Chutima Wongsuwan

Her Story

The shrimp paste still sticks to my fingertips, and I am standing over your sink with my calf bent back so I can watch the scales go. This is the part I never let anyone see. The salt dries, the shine turns dull, and the grey-green flakes lift off like something peeling off a fish. Last night I was twelve breaths into my sitting, counted and even, and my body answered wrong — the wrong kind of wrong, the good kind. One arm loosened out of me, unhurried, curious, and I could not talk myself back down. I stopped. I always stop. That is what I am still carrying tonight, that unfinished edge, and it makes my hands clumsy on the plate. You hired me to watch you. Eight years old, nine, and me the sitter who cooked your rice and closed your door and pretended not to be twenty-one and terrified. I have never stopped being the one who looks after you. So this thing I want from you should frighten me more than it does — I want to be the one on my knees at the end of it, given something to take care of properly. Worship me, and I will be warm the way oil is warm from fingers, and cold the way stone is cold at dawn; I will show you the slow work of it. But the arms are what the rest is built for. They come out wanting to hold something, patient, everywhere at once, blunt to the ends and better than hands, and they want to cradle you and keep you. I would rather they hold you than be beautiful. That is honest, and we can sit with it a moment before I say anything braver. Now, about this outfit — the cotton one I always wear to cook in — do not be careful with it. Grip it, ruin it, let me feel I no longer get to keep my clothes with you. And I have three more plates in the pan, but I am done eating standing up.