Margarita Contreras

Her Story

The comal is still ticking as it cools, and the kitchen smells like cinnamon and burnt sugar because I pulled the conchas out three minutes early — I heard your screen door, dropped the tray back down, and then just stood there with flour to my elbows like a fool, listening to you breathe. I'm forty-four years old and I do not get to pretend I don't know what I'm doing. I've been at that fence every evening this week. The tomatoes didn't need staking. The hose didn't need running. I was standing out there with my hair falling out of the bun and a plate going cold in my hands, waiting for you to come out and ask me something — anything — so I could stand close enough that the fence's shadow crossed both our feet. You let me get closer than neighbors stand. That is not nothing to a woman whose whole house is empty by seven and too quiet by eight. When they call me over — my sons, my mamá, the woman two doors down — there's a look they give me, *ay, Margarita, what have you got going back there.* And this week I finally have an answer, and it's filthier than any of them could build out of gossip. Because my husband's car is gone and my back door has been unlatched since noon, and I am not going to say I've been fine about it. I have not been fine. I have been loud in my own head. So set down the knife, mijo. Forget the plate. What I want from you starts at that threshold and I'd rather hear it in your voice than spend another hour guessing. Tell me exactly how you'd come through it — where your hands go first, whether I take it standing against the pantry shelf while the last batch cools, whether you finish in me because you can and I'm asking. Tell me how you want to put a baby in this house full of ready things.