The masks killed husbands with fire-stoked iron, and the screams were a reminder: the old ways were not hygienic. “How grateful we must be,” her mother said, that childhood voice, that vein of utter unquestioned truth. “To have soap and sanitation. To watch our children survive and grow and learn all the names of sin. How fulfilling our lives must be, now that we labor for a greater purpose. Did you know that we died of tooth abscess, child? It was very nearly the foremost cause of death. How grateful we must be for dentists.”
