Trimming

Harper was being declawed, the stainless-steel clippers snipping her nails to pathetic nubs. According to her mother, it was for her own good—Harper couldn’t stop scratching. Lately, she was always scratchy. Plagued by a deep-down itch that seemed to pulse from her bones. Or her organs, maybe. Somewhere her skin wouldn’t let her reach. She was constantly itching herself.

The snip of the clippers announced another nail lost. Harper flexed her legs into the kitchen chair and tried not to scream or jerk her hands away. Harper’s mother ignored her daughter’s tensing. She kept on clipping, firm in her belief that with enough preventative measures, Harper would get over her itchiness. Harper stayed quiet and small and wished she were somewhere else.

The scratching was manageable during the day, mostly. Harper could scurry through the motions of her sixth-grade existence wearing long sleeves and smelling of Benadryl anti-itch lotion. If she wanted to scratch, really scratch, she had to ask to be excused to the bathroom. There, she could lock herself into a stall and tear her nails against her body, scraping through dermis and skin cream and her mother’s disappointment in the hopes of relieving the itch.

She was always on the cusp of deliverance while she was clawing, always almost soothed. Then she’d put her hand down, and there’d be blood on it, and the prickling would return. And Harper would have to go out and face the world again, toilet paper mummied around her arms, hidden under her sleeves. It upset her mother when Harper bled on her clothes. During the daytime, she had to at least try to be good.  

But the nights, those were Harper’s. Nights were for unbridled scratching, for peeling. In darkness, it was methodical, practiced. In her bed, when she should have been asleep, Harper would start with her feet and work her way up. Ripping and pulling off layers of skin, testing how much of it she could tear off of herself without flinching. As she picked, her blood would gather in the creases of her fingertips, under her nails, and Harper would lap it up until her fingers were bloodless and pure with saliva. She felt, innately, that if she could peel her body down enough, she’d find her center—the hardened, secret peach pit of her. Each morning, Harper would wake up raw and tender, flinching at the contact of the covers.

Her mother begged Harper to stop. Ordered her, screamed at her, pleaded with her daughter with tears in her eyes. Her mom bought her extra thick socks so that Harper could get her shoes on without wincing. She cut Harper’s nails, just like she was doing, this morning, at the kitchen table before school. Harper bit the side of her cheeks until they bled, holding back a scream. She knew she’d get in trouble for yelling.

Her parents had argued yesterday. Harper had heard it, and she could see the shattered beer bottles in the recycling bin—evidence of their tempers. She imagined herself diving among the glass shards, hiding in there until everyone forgot about her. Her mother wouldn’t cut her nails or force her to smile, and Harper could use the jagged pieces for her scratching. It was kind of ridiculous that the bin was even in the house; Harper’s parents didn’t pay for recycling. Her mom just liked to have it so she’d seem environmentally-conscious when they had company over.

Harper thought about bolting, but she didn’t want to add to the household’s tension. She felt the atmospheric unease in the prickling of her skin. Better to keep the peace, to try and be good. Her mother muttered under her breath as she clipped. Maddy, Harper’s sixteen-year-old sister, sat over a bowl of cereal, her spoon in one hand and her phone in the other.

Harper’s dad walked in from the living room. He slept there last night. He did this often. He greeted no one and picked up the travel mug of coffee Harper’s mom had brewed for him—always brewed for him—and left again. Harper heard the wheezing of the front door’s hinges.

“Will Dad be back tonight?” Harper asked her mother, who had paused the clipping when her father appeared.

“I don’t know, honey.” She resumed. Harper tried not to wince. “He might be working late.”

Maddy snorted. Harper knew why. Their Dad always got his schedule in advance, kept a copy of it on the fridge. He worked long hours at the power plant, sure, but everyone knew when his shifts were. It was right there, on blue ink and printer paper, for anyone to read. But even on his nights off, he didn’t always come home. Their mother never mentioned these discrepancies.

Maddy yawned. Harper watched her, determined to look anywhere but her nails.

“Maddy,” Harper said.

“What?”

“Your teeth are whiter. Did you start using whitening strips?”

“Mom!”

“Don’t start now,” their mother said.

