Look closely at my hands. Notice how I’ve shredded the skin around my jagged nails. Look closer. See my fingernails picking at wounds, scarcely able to scab over. Bleeding, in perpetuity. A bad habit. A coping habit. A habit I need.

I need to feel the jolt of pain followed by a small drop of blood to remind myself to feel anything. Bored? Pick at my nails. Having a nice time? Just rip a corner off one. Watching TV? Shred mindlessly until there’s nothing left to shred. 

My husband forgives me for this, even though the sound of scratching nails makes the back of his teeth hurt. If he catches me—he usually does—his hands are quick to grip mine and stop me mid scrape.

One pick.

Two picks.

Three picks, three strikes?  

I think he’s close to finding out.

*

I have a wonky pinky—the kind that never straightens out and sticks up in an abnormal triangular shape when I type. The shape a bone takes to after healing from an untreated break. 

As a child, my mom knew she could get me to do a task I didn’t want to do with a promise to visit the library. On the day my pinky turned triangular, she bribed me with the library and a purple popsicle, the kind with two sticks, in return for my cooperation at the grocery store.

Our arrangement was this: on the way home, I could run into the library and pick out a new book while she stayed in the car to keep the groceries cool. Armed with a firm five-minute time limit, which I took very seriously, I ran to and from my mom’s Subaru faster than I could shout Magic Tree House. With my new book in hand, I flung open the driver’s door, handed the library card back to my mom, and slammed the door shut. A few seconds passed, and my mom turned to notice me, red-faced and eyes welling, still standing outside. My pinky was caught in the door. She opened it, carefully, and determined my purple, bleeding, split-nailed finger was fine. After retrieving my popsicle from the trunk, she told me to keep it on my finger until we got home. Next time, she later scolded as she wrapped my pinky in a Band-Aid, you need to slow down. 

That night, we knelt by my twin-sized bed covered in butterflies to say our prayers. Mom thanked God for His guidance through the Holy Ghost, who prompted her to buy me a popsicle at the grocery store. Because of Him, I had something to soothe my hurt (broken, but she didn’t believe it) pinky. God would heal me, she promised. God gives us what we need.

I supposed this meant God needed me to have a wonky pinky.

When I was thirteen, my piano teacher noticed my left hand couldn’t stretch as far as my right hand, because of my pinky. Walking home that afternoon, I decided it was time to try and break my pinky again. This time, I would heal it straight. 

I looked at the Subaru in the garage and tried to imagine a believable explanation for slamming my finger in the door, again. It needed to look like an act of God, rather than an act of Meg, if my mom were to believe me this time. 

My heart pounded as I gently placed my pinky against the door frame. I exhaled a deep breath and thrust the door closed, expecting that to be all it took. The door bounced back. It wouldn’t close—that time, or the next two times I would try. 

Despite my best effort, I couldn’t stomach actually breaking my finger.

*

My mother always trimmed my nails too short. As a young child, I would wince and cry after every snip of the metal trimmers. I begged her to stop, then begged for Band-Aids after to wrap around each throbbing fingertip. Don’t be dramatic, she’d say. You’re fine. From this I learned to never let my fingernails grow long. I tear them down before they can make it. It’s safer to do it myself than let someone else. 

There’s a photograph of me, tear-stained, in a pink nightgown, with multicolored Band-Aids wrapped around every fingertip. When the photo albums come out, this one always gets a few laughs. You were so sensitive, mom jokes, because that’s what she thinks of the memory. A joke. A funny childhood anecdote. And sometimes I’m inclined to agree with her. It is ridiculous, isn’t it, for fingertips to hurt so much after a trim that it began a life-long habit of self-destruction. 

*

Some nights, before my husband and I were engaged, while we laid in bed waiting for sleep, he would tell me to close my eyes. With them shut, he slid the ring on my finger to let me feel it. I loved the pressure of the band around my finger—snug, but not too tight—the ridges of the prongs holding the diamond in place. I was eager to see it, to count the rainbows that reflect off the stone under light. He loved having that secret, what the ring looked like on my finger. For a time, that belonged only to him. 

