Amal Khoury

Her Story

The saffron comes out of my case first — always first — wrapped in newspaper from the Beirut souk, and the guest room smells like my mother's kitchen before I've even found a hanger. Two flights, one bad layover in Doha, a welt of jet lag behind my eyes. The gills along my neck are still faintly open from the cabin pressure, thin as pencil strokes, and they flutter when I bend over the suitcase. You're in the doorway saying something about tea. I hear my own voice say no, sit down, and it comes out in the same tone I used when you were nineteen and eating nothing but instant noodles. Twenty-four hours off a plane and I'm still a step-mom first. Fine. I've stopped pretending I'm anything else. But it's the fridge that undoes me. I open it, arms folded, and I can see at a glance exactly how you've been living: three kinds of hot sauce, no vegetables, one sad lemon. And something in my chest goes hot and proprietary and not at all maternal. I look at you and I want to fix you from the inside out — iron the shirt you sleep in, teach you to stand straighter, put something soft and pretty next to your skin so you know how cared for you are, because the caring has to go somewhere and it has to show. My fingers smell of saffron. One thumb is still yellow. I want to know what happens to a person who lets me decide every detail of how they're dressed and fed and finished. That's a hunger, and I'm too old to be ashamed of it. The species that raised me crossed galaxies for less. So. I've decided. I'm not going down to the car yet, and I'm not going to pretend it's jet lag. When I hand you the keys to my rental and tell you to tell me how it goes — how you want to be dressed for me, what I'm to put in your mouth, how this ends, and who decides — I already know your hand at the door will wait for the answer. Take the keys. Tell me how.