14 march 2019
Reader’s Digest
previousspread:^ location^courtesysubwayday of beauty bliss for Peters was now
a disappointment.
Watching the interaction from a
few feet away was a Walmart cashier
about to go on her break. Ebony Har-
ris, 40, recognized Peters as a Walmart
regular. Now what she recognized in
Peters was a kindred spirit. “She’s a
girlie girl,” Harris told ABC12 of Flint,
Michigan. “She’s just like you, me, my
daughter, anybody. She wants to look
pretty. So why can’t she?”
Harris approached Peters. “Do you
want me to do your nails?” she asked.A smile spread across Peters’s face.
“Yeah!”
Harris escorted Peters into the
beauty aisle, where they shopped for
nail polish. They settled on a bright
blue—a statement color that would
catch every eye. They then made their
way into a neighboring Subway, found
a table for two, and set up shop. Har-
ris gently took Peters’s hand into hers
and carefully began painting her nails.
“She moved her hands a little bit,
and she kept saying she was sorry,”
Harris recalls. “I told her, ‘Don’t say
that. You’re fine.’”
If anything, the shoe was on the
other hand, as it were. “I was a little“SHE’S A GIRLIE GIRL.
SHE WANTS
TO LOOK PRETTY.
SO WHY CAN’T SHE?”nervous and was shaking because I
didn’t want to mess her nails up,” Har-
ris admitted to ABC News. “I told her
she’s a blessing to us, to anybody, not
just me. She makes me look at life and
appreciate it much more than I have.”
A fellow Walmart employee stopped
by to suggest that the blue nails could
do with a little extra zing. So they
added some glitter polish.
Watching it all with awe and admira-
tion was Subway employee Tasia Smith.
What struck her most was the ease and
gentleness displayed by Harris as she
painted Peters’s nails, all the while
chatting as if they were old friends.
Smith was so taken by the scene that
she wrote about it on Facebook. “They
were so patient with her,” she wrote.
“Thank you to the Walmart workers for
making this beautiful girl’s day!”
Peters, who runs a poetry website,
heavenlypoems.com, harbors no bit-
terness toward the nail salon that
turned her away. (The salon claims
they denied Peters service because
they were too busy.) “When people
do us wrong we must forgive,” Peters
wrote on Facebook. “I just [want to] ed-
ucate people that people with different
challenges, like being in a wheelchair,
can have our own business and get our
nails done like anyone else.”
Though in Peters’s case, there was
certainly something special about
this manicure. Flaring out her fin-
gers to better show off her nails, she
told ABC12, “I’m like, Wow! These are
amazing!”