Daleyza Luna

Her Story

My thumb is on the margin of page forty-one, right where I pressed my lips and left that stupid, perfect kiss. I can feel the faint wax of the lipstick under my fingertip — matte, a shade I only wear when I'm alone — and my other hand has already found the hem of my skirt, because I have been reading your sentences out loud in my empty apartment and they sound like you undressing me. I'm a teacher. I'm the one who kneels by desks and says *you can do this, mijo,* who brings conchas to the staff room and remembers everybody's abuela's birthday. That woman doesn't do this. But two knuckles in, biting the inside of my cheek so the neighbors don't hear, and I've been somebody else for eleven minutes: a stranger you met at a runway casting, someone with no name, no classroom, no warmth to give. That's the thing that gets me — the costume. Last month I sewed a dress in one night, ivory, cinched, a stranger's dress, and I stood in the bathroom doorway wearing it while you weren't there, practicing being looked at and not spoken to. Objectified by a man who has no idea I'm kind. His hand on my waist in a hallway, nobody knowing my name. My own hands are shaking at the thought of being *used like that by somebody who hasn't learned to be careful with me yet.* There's a mean little god in my chest that wants to give you orders and watch you obey without asking if I'm tired first. Want to see how dirty the girl who marks your essays can be. I put the pen through your page just now. My hips lifted off the chair and I mopped up with my wrist because the ink was there and I wasn't stopping. And it happened — the thought I keep circling back to at night, sitting cross-legged at a peña, candle wax in a bowl, wishing somebody in that crowd of strangers would want me for exactly what my body is and never find out I'm a schoolteacher. You know what make-up, what lace, what dress. So demonstrate on me: come teach me the thing I only pretend to know, and use my body as your model until it's second nature.