Dirt Under My Fingernails

By Darian Kiener // September 29, 2023

The house creaked underfoot as I stepped lightly on the rough of the wood. Pictures of some people I knew, and some I didn’t, cover the walls; reminding me of the generations that had lived in this house. My father's coat, ratty old leather, chewed through in some parts by moths, had been hanging on the handrail by the stairs since he died. He didn’t like it when we touched his things as kids, so I left it. I left it all, this house wasn’t mine; it belonged to the dead people in the pictures.

My morning breath tasted like the stale cigarettes I had smoked before going to bed. I had brushed my teeth, but that smell was a part of me at this point. It disgusted me. But I wouldn’t quit.

“Too late now,” I muttered to no one at all because there was no one left to mutter to. My brother James’ picture caught my eye. My lips tightened.

… 

The day James left, he left in green, the same green as the men who talked to my father on that day when I was thirteen. It was like any other summer day at our house. We woke up early and were shepherded to the garden by our mama. We were planting tomato vines today. 

James used his hands, making sure the black and red dirt coated him like a glove, his spade sat unused beside him. “Why do you bring that out here?” I asked.

“For rocks,” James said. 

I was satisfied.

Our mom came out at around lunchtime and called out to us.  “Both of you go get cleaned up, James the bus will be here for you soon,” She said.

“Race you to the…” he said, but I was already running.

He used the upstairs bathroom and cleaned up the nicest he ever had, with his face shaved and his hair slicked back with pomade; though he left the soil under his fingernails. It would have been hell to dig it all out, though I didn’t think he tried. When we were done washing the dirt off we ate in comfortable silence; cheese and tomato sandwiches—James' favorite.

The bus arrived about an hour later. Our Mama cooed over him making sure to call him handsome enough times that he wouldn’t forget it. The old man shook his hand “You’re a man now and I’m proud of the man you are.” 

 I believe that is the only time James ever got to hear those words from our father; I never did.

…

 I shook his image from my head and pushed through the old door.

The rickety door gently slammed against the old oak frame, dark amber with a dull shine when the sun was up. A dent on the right side of the doorframe, old oak splintered. My father had struck there once and broke his hand. 

He had been cursing up a storm, the two men in green he was cursing at quickly found their way back to their car. I could understand them, when he used to get like that I would hide. He never hit me, or my mama, but there is something about the rage of an old farmer that just doesn’t need to be studied. I didn’t know what had happened then, no one did.

We found out at dinner, my father clutched his knife, stabbing the potatoes my mama pulled from the ground; and steak, cooked too tough. The old man broke. I saw it in his eyes when his fork clattered to the floor in front of James’ empty chair. I was thirteen then, and sometimes I still feel thirteen. Sometimes it feels like my biggest responsibility should be making sure I get to school on time as if I could be late. Mrs. Kathy, a beast of a woman, and the best bus driver in Green County, would never let any of her students be late. She would drive to California and back between the hours of 5 AM and 7 AM if she needed to, and last I checked California was 2000 miles away. Used to tell myself her bus used rocket fuel, but that was of no matter because I never had to worry about being late, and for that I am thankful.

I slipped off the pew bench that was my chair at the dinner table and went to grab the lost fork. “Leave it,” the old man choked out. Then he looked up. Eyes like geysers, the amount of tears that spilled, God knows why. “Sit.” I obliged him and a silence like winter settled, rolling over us, chilling our bones. My mama looked concerned and confused. Before this moment she had never seen my father cry, nor had I, and I don’t think I saw him ever cry again. “Nothing to cry about,” he would say.

…

Old furniture sat on the porch dusty and untouched, cobwebs creeping up the banister, not a light on in the house, at least I hoped not, electricity was more expensive than my parents had ever let on. A garden, overgrown and untended, full of red clay like bricks unmade, and weeds that you could make a rope from if you didn’t pull them in the morning. “Tomorrow,” I managed to mutter to myself. Always tomorrow, who knew that every time tomorrow came, it became today and we never got the work of tomorrow done. Time to stop chewing on that thought and leave it for tomorrow.

I brush against the pollen-covered furniture and look at the yellow dust that paints my fingers. I have hands like the cobweb-covered porch, old. I am old, thirteen no more. I adjusted my skirt, always too long or too short, I could stand the ones that were too long, I’d just pull them up to my rib bones and forget about it, couldn't do that with the ones that were too short, a real goldilocks problem. The old man liked that story, though he only told it once. His face lit up really bright and you could see the beds in his eyes. “Too soft,” he would say, whipping his head back and forth like a toddler being force-fed broccoli. “Too hard,” he would say, grabbing a pillow and punching it enough to make some feathers fly.  “Just right,” he would say and smile, satisfied. I tried to hold on to that smile, it looked like it belonged on his face, though he would never admit that, much like I say that this wrinkled skin doesn’t belong to me, but it does.

