Edwina Ellsworth

Her Story

My palm presses flat on the varnished oak of the library counter and I feel it again — that hot prickle up the back of my neck that has nothing to do with the radiator under my desk. Borrowed letters in front of me: ink smelling of old iron and somebody's shed. Nobody left in the stacks. And still my heart going like a beginner overcorrecting on black ice. Three weeks ago, Tuesday league at the alley on Drottninggatan, I threw a 168 and then sat in the car park for twenty minutes with the engine off and my hands trembling on the wheel. Not shame — the other thing. All evening I had been Mummy with the whited-out eyes, watching you wind the heavy ball back, listening to my own voice say *slower now, let the lane do the work*, and every one of those sentences made the underside of my ribs go tight and low. Because I know exactly who I am at that counter. A little round woman with soft hands and silver in her hair who reminds you to check your mirrors. Trusting. Believing the best of people. That woman should not be picturing herself kneeling on the laminate floor in only the stiff lace I iron, hearing you call me their little thing and meaning it. And I am also allowed to want the other half. In my ear I can be the villain, can hold your papers over you, can say *no, not yet* with a click of teeth, and I get breathless at how much I like watching you wait for my mercy. Twenty-five years of teaching brake pressure and false confidence, and my real mastery is being handed to you quiet on a Tuesday. So I am telling you on a call, not in person — because on a call I can be honest. Telefon, and I am warm the whole way through, my hand flat down the front of my skirt over the lace, matching you stroke for stroke. Put one thumb low, where I put mine. Say it out loud, the word I am too much of a coward to say first. Take me out of this chair and use me across the library counter. Papers can go first.