Gale Acuff
Oral History
I wish I could take my teeth from my mouth the way my father could--when I was young he'd frighten me by pushing his upper plate forward with his tongue, then dislodging the lower with his tongue arched like a cat. He'd always smile. I think he was smiling but it also looked like physical pain, embarrassment, and some desire to scare. He did with his dentures what some folks do
with their eyes and what he spoke he never
uttered. He'd take out his teeth and brush them and leave them in a glass on the mantle. There they waited at night, underwater, like twin fetuses, and they floated, two perfect sets of molars and bicuspids and incisors, of a piece with the hard pink gums. Near the end they were useless--he'd lost a lot of weight so they didn't fit so he couldn't chew. But his appetite was still strong, so we fed him through a straw
what he liked best--corned beef and potatoes, masticated in a grinder. I get
religion thinking about it, how one can still eat but the mouthfuls won't digest. When we found him his mouth was open. I've seen babies that way, toothless but prepared, so quiet they seem like dolls, and their eyes gone wide as if looking forward to what's next. I closed them with my index finger. It wasn't easy--not that he resisted but that he didn't flinch. I didn't try my luck with his jaws. I still have his teeth wrapped in one of his handkerchiefs. They're in a box in the top of the hall closet or are they in the attic? I forget. Or perhaps I shared them with my sister.
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