Image by Louise Evans

A Jar of Teeth

Teeth are funny. They mean different things to different people. Once, when I was younger, I met this boy called Charles. Which may or may not have been his real name. Charles loved his teeth. Perhaps more than what was considered normal. Skin was black as coal, his teeth glowed white, framed by his wide smile. Row upon row of polished white teeth crammed his mouth like pearl peas in a dark pod. I didn’t trust that smile, but I couldn’t stop staring.

I imagined him brushing them religiously every night for three minutes, not two, with an egg timer to keep him on track. Then I imagined him flossing. And mouthwash afterwards. Listerine -  of course. The one that had the built-in-whitener. And he would use a whitening gel and painstakingly paint it on each tooth - careful to get in the folds. Then he would wait, mouth gaping like a fish, for it to dry.

But his teeth were in his mouth. Exactly where you would expect them to be. But sometimes, I now know, teeth appear in other places. With the looming threat of ripping flesh.

And then there’s The Coroner's Report. Like fingerprints, teeth tell you who a person is or was. I guess dad’s did the same. Sort of. That is what I have decided to remember anyway.

I’m remembering dad. And in doing so, I remember what I want to remember, what I feel to remember. And some bits I misremember, but I have my reasons. I am also aware that my remembering isn’t the same as his remembering or her remembering. Mine is unique to me. Like teeth. And like teeth, my collection of memories help me piece together who my dad was. I line up me memories like a line of shiny clean teeth. And so in remembering him, I am keeping a piece of myself intact. Disease free. For we are our memories, are we not? A version of our parents. And so by remembering dad, I’m keeping him in one place to protect them and him. Ergo, to protect myself. So reader, I warn you. My memories are just that. Fragments of a person that can help me to keep myself together so that I don’t disintegrate. It’s bad enough that dad is disintegrating. Collecting memories of him in a makeshift jar is the very least I can do.

 I begin the jigsaw of my dad with a random piece. A memory of a story from mum.

She never knew dad had false teeth. Not when they chatted over a white wine dinner, and not when they were saying 'I do’ in front of the priest and God himself. Maybe she just thought he had perfectly straight white teeth. Dad didn’t put his teeth by the bed. Not in the early days.

So when mum called him from the bathroom one day to answer a collect call from Jamaica from gran, she screamed to see an empty deep-pink space framed by white frothy lips and pink gums. A toothbrush in one hand and his teeth in another. That was the beginning of the truth about dad. I suspect these same teeth that were there in the beginning, will be there at the end, for like the boy from my childhood, my dad looked after his teeth but still slept with them in his mouth like real teeth and I now wonder who that particular lie was for. I was to come to realise that dad kept many secrets. And just like there were secrets in the beginning, there were secrets at the end too.

Dementia eats away, with teeth, at everything that makes a person a person. The brain is not enough physical food for its monstrous maw. It steals, with folds of flesh, life in real time.     

Dad’s life was full. I wasn’t allowed to see all, but now it's almost done, his secrets are spilling over like sticky beer from a too-full glass. Overflowing and making a mess.

One childhood memory was when dad was making his famous seasoned rice for dinner and Jackie saw on television an x ray of lungs. This was in the days when Jackie was Jackie rather than Jacquie.

She was eating an orange, sat on the brown fluffy carpet of the living room. The sun spilled in creating a triangular glare on the TV screen. Obscuring our view. Jackie swallowed an orange pip, as she regularly did when eating oranges. And as she watched the television pictures popped up: an xray of lungs. She stared at the flower-like alveoli budding and she remembered what dad had told her about the pips. Gulping, she glared at me wide-eyed. Dad warned her she’d grow an orange tree in her stomach if she kept swallowing those pips. And here she was confronted with the evidence on the TV screen. For she didn't see lungs. She saw the buds of a tree growing inside the poor unfortunate soul on the television. And as dad entered the room, the smell of the seasoned rice proceeding him, he laughed when he saw her face frozen in horror and holding the pip-less orange in her hand. Dad’s lies manifest but masquerading as truth.

