The Woman with the Yellow Fingernails by Timothy Moore
From Volume 39, 2012
“The Woman with Yellow Fingernails” started with a voice in my head in a cadence that I found fascinating — and then, quite suddenly, it was on paper, ready to be submitted. Like much of my writing, the story insisted on bursting out of my brain and I had very little control over how it was written or why. It’s both strange and wonderful to see it again, like an old friend that wants bloody revenge against you and you can’t quite remember why.”
I do not think that it is strange that I am in this RESTAURANT, with these PEOPLE, just sitting, highlighting my notes, and highlighting my nails, with keen precision, YELLOW, delicately so as not to let it touch against my pale skin, just the nail, the beautiful YELLOW, the color of my deepest marrow, this solid, final YELLOW. There is nothing strange about that. The waiter, a young Vietnamese boy, says Hi, and I say, because I am polite and I am kind, I say Hello, sir, how do you do, sir. And he says, What would you like to eat? And I say, I would like to eat PHO, and I point with my YELLOW fingernail at number 41 on the plastic menu, on the item that says PHO, and it has beef tendons and steak and noodles in a steamy hot bowl, and I ask for the medium, but I know I should have asked for a large.
As you may suspect, I am not here for PHO.
I blow on my nails, and behind me is a table of men, Asian businessmen, slurping their noodles from their medium bowls. They seem very pleased with their choice and are nodding and speaking in a familiar manner, though the words are not familiar to me. This is a big room, I note on my paper, and then I highlight the note with the beautiful YELLOW. Behind them are more tables and more people. The other table seems to be with these men, and it is full of their children and their women. One of the children is a girl in very short shorts, INAPPROPRIATE short-shorts for a child who is a girl, and she walks to the table of men and says something, but before she can finish, one of the men at the table, her father, probably, he yells at her, in a tone of anger, and she sits pitifully back at her table, in near tears. I want to stand and embrace the girl as a PERSECUTED SISTER IN ARMS, but I remind myself that I am not here for that, or for her, my reasons are very specific in my wanting, and right when I write that on my paper and am about to highlight it, that is when I see her.
She is a Vietnamese WOMAN, a little older than me, I note, maybe forty, the wrinkles under her eyes and on her cheeks reveal forty, I highlight, and she walks in from the back, from the kitchen probably, and is overseeing the waiters who bustle and fill the cups with water and nod and pass her by, in a state of fear in her watching. She holds a stature of KINGS. I blow on my nails and I wait for her to look at me looking at her.
When she sees me, she barely reacts, but she sits in front of me, yes, I nod, scribbling on my paper, for that is exactly why, the reason entirely that I am here. Yes? She says as a question, and I nod, Yes, that is the exact word, Yes, the only word, YES.
I am here for my justice and for my PHO, I say to her.
You have already received your justice, she tells me.
Maybe not justice, then, I say to her. Maybe revenge, then.
You have already humiliated me and your husband. You have already driven him away from me and from you.
Yes, I say, YES.
What more is there to do to me which you have not done to me, she says.
Oh, if only she knew how much more I could do to her!
You have taken him who I have loved more on all of this Earth, even more than the air that we breathe and the PHO I will consume, more than that even, I tell her.
You do not love him and never loved him, she responds.
You do not even care that he has left you. You are to exact revenge?
I nod, BUT she does not know I AM revenge. I AM revenge in its entirety, sitting before her, steaming and hungry and YELLOW.
Just do it then, she says. Do what you have come here to have done to me.
First, I say, not listening to HER command, no, I say,
FIRST, I will have my PHO.
I put spices in my PHO. I put soy sauce in my PHO. I sprinkle bits of lettuce in my PHO. I separate the noodles in the wash of ingredients. I separate the steak into smaller slabs of meat, cooking inside the broiling broth. The WOMAN, his LOVER, sits in front of me, watching me. Waiting. The girl in short-shorts, my sister, dances between the tables, defiant. The father and the men shake their heads, pretending to be knowing, but knowing nothing but the bowl below their faces.
I slurp diligently. I suck in the noodles. I grind the beef. And then when I am done, I am watching her, I watch his LOVER as I take the entirety of the bowl, and I let the broth fall into my gullet, and the runoff pours below my chin and down my neck and onto the table and ground. And her face in disgust, but am I satisfied? I am satisfied.
Come, I tell her, and I make my way to the RESTAURANT door and she follows, slowly. I give a wink to my sister, and she sees me, and I know she understands, and she gives a twirl in her short-shorts, kicks one leg in the air, our SECRET DANCE OF THE JUST. Who cares if no one recognizes our victories? WE KNOW THEM FOREVER.
Quicker, I tell his LOVER, or we will miss it.
I swing the door open. I walk fast to make her walk fast, which she does.
We make it to the Argyle Red Line station. We stand at the edge of the platform. She waits. She BELIEVES she KNOWS.
You mean to throw me onto the tracks? She asks.
SHE DOES NOT KNOW.
People meander by. People listening to their IPODS. On their cell phones. I am on the platform. I am in control.
Do it then, she says. I don’t care anymore. You have taken everything from me now.
LISTEN, I say.
She listens. I listen to her listening. I want to place my ear against hers to see if I will hear her brain move and cringe. This is the train that he came on to see you and then later to make love to you in such a manner that he refused me in the many months of infidelity, I say. And now he is gone, because of you he is gone and he will not come back to either of us and you have taken him so now I will take me away from you and you will live with it, I say.
I fall onto the track. It is not low from the platform, but I fall poorly, right onto my left leg. I look up at her, and she can’t believe it. The look on her face! Others circle around her, and they’re looking down now at me and what I have done.
She’s fallen! They scream. A woman has fallen! She needs help!
And the WOMAN, his LOVER, can only watch, and I wait for the train to smash into my frame and release me in beautiful smears of YELLOW, I should have highlighted my whole body in calm, bitter YELLOW, so I would be like a streak of sunlight when the train lifts me into the air and then crushes me into the ground.
But the sound has stopped. THE TRAIN HAS STOPPED. Men in orange vests lower onto the tracks. I limp away from them. They are confused. Everyone is confused.
What is she doing? I hear people say. Where is she going? I am going to plead my case to the train conductor. I am going to say to him: I have fallen. I have fallen and I need the extra push, that extra momentum, to get the completion that I require. Can you help me, SIR? I will say, and I will mean it. And he will understand, and he will let me lie in front of his metal ANGEL, and he will give me the sweet revenge that I thirst for, and I will be a beautiful smear as he plunges into me and the last thing anyone will see of me is my smile.
Timothy Moore has work published in McSweeney’s, Entropy, Midnight Breakfast, and Apogee, among others. He is a Kundiman and Luminarts Fellow and has had a Hinge Arts Residency. His chapbook, I Will Teach You Retribution, is forthcoming from Long Day Press.
