False Teeth

False Teeth by Joan B V Heaton

It isn't funny to lose your teeth. I was fifty when I lost two of mine.
I was glad to get rid of them really. Toothache is a pain. But I wasn't
prepared for the come down - both physical and psychological. You know
that weak feeling that lingers after the 'flu. It was like that. Plus
the depression. It made me wonder. I didn't need dentures. I had two
crowns fitted. That's a story in itself. I have sensitive nerves and
the painkiller didn't work. The dentist, a lovely man, kept on topping
it up until I ended up almost comatose and he had to give me oxygen to
revive me. I could tell that he was worried. He started to sweat. But
that was nothing compared to what my husband had to go through.

I blame the cardiologist. But, to be fair, if you go through a pack and
a half of strong cigarettes a day, which my husband does, the teeth
have to suffer. Anyway, the heart tablets worked but the side effect
was seven lost teeth. Nasty. Three days in the dentist's chair. The
dentures look lovely though. Better than the real teeth, to be honest.
Let's face it. A mouthful of false teeth is a small price to pay for a
healthy heart. My husband looks like a young man. He won't go near a
dentist again though. Never will. Just like my Dad. Bolted out of the
dentist's surgery leaving my mother there, embarrassed and furious,
explaining to the receptionist that he'd had a phobia about dentists
since the war. Army dentists were sadists, he said. They had to be.
There were more important things going on. Which brings me to my
mother. Bless her.

My mother's had dentures since she was nineteen. That's why she was
fanatical about caring for our teeth. No fizzy drinks. No sweets. No
biscuits. Brush and floss. Rinse and gargle. Beautiful teeth. We didn't
appreciate it then. Kids don't appreciate anything their parents do for
them, do they? We appreciate it now though. My mother told us that
she'd had beautiful teeth when she was a girl. Good teeth ran in her
family. I never thought to ask her why she'd lost hers so young when
she'd looked after them so well. Her father was very strict. He'd line
them up every morning and inspect their teeth and their shoes, in that
order. Shiny teeth and shiny shoes. I don't know what he would have
done if they'd let him down, but they never did. They were too scared
of him. But something had happened in my mother's life, and she
couldn't talk about it. Psychologists call it denial. You just wipe
something out of your mind. Nobody talked about anything in that
family. Just whispers and looks. This is the story of why my mother
lost her beautiful teeth and had to wear dentures for the rest of her
life. I see it as an act of revenge and hatred.

My mother was a country girl, the eldest of five children, and the
acknowledged village beauty. Her aunt used to send her exquisite
clothes from London, not that she could afford to buy them, of course.
Her employer, a rather famous aristocratic lady, would give her
cast-offs. These cast-offs were haute couture. You can imagine. They
fitted my mother perfectly. She had a twenty two inch waist in those
days. She looked stunning. I've seen the photographs. Her aunt also
sent her shoes that had been especially made to match the outfits. The
trouble was that my mother had country girl feet, not as dainty as she
would have liked. She squeezed her feet into those gorgeous shoes and
suffered. Like those old Chinese ladies with bound feet. Now she's
crippled with bunions. I've always loved shoes too. Italian shoes in
the softest leather. Mother was fanatical about our feet. We were
always being measured on those X-ray machines in the shoe shop. Length
and width. Each foot separately. I had one foot longer than the other.
Most people do, apparently. We loved it until we were teenagers. Then
we were embarrassed and refused to wear sensible shoes. We had to at
school though. The nuns were very strict about shoes. But at the
weekends, no way. We crippled our feet for the sake of fashion. Well,
you had to, didn't you? Street cred, they call it now. Just like my
mother really. Just realised that. Must be in the genes. Just thought.
My mother was like her father. Always checking our teeth and feet. I
did that to my children too. Funny how things that go round, come
round. But my mother did look beautiful in those lovely outfits her
aunt sent her. Perhaps she looked too lovely considering what happened
to her.

