off the anesthesia of the procedure, he has three fewer teeth.

---

I can’t eat. There’s too much pain in my mouth. It all started when my baby’s head bumped up against my chin, causing me to bite my tongue. I examine my tongue in the mirror, close enough to see a mosaic of pink dots. On the ridge of the front of my tongue is a disruption to the pattern. “Damnit,” I think. This is not the first time I have bitten the inside of my mouth. I make a note to be careful when eating. 

Hours later, I check my tongue again. I stick it out to the left, to the right, and then lift it. To my horror, I discover clusters of white craters have cropped up under my tongue. The ulcers are all different sizes with red halos glowing around each one. 

A few days after the ulcers appear, I inadvertently bite the inside of my lip. That’s why I’m forced to fast now. I think about the pain my teeth have inflicted on my mouth, the trauma that comes from mindlessly biting the same spot over and over again.

---

My husband Mike and I have different perspectives on dental care. Even though my teeth are straight, they are not healthy. Teeth were an afterthought when I was a kid. My parents didn’t enforce toothbrushing—there were more pressing things to worry about. Having the money and time to focus on teeth is a privilege. 

My husband’s childhood included out-of-state soccer tournaments over spring break, chores like grooming his mom’s horses, a big backyard that could be used as a football field. He and his sister had braces, retainers, headgear. 

This means that as an adult, he has good dental habits. He flosses every day. He brushes his teeth for at least two minutes and uses a water pick every night. Naturally, he wants to pass these habits down to our son. 

Our baby, now a toddler with eight teeth, hates having his teeth brushed. Whenever Mike approaches him with a tiny toothbrush, our baby runs away and hides behind me. Sometimes, Mike has to wrestle him to the ground. Other times, he wraps one arm around our baby’s chest and arms and brushes in between his yelps. I hate to hear him scream like that, but I know it’s important. So I stay quiet and don’t comfort him the way I want to when he clings onto my legs.

---

I know there is no official score when it comes to sacrifice and suffering, but if there were, my mom would win. She was the breadwinner in our family. She made us clothes with her self-taught, prodigious sewing ability. She made sure we went to the best schools. And she never made it seem like my brother was a mistake or a burden. Even if she wasn’t the most outwardly loving mother toward me, for this, she will always have my devotion.

---

My mom and I are in Tijuana for the fourth and final time. It is Thursday, the Fourth of July, but I do not have plans to attend a parade or barbecue on my day off. I’m hoping that using this rare weekday off to go to Tijuana means shorter and smoother lines at the border. 

I enjoy these trips with my mom. It’s fun to take the trolley, and we usually get lunch at an outdoor eatery near the dentist’s office. But there’s an undertow of anxiety because I’m dreading the call from my dad asking how much longer we’ll be gone or lamenting what a waste of time the trip is. The phone calls are never really about showing concern, just a way to exert his will and opinion. A lifetime of this kind of anticipation has me on edge despite enjoying my mom’s company.

My mom has been using temporary adhesive to wear her new bridge for the past couple of weeks. After some slight adjustments to the fit, the bridge will then be permanently cemented in place. Except there’s a problem. 

“It seems the bridge is chipped,” the dentist says. “We can fix it, but we have to send it to the lab.” 

“How long will that take?” I ask.

“A couple hours,” the dentist says. My stomach drops. I recoil at the thought of having to call my dad to say we’ll be back in the evening instead of the afternoon. 

“But we can reschedule for another time,” the dentist suggests. 

I can’t take any more time off work. I tell the dentist we’ll stay, but I insist on my mom calling my dad instead of me. 

After the call, my mom takes off her shoes, crosses her feet, sets her hands on her stomach and leans back. She’s calm as she closes her eyes. I go back to the empty waiting room where worry is waiting for me. But I’m not worried about my mom—I know she’ll be fine. I’m worried about my dad’s emotional state when we get home. I try to figure out a formula that will predict the level of my dad’s wrath relative to the hours we are gone. As the daughter of refugee parents, I was well-versed in anticipating explosions of anger and frustration. If I could figure out the formula, I could brace myself better.

---

In my family, being first-born also meant being the liaison between my family and the white American world. I was the first to become fluent in English, which came with immense responsibility. I wasn’t even ten when I started calling phone companies to dispute monthly bills. I answered the door when Jehovah’s Witnesses came knocking. I translated at doctor’s appointments. I advocated for my brother and parents during parent-teacher meetings. 

Even though I found relief when I moved away to college and had my own life in my twenties, I’m now back in this role. My parents need me. They rely on me. And this is in addition to how much my son needs me. Sometimes, I cannot take how much I am needed.

---

Besides the two-hour setback, the Tijuana trip goes smoothly. My mom’s new bridge fits snugly and her bite feels good. As we make our way back across the border, it’s not quite dark yet, so we don’t see any fireworks, but we can hear the faint crackle of them. 

“Are you hungry, Mom?” 

“Yeah, I’m starving.”

“If we hurry, we can get to the Peking duck place before it closes. I know Dad really likes that place.” 

