The Dentures

Pat Orozco Munoz (2000)

She had nightmares and did not know if the noise in the dining room was the result of her poor digestion. With the same agility she had several years ago, she sat in her bed and imagined all her china crashing to breaking. She thought of going to the dining room immediately, but she had to turn the light on.

She searched for the ivory-handled walking stick. She always left it beside her pillow. With the walking stick she used to pull the light switch, but the stick was not there. It was strange not to find the stick there, as that was its usual place since she decided she was old and needed the support that Don Gaston, her husband, never used.

She still remembered when they went to the Persian market and Don Gaston bought the walking stick; that day she vomited the refried sausages she had eaten for lunch. They believed she was pregnant and it was then, after many tests, the doctor told them she was sterile.

She heard the door of her room being opened, creaking for lack of oil, making the same noise for forty years. She had tired of telling Don Gaston to oil it with ‘3 in 1 Colombian oil’, until finally she got used to its creaking. There was no difference between the creaking and her husband’s snoring.

She would turn the light on, but she did not have her dentures in, and could not let anyone see her without them. In thirty years of using the dentures, she had only taken them out to sleep. She used to leave her dentures in the Baccarat glass on the table beside her bed. She extended her hand over the table’s smooth surface, looking for the glass, but like the walking stick, it was not there. 

She dropped the watch. She could no longer know the time. On her wedding day her mother had given her that watch with little green lights, so she should know what time her husband arrived at night without put the light on. That night, her wedding night, she experienced the watch’s value. Don Gaston arrived very drunk at four in the morning and dropped onto the bed fully clothed. In the thirty-five years that they were married, he had done the same thing ten times. She counted and wrote them in the bible so that God would not forget them.  The chamber pot fell on the floor as if someone had stumbled upon it, but that was not a concern, she had not urinated yet.

 She used to wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning to urinate, so she calculated it must be approximately 2.00 am. Early to get up, but she had no other choice. She did not take even a second to put the light on. In her face was a boy of about twelve years old, trying to get her China and her watch with little green lights into a plastic bag with red letters that read "Say No to drugs ". She forgot she was 80 years old, took the chamber pot and ran after him. The boy dropped the plastic bag with the watch with little green lights and the China and tripped over the Louis XV-style chair Don Gaston had purchased at auction. She grabbed him by the leg and hit him with the chamber pot until she remembered that, she did not have her dentures in.  She threw down the chamber pot, and covered her mouth then, and the boy jumped out of the window. She remembered that she was 80 and could not jump out of windows. 

She looked for her dentures in the dining room, in the kitchen, under the bed, in the cookie jar, but she did not find them even in the Baccarat glass. However, she was too old to have new dentures made, and fifteen years ago Miguelito Lopez, her dentist, had drowned with his three false teeth.