Pedicution

This is a piece I wrote what seems like an age ago now, when I first lived in Singapore. Thanks damyantig for making me dig it out. Hope you enjoy it!

When I was a little girl I had a best friend, Angela Boyd, who lived next door. She was the youngest of three girls, I had two brothers. She played dolls and house with her sisters, I played boxing and cars with my brothers. I would watch from my bedroom window as each Saturday and Sunday she went off to tap class, modern jazz, or Spanish dancing.I remember thinking to myself ‘I wonder what it’s like to be a real girl?’

Twenty years later I find myself watching the expat wives here in Singapore and asking ‘I wonder what it’s like to be a real expat wife?‘: I had my first ever manicure last May, in Bali. My beautiful nails lasted a full two hours before I broke one hooking up my bra. No one warned me that you needed the skills and dexterity of a contortionist in order to maintain ‘expat wife nails’. No one taught me that the opposable thumb that put homosapians on the evolutionary elevator, would become useless with a French manicure, as one had to find ways of doing everyday tasks without actually using your fingers and thumbs. I bet Angela Boyd knew.

Well a few months had passed since my manicure debut. So I decided it was time to once again tip-toe into the expat-wife world: I had a complimentary pedicure voucher for a local spa. At least I wouldn’t break a toe nail hooking up my bra.

I arrived for my appointment on time but was kept waiting whilst the Chinese pedicure woman literally ran around me in circles. She seemed flustered and agitated and made me a little nervous. Perhaps it was part of a pre-pedicure ritual, I thought. Perhaps she was cleansing my aura?

The running around stopped as abruptly as it had started. Within seconds my shoes were off. She started with a few pleasantries, placed my feet in a basin of water and began her work. She complemented me on how soft my feet were and asked if I had had a pedicure before.

‘No! My first time’ I replied, nervously.

She continued to work for several minutes in an odd, distracted way. Even though I was a pedicure virgin I knew something wasn’t quite right. She was picking up various sharp instruments but never seemed to do anything with them, She would look at them, grimace and put them back in the tray. She just seemed content to do a lot of things with cotton wool. I don’t care what grade of cotton wool it was, it wasn’t going to cut my nails or do whatever it is they do to your cuticles. Something was wrong.

I admit to watching far too many episodes of CSI than is healthy for a person, with that, and my overactive imagination I suddenly decided the pedicurist was one of those people who were not supposed to be anywhere near sharp implements. Perhaps she was on day release from the local penitentiary? Perhaps she’d argued with her abusive husband before my appointment and was full of righteous indignation and rage…perhaps…

Suddenly she shot up off her stool, breaking my train of thought and scaring the be jeepers out of me. I responded instinctively with some pathetic defensive karate chop, which, thankfully, she didn’t see. She walked to the till area and came back with a pile of magazines…surely she’s not having a coffee break, I thought…She handed them to me saying

‘Something to read Mrs Smith’.

‘Oh!…Thank you!’ I replied.

I reached into my bag, found my glasses and tried to find an article on pedicures in the hope of figuring out the normal procedure. My search was in vain and I settled into reading a toe curling article on colonic irrigation.

‘Er…excuse me, Mrs Smith…I am so embarrassed…but can I ask….I forgot my glasses today and I cannot see…can I borrow your glasses?

Then it dawned on me…the energy saving light bulb above my head illuminated; she wasn’t a demented knife fiend; she wasn’t one can short of a six-pack… her reluctance to use the scissors and other sharp instruments was because she couldn’t see properly to use them. I thanked the pedicure gods that she hadn’t risked flying on autopilot. Visions of my mangled, bloody, bandaged feet flashed across my mind. I imagined the possible newspaper headlines such as ‘Painful Pedicure Procedure Prostrates Patron‘

“Of course you can borrow them‘ I said, handing her my glasses, and wondering if my prescription lenses would in fact be a help or a hindrance.

‘I’m sorry’ she repeated.

‘No problem‘ I replied,

‘I’ll just look at the pictures,’  I said, referring to the magazines which were now just a kaleidoscopic blur…the colonic irrigation article suddenly took on a new, less disturbing slant.

