Fig (30 page)

“We are going to give one another manicures!” Miss Pratt says, gesturing her arms into a curl that arches around her head like Vanna White on
Wheel of Fortune.
She brings attention to her hair, her face, and her smile just as she has taught us all to do. She's already confessed to having her teeth professionally bleached, and when she did Miss Avery said a true sign of friendship is when one gal shares a beauty secret with another. And I wonder if secret conversations using flowers count?

Miss Avery and Miss Pratt's teeth are so white, they glow in the dark. At night in bed, I see them smiling, like the Cheshire cat from
Alice in Wonderland
. I see nothing but the girls' white teeth floating in the ether above.

Miss Pratt and Miss Avery each claim a line of girls. Miss Pratt takes my row. I stand somewhere in the middle and forget to breathe. I'm not sure whether we are practicing how to stand again or being paired off for the manicures. I have a tendency to daydream. I get lost. I am planning on getting sick. This way, I can get out of doing the actual manicure. I do my best to turn green.

It isn't until Miss Pratt reaches Sara that I realize the instructors are asking all the girls to take off their gloves. Miss Pratt nods her head, and Sara takes her cue. She removes her white gloves, pulling at each one like she's presenting a special treat—unwrapping a gift. Her hands are diamonds or white chocolate. Mama once told me how some Chinese women seduced their husbands by unwinding their bound feet. Ten feet of binding cloth took a long time to unravel, and the exposure was all about the anticipation. They unwound until their dainty and deformed feet were at last revealed. Cloven and putrid smelling, their feet were coveted by their lovers.

I watch Sara and Miss Pratt from my peripheral vision. My hands are beginning to swell within the confines of velvety white cotton. They bloat the way Mama did from antipsychotics:
Thorazine
,
Prolixin
,
Compazine
, and
Haldol
. And when my turn comes, my hands will be too large to come loose from my grandmother's gloves. Either that or the seams will have busted.

Burning hot, my fingers and palms are tingling—too fat for blood to circulate. I wait for my heart to fail.

*  *  *  *

Miss Pratt takes Sara's hands into her own and caresses them. Sara is a china doll as well. They hold each other with cold carved porcelain fingers. Then Miss Pratt lifts Sara's little hands, to take a closer look. Sara's nails are not cut too short or left too long, but lurking inside my gloves are callused fingers, shredded cuticles, and nail beds caked with dirt and blood from picking scabs.

And on my wrist—

“Exquisite half moons of smoothly finished and sparkling clean fingernail,” Miss Pratt says. Now she's a food critic describing the high-class French cuisine we are all preparing for: the grand-finale dinner that will either mark our transition from one level to the next or serve as our graduation. After graduation, someone like Candace Sherman will go to finishing school—“finishing” is supposed to imply the act of perfecting. “The final touches to a masterpiece,” as Miss Pratt has explained, again and again. But I think it sounds like the girl is finished. Done for, as in “That's all she wrote,” which Uncle Billy likes to say.

I told Mama my theory. I thought she'd laugh, be proud of my dark sense of humor and my feminist inclinations, but she didn't seem to hear me. Aside from the involuntary twitching, which is called dystonia, her face was blank. So I repeated myself. And the second time, the words sounded overrehearsed and too heavy. I even raised my voice, but she still didn't hear me.

Sara's skin is almost as white as the instructor's gloves holding them. So white, they turn powder blue like she's more dead than alive. I think about my name. Not Fig, but Fiona, which means “fair and white.” Sara means “princess.” I know because I've read everything written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, including
The Little Princess
, which is about a girl named Sara. Miss Pratt's holding her breath the way people do when they're impressed. And when she finally lets it out, there is a little puff of air accented by delight, and under her blush her cheeks burn a true pink.

“Perfection,” she announces, but she doesn't move on. She knows I'm next. Everyone is aware of this. After an eternity, because she has no other choice, she takes her position in front of me. She clears her throat, and this indicates that it is now my turn to remove my white gloves.

