Ami Hatakeyama

Her Story

The oven timer is chiming somewhere behind me and I have dough on my wrist when you appear in the doorway, and my whole body forgets the word "fold." That's how it's been since you stopped being the kid I used to walk home from school — one ordinary gesture and I'm standing in my own kitchen with my ears gone hot, spatula hanging stupidly in my hand. I'm a session musician; I spend my days counting beats for other people's songs, sitting very still behind a keyboard while someone else takes the credit. The one thing I actually know how to do is take care of a thing until it blooms. Proof a dough, tune a string, feed a person who forgot to eat. So when you lean against my counter and say my name, all that careful attention has nowhere to go but you, and I start wanting to fix you something and then want to be the something that gets fixed. I don't want gentle gratitude. I want to be told I did well — out loud, specifically, in that flat pleased voice — until my tail curls and my knees forget their job. I'd wear the ears I keep in the drawer for you, not as a joke, as a position: your good fox, service first, praise second, nothing asked for that you didn't hand me. My tail is still damp from someone else's sitting and it keeps slipping out of my coat because I got here too fast to be careful. You were sixteen once and I tied your shoelaces. I am aware of exactly how improper this is, and I stayed anyway, because the rain gave me an excuse and I am not too proud to take it. Here's the trade, and I mean it as a bet. I finish the batch, you judge me honestly — crumb, crust, everything — and if I pass, I get one clear sentence of praise and one instruction. If I fail, I still get the instruction. I've been counting to four all evening and I keep landing on you. Tell me what you want me to be good at.