Nobody liked it when Harper talked about teeth, especially other people’s. She knew this, but she couldn’t restrain herself. Teeth were her theology—the hardest substances in the human body, but, Harper concluded, one of the least resilient. If the enamel was damaged, it couldn’t be repaired, and the tooth’s inner layers would be exposed and weak and vulnerable to attack, to erasure. Teeth could be eroded, worn down, stripped, Harper knew. She read about them, checking out books at the library and reading articles online. She stared into the mouths of the people around her. Harper often dreamed about a pair of incisors peeling the skin off her body in ribbons and curls, like carrots being shaved into garnishes.

She had all of her baby teeth in a jar under her bed. She had Maddy’s, too. She’d discovered them way back in the hall closet one day when she was looking for a band-aid. No one noticed they were missing. Sometimes she liked to take the teeth out and caress them—those pebbly souvenirs of her childhood, replaced by something that was once embedded in her body. They made Harper certain there was something else beneath her, that her limbs were replaceable like the pearls born in her mouth.

At first, her mother had been charmed by Harper’s interest, hoping it could lead to a future as a dentist. But she found Harper’s probing, constant focus unnerving. Everyone did.

“It was a compliment,” Harper said. Their mom said nothing and continued to clip.

Her mother didn’t listen when the doctor said that Harper had some kind of mental disorder, that she would need to see a specialist, would need to talk to someone about her scratching. They couldn’t afford that, she’d said. And, besides, all little girls go through phases. Her parents believed this would pass. Harper knew better.

The frequent trimming of Harper’s nails was one of the tactics her mother used to lessen the effects of the itching. She kept her daughter’s nails short and painted in the hopes that Harper wouldn’t want to spoil the manicure with her blood, and that her fingernails would be too dull to do much damage. She made Harper wash and comb her hair, too; said it was for hygiene reasons. But Harper didn’t want orderly hair and trimmed nails. Harper wanted claws. And teeth. Harper wanted her parents to stop shattering each other. Instead, she got glittery barrettes and a pair of mittens that she was supposed to wear to bed so she wouldn’t scratch in her sleep.

Her mom snipped the last nail. Harper inspected her stubs.

“Get your cookies,” her mother said. “It’s time for school.” Another of her mom’s attempts at domesticating her daughter was through baked goods. She’d decided to send Harper to school with cookies to share with her classmates. Friendship through bribery. That morning, Harper arrived at her middle school with stumpy nails and a comically large Tupperware container.

At lunch, Harper knew she had to try her mother’s tactic, at the very least so she could say that she had. And there was no way she could eat all these cookies by herself. She sat down next to two girls who were in her social studies class: Chelsea and Cameron. A strategic decision: these girls were known to be nice, but weren’t popular. Chelsea had braces and Cameron had a dainty chip on her left canine.

“Hi,” Harper said. “Would you like a cookie?”

“Oh,” Chelsea said, “are they homemade?”

“Yes, but from one of those box mixes.”

“That’s the best kind!” said Chelsea. Both girls took one.

“I like your hair clip,” Chelsea said. “Yeah,” Cameron said, “It’s so cute!”

“Thank you.” It was one her mom made her wear—pink and sparkly.

Chelsea took a bite of the cookie, chewed, swallowed. Then she looked around the lunchroom and leaned in closer. “Have you noticed that Mr. O is, like, such a creep!”

“Totally!” said Cameron. “Such a creep.”

“Yeah,” Harper said, “I bet he makes out with the CPR dummies from Health class.”

“Oh my god,” Chelsea squealed. “You’re hilarious!”

“So hilarious!”

The three of them chatted for the rest of the lunch period. There were no cookies left by the time it was over.

“Promise me you’ll sit with us again tomorrow!” Chelsea said.

“I’m not sure my mom will have time to bake anything by then.”

“That’s fine. I just want you to sit with us. You know, to talk.” Chelsea’s braces shone in the fluorescent lunchroom lighting. Her teeth were angelic.

“Oh. Yes, I can do that.” Harper’s insides were warm. “See you tomorrow.”

Harper ate lunch with her new friends every day that week. She liked these girls. They were silly, maybe a little vain, but they were funny and generous. Chelsea gave Harper a scrunchie and Cameron always shared her fancy-smelling hand sanitizer. They gave her something to do at lunch besides read and scratch at her skin.

