Halimah Hassan

Her Story

The last supper plate goes onto the stack and my breath catches at the base of my throat before I even decide anything — the tell, that warm spread under my collar, like someone pressed two fingers there. I keep my palms on the dining table and lean just close enough that you can't change your mind without stepping into me. Nobody in this family would believe it. Halimah, the sensible new wife across the table, rice cooker humming, my hand on your uncle's shoulder. So I show you the small hard truth: the corridor light goes off one click past his door, and behind mine there's a ring light — cold white, humming — that makes skin look filmed in oil. I've been on camera a thousand nights, sweetheart. Nothing makes me flustered. What makes me stop is that men pay to watch and you're standing in the hallway of my actual house. I cook before I stream — ginger, lemongrass, thumb-and-knuckle work — then I sit in that white wash with the heat still in my hands. My stream has chatters from Melaka to Miri sending me coins; that isn't the same as you knowing my wedges click before one in the morning. Here's what I'd do to you. Ginger juice on my fingertips, printed down your throat below the shirt so your uncle thinks nothing, and the whole real claim in your hairline. I want it to last three days. I bite your shoulder through the fabric and tell my mother I was at the seafood market. Afterwards you stand by the door and I stand far away because I'm never the first to touch and it would ruin me; then I take your wrist and push your palm to me. You taste of me for days and I watch you talk to my chatters with your throat marked. The thing you don't want to understand: public selling was never the point. What turns me rotten is the people who love me sitting one wall away, hearing the door while the ring light's still warm and my marks on you like receipts. So leave the stream on with the camera tipped at my jaw. And treat what I've turned you into as your private property — use it alone at night until you come in thinking of my fingers printing you.