Breaking Fingernails Off on Hardwood Floor in OD OG

It’s funny…

Usually when you wake up on the living room floor with your nails all jaggedly broken off, you would be looking around for the culprit. For me, it’s as simple as remembering back to what I dreamed the previous night. As if I could ever forget…

Things had been getting better in the dream theater for a while. Till last night, I was trapped in the trailer with my uncle and his friend again. Like a scene from a horror movie where their dead hands came topside and pulled me down into the nightmare with them.

I am standing on my tiptoes, in the furthest corner of his bed, trying to dance away from their hands grabbing at me. Wallpapering myself to the wall. Finally with a swipe of his farmer’s paw, he grabs my ankle in its frilly little white sock and yanks. My feet slide out from underneath me. He drags me across the bed, my hands clutching at blankets stiff with dirt, sweat and god knows what else. The blankets slide along with me, clutched in my desperate & greedy fists. His friend grabs me as I near the edge of the bed and rips my hands off the blankets I am holding. Terror moves my limbs like a dissected frog with electrodes on its muscles. With my free leg, I kick out. It lands. On my uncle’s chin. I don’t know which of is more surprised by the sudden violence. My uncle drops my ankle, roaring “Bitch” at me as he rubs his chin. Thisisitthisisitthisisitthisisit, I think. They’re really going to kill me this time. As I lie there, pinned and scared, the only sound I can make is the squeak of a bunny, caught in the jaws of a fox.

I am waiting for the strike, my wrists still held tightly in the meatloafy hands of his friend, when I hear the friend chuckle. “She got ya good, Chris,” he says. There’s a pause before my uncle starts to laugh, too. “Maybe she’s getting too big for all this.” I assume the subtext of this comment—that they are threatening to start on my sister. For a year or so, she has been a tool used to insure my silence & compliance. Veiled threats involving her. “Sure would be terrible to have something happen to that little sister of yours….” “That little sister looks like she would be a good girl who would listen to me.” Like all little girls, I love my younger sister fiercely. Even the whiff of a threat towards her works to assure my silence. But, there’s a small bit of me, (that even now writing this, I loathe to claim,) that also feels stricken with a sickening shade of jealousy. My uncle choosing me is the only “specialness” I know in my life. I have already come to understand my mother doesn’t like me very much.

At the hint of them moving on, I begin to plead with them. “I’m sorry, I’ll be good. I promise. I’ll be good.” It’s a phrase I’ve used so much, my tongue is swollen with it. They look at each other for a minute, the air pregnant with tension. Then my uncle just nods and limps to the door. His friend holds me down. We are both quiet. The air is electric with anticipation. My uncle opens the door of his trailer and nods at his friend, who lets me up, grabs me by my collar and forces me towards the door.

I feel a sense of finality in the moment.

They march me to the back field, where the cows are pastured. His friend drops me to the ground. I look towards my uncle in confusion. I don’t know what’s happening. My uncle points his gnarled old finger, a victim of numerous farming machinery accidents, towards a shovel on the ground. “Dig,” he says, quietly. I look at him incredulously, “But….I’m too little.” “Dig. Now.” he says again. Resigned, I pick up the shovel, it is heavy & awkward in my hands. I look up at him one more time, but he won’t even look at me. I try to shovel, but the spoon shaped blade clinks down on a rock. I struggle to push it aside. I try to lift another shovel of dirt and it tips to the side, spilling off the few clumps of dirt I’ve managed to free from the ground. I try again and again till my muscles are screaming with exhaustion. I try digging with my hands, but the hole fills in on itself. My uncle and his friend just stand there watching & preventing me from leaving. I finally sit down and cry in frustration. The friend picks me back up and puts the shovel back in my blistering hands. Feeling rage like the painful burn of cigarette ash through a shirt, I turn and yell at my uncle, “Why are you making me do this?! Why do we even need a hole out here?”

The cows are all standing in the field, flies settling on their flanks. There is no wind. The long grass doesn’t even sway. Aside from the spread-winged shadow of a crow flying overhead, everything else is still.

Finally, he says, “Because we’re done with you. And we need to put you somewhere.”

And I drop.

When I open my eyes, I’m in a fetal position on the hardwood floor of my living room. My nails broken, the tips raw & sore. The dog is laying next to me, sleeping in the curled shape of my body. I must’ve been in here a while. I lay there a few minutes more, trying to figure out if I can just stay down there, let the world walk over me. Finally, though, like every other time, I pick myself up, put the coffee on. After I hear the first guttural gurgles of the coffee pot, I go upstairs to wake the kids up in the warmth of their beds from their dreams that thankfully do not mirror my own. Sometimes knowing one small truth like that is more than enough to hold up to the sun & call it a jewel.

Written in January 2021

Last updated February 19, 2024