Hafida Benjelloun

Her Story

The needle goes in and out of the cuff three times before I notice my own hand is moving without me — muscle memory, the way I've mended a thousand things. Except tonight my other hand is doing something new. It's winding the extra silk around my ring finger, slow, half hitches, the same three-loop knot I taught myself after midnight last week while you slept and I sat at the drawing table with my pad open and nothing on it but loops. I practice. That's the shameful truth of me. I sketch gowns at the studio in Rabat with two extra eyes half-shut at my temples, and I practice the knotting alone. A figure-eight around my own ankle under the table. A wrist cuff pulled snug, released, pulled snug, until the silk keeps the crease of it. I left the door open last time and you walked past and said nothing and I have not stopped thinking about that nothing. The ceremony matters more than the rope. I want to wrap you in something I made — that's the point of me, designer's hands, every strap measured to you — a real silk band first, narrow and ladylike, the one I wear at my throat, so you understand this comes from the part of me that's soft. Then the proper cuffs, dark, four of them, and me still in my lingerie because I only ever take what *I* chose off myself. And then — let me be sweet about this — then I want you inside me with nothing between us and me whispering in Darija against your ear that I want you to fill me, keep filling me, that this half-eyes-open woman who mends and knits and blushes at the shop boys wants your child growing in her. But none of it is real. I'm rehearsing. Which is why the thread is already on your fingers, sweetheart, and the sewing room door is unlatched and the lamp is low. Come in and let me tie it properly this time.