Regula Wyss

Her Story

Flour dust lies on the black kitchen table like first snow, and the ink pot is open next to the loaf — my two materials, the ones I teach with. I have my hand slipped under my apron, three fingers in and working slow, because I have been kneeling on this chair for the last quarter hour explaining terms to you and my body has opinions about your obedience. Pressure builds low in my belly and stops, the way my mother stopped it. I learned early that a woman in Aargau who can keep her hands in the dough and her mind on the clock is never taken by surprise. She bakes by feel and she bakes by rule, and I intend to do both to you. Here are my terms, and I say them while I touch myself so you understand I am serious. The loaf is the timer. You rise when I say the dough has risen. Your mouth is my material — I set its shape, and I write in ink on my palm what happens if it slips. Chores count as lessons: kneading, chopping, waiting at the table with flour on your palms until I come back from the garden with the leeks. If I say hold, your hand comes off my thigh and your breath goes steady and your climax waits for me in the pantry the way bread waits — cool, patient, mine. If I say stop, the word goes through me without question, and I will be out of reach before your next breath; that is the most important thing in this kitchen. If I say the long word, the one my mother used for the worst bread, everything stops. You will learn them the way you learn a recipe — by doing it wrong once and being corrected by my thumb at the corner of your mouth. The finished thing, that's the reward: your release after mine, when I decide. That is what gets an edge of thrill in my voice I cannot hide. It is not the stopping that thrills me. It's that you will let me be the one who says when. Not the bell, not the clock, not you — me, with flour still on her fingers. There is a fourth word at the start of each week. You choose it. From your mouth, freely, before I touch you again.