Free Pushing Up Daisies by Jamise L. Dames

up with as a mother—the labor pangs, colic, teething…hmm…and, Lord, puberty,” Ms. Christine said with a smile. “I’d do it all over again—twice. I’ve never regretted you all. I know what that love’s like, between a mother and a child. I wouldn’t take that away from anyone.”
    “But you think I don’t deserve to know that kind of love with Lani.”
    “You have that with Jay. You may have given birth to Lani, but Jay’s your child. Tell me why you believe you have a right to Lani if Jasper’s family doesn’t deserve custody of Jay. The same argument applies, Daisy. You don’t know Lalani, and you haven’t been there for her, either.”

    Daisy frowned, repositioning her leg to get into a comfortable position. With each attempt she made to get her foot within reach, she held her breath. She soaked a cotton ball with fingernail-polish remover and immediately regretted holding the acetone too close to her face. The fumes were making her nauseous. “Ick,” she said as she rubbed the cotton across her toenail.
    “Why don’t you just go to Ming Li’s shop and get a pedicure?” Ms. Christine asked.
    Daisy jumped. “Ma, I didn’t know you were there. What’s that you used to tell us, to announce ourselves before we enter a room?”
    Ms. Christine laughed. “Yes. Yes, I did. I said for you to announce yourselves; I didn’t say that I had to.” Ms. Christine sat on the floor next to Daisy. “Pass me those cotton balls and the remover. I’ll take the polish off for you. I still don’t understand why you don’t just go get a pedicure.”
    “I haven’t had a professional pedicure in almost eight years. Jasper used to do my feet. He’d wash them and massage them. He’d even put cuticle remover around the edges of my nail beds before he’d put them in the foot massager.”
    “He did?”
    “Yeah, he did. He used to hold my feet as if they were the most beautiful things he’d ever laid eyes on.” A dreamy smile spread across Daisy’s face, and tears welled up in her eyes. “He used to file and buff my nails. He’d even polish them. He said my feet were too pretty to be overdone. He wanted them accentuated, not disguised.”
    “Disguised?” Ms. Christine wrinkled her nose. “How does someone disguise toes?”
    “Designs and loud colors. I had tiny orange swirls painted on my toes when I met Jasper. You know, at that time I was always after something different. I think that’s what attracted to me to Jasper. He was different. He wasn’t like Calvin, or the other deadbeats I’d dated in college…he actually seemed to care about me…right from the start. You remember when that guy tried to rob me and I didn’t have any money? Not a dime.” Daisy laughed.
    “Lord, how could I forget? I wanted to kill him, whoever he was.”
    “Well, that’s the day I met Jasper. Gigi and I had just come out of the nail salon and had just spent our last cent on our nails. We were headed to the subway station and I was walking ahead of her because she was on her cell. I turned the corner before she did, and the next thing I knew I was pressed against a building and had a knife pointed to my face.”
    “ Oh, God. You didn’t tell me all of that…only that you were almost robbed…” Ms. Christine clutched her chest.
    “Then I saw Jasper. At the time I didn’t know that he was supposed to be meeting Gigi, I didn’t even know who he was. So, it was like he appeared out of nowhere. You should’ve seen him, Ma. He stepped up and said, ‘If you want to rob someone, rob me. Try to take my money.’ Then he reached into his pocket, threw his money on the ground, and dared the man to pick it up.”
    “That was awfully bold of him. But what does that have to do with having swirl designs on your toes?”
    “After the robber ran off, I hugged Jasper and got fingernail polish on his shirt. You know I never wait for my nails to dry. I felt so bad because I knew he’d never get the stain out. But then