I forgot to mention that my mother's family was not only good looking
but very clever. And my mother was the cleverest. They all said that.
She was her father's pride and joy. Beautiful and brilliant. She won a
scholarship and was all set for a glittering academic career. My
grandmother had made great sacrifices to put money aside for books and
school uniform. She bought the books my mother needed second hand but
they were in perfect condition. They looked after books in those days,
didn't they? Not like today. Our children don't have much respect for
books any more. Easy come, easy go. They have too much money. They know
the price of everything and the value of nothing. My mother loved those
books. She cherished them. Then, they said she couldn't take up her
scholarship. It's hard to understand really, but my mother was blamed
for her father's apostasy. That's what the nuns told my grandmother. It
means that my grandfather wouldn't go to church. My grandmother was a
daily communicant but grandfather had had a philosophical disagreement
with the priest and banned him from ever crossing his threshold. My
mother went to church with her mother but that didn't count. It was her
father who mattered to the nuns and they said that he was a heathen. My
mother was the daughter of a heathen and, because she was clever like
her father, she might be subversive and spread discord through the
convent. The nuns didn't want trouble from an enquiring mind. My
grandmother begged them to reconsider but the nuns said she should pray
for her husband's soul and that was the end of it. My grandfather said
that he would burn down the convent with all the old hypocrites in it,
but that was just the drink talking. My grandmother was able to sell
the books to my mother's cousin. He was an only child and his father
was a rich farmer. They could afford to pay for new books really but
they felt sorry for my grandmother. My mother told me that her cousin
went to university and travelled the world, going to conferences in
places she hadn't even heard of. I could tell she was resentful. Not
against her cousin. She liked him. No, it was deeper than that.

You might wonder what all this has to do with my mother's teeth, but
you'll see how the small things all add up until something awful
happens. It's like that butterfly that flaps its wings in the Amazon
Basin. It can cause a catastrophe in China. I could never quite work
that out but I get the philosophical idea. It's the little things that
count. My mother had to leave school and get a job. She was lucky.
Because she was pretty and clever, the local doctor gave her a job as
his receptionist. When she got paid, she gave all her wages to her
mother and my grandmother gave her back a little pocket money. Remember
that my mother lived in a small village and her aunt sent her beautiful
clothes, so she really didn't need to spend any money at all. I suppose
she bought a lipstick and some face powder now and again, but her
father wouldn't let her wear make-up anyway, so she probably
experimented in her bedroom. Her father wouldn't let her go to dances
either, so she must have had a very dull life. All my mother wanted to
do was go to college and read novels. She was a romantic. I suppose
what happened was inevitable. When the new teacher came to the village
school from the city, my mother just wanted to talk to somebody
interesting for a change. The trouble was that he was quite a bit older
and my mother was in awe of him. My grandmother should never have let
her go to that summer dance in the church hall, but she felt sorry for
my mother. She was a pretty young girl after all and my grandmother
blamed herself for losing the scholarship. She helped my mother climb
out of the bedroom window and told my grandfather that she had gone on
an errand for a sick neighbour. If he had seen her in her gorgeous
frock, he wouldn't have believed a word of it. And that was when the
teacher asked my mother to dance and fell madly in love with her. And
that was when the trouble started.

My mother told me that she didn't love the teacher even though he was a
very nice man, and handsome too. He was too old. She was seventeen and
he was thirty and he was more like a kind father to her. He told her
that she was very pretty and she liked that. She was only a country
girl of seventeen. He gave her books too. She had to hide them in her
room. If my grandfather had found out, he would have been very angry
and would not have allowed my mother out of the house, not even to her
job. My grandmother was suspicious though, and I expect that she was a
bit worried about it, but the teacher was a responsible older man and
could see that my mother was clever. Grandmother probably thought that
he was only interested in my mother's mind. And she probably thought
that my mother was an innocent young country girl. On the other hand,
my grandmother could not have been that na?ve. It was probably another
case of denial. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. That kind of
thing. I'm not saying anyone involved was evil. No, that came
later.

When my mother found out that she was pregnant, she didn't need to tell
her mother. She already knew, as mothers do. My mother's aunt, the one
who sent the frocks, was home on holiday.
"The girl's in trouble," she said to my grandmother.
"Her father mustn't find out," my grandmother replied.
My mother was there at the time, numb with terror and shame. That's all
they said about it. The next thing she knew, she was in a car with her
aunt, waving goodbye to her mother. She never found out how her mother
managed to get her away. She must have told some story to her father
and it must have been a good one for him to let her go. The teacher
didn't know anything about it, but he must have guessed when my mother
disappeared. He tried to find her later. I believe he really loved her.
No-one thought of him though. They were too scared of my
grandfather.
"He would have committed murder if he'd found out," my mother told me
years later. Somehow, I doubt it. At worst, there would have been a
rumpus. Better a rumpus than what happened next.

