The Manicure
By Keely O'Shaughnessy
I peed with the toilet door open. No need for formalities: motherhood had relaxed me that way. I didn’t even have makeup on. She eyed me from her perch on our bed, feet dangling. I’m not Grace’s mother in the traditional sense, not by blood, but she is mine. She doesn’t know anything different. She’s eight and a half.
"Don't touch.” I said, “They’ll be tacky."
"Tacky?"
I was shocked by the words she'd yet to learn and wondered whether teacher was in my remit.
"Still sticky,” I said. I stood up, shook and wiped. I figured it was healthy for her to see the matured female form. I went to the sink and opened the hot tap full. My skin was sepia in the bathroom light. Grace was too young to care how I looked.
She’d begged for a manicure for weeks. Molly goes to the salon with her mum and gets a cola, and little diamonds glued on.
I’d protested, but she hadn’t let it drop. Each night, after school, she’d stare at her bare nails and sigh. On the seventh day, I finally relented and picked a bottle of bubblegum sparkle from my collection. I’d vetoed the slutty shade of crimson that she’d chosen.
Coming out of the bathroom, Grace was pecking at the packet of cookies I’d bought. She prodded the wrapper with her nose, arms and nails stretched behind her.
“Here,” I said. “Let me.” I found the red plastic tab and unfurled the biscuits, triumphantly. I held one above her mouth. She guzzled it in three handless bites, and then smiled, lips ringed with crumbs.
“Can we watch the film now?”
We’d chosen Freaky Friday, the original version. Lindsey Lohan was a step too far for me. I slid the DVD in, and she pressed play with her elbow.
“Ready for the top-coat?” I asked.
She gave me her hands. Her spindle-thin wrist felt dependent in my grip. Her tiny nails only needed the smallest daub of polish.
A young Jodie Foster and her mother, a long dead actress whose name I can’t remember, yelled at each other. I could tell Grace wasn’t sure – the colour wasn’t crisp enough and the phones had cords. Another mother might have picked something cooler. There was something about the way she was sitting: one leg draped over the other, chest all puffed out like a pintsized pinup. She was only enduring this to humor me.
Once she had her glittering nails, I studied her shape; over the past few years, she’d shed her girly plumpness, but not yet gained curves. The first time I saw her, she was so small, not quite six months old. Her skin had seemed almost transparent. Blue-purple veins just visible beneath a soft, pinkish top layer. She was a featherless chick in my arms mewing and squawking for nourishment. It was the first time I’d ever held something so fragile.
On the screen, Jodie Foster flickered: her silhouette glowed orange and then green. Mother and daughter echoed the same words, and for a moment, Grace was interested. There was a flash of light that indicated the swap had happened. Grace laughed and I tried to imagine her becoming me. Not in an instant, but slowly over sometime. Her face morphing to match mine, her body filling out. I pictured her in a pair of my patent heels, kissing boys with cherry-glossed lips. I saw her naked in a man’s bed, his hands tracing this new body’s form. I watched her innocence seep away as she stole another woman’s husband and I felt thankful her face could never actually resemble mine.
THE END
Author Bio: Keely O'Shaughnessy (she/her) is a fiction writer with Cerebral Palsy, who lives in Gloucestershire, U.K. She has writing forthcoming with Bath Flash Fiction Award and Emerge Literary Journal. She has been published by Ellipsis Zine, NFFD, Complete Sentence and Reflex Fiction, among others. Find her at keelyoshaughnessy.com.