Teeth, Nails, and Shoes

It’s at least ten minutes past 4:30pm in the small conference room with no windows. There’s a restlessness amongst the women, all in lowly administrative roles even though it’s 2017. It’s just like that in Baltimore sometimes. The men, in suits or lab coats or both, are likely to talk in circles at this time of day.

“We need to be thoughtful when crafting the guest list,” the most important man says, reiterating that point five more times. 

The least important woman tries to write lines of poetry in her notebook. She pauses that inevitably come with crafting lines create the perfect illusion that 

“What about Dr. Ferrera?” the event planner asks.

The most important man is silent for a long moment. It’s longer than most people could get away with thinking in a meeting, but again, he’s the most important man in the room. They all know he’s just like this. No ones dares to interrupt.

Finally, he speaks. “I really like Dr. Ferrera, he’s a great hospitalist. But there’s something you’ve all got to understand about donors like Ms. Austen. She’s used to spending time with certain types of people.”

She shifts slightly in her seat and writes down another line. On the opposite page, she writes down Dr. Ferrera as a potential person to send an invitation to. She keeps listening, wondering where his miniature speech will go.

“Here’s the thing,” he continues, using so many unnecessary words to reach his point—whatever it may be. “You’ve probably heard this before. But you can always tell where someone came from by three things: fingernails, teeth, and shoes. Dr. Ferrera is great, but he’s young. I don’t think he’s quite ready for such an intimate dinner.”

He’s still talking, but her heart constricted as he went down his list. Her hand is becoming sweaty around the pen. The small conference room seems to get even smaller. He isn’t looking at her—she’s so unimportant, the newest secretary there—but she stares at him with vacant eyes, waiting for him to turn his judgmental gaze upon her.

Does he realize who he’s talking to? She wonders.

She shifts in her seat, rubbing the toes of her small boots together. They looked stylish two or three years ago, but any shoes bought on the clearance rack of KMart tend to show their age in much less time than that. She’s aware of just how thin the soles have worn and wonders if he’s looked at her feet clad in these worn, faded boots that barely make the cut of business professional.

The pen in her hand is becoming slick from sweat. She curls her hand toward herself slightly, part protectively. It’s also partly because this is the improper way she learned to hold pens. That was when she was learning to write from a cruel first-grade teacher who always shouted at her students in a small town no one knows the name of so far from home. Her nails are short and thin. They don’t even take well to polish. She’s tried.

She looks at the other women perched at the table, tentatively listening, taking notes. They all at least have manicured fingers. Even the doctor’s transcriptionist, who people often forget the name of since she’s so quiet, has a simple clear lacquer on her fingernails. 

She runs her tongue over her slanted, crowded teeth. The first dentist she saw in twelve years upon leaving home had ripped so much unmentionable grout from the gums of her teeth. The woman had been polite, but she wondered if even that woman had wondered what rock she’d come crawling out from under to have such horrendous teeth in a mild-mannered, ordinary suburb outside the city.

He was still talking. She was half-listening.

She failed every one of his tests.

She never felt more like a spy behind enemy lines.

~

It’s 2018. She walks into the DSW in the Canton neighborhood of Baltimore, a part of the city being slowly consumed by chain stores and luxury apartments no one can really afford.

She can’t afford these shining shoes on display pedestals. She walks to the clearance aisles at the back of the store but stops before entering. She turns around to the real aisles—aisles for people with money, whether they realize it or not.

The cheapest pair of elegant work flats in her size is $40. That’s nearly two weeks of her grocery budget. She eyes the shining faux leather with longing. She knows she’ll scuff them in her infinite carelessness. 

She uses a credit card and buys them anyway. She wants to blend in. How else will she blend in enough to pretend she belongs in their polite offices?

~

It’s 2019. She’s uncomfortable in the salon in a beach town of New Jersey. She shows the young woman who is supposed to be the technician to do her first-ever manicure a picture from the business’ Instagram.