I think about how my mom makes offerings to our deceased ancestors on our family altars at home. I make offerings to my dad while he’s still alive. 

---

The communicative and light-hearted nature of my relationship with Mike has alleviated a lot of the traumas and anxieties I carried into our marriage. But Mike and I are arguing more than usual. Some of that is to be expected. We’re new parents. We’re both balancing work. There are stresses that come with a new job title that I have recently taken. But I soon realize that all the arguments stem from a common thread. No matter how supportive of a partner Mike is, he doesn’t bear the weight of being a daughter to my parents, of feeling like he’s forever indebted for this life. 

When we argue, it doesn’t take much before I start crying. I’ll cry at the frustration of it all, how overwhelmed I feel. I’ll cry in the shower, or curled up in a fetal position on my bedroom floor, or in my car. Mostly, I’ll cry over how singular and lonely this feeling is. 

---

I’m lucky. Lucky to be born in this country. Lucky to have straight teeth. Lucky that I wasn’t born as my brother. Lucky to have had a healthy pregnancy and birth. Lucky to have a supportive husband. To me, the opposite of lucky is not unlucky, it’s burdened. Swinging between these opposite feelings is exhausting, and I’m tired. I’m so fuckin’ tired. 

---

Before my dad can get new dentures, he needs to have all sixteen of his remaining teeth extracted. But before that can happen, he needs approval from his primary doctor. But before that can happen, he needs to bring his extremely elevated blood pressure down to a normal range. But before that can happen, he needs to take his blood pressure medication, which he is convinced is going to kill him. 

Still, I push him to take his medication. 

---

My dad and I are in the garage, which has been transformed into my parents’ kitchen, dining, and living room area. The TV is blaring Khmer (my dad’s first language) karaoke music. My dad is cooking his dinner on a portable burner—the kind for camping—on top of the chest freezer. 

“Dad, have you taken your blood pressure medication today?” 

I speak in Vietnamese and my dad grunts to imply that yes, he has.

“Are you sure, Dad? Because I looked at the bottle and it looks like you haven’t taken any pills.” 

“Those pills don’t work. They make your blood pressure go even higher. My doctor friend told me it’s natural for your blood pressure to go up as you age.” 

“Dad, your blood pressure is in the 180s. That’s not normal.” 

He grunts again, as if to tell me, “I’m done talking about this subject.” 

“Dad, why can’t you just do what the doctor tells you?” I feel I’m reverting to my eleven-year-old self again. I’m getting angrier. “You keep complaining about not eating, but in order for you to get your teeth fixed, you have to do this part,” I say. “Can you just think about someone other than yourself for once? Can you think about the time I have to rearrange my schedule to take off work to take you to the doctor’s office only for you to ignore the doctor? Can you think about how I have to ask my husband to take you on the days that I can’t? Can you think about how I’ve taken the time to set up an appointment for you to get your teeth extracted, but that can only happen if you lower your blood pressure? I’ve scheduled every doctor’s appointment. Arranged for you to get to and from. Anything you’ve needed, I’ve done for you. I’ve taken you to the Social Security office. I’ve taken you to the bank. I’ve taken you to the grocery store. Anywhere you needed to go, I’ve taken you. Can you just once be easy? Can you please just understand me and where I’m coming from?”

“I do understand you,” my dad replies. “You don’t understand me.” 

All of a sudden, all the noise—the Khmer karaoke music, the sizzling of fried fish on the burner—becomes muffled. My surroundings become blurry. My mouth no longer is a container for pleading and exhaustion, but acrimony and resentment. I raise my voice. I point.

“If you’re not going to do what the doctor says, then don’t ask me to do anything for you again. It’s just a waste of my time. If you don’t want to fix your teeth, fine, just leave me out of it.” 

---

Trauma manifests in other ways in my mouth. I’m having a particularly difficult time at work and when I wake up from a dream where a staff meeting goes wrong, my jaw is sore. I already know I grind my teeth in my sleep, and now I know that I clench my jaw, too.

---

The next day after my fight with my dad, I vent to my mom about how frustrating he is. 

“All of that is true,” my mom says. “But you are in the wrong, too.” 

“How am I in the wrong?” 

“You do all those things for him, yes, but you shouldn’t throw it in his face like that,” she says. “It’s mất dạy.” 

“Is it disrespectful if it’s true?” 

“You are the daughter. He is the father. By speaking it, you erase the good deed of doing it.” 

This comment fills me with rage. And then I think, Is this what I deserve? Is this what I invited into my life when I brought my parents down to live with us? It’s not enough that I fulfill my daughterly duties, but I have to do so with humility and grace.

I think about the possibility of holding it back, of not speaking what I think is truth and what needs to be heard. I think about those words on the tip of my tongue, touching the backs of my teeth and not being able to come out. And I think about how bitter it would taste to just leave those words there.

---

My baby’s teeth are perfect. Of course, I would love him the same if his teeth were not straight, but I can’t deny I feel pride when I see his teeth. It’s something I can claim that I passed down to him, one less thing for him to worry about.

