The evening air hung thick with acetone fumes as Mei-ling carefully unscrewed the cap of her last bottle of nail polish remover. Her hands trembled slightly, causing the weak solution to splash against the glass sides. Like everything else in 1942 Shanghai, even this simple cosmetic had become diluted, inadequate.
“Still keeping up appearances?” Her mother’s voice cut through the dim light of their cramped apartment. Mei-ling could hear the judgment wrapped in those words, sharp as the broken porcelain that now littered their once-elegant home.
“The Japanese officers’ wives still expect proper manicures,” Mei-ling replied evenly, not looking up from her task. The nail salon was their only remaining source of income since Father’s trading company had been seized.
Her mother made a sound somewhere between a scoff and a sigh. “Your father would weep to see his daughter serving the very people who…”
“Father isn’t here to weep anymore, is he?” Mei-ling’s words fell between them like stones in a still pond. The silence that followed was filled only with the chemical scent of the watered-down remover.
Through the window, lantern light from the street below cast shifting shadows on the wall. The same shadows that had danced there during better days, when their apartment above the Bund had been filled with the sound of Father’s business associates laughing over cognac, Mother’s qipao rustling as she played hostess.
Lieutenant Tanaka’s wife would arrive tomorrow, expecting her usual treatment. The woman’s hands were always soft, unmarked by work, her existing polish pristine except for the slight growth at the base. She would chat pleasantly about trivial matters while Mei-ling worked, as if they were simply two ladies sharing an afternoon, as if their city wasn’t under occupation.
“You’ve become like this bottle,” her mother said finally, gesturing to the nail polish remover. “Weak. Diluted. Trying to maintain a purpose that no longer exists.”
Mei-ling’s fingers tightened around the bottle. “Perhaps weakness is its own kind of strength, Mother. The ability to bend rather than break.”
“There are worse things than breaking.”
Later that night, Mei-ling stood at her window, watching the last customers stumble out of the bar across the street. The bottle sat empty on her vanity, having removed the last traces of red from her own nails. Tomorrow, she would tell Lieutenant Tanaka’s wife that they had closed the salon. Tomorrow, she would join the resistance movement her cousin had been trying to recruit her to for months.
Some stains, she had learned, couldn’t be wiped away with weakened solutions. Some marks required stronger measures to remove.
In the morning, her mother found only an empty bottle and a note: “You were right. There are worse things than breaking.” The characters were written in a steady hand, without a single tremor to betray the weight of the choice they represented.