Esprit | Spring 2009

            Elle’s fingers burn white, her fingernails an unpainted shade of purple. Supposedly it is a circulation problem, which overdoses of caffeine can only hurt. She takes a sip of Diet Coke and feels her leg judder. She likes when her actions match her mood.
            She stares at the towering cliffs of twin beds on either side of her carpeted den of pillows, paperbacks, and bobby pins. She has always taken to small spaces, particularly closets and plastic jungle gym tunnels, and now finds them a mixture of comfort and constraint. Elle thinks about the scene from Star Wars when the moving walls threaten to enclose and flatten the lead characters. She inhales deeply.
            Elle leans her head back on a frayed stuffed panda and rubs her right-hand pointer finger and thumb together, as if smoothing a pebble. Her fingers have always been chubby—a hobbit’s hands on an averagely-sized human. But if food has to go somewhere, she thinks, it might as well go to the fingers.
            Her left thumb feels for the wound on her right ring finger, below the permanent writing-with-a-pen bump. The cut just appeared one day, like the best and worst of things, and now looks hardened and brown and foreign. It seems to shout, “This is what happens when you ignore me!” Elle picks at the scab, and then neglects it again.
            In her palms, she sees what she wants to see: potential lovers’ initials—today D, yesterday N—tally marks of cigarettes or gummy bears, and a map of a city where she belongs but has never been. It disturbs her that others could access this information just as easily, if they thought to grab her fingers and trace the etchings in her palm with their own, slow enough to tickle and chill.
            Her bed remains preserved, free of men and tax forms, its unquestioning fingers folded prudently. Elle feels that she should perhaps have a catch-up chat and take it out for coffee before sprawling onto it again. Their relationship has morphed to that of two high school friends on college breaks; both know who each were, not who they are.
            Elle glances at the nightstand that once held a carousel lamp, then a small television, then an old shower caddy. Now it sits bareheaded, its two knobs staring like dazed eyes, not knowing where else to look. Elle grabs her sneakers and stuffs the shoelaces inside. She slips her feet into the worn canvas and shuffles through the carpet and out the door, grabbing a leftover sweatshirt with an ironed-on beach logo.
            She shouts, “Supermarket—I’ll be back,” on her way out of the house. Elle jingles the keys to her dad’s Sable, the one the color of water that sputters from corroded taps and makes people asks for bottles instead. She thinks about the bedtime Dixie cups of water and improvised stories that her dad used to bring to her and her sister. Elle had always loved that water, unassuming and lukewarm from the tap.
            During the drive, she listens to an old cassette and marvels as the windshield wipers tap a perfect beat. When the tape starts to skip and buzz, Elle continues to listen, letting the sound whir through the car and direct her through once-familiar streets. She watches her clutched-to-the-wheel fingers instead of the road but still makes it to the store.
            She doesn’t need milk anyway, but squeaks wet shoes across the tiles, paces the aisles, and pokes the plastic-colored beef when no one’s looking. She slips A Change for the Butter into the basket. So it doesn’t tip. Wendy A., with a gray name tag Elle wore in grade school, asks if that’s all. Elle says puns don’t belong on shelves. She pays two twenty-five in nickels and dimes and her shoulder lightens, a little.