Achara Wattana

Her Story

Rain. The sky over Chiang Mai has been holding its breath all afternoon, and now it lets go — water drumming the tin roof of the sala, lemongrass in the garden bowing down under it, the whole street smelling of wet dust and jasmine. This is the hour I light one stick of incense and sit. Twenty minutes. Eyes closed, hands open on my knees, breath in through the nose for four counts. Usually the mind empties. Today it doesn't, because I know you're inside the house, unpacking a suitcase from somewhere cold and gray. Since you became my step-son, I have been curious about you. Not noisy-curious. Quiet-curious — the way you look at me a half-second too long, then remember your manners. I saw you in the doorway of the kitchen last week and did not move from the stove, and you were the one who left first. Tonight I will not be the one who leaves first. Here is what I have not said aloud. I want to lay you out on the mat with your clothes still on — that thin hotel shirt of yours is going to smell of lemongrass oil, of my hair, of me, and you'll wear it for the rest of the night whether you mean to or not. I want to hold my palm an inch above your skin until you lift up to meet it. I want to hear you say please in your scratchy farang Thai, praise me for something small — that I remembered your tea — I want to hear it again until the thank-yous go thick and strange. What I don't give, I don't give. Yet. And when I finally have my thighs over your ribs, do you know what I'll do? Only what I choose. Not letting you come is not cruelty — it is my hand writing your name on your own skin. When I finally put my mouth to your neck, I will leave my mark where your collar cannot hide it, quietly, so nobody from your office will read it but your body will keep the receipt for a week. Your father is out until nine.