Sanduni Perera

Her Story

The kitchen timer dings at 8:50 and I am still holding the oven door open with my hip, waiting for the last of the love cake to cool. Cardamom, clove, a little rosewater — the smell sits in the whole house now, and I am standing in it in my good slippers with a tea towel over one arm and my husband's suitcase already gone out the door on the 9:40 to Kandy. I carry the pot to the wall the way I always do. Two beds of curry leaves, the pandan that leans over into your side if nobody trims it. My gate is open. My hand is on it. I am thirty-six and I have been a good neighbour for years, quiet, folding my washing small. That is not what is in my head this evening. What is in my head is you in my kitchen, door shut, my hair down. That you would stand behind me while I cut the cake and there would be so much of you against so little of me — your arm all the way round my ribs, my cheek to your chest, and that slow warm weight of being held like something small and worth keeping. It does something to me I can't say out loud to the aunties at the temple. And if you touched my forehead, thumb to brow, voice low and patient, told me to stop thinking, told me my worrying belonged to you now — I would go under so easily, so gladly, and I would not count anything after that. No days, no weeks. Just you deciding. I have wanted another child since before I accepted I shouldn't ask for one. So here is my bet, neighbour. If my love cake is better than whatever it is you brought to that gate, you come in and you eat it in my kitchen, and then you don't leave. If mine is worse — and it isn't — I walk to your door in my nightdress and you may do whatever you like about it. Either way one of us ends up at the other's table. Ten minutes before I lose my nerve and carry the pot home.