The girl’s mother takes her to sharpen her fingers into knives on her seventeenth birthday. Outside the salon, a flock of teenagers congregate, examining each others’ hands in the sun. The girl and her mother watch them through the waiting room’s glass front as an attendant brings them a catalogue. The teenagers press together for selfies. One of them drops her phone, clawing at the empty air in surprise as it hits the concrete. Three knives extend from her left palm. Her pinkie and thumb are still whole, ripe for picking. She’s one of those girls who are too cheap to do the whole procedure at once, who start with the novelty of flipping catcallers off with a sharp metal finger.
The attendant deposits the catalogue in the girl’s lap. There are dozens of knives embossed in the catalogue, bejeweled, engraved, ready to be installed at a moment’s notice in one of the operation rooms down the hall. A flatscreen TV in the corner displays the process of the sharpening, the stripping of the flesh, sharpening of the bone, the metal encasing, the final touches. A gaggle of little girls watch, mouths agape. They’re too young to be here, eleven, maybe twelve. The girl’s mother didn’t undergo the procedure until after college, but then again, times are changing. An attendant escorts the girls out.
The girl’s mother thinks of all the things that have to be done at home. The dishes. The laundry. There is a single dandelion, triumphant in the rose beds. She noticed it on their way out of the house, didn’t have time to bend over and tear it out by its roots. She keeps an eye on the young girls as they go. It’s a habit, in case they wind up on missing posters or milk cartons.
The girl hasn’t chosen yet. The girl’s mother settles down on a leather couch and considers the week’s shopping. Outside, a group of boys play basketball, their soft hands dribbling away. The teenagers taking photos at the salon door size them up, their hands twitching, unsure which fingers they wish to use.
A woman emerges from behind one of the closed doors lining the hallway of the salon, her hands triumphantly aloft. Ten knives. She is complete. She nods as she passes by, flexing her new fingers. It’s a good feeling, the girl’s mother thinks. The girl’s father gave her her knives as a gift, one for each anniversary.
The girl eyes the part of the catalogue dedicated to single fingers. They’re trashy, her mother thinks, for function more than style, but then again, her daughter has never been a big fan of body embellishments. She doesn’t even have pierced ears. The girl chooses a carbon steel design with an intricate inlay of flowers.
The girl’s mother approves. It reminds her of the flowers the girl’s father gave her on their eleventh anniversary, but she doesn’t tell her that. An attendant snatches the girl away. Her mother waits on the leather couch. Outside, in the abandoned lot, the boys play basketball. A flock of magpies pick at the grass. She used to recite the magpie rhyme every time she saw one. She even taught it to the girl when she was a child, though she doubts she remembers. They don’t talk about back then, and the girl doesn’t bring it up. The mother assumes she’s forgotten the magpie rhyme along with the rest of what happened, when the three of them still lived together in the same house. At least, she hopes the girl has forgotten.
Next door there is a shop for impenetrable things. Phone screens, book casings. Perhaps she’ll pop over and buy her daughter another present. Seventeen, after all. Nearly grown, nearly gone. The girl’s mother will sleep easier knowing she’s got something to protect her when she’s on campus. Something a bit more trustworthy than splayed keys or pepper spray.
The girl’s mother texts her stylist. Tomorrow is her spa day. The girl’s mother cleans her knives every day, and deep cleans them once a week. Her knives aren’t of a good quality, like the modern ones, and they have retained stubborn stains. She’s been thinking of doing hers up, melting down the metal, adding a shiny veneer. She would miss these knives, though. Sometimes she misses things for no reason. Like those eleventh-anniversary flowers. She should have pressed them.
The girl’s mother thinks of a fairy tale she read once, about a maiden who didn’t have hands. Her husband, the king, made her hands of silver, completed her. She made the mistake of telling that story to the girl’s father, once. It had been after their tenth anniversary, before their eleventh. The girl had been six years old, then. The girl’s father wouldn’t shut up about it. He called himself a king, tried to build a throne out of empty beer cans, lorded over the vomit-stained bathroom. That year was a bitter one. The girl’s mother distracts herself from her memories by examining the salon’s decor.
On the walls there are posters, declaring what you can do with your knife-fingers. You can cook and clean, of course. You can play piano. You can put soft shells on them, if you are in the mood to caress. You can raise a girl while temping at an office. You can learn to run a household on crumbs as your husband drinks the money away, you can cry into your balled fists night after night, you can cut your husband’s face in half on the eleventh anniversary of your marriage and let the blood puddle on the floor. The last part isn’t on a poster, the girl’s mother muses, but it is implied.
When the girl emerges, she’s beaming. She chose her pointer finger, and the metal gleams in the light. The girl’s mother takes a picture to send to everyone. They walk shoulder to shoulder to the car. A poster of a missing girl flutters underfoot, her soft hands reaching out to the camera; the caption reads have you seen me?
On the way to the car, they see a woman with her baby boy. He toddles around, his pudgy stomach peeking from under his shirt. The woman has two obsidian thumbs, capped away for childcare. The girl’s mother thinks of how she gave birth to her, how she held her in an empty delivery room, how she proclaimed her perfect from her teeny-tiny fingers to her teeny-tiny toes, how, when it was just the two of them, she kissed each and every finger, slowly, resolutely, as if already saying goodbye.
Noa Covo's work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Passages North, Waxwing, and Jellyfish Review. Her chapbook, Common Ancestors, was published by Thirty West Publishing House. She can be found on Twitter @covo_noa.