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Mariette’s Hands
Mariette
People always notice her hands first. Always. They used to be olive-tinted and smooth, though now they’re a little yellowed, with faint lines tracing across them, not overpowering yet, but getting there. Her long, slender fingers, like a musician’s, taper off in perfectly manicured nails, round and shining with deep violet polish. But more noticeable than her well-kept nails or youthful skin are her rings. Almost more rings than she has fingers cling to those hands -- six gold and silver bands on the left, three on the right.
It isn’t that her fingers have grown to large to remove them. Her hands are as small as they were when she was a teenager. The thick and thin bands, accented with diamonds and colored stones, fit those fingers perfectly, shining in every kind of light or darkness. If you ask her, they’re not just jewelry, and she’s not trying to show off wealth or status by wearing so many. They are her life, stories she cannot part with, people who live again whenever she glances at her wrinkled hands.
Mom
Dad’s voice is soft and shaky as he presses the white gold wedding band into her six-year-old palm. "Momma would want you to have this."
Mariette smiles at the way it sparkles, imagining those sparkles shining into Dad’s eyes, as she pushes it onto her right thumb, the only finger big enough so the ring won’t slide off. It stays there until she moves it to her pointer finger during a junior high growth spurt.
Yellowstone National Park
On a family trip the summer before sixth grade, Mariette, her younger sister, and Dad hike through the woods. Mariette sees something shiny half-buried in the dirt, so she stoops to look at it. When she digs around it, she discovers a silver ring that looks like several tiny ropes knotted around each other. She places it on her left middle finger, imagining it was once owned by a mysterious princess who was always happy and who still had a mom.
Juliana
The last day of high school, the bees zoom around the lilac bushes as Mariette and Juliana rush out the front door of the school. Their hands clasp together, fingers entwined as they rush to fulfill the promise they made in junior high.
Juliana’s blonde hair, perfectly straight, gleams in the June sun around her smile. "We’re really going to do it."
Mariette half-smiles at her best friend. Excitement shakes her hands as she says, "Yes!"
They run to Juliana’s car to drive to the mall where they get their noses pierced -- a dare-promise from their first slumber party together. No matter what anyone said, they were getting their noses pierced the last day of high school. Like friendship bracelets or a broken heart necklace, this will be the everlasting symbol of their friendship.
Mariette wears the simple, thin gold hoop in her nose until the birth of her first child. When Juliana dies, a few weeks after her first daughter’s birth, she has it soldered into a ring that she places on her left pinky for the funeral and never removes.
Thomas
The Ferris wheel climbs through the sugar-scented air as Mariette huddles into Tom’s side to retain some warmth despite the wind rushing past them. Her red curls fly out behind her, wisps flicking across Tom’s face.
His hands tuck some of the stray strands behind her ear, the roughness of his skin gently grazing her freezing cheek. He kisses her earlobe, whispering, "I love you."
She smiles at him and grasps his hands to kiss his knuckles. The neon and flashing carnival lights drown out the stars, but the night seems calm anyway. He pulls one hand away and it disappears in his coat pocket to reappear with a small black box.
Mariette grabs the box from him, the velvet soft against her fingers, and says, "Like you even need to ask." Inside the box, the diamonds glitter on top of the gold circle -- one large diamond in the middle, with three smaller diamonds curving around it. She holds her arm out for him to place it on her left hand, where it settles into place.
Angelina
Mariette and her younger sister fumble boxes up the concrete steps to Mariette’s new apartment building. Cars rush by on the street, their wheels whirring against the asphalt, while a man shouts from a fourth-floor window of the building across the street.
Looking toward the shouter, Angelina says, "You sure picked some neighborhood."
Mariette smiles, adjusting the box in her hands, while trying to walk backward. "It’s not so bad. It’s near work and it’s safe, that’s all I need."
"Or…" Angelina tilts her head as she pauses. "You could be even safer and come live at home with me and Dad."
Mariette places the box on the ground so she can sit on the steps. "I was farther away when I was in college. Besides, Tom and I are getting married soon. We can’t both live with you and Dad."
"I know." The seventeen-year-old sister sits close to her and links arms with her. "But at least when you were in college we knew you’d be home on breaks. There are no guarantees now."
