In the dry years, my teeth begin to fall from my mouth. Not in a clatter, but softly. I collect them in the blue enamel pot we used to keep for tea leaves, bury them beneath the kitchen window, scrape furrows in the dirt with my fingernails. When the weather breaks, perhaps they’ll sprout. Perhaps they’ll grow. Mother doubts it.
She says it might never rain again. Sometimes she tells me stories of when water fell freely from the sky, when pools and puddles collected in the street for anyone to see, when flowers bloomed in pinks and butter-yellow clouds, when parks were lined with sweeping trees, when lush green grass frilled the roadsides. I try to recall, but the pictures are faded and grey.
We bathe in sand, eat beans from tins with rough oatmeal biscuits soaked in the sauce. The Government trucks in water to town for drinking, and milk to the school for the children. It comes in trays once a month. Row after row of small bottles with golden foil lids that glint like jewels in the sun. I love the feel of the glass, heavy and cool against the skin of my palm. I save my share of milk for Mother, who rightly demands it. She gave her teeth to the dry and her bones are brittle, she’s a tumble weed that whispers through the streets in the desert dusk.
No matter what I do, the milk always spoils in the heat before I get home. Mother doesn’t mind. She waits for me in her chair on the veranda, blinking. Brown dust cakes her dress and settles deep in the folds of her face. She tilts her head like a hungry baby bird, and I spoon yellow curds into the puckered crevice of her mouth. She clutches my hand, flicks her dry tongue over her lips, seeking every last speck. When we’re done, she closes her eyes and coos.
The University sends a doctor to our class to check our bones. A dentist to look at our teeth for his studies. We gather beforehand to watch the clouds of red dirt billow on the horizon as they approach. We grin gap-tooth when they alight in their fresh white coats. I line up with the others, allow the doctor to run probing hands up and down my spine. I reach to touch my toes. I squat. When the dentist asks, I open wide. He doesn’t like what he sees in my smile. The teeth I have left jut crooked, this way and that, wooden fence posts battered in a flinted wind. He says if I hope to save any, I need fillings and braces and both in a hurry. I laugh. It’s as likely I’ll sail a clipper ship down the cracked creek bed.
When the last of my teeth come loose, I clamp my jaw together to try to hold them in a little longer, savour the click, click, click as they meet. My gums itch and ache, they feel the loss already. The skin of my lips and my cheeks is soft and sinking. Mother comforts me as I cry, catches my tears with her fingertip, sucks at each one like it’s spun sugar candy. She takes my face in her hands, kisses my mouth and counsels my surrender. She reaches in with her tiny clawing fingers, wobbles each tooth gently, ready to tug them all free. I ask her to wait until they fall on their own, but she refuses. She tells me it won’t hurt. Like pulling little flowers, from a bed of soft, damp soil.