---

It’s been four months since my dad has had no teeth. In that time, he has developed the menacing habit of running his tongue across both sets of gums. I limit my interactions with him these days, but when I do see this toothless version of him, I feel both pity and righteousness. No matter how strained a relationship is, it is hard for a daughter to see her father struggle with basic things like eating and talking. But getting new teeth didn’t have to be this hard. If he had followed the doctor’s orders, he might have had his new teeth already. When I’m done cycling through these two emotions, another one settles in—shame. No daughter wants to feel pity or righteousness toward her father.

Mike has been taking my dad to most of his dentist appointments, but today is Veterans Day, so I take him. We do not talk during the fifteen-minute car ride there. My contempt for my dad and his lack of consideration throughout this process has rendered us silent. 

We arrive at a run-down dentist’s office with brown and outdated furniture. My dad tries out his new joke on the receptionist. 

“No teeth, man,” my dad says. “I’m like baby. Can’t eat anything.” 

The receptionist gives a courteous laugh. I am not so generous. Although I am being combative toward him, a part of me is relieved. This year has been filled with teeth sagas, and this is the last one. 

After a short wait, my dad is escorted into the back area. He settles into the dental chair. Unlike my mom, he doesn’t cross his feet demurely, set his hands on his stomach, and lay back tranquilly. He’s excitable, like a puppy just released from a cage. He wants to make jokes. He wants to interact. He wants to be the center of attention. 

I see my dad’s new teeth on a dental tray alongside a mirror and sharp, silver pointy things. But none of the tools are needed because when the dentist inserts my dad’s new dentures, my dad says they feel good. 

“There’s no rubbing?” the dentist asks. 

“No, good.” 

I have a feeling they don’t fit quite right, but he’s not speaking up because he wants to come off as an easy patient.

“Dad, if you feel something’s off, say it now so they can fix it and we don’t have to come back later. Mike and I might be too busy with our work schedules to take the time off.” 

This is my way of reminding him to be mindful of me and my husband, not the dentist. 

“No, no. It’s good,” he nods vigorously.

The new teeth make his lips protrude, contorting his face slightly, but it makes a big difference. For as long as I can remember, my dad has always had black holes in his mouth. With these dentures, he looks like a cartoon version of himself. 

“Feel good, look good!” my dad says, smiling a smile I don’t recognize.

Teeth hold our histories. They bear the scars and cavities and grooves and crevices that make us undeniably us. All of that is gone for my dad. He has a completely blank slate. I can’t decide if this is something to mourn or be grateful for.

---

Recently, I went back to the dentist after I had a root canal because I was feeling some pain. I was conditioned to think that any discomfort in my mouth was my fault, a direct result of something I did. Worried that this was the beginning of a cavity and mad at myself for possibly needing more work on my teeth, I booked an appointment to get an X-ray. 

“It’s not likely you have a cavity on that tooth,” my affable dentist said. “Having a root canal means that tooth is dead.” 

“Then why do I feel soreness and pain there?”

“It’s possible that the tooth is bruised. There was a lot of trauma done to it recently.” 

My dentist explained that even though my tooth was dead, there were still tendrils of nerves that were reacting to what I was eating and drinking. As she spoke, I looked past her at the tooth poster on the wall. Blown up that big, the tooth looked sturdy and indestructible. It never crossed my mind that teeth could be tender enough to be bruised. As the dentist finished talking, I realized what I was feeling in my mouth had nothing to do with my actions. It was just the way my body was healing. I left the dentist that day thinking about what it meant to be indestructible and tender at the same time.

---

Whenever things are hard or unfortunate or lacking clarity, Mom will use a Vietnamese saying that means, “it is my fate.” Helping my family members with their teeth issues this year, I had resigned myself to this fate. I believed the best approach was to keep my head down and endure it. I hadn’t realized how hardened I had become.

I have learned to reframe how I think about pain. The dull ache happening in my molars could be the residual effects of a past trauma that I forgot about. A tightness in my jaw could be due to anxiety driving me to clench my teeth. The sting of citrus against a canker sore on the inside of my bottom lip means I need to slow down and drink more water.

I pay attention to my teeth differently now. I used to think my straight teeth were a gift, and whenever they didn’t feel as perfect as they looked, I felt the shame of believing I was taking my gift for granted. I now realize that despite trauma and distress, my teeth persevere. My teeth have taught me a way to be tender, even in the face of a little pain.

 

---

MAGGIE THACH MORSHED is a Vietnamese Khmer American writer based in San Diego. A former award-winning sports journalist who received her MFA in creative nonfiction in 2013, she now writes at the intersection of assimilation, duty, and autonomy from a refugee family’s perspective. Her writing, which explores the tension between obedience and identity, has appeared in Catapult, Full Grown People, Undomesticated, Off Assignment, and diaCRITICS. She was part of the Women’s National Book Association’s 2024 Authentic Voices cohort. She is an academic support specialist at UC San Diego, where she works with low-income and first-generation college students on developing their voices through writing. She is currently working on her memoir. Find her on Instagram @first_daughter_energy.

Featured image by Enis Yavuz, courtesy of Unsplash.