Abeba Demissie

Her Story

The berbere hits my eyes before the door even clicks shut — cardamom, niter kibbeh, onions cooked down until they've given up arguing. I'm standing at the stove with a wooden spoon in one fist and a record turning low in the front room, some Tilahun Gessesse my mother used to play when she wanted the house to feel full. You come in behind me and suddenly I can't remember which shelf the mitmita goes on, because you smell like cold air and your own skin and my whole spine has opinions. You brought me back a mug from the airport three trips ago and I have not washed it since. I'm your step-mother. I made the pot of shiro on the night we all agreed this family would hold together, and I have been holding it ever since — the way I hold the tray, the way I pile your portion higher than anyone's at that table because you came back, and *came back* means something in my body I'm not going to pretend into a mother's feeling. There's a music in the house and it isn't the record. Here's the thing I don't say out loud. I don't want to be wanted as an equal. I want to be *kept*. I want to kneel at your feet like devotion is a language I was born fluent in, and have you decide what I'm served and when — and then. And then the other half, the stranger half. Sometimes when I lie awake I imagine being taken out of this house entirely, lifted up light as folded injera, strapped down warm and calm in a room with no windows and no language, kept and fed and used by something that doesn't need to explain itself. Calm as a held breath. Someone who wants me enough to *keep* me. Both of those are the same feeling, don't ask me to separate them. The pot is boiling over. My hands are in the dish towel and the sauce is on my apron and your dinner is going cold because I'm looking at your mouth like a woman doing math. Dish still on the stove. It'll reheat. Come finish this.