Those were the days when I assumed dad was who he appeared to be. I assumed the white teeth I saw in his smiling mouth were as real as him. Those teeth were where they should be. Immovable. Reliable. My pure white honest dad. I thought he would always be the strong stubborn difficult man I loved. I didn’t realise that years later, when I visited him in his home, most of who I knew him to be would be gone. His santa-like stomach wobbled as his large frame shook in glee. That contagious chortle made us all fall about laughing on that fluffy brown carpet. All that was stolen. Or perhaps the dad I thought I knew, didn’t really exist.

I didn’t know that I would dread going to see the strange interloper that looked like my dad and sounded like my dad. He laughed like my dad, and argued like my dad but wasn’t my dad. It didn’t make sense. I’d stare at his face looking for that strong, funny, santa-like presence. Maybe he was in there somewhere. The least I could do was try to find him in the folds of wrinkled skin, and in the conversations where he’d use joined up words without joined up meaning. But this dad was different.

This dad was skinny and feeble, whereas my dad was large and strong. This dad ate crackers soaked in tea, whereas my dad like oxtail soup, curried mutton and fried chicken with rice and peas.

This dad turned the air blue with his puce curses and his angry outbursts. This dad didn’t know me, and when the wife told him I was his daughter, he’d smile and say, ‘is it?’ as if she were lying, and I was lying and he was just playing along before turning back to drink his tea with sloppy crackers that reminded me of sick. For his teeth weren’t what they used to be so he struggled to chew. And his stomach wasn’t what it used to be so he struggled to digest. And his sight wasn’t what it used to be so he struggled to see me.

The smell of urine would cling as his sense of self would flow out of him when he urinated on the veranda floor. I guess the bit of his brain that told him he would need the toilet had vanished with the bit of him that knew I was his daughter. And I vowed when I left, I would never return.

There were three of us, and a fourth adopted, but there was a fifth we had always heard of growing up. Years after, we discovered a sixth that dad swore he knew nothing about. And now he couldn’t keep his secrets in anymore, I heard of another. A seventh. A boy.

I also discovered that she was my stepmother. My brother and I asked for proof, and she showed us years old pictures in a church with guests, and a priest, and she, a bride. And she showed us a certificate with signatures. A younger version of my dad, sepia stained, stared up at me from the pictures while my blood silently steamed. And I wonder if I knew him at all.

All I have left is a jigsaw of the past because the present isn’t so much as a gift but a reality check of what I thought I knew. And the future? Remains as always the future does. A mystery. So I try to piece together the memories I have of him so I can piece together who he was. And I try not to be cross for I know at times the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And I try to tell myself that I didn’t mean my vow and of course I will go back and see him again - God willing.     

Like I said before, I misremember for my own reasons and know he kept his secrets for his. But he is still my dad. And behind the anger and feelings of betrayal, is the love I feel for him. Of course I still love him. It’s Mosaic law. Written into your DNA. ‘Honour thy father’ - implying it is a choice.

By collecting and polishing my memories and lining them up in a nice, neat row of sparkling white teeth, I don’t get eaten. The monster doesn’t get to rip and devour my brain; erode my sense of self like it did his. I keep them fresh in a jar at a respectful distance for I understand, more than most, the silent threat of sharp, strong, healthy white teeth that have been well fed.

I remember so dad doesn’t disintegrate any more than he has to. I remember because he no longer can. I remember my dad in pieces, like his brain has been eaten in pieces and I create my jigsaw image. Guarding against the teeth of dementia, I polish my memories, smooth out the sharp edges so that I can see dad better. And these memories I place in an old jam jar. Safe. Beside my bed. There, I can look at them whenever I want. For now they cannot bite, and tear and devour me. I have neutralised the threat. I can keep them. Perfectly safe pearly white teeth, and remember my dad.

Cheryl Diane Parkinson is a Caribbean-British-born writer/educator from East London, living in Norfolk. She is an educator of 14 years, teaching English Literature and Language at GCSE and A Level and has recently passed her PhD at Birmingham University. She has been writing since 2010 and her publishing history includes The Revolving Door published in 2018 and Our Lives Matter published June 2020. She is currently looking for literary representation.

Louise Evans is a graphic designer and illustrator living in Bristol. She is interested in socio- linguistic history and the physicality of books. She does design for The Grapevine.