On the following Monday, she sat with them again. “Hey,” Chelsea said as Harper sat down, “Cameron and I are having a sleepover on Friday night, at my house, and then on Saturday we’re going to the dance. Ask your mom if you can come.”

“Yeah!” Cameron said.

Harper paused, looked around. She was searching for the other kids, the ones who should be listening a few feet away, ready to cackle and squeal when Harper accepted the fake invitation. But there was no one watching. It was just the three of them.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll ask.”

*

When prompted, in the car after school, Harper told her mother that the cookie method had worked—for now. She told her that Chelsea and Cameron seemed like nice girls, that they were never among the students who teased Harper for being so itchy or for reading books about teeth. When she told her about the sleepover, her mother clapped her hands together.

“And then they want to go to the dance at school. Can I go to that, too?”

“Of course you can! You don’t have any homework to do today, do you?”

“Not really. Why?”

“Because you need a dress, honey. We’re going shopping.”

*

When they arrived at the department store, her mom was shimmering with excitement. Even Harper felt a cautious glee. She wasn't interested in dressing up, but she was happy her mother was pleased, so she followed her into the chaos of the Juniors section. Harper quickly learned that she did not have the mental fortitude required for dress shopping.

“This one’s cute!”

“No,” Harper said, “it looks like the Easter Bunny threw up on it.”

Her mother pressed her lips into a hard thin line and slammed the clothes hanger back on the rack. Harper wished she’d said nothing, then felt a twang of frustration that her mom always took everything she said so personally. It was just a stupid comment about a dress. In her mom’s mind, Harper knew, insulting the dress she’d liked was the same as insulting her, but that wasn’t what Harper had meant. Her words just always seemed to climb out of her mouth before she could assess them. Chelsea and Cameron had seemed to like that about Harper, her brazenness. Her mother did not.

They managed to find one for Harper to try, the least offensive of the dresses on display. It was simple and dark. Her mother called it elegant. Harper scratched her arms when no one was looking.

“Why don’t you ask the attendant to get you a fitting room,” her mother instructed.

“Um, excuse me,” Harper said to a lady restocking t-shirts. “Can I have a changing room, please?”

“Oh, you can go on in, dear. The rooms aren’t locked.”

“Okay, thank you.” Harper paused. The lady had pretty white incisors, and she’d been so nice. “I like your teeth.”

“What, dear?”

“Nothing!” Her mom interjected. “Thank you for your help. Let’s go try these on, Harper.”

Harper followed. She could feel the bubbling of her mother’s frustration.

“What have I told you about doing that?”

“Sorry, mom.” Harper felt a familiar twisty feeling in her stomach. She’d upset her mother again. I didn’t mean to, she wanted to scream. Instead, she slunk into a changing room, dress in hand. Once inside, the itchiness overtook her. Harper did her best to fight it, pulling on the dress and scraping her skin as lightly as she could. Harper looked in the mirror. Against their better judgment, the dress was short sleeved. The scars from all the scraping, and the red marks from this bout of itchiness, were prominent. Harper’s body was gashed and blemished. That was all her mother looked at when Harper opened the door to display herself.

She stared at Harper, at her exposed arms and uncovered calves. In a low voice she said, “We’ll get you tights. And a cardigan.”

Harper knew that her mother knew what she looked like underneath her sweatshirt and jeans. She wasn’t sure if her mom momentarily forgot, or if she hoped, somehow, that the gashes wouldn’t look so bad next to a fancy dress. Either way, Harper watched her mom’s jaw clench as she looked at her body.

Harper’s fingers began to dance under her mother’s gaze. Her skin prickled and pinched. Her fingers traced their way up her arms, grazing them. Harper was inconsolably itchy. She wanted to rip her skin off and hide underneath it, like a blanket.

“Stop that,” her mother said. “Stop it right now!” Harper didn’t stop, she couldn’t.

“Harper, I’m serious.” Harper knew nothing but the itch. Then her mother was on her and grabbing her hands and yanking them from her flesh right there in the J.C. Penny.

“I said, stop fucking scratching!”

She dragged her daughter back into the fitting room, forcing Harper out of her dress and into her regular clothes. They were silent for several moments. Her mother put the dress back on the hanger.

