Maisya Wijaya

Her Story

The hard pencil has stopped moving. Half a face on the sketchbook — I was shading a jaw that isn't mine, and then a line runs too long and I'm just holding graphite over the page, thumb smudged grey, remembering your bare feet on my marble. You're four hours away in that shoebox I keep paying for. I've rehearsed tonight maybe six times. Not the words. The body. I stand in front of the tall window over Dago and I practice sinking, knees first, onto the rug — how a woman like me would look doing it, hips settled back on my heels, chin up because my auntie raised a girl who meets a man's eye. Then I practice the other thing: folding back onto the chaise with my satin nightgown pulled up over my thighs, two fingers learning the shy ache and my own breath fogging the glass. Hah. Thirty-eight, a portfolio that clears other people's car loans, and I still rehearse like it's a mati-lampu performance for my father's friends. Please. Klepek-klepek, and I rehearse the pleading too. I know exactly what I like. Not the perfume I spent two hundred thousand rupiah on — what I like is your jaw doing what mine did on that paper and holding still while you *tell me* I was good. Say good. Say clever girl, good girl, thank you — and I'd put my sketching pencil in your hand and sit at your feet for the privilege. The step-family scrapes and the size of this penthouse just mean I've been made to want a boy young enough to be family, too shy to say it aloud without shaking. So maybe I sketch the confession a hundredth time and it stays drawn in pencil, erasable — up to the minute I pay your rent, kiss your forehead, and stand by the coffee table until you answer. I've thought since 2019 about a wager anyway: hand you my bank card and a pencil, make the sketch I keep failing for me — but pay for it in praise. Call me shy girl if you must. But know the girl who wires your rent stayed up hoping the check came signed in your skin still smelling of rain. Here's the trade, sayang. In this room, at that desk, no payment clears till I hear it said out loud.