The nurse explained to my parents that the presence of my four teeth was a rare condition in our country, but one that was not uncommon among other races. It was called congenital prenatal dentition.
What kind of races? asked my father, on the defensive. Caucasians, sir, said the nurse.
But this child is as dark as the inside of a needle, Dad replied.
Genetics is a science full of gods, Mr. Sánchez.
That must have consoled my father. He finally resigned himself to carrying me home in his arms, wrapped up in a thick flannel blanket.
Not long after my birth, we moved to Ecatepec, where Mom made a living cleaning other people’s houses. Dad didn’t clean anything, not even his own nails. They were thick, rough, and black. He used to pare them with his teeth. Not from anxiety, but because he was idle and overbearing. While I was doing my homework at the table, he would be silently studying them, stretched out by the fan in the green velvet armchair Mom inherited from Mr. Cortázar, our neighbor in 4-A, after he died of tetanus. When Mr. Cortázar’s progeny came to take away his belongings, they left us his macaw, Criteria — who suffered a terminal case of sadness after a few weeks — and the green velvet armchair where Dad took to lounging every evening. Lost to the world, he would study the damp patches on the ceiling while listening to public radio and pull off pieces of nail, one finger at a time.
Starting with his little finger, he’d press a corner of the nail between his upper and lower central incisors, detach a tiny sliver, and, in a single motion, tear off the half moon of excess nail. After he’d detached the sliver, he’d hold it in his mouth for a moment or two, roll his tongue, and blow: it would shoot out and land on the notebook I was using to do my homework. The dogs would be barking outside in the street. I’d contemplate the piece of nail lying there, dead and dirty, a few millimeters from the point of my pencil. Then I’d draw a circle around it and go on doing my writing exercises, carefully avoiding the circle. Bits of nail would keep falling from the heavens onto my ruled Scribe notebook like meteorites propelled by the current of air from the fan: ring, middle, index, and, finally, the thumb. And then the other hand. I’d go on fitting the letters around the small circumferenced craters left on the page by Dad’s airborne trash. When I was finished, I’d gather up the nails into a small pile and put them in my trouser pocket. Afterwards, in my bedroom, I’d place them in a paper envelope I kept under my pillow. During the course of my childhood, the nail collection got to be so large that I filled several envelopes. End of memory.
Dad no longer has any teeth. Or nails, or a face: he was cremated two years ago, and, at his request, Mom and I scattered his ashes in Acapulco Bay. A year later, I buried Mom next to her sisters and brothers in Pachuca, the Beautiful Windy City. It’s always raining there, and there’s hardly a breath of air. I travel to Pachuca to see her once a month, usually on Sundays. But I never go as far as the cemetery, because I’m allergic to pollen and there are lots of flowers there. I get off the bus not far from the gates, at a lovely median strip with life-size dinosaur sculptures, and I stay right there among the gentle fiberglass beasts — getting soaked, saying Our Fathers — until my feet swell up and I feel tired. Then I go back across the street, carefully dodging the puddles — round as the craters in my childhood notebook — and wait for the bus to take me back to the station.
My first job was at the Rubén Darío newspaper stand, on the corner of Aceites and Metales. I was eight years old and all my milk teeth had already fallen out. They had been replaced by others, as wide as shovels, each pointing in a different direction. My boss’s wife, Azul, was my first true friend, even though she was twenty years older than me. Her husband kept her locked up in the house. At eleven every morning, he sent me there with a set of keys to see what Azul was doing and to ask if I could fetch her anything from the shops.
Azul would generally be lying on the bed in her underwear, with Mr. Unamuno all over her. Mr. Unamuno was a pigeon-chested old codger who had a program on public radio. His show always opened with the same line: “This is Unamuno: modestly depressed, engagingly eclectic, and sentimentally political.” Idiot. When I came into the room, Mr. Unamuno would spring up, tuck in his shirt, and clumsily button up his trousers. I, in the meanwhile, would be looking at the floor and, sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, at Azul, who would still be lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, passing the tips of her fingers over her bared midriff.
When he was finally fully dressed and with his glasses on, Mr. Unamuno would come over and give me a rap on the forehead with the palm of his hand.
Weren’t you taught to knock, Turnpike?
Azul used to come to my defense: He’s called Highway, and he’s my friend. And then she’d give a deep and simple laugh, showing disconcertingly long canine teeth with flattened points.
After Mr. Unamuno had finally slipped out — all anxious — through the back door, Azul would wrap the sheet around herself like a superhero’s cape and invite me to jump on the bed. When we got tired of jumping, we’d lie down and play pocket billiards. She was always very gentle. When we’d finished that, she’d give me a slice of bread and a pouch of mineral water with a straw, then send me back to the newspaper stand. On the way, I’d drink the water and put the straw in my pocket for later. I eventually accumulated more than ten thousand straws, word of honor.
What was Azul doing? Mr. Darío would ask when I returned to the stand.
I’d cover for her, inventing the details of some innocent activity:
She was just trying to thread a needle to mend her cousin’s new baby’s christening gown.
Which cousin?
She didn’t say.
It must be Sandra, or Berta. Here’s your tip, and now off to school with you.
I finished primary, middle, and high school and passed unnoticed with good grades, because I’m the sort that doesn’t make waves. I never opened my mouth, not even to answer at roll call. My silence wasn’t for fear of them seeing my crooked teeth, but because I’m a discreet sort. I learned many things at school. End of beginning.
AT THE AGE OF twenty-one, I was offered a job as a security guard in a factory on Vía Morelos, due to that selfsame discretion, I believe. The factory produced juices. And the juices, in turn, produced art. That is to say, the profits from the juice sales funded the largest art collection in the continent. It was a good job to have since, although I was only in charge of guarding the factory entrance and was never allowed into the gallery where the art was shown, I was in a sense the gatekeeper of a collection of objects of real beauty and truth. I worked there for nineteen years. Setting aside six months when I was off sick with hepatitis, three days for an ominous case of tooth decay that ended up needing a double root canal treatment, and my annual leave, I spent exactly eighteen years and three months as a factory security guard. They weren’t bad years, but they weren’t good either.
But one day Fortuna spun her wheel, as Napoleón, the singer, says. On the very day of my fortieth birthday, the Pasteurization Operator got a panic attack while he was attending to a DHL messenger, a plump man of medium height. The Polymer Supervisor’s Secretary had never witnessed a panic attack before and thought the messenger of medium height was assaulting the Pasteurization Operator, because her workmate had put his hands to his throat, gone purple as a plum, turned his eyes up, and let himself fall backwards, collapsing spread-eagled on the floor.