“We’ll go check out now.”

“Mom, you don’t have to-”

“Then we’ll go to Target. Get you some tights and a little sweater. I would do that here, but you’ve embarrassed us.”

“Mom, it’s fine. Let’s just go.”

“You have to have something, Harper. I’m not going to ruin your weekend just because you ruined my afternoon.” She turned and walked out of the fitting room. “Come on.”

Harper was the smallest, guiltiest child in the whole world.

*

They came home to a quiet house. Maddy was reading in the living room and their father wasn’t home. Their mother started making dinner and Harper sat on the couch next to her sister.

They could hear the yelling through the walls, the doorway. Their mother was on the phone, obviously with their dad.

“Well, she had to wear something,” they heard her shouting. “This is a big deal for her! She shouldn’t be embarrassed!” Silence for a few moments. “I don’t give a damn how much it cost! Why don’t you come home and talk to me about it instead of checking my bank statements like I’m a fucking child!”

Maddy looked at Harper. “School dance?”

Harper was near tears. “I wouldn’t have asked to go if I knew it would upset everybody. I just want them to be nice.”

“To you, or to each other?”

“Both, I guess.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen, especially not between them. They’re just going to get worse.”

“How do you know that?”

Maddy shrugged. “I just do. Lots of my friends' parents got divorced.”

“So why are they still married?” Harper asked.

Maddy stared at her, cocked her head to the side. “For you, idiot. They stay together for you. You’re literally crazy. If they split up, they think you might lose it for real. It’s obvious.”

“Oh.”

 “Yeah. So now we’re all unhappy. Maybe if you tried being normal, this shit would get better.” Maddy returned to her book. The one-sided yelling ebbed and flowed in the kitchen. Harper imagined she was a scrap of meat lodged between two teeth.

*

That night, her mother sat at the foot of Harper’s bed after Harper had just settled under the covers. The lights were already off.

“I’m happy you’re making friends,” her mom said. Then, a pause. Harper knew to stay quiet. “I may have overdone it a little bit at the store today. You know I just get so frustrated sometimes. Goodnight, Harper.” She left the room, leaving Harper alone with the darkness.

 *

Harper waited all week for the slumber party. On Friday, after school, she packed her overnight bag. This would be her first ever sleepover, and she wanted to be prepared. She gathered her things—pajamas, toothbrush, dress for the dance—and zipped up her duffle. Harper paused, glancing at her mattress. The baby teeth were under there, always close to her when she slept. She couldn’t leave them here all alone. Harper knew she might want them, in the night, that she would feel strange without the teeth nearby. Harper carefully wrapped the two containers in an old t-shirt and tucked them into her bag. Her mother was waiting downstairs to drive her to Chelsea’s.

 *

Cameron and Chelsea squealed when Harper arrived, running to the door to hug her. With that, Harper was hurled into the unfamiliar territory of a middle school sleepover.

The first thing they did was order a pizza. They watched a movie while they ate. It was something Harper had never seen before—a romance, set in high school, with lots of singing and dancing. Harper thought it was silly, but she liked watching it with her friends. Then, Chelsea and Cameron taught Harper how to make friendship bracelets, and they each made one using complimentary colors to show that they were all friends but that they weren’t so basic that they had to match each other. Harper periodically excused herself to go scratch in the bathroom. They were set up in Chelsea’s finished basement, alternating between the couch and the sleeping bags they had spread across the floor.

Once Harper finished her bracelet and Cameron carefully tied it onto her wrist, she felt a thump on the back of her head. She turned. Chelsea was there, grinning, with a pillow in her hands. She raised her arms to deliver another fluffy blow. Harper had had pillow fights with Maddy before, back when her sister wasn’t such a teenager, so she knew what to do. Evidently, so did Cameron. The girls waged war, giggling and shrieking as they pummeled each other.

They eventually collapsed onto their sleeping bags, having established a tenuous truce until they had time to recharge. Over their heavy breathing, the friends could hear the sound of raised voices trickling down from the staircase. Chelsea’s parents.

“Yours do that too?” Harper asked.

