SOME MOTHERS CHEW THE ENDS OF THEIR BABIES’ FINGERS AND SPIT OUT THE NAILS. This keeps the babies from scratching their noses and cheeks when they bat their fists at nothing. I asked my mother if she did that for me. She looked out the window and said I should ask about French kissing or rosebud tattoos like normal girls.
If you’re left-handed, the fingernails on your left hand grow faster. Visa-versa for right-handers. When people die, their fingernails keep growing after they’re buried in the ground. Toenails too. They grow straight, like daggers. When they run out of room in the coffin, they curl and loop like roots.
I don’t use my left hand much anymore. My fingers must be confused. All my nails are stubby dead ends. They stopped growing after being hammered by a volleyball. When gym class was over, my first finger drooped at the knuckle like a candy cane. I could pull it straight, but when I let go, it curled back under. Mallet finger, the school nurse called it. She told me to get it splinted at the hospital. Said I’d be right as rain in six short weeks.
Mom doesn’t believe in hospitals. Does it hurt, Rebee? she asked. Look at that, like pokin’ a caterpillar. She laughed and said I could point at people, and they’d never know. I tried a Popsicle stick and Scotch tape, but my finger just turned purple. When the Scotch tape ran out, I gave up.
I can’t button shirts or pick up a jellybean with a floppy finger that has no feeling. But if I rest my left hand against my coat sleeve or desktop, it almost looks normal.
* * *
I collect nail clippings and keep them in a plastic box that used to hold elastics. Nobody knows.
My nails come from all over. Most are my mother’s. She calls herself Harmony. Harmony leaves the slivers lying in the tub. I come along afterwards, scoop them up and drop them in the plastic box. Passion purple pinky trimmings from the lousy bed hotel. Carstairs. Sparkly red glitter bits from the place with ceilings that peed when it rained. Fort McMurray I think. I’ve picked up a few from the floor of the van. Harmony could do without shoes year round if her toes wouldn’t fall off in the snow. I read somewhere that it’s illegal to drive in bare feet. When I told this to her, she said, “So hand me over, Rebee. Here’s your chance.”
At my Aunt Vic’s place I saw on Ripley’s Believe It or Not the old man from Bangkok with the longest fingernails in the world. Over twenty feet of nails. His one hand had five golden twisted ropes that dragged the floor and curved back up again like a ram’s horns. He couldn’t ride a bike, turn pages of a book, or sleep through the night. He tried to sell them for $20,000, but nobody wanted nails. If I had the money, I’d buy them in a flash. Nails are like magic. Roll someone’s nail between your fingers, it brings back a slice of somewhere you’ve been. A whisper, the smell of oranges, fridge noises. Somewhere forgotten, but it’s out there somewhere.
* * *
We move around a lot. Harmony gets restless. For her, a new place has a three-month expiry date, same as fruit bars. Harmony loves moving day. She skips between rooms, pink cheeked, eyes glowing with the thought of waking in a place where she has to hunt for the light switch. She collects her candles, crystals, incense sticks, her bear claws and peacock feathers, creates a pile on top of the Indian sari we use for a tablecloth, and folds it like a diaper.
We roll foamies and quilts. Stuff our clothes into green garbage bags. Fill cardboard boxes with our garage sale dishes and mismatched cutlery, half-empty jars of mayo and peanut butter. Harmony laughs as we struggle onto the street with the giant blue pillows, the folding wooden table and old chairs, the ghetto blaster and the rest. Everything we own fits in the white van.
My stuff goes into a bag I keep at my feet. My toothbrush and Walkman, jalapeno chips and Sour Pusses, my sparkly mirror and my nail clipping box.
We arrange ourselves on the front seat. Be a doll, Rebee, quit smacking your gum. She places her sugared coffee in its holder beside mine. I pull out my Walkman and plug myself in. Shake it down ladies. Make this your night. Be free, uh-uh, be free. Are you ready?
I flick the tip of my bad finger against my zipper pull and watch it flop like a fish. I stare at my fingertips. At least I won’t be like the Oklahoma nurses. The nurses cuddled the sickly babies, changed their diapers, fed them warm milk, loved ’em to death. All that bacteria festering under their long, shiny nails. When I have babies, I’ll nurse on their curled fists and hold their slivers in my mouth — tiny white slivers. One at a time.
We rumble along the highway under a watery sky, past wheat rolled into giant soup cans, cows frozen in muck. I think about where we just came from. I can’t remember the colour of the walls or feel of the curtains or shape of the bathroom sink. Blank as water, like on a test day in a new school and I end up at the fountain, gulping, drowning.
I slip off my runners and slide my toe across my bag until it touches my nail box.
We’ll get to wherever we’re going tonight. Unload the white van. Light an incense stick. Find the little hidey spots.
Harmony will crash, a smile on her lips.
I’ll wait awhile. Sprinkle the brittle bits on my blanket. Sift them like seashells.