“Oh, but you booked for a gel manicure. That’s powder dip,” she says in a tone that isn’t unfriendly but isn’t warm, either. “You should have booked my mother if you wanted that.”

I can tell from the slight tilt of the owner’s head that she’s listening.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is it possible to get a gradient look with regular polish?”

The woman looks at her strangely. “Uh, no. Have you been here before…?”

It’s the polite way of saying are you an idiot or are you a grown woman showing her age around her eyes who never has had her nails done before?

She has no choice but to confess that it’s her first-ever manicure. The owner kindly swoops in and says she’ll squeeze her in for powder dip. The owner’s daughter seems amused, saying how most girls have their first in high school.

Maybe once the lacquer is on, people will think she was that kind of girl, too.

~

It’s 2020 in a congested suburb of New Jersey in some approximation of commuting distance to New York City.

She knows the drill. By some miracle, she didn’t need the dentist’s drill before starting this painful process of fixing her teeth. She took decent care of herself, even when using dollar store toothbrushes and off-brand toothpaste.

She knows the drill now. She doesn’t flinch when she passes the card for her health savings account across to the woman behind the desk.

She’s never spent so much money in one place at one time. But this is it. 

This is the last step to go from spy to belonging. She doesn’t want to pretend to be one of them—she wants to be one of them.

~

The drone of voices disagreeing over a policy name hums in her ears. It’s just past 10am because there’s a silent gentleman’s agreement not to make a meeting before 10 unless they’re actively punishing someone. She’s listening, waiting for them to bring up the parts of the project she’s responsible for. But she’s also listening to the traffic outside, the occasional blaring of car horns and the taste of a homemade latte on her tongue sings a song of its own. 

It’s 2021 just a bridge away from Manhattan and there is always noise—it is just what it is like to live in a place that is also alive.

The five voices move down the agenda. They reach the dissemination of the new policy. Soon, it’ll finally be her time to speak. She sways her foot over the edge of her fire escape, waiting for it to finally be her turn to speak. She still finds herself impatient for these moments.

She doesn’t write poetry anymore when more important people talk. She’s climbed a few rungs higher on the ladder—enough for people to listen when they enter the citadel of her small area of expertise. It isn’t much, but it’s better than taking meeting minutes. The caveat is that she’s just important enough that zoning out to write lines of verses just isn’t an option anymore.

Or if it is, the cadence of voices and horns canceled out the music in her head waiting to get out.

“I’d like to propose adding something to the change management plan. Can we work on a one-pager flyer summarizing the key changes?”

She taps her fingers on the desk as she listens to the jargon. She knows the important words to focus on.

“From a sustainability perspective, I’d recommend we create a short video with a scannable QR code at the end rather than prepare print materials,” she says in a perfect working professional voice.

The five other people on the call agree and ask a few more questions about how long it will take her to develop the assets. The exchange is full of pointless words, but she takes note of the most important things among the slow discussion. Her fingers sail across the keyboard, her long nails covered in gel polish a pale blue like the sky, contrasting the black plastic of the keys. 

She picks up her phone to glance at her calendar. She sees her reflection for a moment before the screen comes to life. It distracts her.

She looks at her shoes, a pair of sandals purchased from a proper shoe store that doesn’t also sell diapers and cleaning supplies. She looks at her nails, an indulgence, she admits. But she just adores putting bright art on her body in a way that all her officemates would still consider socially acceptable, even if they are operating on standards of half a century ago.

She opens the camera app and flips the view to see from the front camera. She gives the phone a rehearsed business smile, revealing the teeth she spent five thousand dollars to straighten. Two years and a great many nights spent grimacing in pain from her jaw as she fell asleep in ever-larger apartments, they’re finally straight. She finally looks like everyone else around her.

She wishes she could celebrate these victories all on her own, but that man’s voice is in her head every time she sees her smile, pays another woman to do her nails, or steps into a shoe store.

“I wonder if I’m passing now,” she murmurs.

She looks like she belongs on that Brooklyn fire escape, but she isn’t sure if she’s any happier about looking the same as everyone else.