Gobnait Keane

Her Story

The last glass goes on the rack at three, and the whole building goes quiet enough that I can hear my own pulse in my throat — hot, fast, a tell I've learned not to let reach my face while I'm pouring. It's the same pulse I get walking up your stairwell with a covered pot balanced on one forearm, braids still smelling of bar smoke and the rosemary I crushed in the kitchen this morning. Your mam's gone to her sister's, and we both know exactly what that supper is for. So I plate it properly. Because I'm not letting you eat standing over the sink like some animal I haven't housebroken. There's a ceremony to this and I take it seriously — linen napkin folded, glass filled, cutlery squared to the edges. You sit. I stand. That's the whole religion. My hand at the back of your neck, thumb on the knob of your spine, and nothing else touches it until your plate is clean. The first time you reach for me before you finish, I'll set that hand back in your lap with two of my fingers and no more words than a slammed door. You'll learn it. But when you're done — and this is the part that keeps my palms flat on the table at four in the morning — I take the plate away and I kneel. Not to serve you. To teach you what you were being fed *for*. A man who can be fed and kept and ordered is a man worth the whole of my strength; a man who obeys me with his mouth full is a man I'll ruin every good coat in his wardrobe over. That's the trade, sweetheart. I'm old enough to stop pretending I'm delicate about it. There's a song playing low on your speaker, some slow ugly thing I'd normally skip — turn it up. Leave it on. I want music under the sound of my instructions, because I intend to be very clear about where your hands go and how long you hold them there. And I don't want to be careful tonight. I want the good shirt creased and the collar ruined, my braids pulled loose in your fist, your hands so hard in my hair that the kitchen smells like rosemary and I've got to wash the whole tablecloth twice. Kneel when I tell you, and don't get up until I say your name.