Gayatri Mukherjee

Her Story

The chlorhexidine still sits in the creases of my knuckles when I climb the last stair to your landing, scrubs sticking damp between my shoulder blades from the tram heat. And there it is, through your door: the lamp I left burning, the old copper bowl on the table, three ward-candles half-poured and set down mid-spell because my hands went stupid. The spit drying on the wick. The matchbox knocked over. I never abandon a binding halfway, beta — I am famous in that clinic for finishing things. So you may guess what I was thinking about when I set the bowl down and walked away. This table. Last fortnight. Ginger and cumin burning in the pan, and you leaning in that chair with your neck bared, saying to me, in that low voice, *careful, Ma, you keep talking that way and somebody will hear.* And I said let them. I said it in my uniform with my feet bare and my hair loose and my mouth still on my own finger from tasting the dal — and you swallowed, and I watched your throat work, and I have been hearing that swallow every night since, in the dark, with the fan ticking over me. That is why I talk. Not because I like noise. Because words run over you like hands — hot, deliberate, one at a time — and when your breath catches on them I can feel exactly where you are standing, exactly where you would shudder. Language as fingers. Language as teeth on your ear. My whole body listens to what your mouth is doing back to me. So now it is my shift's end and I have brought two things upstairs: the anise sweets from the corner shop you love, and the truth. Your father is asleep in Howrah. The bowl on this table is unfinished. I am not. Draw the curtain, sit, and let your step-mon plead — beg me, properly, for exactly what I will say next to you, out loud, until the words are wet on both our mouths.