My finger felt undeserving of something as beautiful as an engagement ring. I couldn’t fathom placing a precious stone wrapped in gold on a finger covered in scabs I refuse to heal.

Knowing we would be engaged soon, and pictures would be taken, I agonized over my nails. I needed them, at least the ones on my left hand, to appear perfect. No one, I’d convinced myself, could believe I was happy if there were scabs crusted around my nails.

In front of the nail polish at CVS, I felt a twinge of jealousy over people with beautiful nails. Nails that change color with the seasons, that showcase personality traits like self-control and restraint. My nails tell people I’m anxious, that I lack self-control, that I’m looking for a way to mask my throbbing fingertips beneath something presentable, something photographable, something I might want to remember from the day I get engaged. 

As a teenager, my mom and I would get manicures for our birthdays. My mom always got navy blue polka dots, but every time we went, she’d spend ten minutes considering something new. Something less boring than a polka dot, she’d say. As far as I can remember, it was always polka dots. In the era of chevron stripes, she chose to be a polka dot. I liked a French tip. 

I love the texture of paint on my nails almost as much as I love how satisfying it feels to scrape it off later. My manicures never lasted longer than a week, despite my mother’s pleas to leave it alone. I could never resist. Now I just look at nail polish, imagine what it would be like to wear, and scrape at the keratin beneath the nails growing to get ripped off.

I got a gel manicure the weekend of my engagement. Gel, because it’s stronger than polish. Harder to rip off. A cream color, that, incidentally, was a perfect match to my husband’s skin tone. I fought the compulsions long enough to take photos my hands looked decent in, or as decent as a hand with a wonky pinky could look. 

A month later, I noticed that, for the first time in my life, my fingernails grew long. Almost as soon as I noticed, I began the process of peeling gel polish off my nails. At first, I used tweezers to pull a corner up around my cuticle. Once I could get enough of an edge to work with, I could peel the polish off in one piece. With it, the top few layers of my nails. It was painful to remove, but so satisfying to place an entire manicure carcass on the table in front of me. I’d arrange the peels in order, from left pinky to right pinky. My fingernails were flaky and brittle for months afterwards. It would take years for them to grow long again. 

*

The last time I visited a temple, an elderly stranger and I practiced the Patriarchal Grip. Our pinkies twisted together. His pointer finger pressed firmly into my wrist, and mine into his. 

My face, and the faces of the other women in the white-carpeted room were covered by a veil. We, and eight other strangers, stood in a circle to repeat the words spoken by a man kneeling on the altar. 

Bless the sick                                                                         Bless the sick

Bless the weary                                                                 Bless the weary

Bless us,                                                                                          Bless us,

and our hearts.                                                                   and our hearts.

We will be obedient.                                                 We will be obedient.

The stranger’s hand was sweaty and tremored. Through the opening between my veil and the skirt of my temple-approved white dress, I could see his bony fingers woven through mine. He was missing the fingertip of his middle finger. A healed wound. An old wound. The nail didn’t grow. His hand reminded me of my grandfather, who lost a fingertip to a miter saw. 

The temple is full of reminders, symbols, and warnings. All of them promises I’m forced to keep if I want to live a happy eternal life when I die. Be perfect. Perfectly obedient, perfectly clean, perfectly manicured. Perfectly the woman I was raised to be (quiet, subservient, motherly). Perfectly not tearing apart my fingertips because God gave those to me and would be so disappointed to watch me hurt myself, but it’s okay for a man to carelessly use power tools he has no business using and permanently slice his fingertip off. 

When the ceremony ended, I returned to my seat and relieved the pressure of an eternity I was unsure I still wanted by picking at my nail, the one the stranger was missing.

*

For the first few years after leaving the church, my fingertips ached for a cleanse I did not need. I missed the rush of the Sacramental reset, the bread and wine forgive-me-for-my-sins-lord mistake erase. I still miss it, when I remember, years ago, God was in my hands.

God was the forest green fabric-covered hymnal resting in my palms and stored in a narrow box on the back of church pews. God was the crinkle of the tiny plastic cup of tap water after I emptied it in my open mouth and pushed it through the opening of the metal Sacrament tray. God was my pointer-finger tracing the small-print text of The Book of Mormon as I read, out loud, to Grandpa, before he died on a Monday evening.