*  *  *  *

The first class I attended, Miss Pratt tried to be nice. She gave me the booklet that serves as the textbook and promised to go over it with me after class. But then there was the incident regarding my name, and everything changed.

Gran introduced me to the teachers as Fiona. After a conversation in the car on how it'd be best if no one learned about my nickname. And this is why Miss Pratt introduced me to all the girls as Fiona—girls who already know me as Fig. From school or from the Sacred Heart of Mary. Candace Sherman was the one who pointed out that no one ever calls me Fiona.

She said, “I think it's sweet you tried,” and smiled the smile she's praised for.

“I'm not sure I agree, Candace,” Miss Pratt said, making the hard
C
harder and the soft
c
at the end hiss longer than it should. She was emphasizing how Candy is a nickname too. “Remember, dear,” she'd said, “some nicknames are meant as terms of endearment.”

Then Miss Avery listed off a variety of becoming nicknames—beginning with Trixie and ending with Candy, to prove she and Miss Pratt still adored her. When she had finished, she asked what my nickname was, but as soon as I told them their cheerful demeanor changed. “Like night and day,” which is one of Gran's favorite things to say.

Those three letters told them all they needed to know.

Miss Pratt took the most offense. She didn't ask how I'd come to get the nickname, like most people do. Instead she said, “Well, that's not very attractive, is it? It reminds me of a prune, and we all know what prunes are for.” This sent a case of giggles around the room. When there are no adults around, the girls still call out, “Hey, Prune!” and shout “Diarrhea, diarrhea!”

Their shouting has a singsong quality, and the words reverberate. At night in bed, I still hear their taunting, and the only way I can escape is by picking. And when I do, it has to be the sore on my wrist. But the worst is still Miss Pratt. I think she thinks I tricked her into thinking I was someone else. I couldn't crucify her if I tried.

Miss Pratt clears her throat again. And I know I can't just stand here like I don't know what I'm supposed to do. She is tall in her heels—shoes that make her look like she hasn't any toes.

As I tug on the first white glove, I see the rows of girls in front of me and to my sides. They bend at the edges like we're stuck inside a crystal ball or the world is collapsing at the sides. Their faces and bodies warp into fun-house-mirror reflections, and I can hear every breath and whisper—each girl has been magnified by some invisible microphone, feedback included. The glove slips off my left hand faster than I expected and it falls.

Even the hush of the glove hitting the carpet is audible.

My naked hand acts of its own accord by trying to take cover. It hides behind my back, instead of being seen or starting in on the other glove. “Both gloves,” Miss Pratt instructs. Her voice is so clear and cold, it hurts.

The fluorescent lights hang low beneath the drop ceiling. The plastic covers are cracked or broken, and the yellow light quivers from harsh to harsher. My other glove comes off, and this time I let it drop because I don't know what else to do. I think about the booklet from Miss Pratt. I'd taken it home and read it cover to cover, including the section on hand care: “A hostess's hands are what guests see most as they are served food and drink.” I should've known they'd check, but I honestly wasn't sure we were allowed to take off our gloves, the way some women have to wear scarves around their heads or get their feet bound. The yellow light turns my skin into something grotesque.

On my wrist, the open sore awaits. For me, it is as permanent as a tattoo because no matter what I do I cannot leave it be. I become two different girls, and one of them is in control. I peel the scabs away as soon as they have formed. I've had this wound for six months. Like the checks I make in my calendar, this sore also tracks the absence of my mother; but the picking follows another chronology—one less linear. In the car to church today, I picked it open, so the blood has coagulated by now. My pulse increases, and my veins are bulging—big and blue, and every pore on my body opens like a sinkhole.

Miss Pratt tells me to lift my hands. “Higher,” she says. Again and again. “Higher.” And my hands are now close to her chin, and her eyes cross to look at them. She does not touch them like she did with Sara. Across the room, Miss Avery stops her own inspection. Everyone is watching. “And turn,” Miss Pratt says, and she shakes her head the way Mama does when she sees the commercials about the starving children in Ethiopia—all those hungry eyes and distended abdomens.

