Sunday Hands

Laura Jean Jackson smoothed the cream colored wool skirt over the summit of her behind before settling into wooden pew with a creak. She sat here each Sunday, and the aural pattern of the creaking as she shimmied side to side–long, short, long long, short–was familiar as the hymns in the thick book on her lap. It was from here that she could best survey her week’s work.

She watched Miss Julie Paine, across the aisle, take off her gloves and place them horizontally across the top of her handbag. The peach polish on the woman’s nails caught the sunlight pouring in through the stained glass windows, making the ends of her fingers dance like tiny prayer candles. Mrs. Mavis Greeley genuflected as she prepared to enter Laura Jean’s row, and Laura Jean let out a small gasp as the older woman extended the blue pointed tips of her hands over her forehead to make the sign of the cross. Oh, how the brilliant azure complimented the robes worn by the Virgin Mary statue above the altar! She listened with glee while the Mumford sisters, Ada and Claudia, noisily let the squared off edges of their French manicures click and clack against the glass rosary beads slipping between their lumpy, arthritic digits a few rows from the back. And then, of course, there was Mr. Simon St. Claire, clasping his big bear paw with its perfectly rounded and shining claws over that of every other man’s while he made his way inside.

As organ music began to fill the church, Laura Jean tried her best to suppress the pride thumping under her camisole. Pride was the deadly sin she’d had the hardest time contending with since graduating top of her cosmetology class. For the past decade, she had been making a reputation for herself here in Ozark as a top-notch manicurist. Her skills were unmatched. Her prices were reasonable.  And most importantly, she could take the raisin-wrinkled fingers of an old washerwoman and, within an hour, make her look like royalty from the wrist down.

As the music crescendoed, signaling the entrance of Father Douglas, the congregation stood as one. Laura Jean’s hymn book slid from her lap and down to the floor. She blushed as she bent to pick it up, yet there was no need to feel embarrassed. Beloved by her community, she could do no wrong. She gracefully bent and felt around on the cold floor, her gloved hand (she always kept a pair of gloves, with a bit of moisturizer inside) searching below her for the book.

“Please be seated,” said Father Douglas.

Feet shuffled, pews creaked, and Laura Jean turned white. The thick block heel of Mrs. Mavis Greeley’s shoe had come down hard, right across the three middle fingers of Laura Jean’s right hand. Feeling off balance, Mrs. Greeley pushed her foot down harder and dug her heel side to side, as if she were trying to drill herself into the ground. After a few long seconds, she sat, her weight now resting comfortably in her behind and releasing Laura Jean’s hand from bondage.

Stunned, Laura Jean Jackson raise her hand and slid off her glove. She took a deep breath and felt her chest ache behind her camisole while she, with some difficulty, wiggled her swollen, purpling fingertips, whose chipped nails were now framed by crimson crescents of blood.