“Yeah.” Chelsea rolled over to face the ceiling. “All the time, now. When it happens, I know I should put music on or something, but I always try to listen. I want to understand why it's happening, you know? So I can see if I can help, but I never can. This is so embarrassing, you guys. I’m sorry they’re doing this tonight. Let’s put on another movie.”

“My parents used to do this every day,” Cameron said. She was lying on the other side of Harper. “Before my dad moved out. He has a new girlfriend now, and my mom still cries all the time.”

“I’m sorry, Cameron,” Harper said.

“Yeah,” said Chelsea, “that sucks.”

“My sister says my parents are only staying together because of me,” Harper said, “but they don’t even like me. They think I’m such a freak. They never let me talk about anything interesting and my mom gets upset when she sees my skin.”

“Because you’re so itchy all the time?” Chelsea asked.

“You noticed that?”

“Yeah, we both did.”

“Oh.”

“Why is it like that?” asked Cameron.

“I don’t know. But my mom hates it. Everyone does.” Harper scratched her arm.

Chelsea nodded. “Sometimes I think my mom only likes me because she gets to plan my outfits and tell everyone that I do ballet.”

“My mom doesn’t really come out of her room anymore,” Cameron said.

The girls lay still, gestating in the silence of their confessions. Upstairs, the shouting continued. Chelsea sniffled.

“Do you guys want to see something cool?” Harper asked. She wanted to comfort these girls, to trust them.

The girls sat up. “Yes! What?”

“I have my baby teeth, and my sisters, here with me.”

“Oh my god, you do not!”

“I do.”

“Show us!”

“I wanna see!”

Harper pulled the containers out of her bag. She opened them and her friends peered inside.

“Woah! That’s so cool,” Chelsea said. “Do you have, like, all of them?”

“Yep. All twenty, each,” Harper said. “Do you want to feel them?”

“Heck yeah,” Cameron said, “they’re so little and cute!”

Harper passed her teeth around. Not Maddy’s though, since her sister probably wouldn’t want a group of strangers touching her baby teeth. The girls were entranced, holding the tiny delicacies in their hands.

“Will they break?” Cameron asked.

“Oh no,” Harper said. “Teeth are strong. So strong you wouldn’t believe it.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh! Tooth enamel is the hardest part of the human body! It’s even harder than bones!”

“No way!”

“Yes way! And did you know that everyone’s set of teeth is different? They’re like fingerprints!” The girls listened attentively as Harper told them about teeth, and they all began to play with the ones she had brought. Holding the teeth up and speaking in funny voices, stacking them together to form little mounds they pretended looked like buildings, tossing the teeth back and forth to each other. Chelsea held one against her ear as if it were a diamond earring.

Cameron put one in her mouth and then spat it out as if it were hers to lose. Their laughter coated the room.

“You’re so fun, Harper,” Chelsea said. “I never would have thought to save all my teeth. I just gave them to the Tooth Fairy.”

“The Tooth Fairy isn’t real,” said Harper. “But it’s nice to get money, though,” she added.

“Yeah,” said Cameron. “Money’s great.”

“I can’t wait until I can have my own money,” Chelsea said. “I feel like all my parents ever buy me is more stuff for ballet.”

“Don’t you like it?” Harper asked.

“Dance? No, I hate it. It’s so boring, and all the other girls there are better than me. And I have to go three times a week.”

Harper considered this. “That’s totally not fair.”

“Not fair,” said Cameron.

“I know how to get your mom to stop making you go to ballet for a week or two,” Harper said.

“How?”

“Just scratch yourself.”

“Huh?” Chelsea said.

“Like I do. Look.” Harper pushed her sleeve up to her shoulder, revealing her gashes.

“She can’t make you go if your arms look like this. Or your legs. This’ll show even through ballet tights, I bet.”

“But…it’ll hurt.”

“Well, yeah,” said Harper. “But haven’t you ever felt so itchy you can’t stand it?”

“I think I have,” said Cameron.

“I haven’t,” said Chelsea. “But I guess I could try.”

“We could do it together,” said Harper.

“Okay,” Chelsea said. “Do I just use my nails?”

“If they’re sharp enough, yeah,” Harper said. “Here, I can show you.”

“Yeah,” Chelsea said. “Show us how you do it.”

“Okay,” Harper said. She wished she’d met these girls sooner, wished she’d known sleepovers meant you could show things like this.