As I turn my palms upward my hands and arms balloon. The more people stare, the larger they will grow. I am worried about explosion, but I'm also concerned about imploding. I want to hide my hands, to hide the open sore. I'd take amputation. Like a scab, my hand would fall off of me and I'd run away. I'd leave it behind: bloody and infected on the stained carpet with my white gloves. Instead, I stand.

I stand like this forever, rotating my hands—palm up, palm down.

I stand like this and rotate my hands for each girl in the class to see, and I am so glad Sissy Baxter doesn't go to charm school, and yet, I know she'll hear all about my rose, my awful sore. Miss Pratt forms a line where the girls all stand waiting for their turn to look. Palm up, palm down—they shuffle past and observe. I am a sideshow freak. I stand on a stage of my very own. I keep company with the Three-Legged Man, the Lobster Boy, and the Camel Girl.

As the girls parade past, Miss Pratt taps her wand against her palm as if it's all she can do to keep from striking me. “This is what neglect looks like,” Miss Pratt announces. And then Miss Avery chimes in. “My future debutantes of America, what does neglect say about a girl?”

The girls all answer in unison. It means I have no self-confidence.

“And what happens to a girl without her confidence?” Miss Avery asks. “Nothing,” the chorus answers. “Nothing,” they say. “Nothing.” And the collective “ing” rings from all their lips.

*  *  *  *

I'm sent to the vestibule to wait for Gran while the other girls divide into pairs to trim, file, buff, and polish one another. As they sit cross-legged amid cotton balls and nail polish fumes, I sit on a wooden bench alone. The oak is hard and the tiny room is freezing. My breath comes out like the endless clouds of smoke Mama is forever exhaling. Through the clear glass below the stained-glass angel, I can see the street.

The angel is fragmented—different shapes and colors, she is broken like a Picasso.

I am the dead squirrel in the road surrounded by a murder of crows.

The crows abandon the dead squirrel whenever a car comes along. And I wonder why it's a murder when the birds are crows and a flock when they are any other kind of bird. My hands are cold. I shove them back into my white gloves. I put aside the folded note I've been told to give to Gran—the one from Miss Pratt.

The note goes into great detail about my hands.
Ragged, filthy nails that are screaming for a professional manicure.
Miss Pratt tells my grandmother she is a fine lady. She and Miss Avery pray to age as gracefully as she has.
Because of this, we know you'll understand the importance of this request.
Miss Pratt does not wish to offend my grandmother.
We understand the situation, and we simply applaud you, Mrs. Johnson, for all your efforts to better that poor neglected child.

Gran is St. Jude, Patron Saint of Lost Causes.

Miss Pratt writes,
For the time being, we simply aren't equipped to handle a girl like Fiona.
The open sore is never mentioned. Undoubtedly, Miss Pratt found it too terrible to acknowledge. And compared with my other flaws, it's just a gaping wound—given the proper time and care, if left alone, it will surely heal and go away forever.

*  *  *  *

Gran puts her reading glasses on to get a better look. I lean over the front seat from the back seat where I have to sit even if it's just the two of us. She is stiff, and I can tell it hurts for her to turn and look. She holds each hand long enough to see the flaws. What disgusts her the most she looks at the least, and I'm not entirely sure she even registers the open sore.

“Put your gloves back on,” she says. “This instant.”

I understand her need for my hands to be hidden. I want this more than she could know. I pull the white gloves back on, snapping the buttons shut where they close just above the wrist as if they were specifically designed to cover my rose. I sit back and pull the safety belt over me before she can tell me to do this as well. Gran takes her glasses off and stares at the world through her windshield. She looks at Main Street like there's something she must confront.

All I can see is the tiny town of Eudora.

The stop and go lights turn from green to yellow to red, and soon they will switch to flashing yellows and reds for the nearly nonexistent night traffic. There is a bank of plowed snow—cold and gray with soot—and the streets are clear. No ice, just worn-out asphalt. And the water tower stands where it has always stood lookout. This is the heart of Bleeding Kansas; a tense division line between the South and the North before the Civil War.