Bad teeth: she took buses and walked with her mom and finally arrived at the dental clinic. But would the white dentist really keep her from losing her teeth?(Fictional work)

CAVITIES RAN IN OUR FAMILY like dark hair y cerveza. No one, not my father, mother or auntie, had their own teeth. They had cajas, yellow teeth they pulled out at night and dumped in plastic cups of tepid water. They removed their teeth after the 11 o'clock news, when there was nothing more to say and the skin around their mouths could curl into itself.

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Dentures happened to people who lived in New Jersey. If we lived in Colombia, or worse, in Cuba, my mother said, we would just have holes in our mouths. As far back as she and Papi could remember, no one in our family had kept their teeth. No one had money for such things, and so ...