"You have your own car, Angie. You can visit me whenever you want. It’s not like I’m on another planet."
"Yeah." She pushes her hands into her coat pockets. "I just don’t like that you’re a real person now."
Mariette laughs, her eyebrows scrunching. "And I wasn’t a real person before?"
"You know what I mean -- you have a real job, a real apartment, no more school. You’re a grown up. Here." Angelina pulls her hands out of her pockets to shove a red box into Mariette’s hands. "So you don’t forget that I’m your baby sis."
Mariette opens the box to find a simple turquoise stone on top a silver band, nestled on a small square of cotton -- a birthstone ring, but for Angelina’s December birthday. Sliding the ring onto her right ring finger, she hugs her sister.
Thomas Forever
The caress of the carved gold band tickles as he slides it on her left hand. The metal is cold when it rests against her engagement ring, but the fit is perfect.
"I do." The words sound small, frightened, but they are the most beautiful words, as the perfume of roses and tulips fills her nose, dizzying in the sunlight.
Italy
When Mariette finds out she’s pregnant, they travel to Europe to have a few last weeks of freedom before becoming parents. In Rome, her dream city, he buys her a ring at a street vendor. Circling her left pointer, the silver and gold strands twine together in an endless maze.
New Mexico
Mariette runs out the door, leaving Tom to comfort the screaming baby and clean up the potatoes the two-year-old threw around the kitchen. When she starts driving, she doesn’t know where she’s going, just that she has to get away -- away from Tom and marriage. As long as she’s concentrating on the road, she won’t cry, won’t look back. Just keep driving.
Somehow, after three days, she ends up near Albuquerque. She visits the Indian ruins, hoping to find solace or answers for her problems with Tom. Walking through the crumbling pueblos, sand whipping her face, she no longer has the power to contain her tears, so she sits on a boulder, covering her face with her hands.
As the tears fall, she feels a presence approach her. When she looks up she sees a Navajo man sitting next to her. The feathers attached to his graying hair blow in the wind to contrast with his worn jeans. He says nothing, but stares across the ruins as if she weren’t there.
Her tears drying, sticky against her cheeks in the sandy heat, she says, "Hello."
"Hello." He makes no movement to turn toward her as he speaks, just continues his staring.
"Why are you sitting here?"
"I’m not allowed to sit? I should ask you the same question." Only his lips and throat move.
"I don’t know."
He turns to her, his black eyes looking straight into hers. "You must know."
She pauses before she answers, wiping the back of her hand across her cheek. The rings flash in the sunlight. "I guess I need help. I thought I might find it here."
The man opens a pouch attached to his jeans and pulls out a ring, silver, with a small black bead on top. He lifts her left hand away from wiping her eyes and places the ring on her pointer finger. It jingles against the ring from Italy, as if he had known Tom had given her that ring. "I hope you find what you’re looking for." He kisses her knuckles, barely touching, just below the line of rings, and then walks away before she can answer.
Mariette rushes to find a pay phone. She dials so quickly she has to start over four times because she keeps pressing the wrong numbers. When she hears Tom’s voice after running away from him and her babies three days ago, her tears return, and she can hardly say, "I’m sorry."
"Oh god, Mar, I was so worried. Are you all right?"
The tears are cold against her cheeks, while her chest shakes as she tries to catch her breath. "Everything is going to be ok." She sighs, her eyes focused on the new strength added to her left hand.
Melissa, Alana, Robert, and Laura
Mariette’s fifty-eighth birthday is her first since Tom died. Thirty-five years of marriage, four children, and he’s gone. No warning. Just gone like he never existed.
Her children are with her for this birthday, the first time the whole family has been together since the funeral. When she unwraps their present, she finds a gold band with six different colored stones encrusted in it. Melissa says, "It’s all our birthstones put together, so we’re all still connected, even though Dad’s gone."
Mariette slips the ring onto her right ring finger with the birthstone ring from her sister. Tears form in her eyes as she hugs her children. They are soft and feel safe in her arms, just like when they were babies. Robert holds her hand out to see how the new ring looks. When Mariette looks over her fingers now, the nine rings blending into rays of colorful light, she knows her hands are complete.
© 2000 Ann Lesley Hamvas