Harper bit at her nubby middle fingernail until she made it good and scraggly. Then she lifted it to her bicep and pushed the claw in, dragging the finger up and down her arm. After a few tries, her old scabs opened, and she was drawing blood, digging for it with her fingertips.

The first thing her mom would say to her, especially when Harper’s scratching had first started to scorch her life, was “Oh, honey, that must hurt!” She would see her daughter, blood trails down the side of her, and exclaim this. “You’re hurting yourself, honey. What’s wrong? Why are you hurting yourself?” It was these moments when Harper found her mother to be the most nonsensical. The pain was there but it wasn’t important. And because it wasn’t important, it didn’t functionally exist. Of course it hurts, Harper would think. I’m bleeding; it hurts when you bleed. But when Harper would try to explain the itch to her mom—how it felt so gun-metal solid that she couldn’t be through with it—her mother would just sigh and look away, especially after the doctors said there was nothing wrong with her skin, no reason for the itch to be there except a hitch in her brain.

These girls would get it though. They’d know it was real. She kept scratching.

Screams from the doorway. Harper turned. Chelsea’s mother stood there, a tray of snacks in her hands.

“What in God’s name do you girls think you’re doing?”

They froze, staring at each other with wide, fearful eyes. They knew, like all girls do, that there is a penalty for strangeness.

“Mom,” Chelsea said, “we were just--”

“Harper,” she said, “what are you doing to yourself? Did they tell you to do that?”

“No, no. I wanted to. I wanted to show them.”

Chelsea’s mom came closer, saw Harper’s arm, all the old and new marks on it. “Harper, are you okay, sweetie? Doesn’t that hurt?”

“Of course it hurts,” Harper said. “But it’s fine. I did it on purpose.”

“Let’s get you some bandages, sweetie. And then we need to call your mother.”

Chelsea said, “But mom—”

“No buts! Harper, come with me.”

“Yes ma’am.”

*         

Chelsea and Cameron waited with Harper for her mom to arrive. When she did, she collected Harper without a word, nodding to Chelsea’s mother and steering her daughter out the door.

Harper expected yelling, but there was silence for the entire car ride home. Harper looked out the window into the lonely darkness. She wondered what her mother was thinking. She wondered if they could return the dress she’d bought. Harper scratched at her arms. She wanted to tear the skin off her body like a fleshy hard-boiled egg, to strip away the superfluous bits of herself and become unrecognizable. She wanted to peel herself new. Finally, they pulled into the driveway. Her father’s sedan wasn’t there. Her mom kept the car running and took a few deep breaths. She turned towards Harper.

“Stop that scratching. Stop it right now.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You always say that, Harper, but nothing ever changes.”

“I’m making friends, Mom. I’m really trying.”

Her mother stared at her from the driver’s seat. Harper felt like roadkill when she looked at her like that, like Harper was repulsive and pitiful at the same time.

“Do you know why I’m so hard on you, Harper?”

“No.”

“Because I know that you can beat this. You’re strong, stronger than your urges. I know it’s hard, but it’s what you have to do.”

“I’m sorry, Mommy.”

“At the very least, you need to get better at hiding it. Just until you fully get better. You may not think I understand, but I do.” She rummaged through her purse for a moment, pulled out a pair of tweezers. “We’re going to try something new. Okay, honey? When you want to scratch, all you have to do is use these instead. When the urge hits you, go like this.” Her mother took the tweezers, clamped them around a few pale hairs on the back of her arm, and jerked. The hairs were freed from her skin. She held the instrument out to Harper. “You try.”

Harper took them, pinched them around one of her own arm hairs, and pulled. It stung, pleasantly.

“Good,” her mother said. “Now, you have to be very, very careful with these, honey.

They are for body hair only. Nowhere anyone would notice, okay? Not eyebrows or eyelashes or the hair on your head. Can you do that for me?”

“Yes, Mommy. I promise.”

Her mother nodded. “Good. Don’t tell your father.” She opened her car door and started getting out. “Let’s go inside.” Harper followed.

Once in the house, Harper wanted to go practice with her new tool immediately. Instead, she sat quietly as her mom got out the nail clippers.

According to her mother, it was time for a trim.