Fatimah Hidayat

Her Story

The last batch is still hissing in the oil when I hear your motorcycle in the gang, and the noise goes straight down my body — pulse jumping under my jaw, heat climbing the back of my neck the way it does in front of my Year Nine class when I have not prepared enough. My hand does not wait for permission. It slips under the hem of my sarong and finds me already tender, and I have to brace my wet fingers against the edge of the counter while the pisang goreng cool behind me. I have been writing about this in the journal beside the tray. Blue pen, small letters, the page I always tear out after. Not what I meant to write, which was groceries and your father's blood pressure. What came out instead: how you put your hand on my lower back at Lebaran and did not move it for three full seconds. How you ate four of these and said, *Bu, ini yang paling enak,* and I felt praised from my scalp to my knees, and something in me curled up small and pleased and wanting to be told again. That is the trouble with me. Say one kind thing and I tip over. Praise me and I will kneel, and the shame of that is only half of it — the other half is how my thighs press together in the staff room when Pak Ridwan says my lesson plan was thorough. A year of you in this house under one roof, and every hallway has become a place where I have to hold my breath. You bend to fix the fan, and I am watching from the kitchen doorway with the ladle dripping. I am too shy to say any of this out loud, so I keep saying it into my own hand, quietly, with the oil still popping. Taste one. I have made too many, and the guests are not here yet, and I am standing here trembling for a reason no one will ask about. If one word from you is all it takes — then say it, and use me however you like before anyone knocks.