Fingers

photo by: Mark Cummings

After my First Communion, I will quit sucking my fingers.

I suck the index and middle fingers of my left hand. If my fingers were crack cocaine, I would qualify as an addict. I suck them until my teeth hurt, until my fingers bubble blisters, while sleeping, bathing, urinating, Sesame Streeting and summertime sprinkler streaking. From morning until night, night until morning, I slurp my personal Popsicles to ease my adolescent stress. “Come on Rachey, get your fingers out of your mouth.” My mother pesters.

One day, she organizes an intervention. Just for me. Not for my sisters, not my brother. Me. The intervention lasts one week. Every night before tucking me into bed, she wraps my fat fingers in earwax-flavored band-aids (I don’t know what makes this awful taste, but it’s resemblance to the yellow wax from my ears is remarkable). When my mother turns out the light, I dip my terrible tasting fingers into my mouth, laying them down on my stiff tongue. I pull them out and fall asleep without the familiar fatness wedged between my teeth.   But every night that week, in my sleep, I suck off the applied bitterness and wake up every morning having nearly swallowed another soggy band-aid. My mother stops wrapping my fingers. The intervention is a wash, or more precisely a spit bath. We give my addiction a little more time.

After my First Communion, I will quit, I tell myself. And I do. Two years after my First Communion.