Guest Post: Nails

I’m so honored to feature guest writer Lydia Edler with this post. Isak Dinesen said, “I start with a tingle, a kind of feeling of the story I will write. Then come the characters, and they take over, they make the story.” I read this essay about fingernails, and it tingled for me. I read it again. And then I asked the author, my tenth-grade niece, if I could publish it, because you need to read it (and tingle) too. Without further ado…Nails, by Lydia Edler.

My seat at the kitchen table has the remains and battle scars of an old nail polish remover stain that came from a bad YouTube tutorial that was supposed to create the “perfect” marblecolored nails. The paint and its topcoat are peeled, showing the natural oaky colored wood usually hidden underneath. My family made the unknown establishment that no one else can sit there, and everyone knows it is mine because of the nail polish remover stain that my mother calls an eye sore.

Across from my nail polish remover stain is my mom’s spot, which is smooth as it does not have a haunting nail polish remover stain, because she has never needed to use it. “I wish I had your nails.” I hear this phrase every week when my mom sits at our kitchen table gluing on cheap nails from Marshalls. The cheap nails are usually $4 as my mom doesn’t like to spend much, and the little sticky side doesn’t hold for more than 4 days because my mother will not avoid doing things like prying open a can just because of her nails. Her nails are brittle and breakable and bend like a diving board when you push on them. “I wish I had your nails,” she tells me after I sit for 30 minutes each week carefully to paint them with the precision of a surgeon suturing a delicate wound. My mother sits for 10 minutes every 4 days to lather glue onto her thin nails and add the cheap, detailed nails onto her fingers. The nails have a faded color and usually a little peeling design that makes them noticeably fake, but she still uses them.

She doesn’t sit for 30 minutes perfecting her nails each week. Being a mother has changed her schedule where she would once spend hours to get ready, but instead packing lunches takes up the makeup time, which is usually done in the car at stop signs. I spend time detailing my nails till they are perfect in my eyes, because if not, I know everyone will notice. I use smooth brush strokes of paint on my nails like an artist would on their color filled canvas. I then paint layers upon layers of nail polish until my real nails look like the fake acrylic nails my mom strives to have. My mom on the other hand slathers glue onto her fingers, and usually has one nail tipped towards the side because she had things to do and didn’t feel the need for her nails to be perfect.

I inherited my strong nails from my grandmother. Like me, my grandmother sits for 30 minutes each week detailing and perfecting her strong and sturdy nails. She perfects her nails and appearance like me and would never walk out of the house without looking perfect, or with one nail tipped to the side like my mother. She doesn’t use fake Marshall’s nails like my mother. My mother finds the best and cheapest deals on things like fake nails, while my grandmother knows what she wants, no matter the price. Her strong and perfect nails match her bold personality and 1950s house-wife persona.

My grandmother is very natural, meaning almost every product she has is organic or 100% natural. All of her nail supplies are natural and have pure ingredients. When I go down to her house, I click my fingers against each of her carefully organized nail polishes and pick which one I will use for the week. Her collection of nail polishes sits in perfectly colored order and stretches on like colorful skyscrapers. I look over the color names to see what catches my attention, instant coffee or pixie peach? My grandmother has a special table for painting her nails each week. Her table has a painting of a perfect blue bird who mocks me each time I see it because it is not stained or scratched. After painting my nails, I come down to her house and she studies them, pushing them down, testing them, to see if they are as strong as hers. “I wish I had your nails.”

My mother tells me of the times in college when she would stop into European nails and meet Helen, the Chinese nail artist who spoke as fast as a cheetah, and flip through the latest celebrity gossip magazine while Helen perfected her fake nails. Even though she was a broke college student, nails were still a feminine priority. I remember going with her sometimes when I was younger and taking in all the sights. The strong scent of gel dip and acrylic powder burned my nose, but not in a way where it was too much. The scent drew me in, and I still can smell it when I think of it. It was like the smell of a white board marker. It burns your nose at first with its pungent initial smell, but you can’t help smelling it again. The nail salon is a suitable place to people watch. There was Martha, talking so loudly you could hear every distinct syllable she uttered on the phone as a tiny Chinese women painted her large, bulging toes. Then there was Kathy, the middle-aged Mom with as much baggage about her kids as the bags under her eyes. She would click her tongue like a clock as she talked to the nail artist and describe her unruly children who still do not understand the concept of sharing.

I would sit in the sticky chairs watching my mother and imagine myself sitting in her spot someday when I had the money. When we left the salon and my mother had made it into the car without any smudged nails, she would tell me I never need to get my nails done and would conclude with the phrase “I wish I had your nails.”

The world pushes the fake enhancements like fake nails or fake bodies and has created these fake enhancements to seem “natural.” So, then what is more natural? My real nails or the fake nails from Marshall’s that advertise the “natural” look? Each day I sit in my spot of the table and run my nails over the ridges of where the nail polish remover uncovered the natural wood hidden beneath. The bumpiness of the table creates a familiar clicking sound with my nails, and each day I sit down, I know what to expect. But across from me sits my mother’s seat which usually has fake Marshall’s nails sitting in the corner, waiting for the nails to be forced over her natural nails. The smooth surface of her table and the fake paint covering the natural woods seems to taunt me and call out to me. Yet I remain in my place, clicking my natural nails over the nail polish remover stain.