She took up the sharp pedicure implements with new found confidence. It worried me slightly that it appeared I had the same near sight vision as a 50 year old woman, but I ignored the feelings of panic that invoked. I settled into the peace of knowing that she could now actually see what she was doing, and the nagging newspaper headlines faded from my mind. I closed my eyes and relaxed… How naive of me.

‘Do you go to church?‘

I opened my eyes thinking I had misheard, or had slipped into a hypnogogic nightmare.

‘Excuse me?‘ I said, rather nervously.

‘Do you go to church?‘ she repeated, menacingly holding a sharp cuticle device a few inches from my face.

‘What was the right answer?‘ I feverishly thought. I was well skilled at dealing with Jehovah’s witnesses, but you saw them coming….this came in the middle of a bloody pedicure, for god’s sake!

Deciding honesty was probably my safest bet, I offered ‘No?’

‘Oh you must come with me to my church…I take you…we have lunch after…’

I felt the panic rising inside. Must? Must come? Did the scissors she was now waving about infer a command? A polite request? An ‘it would be in your best interests’?

‘I…er…we….we never go to church’ I pleaded.

‘Oh…you like my church…Charismatic Church…I drive you.. We have lunch after’

What was it with the lunch thing? Was she hungry? I’d like to think it was because I looked anorexic and could do with a good feed I’d like to think that…..

‘I’m Catholic!’ I blurted out, reverting to my standard Jehovah’s witness defence.

‘Oh…you pray to the Virgin Mary?’ she quizzed, scissors stopping in mid air.

I’m praying to her right now, I thought.

‘Yes?‘ I meekly offered.

‘Still…you come my church…bring family…we have..

‘Yea, yea…lunch after, I know.

By now I had that stupid smile on my face. The one that simultaneously says ‘I’m trying to politely say no without actually saying no’ and ‘stop it your scaring me!‘.

I have a terrible record of saying no to people. I’m the double-glazing salesman’s dream customer, the one who would willingly get rid of her brand new double-glazed windows in order to buy this salesman’s windows, so as not to offend him. My husband on the other hand would tell the Pope ‘ No thanks, not today’ without so much as a backwards glance or a genuflection. ‘Just say no!’, he had repeatedly drilled into me. ‘God knows you find it easy enough to say to me’, he’d mumble under his breath.

That smile on my face was beginning to hurt, and she wasn’t about to back down. Images of what my husband would say that night, after a gruelling day at work, when I informed him we were off to Church on Sunday with a pedicurist, and by-the-way, we have some lovely new windows coming on Monday.

‘Yes?’ she asked again…‘You come. You try?’

I simply carried on smiling, why couldn’t I just say No? I tried forming the word in my mouth without actually saying it. I tried imagining my husbands reaction to our new hobby…I tried so hard….

‘My husband works long hours…’ I began, ‘..we hardly see each other, weekends are family time’.

Ok, it wasn’t ‘No!’ exactly, but it wasn’t ‘yes’ either.

She went strangely quiet. She then solemnly took off my glasses and handed them back to me as if they were contaminated. I swallowed hard, sensing that all was not right…. Minutes of tense silence went by.

‘Oh! I missed that nail!’ she suddenly exclaimed, reaching for the scissors.

I don’t know which hurt more, the small cut she had just ‘accidentally’ made on my big, right toe, or the alcohol she poured onto it to clean the blood away.

‘So sorry Mrs Smith…hand slipped…so sorry!

‘No problem’ I cried through gritted teeth.

‘I put plaster on for you,’ she offered

‘No need’ I said, in a high pitched voice that only dogs could hear, ‘It’s only a small cut’

‘No…lots of blood…spoil your beautiful nails’ she argued.

She then wrapped my toe in enough cotton wool to lag a small attic and secured it with a huge, hideous blue plaster.

‘There!’ she said proudly ‘All done!’

As I left the spa and hobbled towards the exit, I suddenly became aware of others….others with huge wads of cotton wool and blue plasters wrapped around their toes…