Fingers

By Sheila Pang
Illustration by Olivia Fortman

I am fascinated by fingers.

With one command, a message runs like lightning—from my brain to my motor neurons to the muscles of my fingers—to wrap around any object and apply unto it any amount of force I desire. With one chemical impulse speeding down an axon, my fingers can tuck themselves neatly into the folds of my dry palm. With one thoughtless action, my fingers are drumming the ivory tips of their nails against an unsuspecting table. One wag, one twitch, one move of a finger is just mind-blowing.

When I was younger, I used to despise my fingers. I would obsess over hiding them behind my back, within the folds of my crossed arms, or covered in the haven of a footlong sleeve. Behind my back, my fingers were always enclosed in fists, concealing themselves in shame. In the thick of my arms, I would try to cover their width and hairy knuckles. I even remember sitting childishly cross-legged in a nail salon, surrounded by colorful confetti and birthday balloons, and refusing to paint my nails because it would bring attention to my fingers. As I got older, I gained a habit of trying to scratch off the small writer’s bump next to the nail of my right middle finger.

There was one person who thought my fingers were pretty.

I remember my grandma, laughing and chasing after me as my tiny, grubby fingers waved in the air, my clothes splashed with mud. I remember the way her wrinkled hands wrapped around my waist even though my clothes were soiled with muck, and the way she took my fingers in hers. My grandma would tell me not to dirty my beautiful hands as she gently wiped them clean, as if she were holding a precious glass figurine. I remember the way my small hands would fit snugly into hers as we walked out of the park.

I remember my grandma and her hands bouncing in the air to the rippling notes of an old Korean folk song. I remember she danced offbeat at times, but she would wave it off, as if the music was supposed to sync to her melody and definitely not the other way around. The wrinkles around her mouth framed her sensational smile, like how the blue night sky wraps around constellations. Her bare, chapped lips had a pink hue and her teeth were crooked. Nevertheless, there was not a more radiant picture than my grandma whenever she would giggle and dance as if she had not lived seventy years. It was an infectious smile and my hands, if they were ever curled in tight red fists, would unfurl and clap along by the end of the song.

I remember my grandma and her fingers grasping handfuls of candy. I remember how she would always bring Werther’s caramel candies because they were my favorite. I would smuggle them into my pockets; eating them was always a top secret mission kept from my mother. It took skill to act like I was yawning and covering my mouth with a sticky hand full of caramel.

Even after my fingers grew thicker with bumps and hair, my hands still fit perfectly into hers. My grandma still managed to wrap her wrinkled hand around mine, even after she crashed her head into a sharp corner of a desk and ended up in a hospital bed, unable to move one side of her body. Half of her axons dead, she couldn’t talk or walk anymore. Her messages were lost in communication, stuck within her body; they no longer went from her brain to her motor neurons to the muscles of her fingers.

She remained that way for ten years—not really gone but a ghost grasping onto a body, deteriorating with every day in a hospital bed. Her fingers laid at her side on the cheap white blankets she slept in. Her hands grew dead with each doctor and nurse that came to inject shots and examine her body. She had to stare at walls that were sickly yellow with the paint peeling off. An endless procession of flower bouquets, whose stems crumbled as dead petals, littered her bedside table. Despite her situation, whenever I visited, she looked at me with kind eyes and reached out to me with her paper-thin hands, scattered with brown liver spots.

The worst part was that I got used to it. The memories of our playground, the Korean folk songs, and the caramel candies all disappeared with age. I chose algebra homework over visiting my sick grandma. I chose my middle school clubs over going to the hospital. I didn’t have the guts to imagine the pain she was going through.

I forgot about her.

Then, just as I entered high school, news frequently came from the hospital. She refused to eat her food, and she constantly took the IV out of her wrists. She wailed as the nurses gave her the daily shots. During our now regular hospital visits, we were met with dim eyes, almost unrecognizable. She stared at the ceiling, and it seemed as if she were gazing at God, asking why He was putting her through so much pain. Her touch had become like the kind of ice you see on ponds in early winter—fragile and a second away from breaking.

One visit during the November of my sophomore year of high school, I reached into my pocket and took out my phone. I channeled my inner Gen Z and opened up Snapchat. Press for a few seconds and swipe left three times. This time, unlike the countless other visits, I reached out for my grandma’s weak hands and pulled her into the picture next to me. Confused at first, she stared until she realized that the app had decorated her hair with shooting stars and sparkles. Her dim eyes lit up just for a second, and she let out a faint chuckle. A quivering hand grasped at the air, briefly forgetting its years of weight, as if she could catch just one constellation to hold on and whisper a wish to. 

On the eve of my best friend’s birthday, I huddled around my phone, waiting for the clock to tick ten minutes forward. Other friends who couldn’t wait had already streamed our chats with early birthday messages for my best friend. But I tapped my restless fingers against the wooden floor and waited to ring in another grand year. Right then, five minutes remaining till midnight, I was notified. I remember the taste of salt against my forced smile as my fingers clicked the keyboard: “Happy Birthday!” I remember the murky screen, the cheers, the falling confetti and tears.

Wednesday, January 13th. My grandma regained her brightness as a brilliant star in the night sky.

The most unsettling part of the funeral was closing the casket. The still body looked as if it were asleep. A small part of me expected her to reach out for my hands again. I wished for hers to calm my trembling ones. Her wrinkled fingers just laid dead and cold against the dark blue satin folds. Death was unyielding. My warm palms embraced her frigid fingertips; a storm emerged in me. I stared at our hands: intertwined death and life, ice and fire. I wished the fire breathing within me could have passed straight through my fingertips and into hers. Anyone could tell her fingers were worn out. Her fingers had been through eighty years of life, ten in paralysis. I shivered as the mahogany coffin was sealed.

I looked at my fingers, which I had thought were so disgusting, and compared what my fingers had gone through with hers. My fingers had warm blood and oxygen pumping through their veins, muscles, and cells. Hers did not. They could do so much.

I am fascinated by fingers.