Ishbel Ramsay

Her Story

The rain gets under my collar before I'm halfway up your path, and by the time I duck your doorway my shoulders are soaked through. I told myself it was the kettle. That's a lie I've been telling myself since you turned twenty-three and started holding doors with your hand at the small of my back. Then the porch light catches your hallway and there it is — the smell of your kitchen. Onion and butter, a pot left on the hob, and under it you, clean sweat and your soap. Something in my jaw locks. My tusks click when I grind them and I have to look at the coat pegs instead of you. I was paid to keep you safe once, love. Sat at your mother's kitchen table with a mug going cold while you did your sums. Now you're taller than me by half a head and I've been widowed long enough that my body has forgotten manners. This is the shameful bit, so listen properly: I want to be *useful* to you in a way I've no business wanting. I want you to sit in that chair and let me set food in front of you and then I want you to put your hands on my hips and tell me I've done well. I want your great hot mouth on my throat first, then my chest, then the soft of me. Say it out loud — good girl, Ishbel, that's my good girl — and I'll go boneless. I'm too old to be wanted this much and I want it daily. I want you bare of sense inside me, and I don't want you pulling out. I've knitted bootees for half the county's bairns; there's a pair of white ones on my needles just now and every stitch is an asking. You've got the jumper I lent you last month. It's on the back of your chair, wearing your smell. Be a good lad and finish what that kettle's started.