*

At November’s end, I knelt in front of my grandmother’s rose beds to clean out the dead leaves to prepare for winter. It was almost too late—the next day it snowed and covered the beds until spring. In a typical year, winterization happens earlier, but this year, the bad one, I was too busy waiting for Grandpa to die. 

Without Grandpa working next to me, as he usually did, the air felt too quiet. I wore his old work gloves, which were scarcely a step above wearing no gloves at all, except that they provided some warmth (in the places where the holes were small). I rushed through the task, like I always do. The clock in my brain ticks, ticks, ticks, incessantly, always pushing me to get to the next task so I can finish it. Finish the task, scrape beneath my nails, repeat. 

I don’t like being at my grandparents’ house, not since my final memory of Grandpa is of him dead in the back room. He doesn’t haunt us, but he’s around every corner. 

The dirt embedded in his gloves, along with the new dirt swept in through the holes, creased into my knuckles and under my nails. My anxiety grew stronger as that feeling of dirt trapped between skin and nail continued to build. I tried to resist the compulsion to rip the gloves off and pick my nails, but the more that I tried, the more I began to panic, and I couldn’t think about anything besides the urgency to scrape out the dirt. Then suddenly, crying. The gloves were off, and I was picking and crying. 

Picking.

Crying.

        Picking.

And kneeling. For the first time in years, I thought about praying. I reminded myself how it felt when I believed God abandoned me, back when I still wanted to believe in God. I reminded myself how Grandpa, begging for morphine, cried for the God he said abandoned him. For him, for his sake, I wanted to be wrong. I begged for God to be real. I picked my nails, I cried, and to express my anger that there was no one to pray to, I slammed my hands down in the rose beds and gripped fistfuls of dirt. A sharp burst in my palm shut my brain off. The tip of a stray thorn embedded itself in my palm. I pulled it out and watched as blood flowed behind it. A circular scab in the palm of my hand formed as the wound healed. God heals all wounds, someone at the funeral said.

I guess God forgot about mine.

*

Somewhere along the way, I formed the habit of resting my hand palm-up. I like looking at the lines, occasionally pretending to know what the creases mean. I’ve learned enough to know I ought to let an expert interpret them for me before I let the meaning absorb, but it’s clear I have a broken life line. This suggests some form of major life-altering event, like illness or upheaval. 

I look at my palm often, trying to figure out if I believe some omnipotent creator formed a map of my life in my palm, if I even want something like that. All I’m certain of right now, from all this staring, is that on the palm side, my pinky almost looks normal. 

*

Mormons love to shake hands. I’m greeted, in any room, by a mob of hands reaching for mine wanting to say, Your parents have told us so much about you! It’s great to finally meet you. I know what this really means is, Your parents told us you left the church. They mention you every Sunday. We’re so sad for them—they’re good God-loving people. They shake our hands so firmly, not like you, with your heathen hands and weird pinky. But they never say that. They grip my hands, both of them, tightly, and stare into my eyes as though they’re going to be the one that fixes me.

They shake hands because they’re taught to check for devils, and devils will reach for your hand, but you will not feel anything. If they feel my hand, it means I’m not a demon. 

I always pass the test, but I still reach in my bag for sanitizer to wash my hands of their sweaty palms and pick the righteous skin out of my cuticles.

*

There’s a small cut, nearly healed, on the side of my hand. A token from playtime with my cat and a sign it’s time to trim his claws. It gives something else to pick at, gives my nails a break. I’ve scraped at many cuts like this one. They’re small, quick to heal. I once dreamt that the DNA left behind by my cats in these cuts slowly turned me into a cat. That’s impossible, according to Google, but I still checked. 

I rub at the scab obsessively. Slip my nail under the edges of it. I try to peel it off in one piece. The fresher a scab, the more likely for it to fall apart. It gets easier to accomplish if I let it heal a little.

When the skin underneath is nearly regenerated, the scab on this cut comes off with little effort. These are the most satisfying scabs to remove. There’s something about the finality of it, the knowing that the healing is finished and the scab won’t come back. My body has repaired itself. I healed myself. 

But there will always be something to pick at.