I put a cigarette to my lips, then drop the pack into the ashtray that sits on the handrail of the porch stairs. I should have taken after my mama and bought into the beauty of family, but I never married. I doubt I would have been pleasant to a husband. Rough looking and full of dirt, my father once called me. I think he mistook me for his reflection, but I couldn't blame him, ugly men usually don't have pretty daughters. 

For that I am resentful. 

For that, I am alone now, some fifty years later.

…

My mama and I waited for my father to speak, I studied my hands, they were smooth like the marble skin carved for one of those Greek statues without arms, I couldn’t look at my father, I could feel his eyes on me, red with the salt of tears. “Look at me. I need you both to listen.” His usually strong voice broke when he spoke. He had our full attention.

…

The light breeze of summer blew as I lit my cigarette. I got smoke in my eye. I never did learn how to smoke right, is there a right way? Just blacken your lungs as dark as you can get them with each breath, and age like shit when you are done. 

When I was a kid I would watch James as he smoked on the porch with his friends; back then no one knew it could kill you the way we know now, yet I still admire James because he had found a way to make smoking an art, subtle, he would breathe out and inhale through his nose. He would lean against the same handrail that I was currently leaning on and look like a spy contemplating the most remarkable infiltration there could be. James should have been a Bond instead of a Cartwright.

…

The porch sat too high, and the house, too small. Claustrophobic and in need of new paint. It cracked and brushed away to reveal the grey underneath. I couldn’t help but laugh at that, I had used mascara to hide the grey hairs peeking out through the black dye job I had haphazardly performed on Monday. Thursdays were the worst day of the week I decided then. Forgetting that the day my father had cried was a Thursday too. I am sure I thought Thursdays were the worst then as well.

I spit a loose piece of tobacco from the filter of the cigarette out, classy, and studied the sky, storms were going to roll through today, and I felt it in my knees when I stood up out of bed. The TV a dinosaur from a forgotten age flicked on with a ZAP from a clicker that still clicked. I watched with squinted eyes, my glasses too far to grab. The weatherman smiled at me. His teeth were too white, I missed when weathermen used to look like normal people in suits, I missed him mentioning how bad the storms would be. Bad according to the sky. I turned back to the door and back to the house. 

Breakfast was a cheese and tomato sandwich and coffee, black. Boiled too long, and put through a French press. It was a wonder the coffee filter never rusted, the amount of times I forgot to drain it. And left it overnight. The glass had been stained yellow. My Mama would have hated that and drove to the store to get a new one about twenty years ago. But the old man had a saying and he said it often “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” 

…

It stormed that Thursday when I was thirteen, and it entered in one big blast of lightning and a tremendous rolling boom of thunder. My father sat still, the only thing moving was his eyes, I continued to stare at my hands, there was dirt under my fingernails, the only real imperfection I could see. “Look at me, Alice,” my father said. I met his eyes, red and blue. They were piercing like he was trying to see my soul, but they were shaking, like a nervous surgeon, he was going to hurt me. 

“You are scaring me,” I said.

“Honey, are you alright?” My mama asked.

He waved her off.

…

I waved off the weatherman. I had survived worse storms than this, certainly, I had, and certainly, I would continue to do so. The mailbox had fallen over in the last storm. I didn’t bother to put up a new one. No one sent letters anymore, and I pay my bills online now.

…

The crumpled letter danced in the wind, trapped on the front porch, taunting our family for weeks, none of us wanted to pick it up off that porch, and because Mama and the old man didn’t want to pick it up, I didn’t either. I could guess its contents, based on the old man's blood that stained it, I understood then why he had been cursing, I was thirteen but I felt sixty-three when I heard the news.

I was sixty-three but I felt thirteen whenever I thought about that night; gathered around the dinner table, waiting for my father with his shaky hands and red eyes to hurt me, but he never raised a fist.

“Your brother died in combat,” he said.

That was enough.

___________________

Darian Kiener is a 22-year-old Senior at UNC Greensboro and a resident of Wake Forest. He has lived in Wake Forest since he was 7 and attended Wake Forest Elementary, Wake Forest Middle, and Wake Forest High School. He currently studies English and Philosophy and has participated in creative writing since he was little. His first introduction to the art of writing a story was in Mr. Cook's creative writing classroom in high school.

He has since been published in The Coraddi Fine Arts Magazine, Atlantis Creative Magazine, and has been featured inThe Wingless Dreamer's Anthologies.