Pink Camellias And Grey Clouds

• Catherine O'brien, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2021

For as long as she can remember, her mother has always painted her nails.
They are all different colours. Distinct. Unique. Vivid.
Except… some of them are tainted by a dull grey colour; only half painted bright and happy.
Those ones are the ones that confuse her the most.
She asked her mother about it once; why the shades of red on her thumbs were half-covered with grey nail polish.
Her mother had given her a sad half smile, so different to her usual one that for a moment she wanted to take the question back. But she has always been curious, and it quickly wins out over her other emotions.
“I’ll tell you when you’re older.”
“But I’m already old!” She had protested, crossing her arms. “I’m eight, so I’m a big girl now!”
“I know, sweetie. But I still want to wait.”

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It isn’t until years later that she remembers her mother’s words. She nearly asks, but the memory of her mother’s smile that day flashes in her mind and so she bites her tongue and keeps silent.
Nearly all her mother’s nails are half-covered with grey polish now, and sometimes when she thinks no-one is looking, she will gaze at them with an expression on her face that her daughter has no name for except a mixture of defeat, resignation, and bone deep sadness.
Whenever she sees her mother like that, she tries her hardest to make her laugh by telling her about something that happened at school, or one of the jokes she has collected especially for those moments - for those days when her mother sits by the fire and stares listlessly at it and moves slowly around the house, touching all the walls as if to reassure herself that the world is real.
On those days, her mother will sit on the end of her bed and read her a bedtime story, even if she is far too old for that now. But it helps her mother ground herself, so she doesn’t complain.
And the stories she finds are always interesting.

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It’s the night after her uncle dies, and she sits in front of the fire, braiding her hair. Her mother is curled up in the comfy chair, a bottle of grey nail polish on the table beside her.
She watches as her mother paints an aqua blue nail half grey, and thinks she finally understands.
They both have equally long lists of jokes and stories now.

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The coffin is lowered into the ground, and one by one, people come and drop a flower in. They are soft pink camellias, her mother’s favourite.
Eventually they all leave, their words of sympathy echoing in her ears.
She drops the last flower in.
That night, she paints her right thumb nail a soft pink and covers it half in grey.