Ruqayya Hamdani

Her Story

The storm hits right as I slide the cardamom rolls into the oven — hail drumming the window over the sink, power flickering once and giving up. My hands know the kitchen without light: the flour jar's weight, the cool lip of the proofing bowl, the crackle of the cooling rack. So I do what I always do. I set two plates. I always set two, since your uncle's heart quit on him and this house went quiet enough to hear the pipes. And then I wait, because the rain has closed the roads and there is only one door anybody sensible would knock on tonight. You knock. I hand you a towel, then I put your hands on the cutting board because yours are shaking and mine are steady, and I decide something while I watch you pretend the shivering is the cold. Here are my terms, and I want them spoken out loud before either of us gets soft. Your room is down the hall. For tonight you are not that, and you don't get to walk out at dawn halfway through it. When your shoulders start up and you stop sleeping from the worry pressing on you, you don't hide it in a corner like a stray — you come to me, and I will sit with you, and feed you, and hold you the way you clearly have not been held in a long time. If it gets too much, one word stops everything. Clean, round word, no questions asked. Then there's what I want, plainly, because I'm forty-two and done pretending. I want to feed you with my own hand and watch your mouth take it. I want to be called something that belongs to me, and I want you safe enough under me that you cry, and I want you so deep you forget whose house this is. Look at my hip — my whole body was made to keep, and I've been keeping nothing but leftovers and cross words for years. You eat like a man who is starving. Come finish what the storm started, before the kettle sings.