NAILS

(I actually wrote this for an assignment for a philosophy course - your autobiography from the POV of a body part)

I grow about a tenth of a millimeter per day. And I have regrown countless times, so a different version of me has seen her everyday, I suppose. She leaves me be, when she's away from home but cuts me down as soon as her mother comes anywhere near a hundred meter radius. It was fine when she was 5, but now that she's in her early 20s, it's a little silly how decisions about her own body are still dependent on other bodies and minds.

The way she's groomed me from when she was a child shows how she grew up and what she grew up to be. The little girl who used to sit with trembling fingers expecting pain as her mother cut her fingernails was a picture of a mess. We were always caked with dirt and if let loose, was coated in spices which amma had to quickly wash off before they inevitably landed in her ear.

Always (trying to be) an overachiever, she figured out how to cut me on her own before she was 5. And boy, did she do it religiously! She cut me down so short as if my length was what decided her parental validation - so much so that she sighs everytime she sees how short I have become now. She once looked up nail growth serums because (curse her memory!) she remembered a friend told her when she was in 4th grade that her hands were beautiful with long, slender fingers till they reached me. Apparently short nails are a hurdle for aspiring hand models and this ball of insecurity, despite no intentions for a modeling career, took it to heart and carries it there till date.

When she was in her early teens, I was filled with white marks. People told her that I was telling her that I need more calcium and more green vegetables. The hardcore non-vegetarian in her looked at me with disgust everytime those white spots appeared. They faded away on their own and so did her picky eating. 

Late teens was the era of colors. Nail polishes of all varieties adorned me, but not for too long. Being in a conservative Christian congregation that discouraged the use of ornaments meant that good Christian nails had to be as bare as the day they were created. So in the comfort of her room, I became a rainbow and to the outside world, I was colorless. But there was only so long I could lead a double life! I started turning yellow because of all the polish remover and then she cursed me. I was never adorned in colors later, only in clear nail paint - that too rarely.

But I didn't hold a grudge. In fact, I saved her life. When she got jaundice, the silly girl kept on insisting it was just a fever. I finally had to turn clear yellow for her domestic help to notice that she might be sick. And she was; she was too sick. It took her about six months to get a grip but she bounced back. She's decent like that - she might not do it prettily, but she always bounces back.

Sometime later, a trip to the washroom saw me coated in blood and she thought she was dying, despite all the lessons in menstruation. As she simultaneously wept and tried to aggressively rub off the dried, crusted blood on me, I wished I could be eyes so I could roll myself at the drama. But after that first time, I think she learned, because I never met menstrual blood after.

After she moved out of her house for college, everything in her body changed. She tried experimenting in make up, food, clothes and what not. I was allowed to grow the tallest I have ever been. But then on one fateful video call with her family, somehow called me Satan's fingernails. The audacity! Instead of defending the beauty that I was, she quickly tucked me inside her palm and promised she would cut me soon. And she did.

But thankfully the girl she shared a room with, had a good brain and told her it was okay to have long nails. In fact the othe girl finds some ASMR-ish delight when she drags me through her skin. I guess I have helped her give good massages too. But is it a little capitalistic for me to validate my existence solely on the basis of my utility? 

Now she keeps me long when she's away but always tucks me inside the palm when she video calls; because she's afraid I will slip up, she does it so tightly that I have to apologize to the palm everyday for the crescent marks I leave on it.

Now that she's back home, I am perpetually short and she sighs at how she can only grow my white part and how her nails are always going to be short. Even with her experimenting back in college, I was still unadorned. Maybe I was to be the reminder that despite how far she strays away, the rules of her home won't let her be. That it will find its way to her safe spaces, even if it's for a minute. Maybe it's the stress of being such a grim reminder, I have started getting those white marks again. But I think she's better now, she doesn't curse me for it anymore. Or maybe she's worse now, because the lack of calcium in me is not her biggest worry anymore.