fissile leaves he peels back left, the other is levered right, and both are pinioned with the clips and cotton wool wads passed by his assistant. A tubular drain is clamped in the crease of the patient’s mouth, sucking away the copious liquids which rise and pool.
Using such rudimentary devices as a metal probe and varieties of grasping forceps, following the fragmented peaks and troughs of the stumps and the shadowy, submerged outlines of the X-rays, Dr van Toren locates the furthest reach of each root canal and with pliers and drill, individually extricates, eradicates, what remains of Nora Murphy’s teeth. And you would be surprised at how much this is. For although the upper biting surfaces, in the main, are pulverised and crumbled, many roots are deeply embedded, since that is the purpose and definition of a dental root. To hold fast. To fasten firmly to the jaw. Not to be pulled out.
Given the state of Nora’s mouth, though, some teeth pull loose with relative ease; others are compacted, and must be forced.
The procedure is repeated for the upper jaw, with all the added complications of angle and approach.
Throughout, Dr van Toren must move in as closely as possible. He must do everything but straddle. He must yank and prise, wrestling with Mrs Murphy’s arched resistance while trying not to hurt her and hurting her all the same.
Throughout, though she may shut her eyes, despite their involuntary tendency to remain open in sympathetic horror, she has to keep her mouth agape, more so than the very mask of tragedy. The young female nurse is breathing heavily. When she is not cued to pass surgical tools from the tray, she holds the patient’s hand, stroking stroking soothing with her feeble, frantic thumb.
Nora is the patient, so it is up to her to be patient. Van Toren is the doctor, so he must doctor her. And there is the nurse assistant, who must nurse and assist.
For all three people in the room, over the course of several hours, the actions required are condensed to the most simple. Lie still open wide grip twist pass stroke pull. By the end, patient, doctor, nurse, all are reddened with blood.
And then it is over. Nora has found the wherewithal to endure.
There is no one to fetch her home, unfortunately, so again Nora weighs her options, and it’s the bus. Though sweet Jesus there’s a seat so she doesn’t have to stand and it’s the 86, not the Number 7, so she can get off right outside the gate, instead of having to walk up the hill from the tearoom.
With all the bruising, she looks a wreck, and for a while some neighbours suspect that Mark’s back on the scene, because Nora’s been beaten up.
Then after a few weeks the purple and blue fade to marbled olive, seeping to dull yellow. And then one day Nora looks nearly normal again. Her mouth is healed.
Dr van Toren takes the wax impression of the patient’s gums, and the dentures are fabricated to specification by the technician, methodically honed and buffed. Minor adjustments of tooth height and bite are made in the dentist’s surgery during Nora’s next appointment and, There. The teeth fit, as well as can be expected. Fixed up. The teeth become her.
Again, Nora looks like herself, comely, a ready smile with thirty-two serviceable teeth. Her full complement. Not snow white, which wouldn’t be credible, but reassuringly milky, just this side of cream. They are moulded of polymethyl methacrylate, a specialist acrylic plastic. Of course there is rubbing and discomfort, most of which diminishes as the gums harden, becoming accustomed to the new addition, though a few raw, ulcerated spots remain for always. And always the odd, clicking sensation of something extra, of talking with your mouth full.
In addition, she must become particularly vigilant about what she eats, which is quite a turn-up for the books, given that she’s spent her life watching out for food. How to get it. Enough of it.
But on the whole, she is, as they say, right as rain, though when she considers the pink, still toothless mouth of the baby, then she really wants to spit. And when she’s starting to forget, busy again with the inviting blankness of her crosswords, Nora chances on the word ‘prosthesis’. Reads 1. (Gram.) Addition of letter or syllable at beginning of word e.g. be- in beloved. 2. (Surg.) Making up of deficiencies (e.g. by false teeth or artificial limb). Part thus supplied. And she feels so stupid that a damn dictionary can make her cry, reduce her to tears. She cries and cries.
Every night, the young woman must remove her teeth like an old person and soak them in a sterilising solution, though never will she tolerate the glass on the bedside cabinet, the false teeth steeping, sleeping, next to her bed. Come bedtime, the teeth in their glass are banished to the medicine cabinet.
But despite this little, off-putting distance, and the lifelong fact that every morning she starts the day smelling like the chlorinated public swimming pool, her taste buds cringing, gradually she comes to accept.
Okay, for pity’s sake! The teeth are mine, all right, they are part of me.
Still, for some years she will try to hide the fact of the dentures from her small children, because she realises that they, like her, will be afraid of the person with the shrunken face. Yet with time the teeth become a familiar presence, even to the little girls. Their mom’s falsies. Like the cotton wool padding some women stick in their bras to give them bigger boosies. Over the years, the teeth become their mother’s, and it is only in wearing them that she is their mother and, to herself, a woman as becoming as once she was. Only people who know, know.
Name-calling
When her second labour begins, Mark’s off again somewheres, still hopelessly seeking his fortune. Nothing new there except a new baby which tips the scales at a hefty ten pounds and some change. A girl, again, but feisty this time, and a real devil to deliver.
This child is constantly hungry and she clamps to her mother with a gusto that goes beyond hearty, a warning clear enough for anyone to heed. The hospital staff cannot credit their ears. What newborn screams like that at its mother, shattering the hard-won quiet of the general ward? That’s some pair of lungs, god forbid, and the fed-up face on her!
I want more! this baby yells, regardless of the rebuking stares, its mouth a violent cavity opening into a deep maw. More! Gulping greedily – nipple, air, milk – until the plump chin is crusted with curds and her body, saturated for now, floats, farts, puttering into the swell of a choppy history.
Though Nora’s had it with history for the present. How it has no respect for privacy, ignores doors, closed or otherwise, rather like the extremes of Durban weather.
Just the week before, driven by that pregnant urge to tidy the nest, she’d been sorting through Mark’s musty clothes, the signs of his long absence taking up too much space in her heart. And wouldn’t you know it – in the pocket of his sports coat, there it is. The blasted love note that detonates the little she has. She slumps on the lino, letter in hand, her pregnant stomach swilling like a buoy in the wake of a bulk carrier, all the world’s flotsam bilging on the surge.
But she pulls herself together and recovers her equilibrium. She’s not finished by the blast, and nor does she lose a limb, though for that moment she feels torn apart. And likely looks it too, she hmphs, pushing the ragged hair from her face.
However, she’s not dead, for heaven’s sakes. Am I dead? she asks the woman in the mirror. I am not.
It would take much more than this to do her in, so yes, the written evidence being small enough and her own insight now hard won, her life remains intact.
Although she cannot deny how suddenly it