My mother's aunt, as committed to the Church as her sister was, took my
mother to a convent in the city and abandoned her there. That was what
they did in those days. This was a convent that took in women in
trouble and made them atone for their sins by treating them as slaves.
They made them give birth to their bastards with rudimentary medical
help and no love, and, even worst, made them care for their babies for
six months, before taking them away for adoption and showing the
mothers the door. This is what happened to my mother and my mother's
baby. They took out all my mother's teeth when she complained of
toothache and, kind souls that they were, gave her ill-fitting dentures
that made her look as though she had buck teeth. I think those nuns
were teeming with resentment, otherwise they could not have been so
cruel. They had probably been forced into the convent by their parents
when really they wanted pretty frocks and husbands and babies. You have
to feel sorry for them too. Remember the doctor who my mother had
worked for. He must have suspected something. My grandmother managed to
get a good reference from him for my mother, no questions asked, and my
mother's aunt had contacts in the city and got her a job with a Jewish
dentist. My mother got a decent job and lovely new dentures and has
liked Jews ever since. She said that they were the only people who
helped her when she was at her wit's end. She said she'd seen a girl
jump off the roof of the convent with her baby rather than leave
without it. The nuns said that was a double mortal sin. Suicide and
murder. My mother was only nineteen and she'd had a glimpse of hell.
She'd lost her family and her baby. Her baby was taken from her at six
months. She was a beautiful, clever young girl, who had been humiliated
and tormented and had lost a part of her very self. I see a lot of evil
in that.

The thing that gave her hope was the thought that her baby would be
adopted by a loving couple who would give him every advantage in life,
something she could never do without support. Where was the teacher in
all this? Well, he tried to find my mother and his baby, but, by then,
it was too late. My mother was ashamed. She wanted to forget the
humiliation. He wanted to marry her but she couldn't go back home and
face her family. She had brought dishonour on them. I don't have much
time for all that nonsense. Perhaps if she had loved the teacher, they
could have faced the family together, a united front. Perhaps they
could have taken their baby back. But my mother had to get away, far
away, and that is what she did. Years later, she heard that the teacher
was a broken man. He made an unhappy marriage and had no children. He
died young. Things happen like that sometimes. Remember the Jewish
dentist that my mother worked for. He knew that she needed to get away
to a new life and sent her to a brother who lived abroad. He was a
dentist too and that was where she met my father. He fell in love with
her at first sight, but now she was twenty four and not a foolish
country girl. This time she fell in love too and I was born soon after
their first wedding anniversary. She still had trouble with her
dentures though. They were always uncomfortable.

The past has a way of catching up with people, doesn't it? My mother
had named her son after her father. That seemed strange to me when she
told me but I think I understand now. She was trying to maintain a
connection. She must have felt very lonely. He found her in the end.
He'd never been adopted, only fostered, but he'd been lucky. He loved
his foster family and they loved him. They were poor and he'd had no
advantages in life like we had, but he'd been loved. That's all that
matters. He only looked for his biological mother, my mother, when his
foster parents were dead. He told me that he hadn't even thought about
it, but his best friend, a priest, said he ought to find out where he'd
come from. I don't know about that, especially since he'd been happy in
his ignorance. Sometimes people should mind their own business. If my
father had not been the good man he was, things might have been very
different. He understood everything my mother had been through and felt
nothing but compassion for her and her son, our new brother. And
strangely enough, my mother's son adored my father, who was no blood
relation of his at all. He kept his distance from my mother though and
she did from him. They are very polite with each other but, I can see
that they are both scared of love. Why shouldn't they be? They were
once torn apart from each other.

When you discover a long lost relative, or one that you didn't know you
had until you were middle aged yourself, you can't help but look for a
family resemblance. Our brother looked nothing like us. He didn't even
look like my mother, so he must have taken after his father. That must
have been hard for my mother, like an apparition from the past. There
was one thing I noticed though. He had lovely teeth. Really lovely
teeth. His foster mother must have taken care of them. Then, I thought,
dentures are so good these days, that sometimes you can't tell. Just
look at my husband. He has perfect teeth now. I kept on looking, but I
couldn't tell if they were his real teeth or very good dentures.
Anyway, it really doesn't matter in the end, does it?