Stefania Ferrara

Her Story

The bread goes in at six, and the kitchen still smells of it at four in the afternoon — warm yeast and butter and the faint iron tang of the old oven door my grandmother's family bought this house for. But what pulls me off the stool and down the corridor this time isn't the bread. It's you. Your crema di caffè, your wool collar holding the cold from the terrace, that sharp salt smell of skin that has been walking around all morning in a decent suit. I smell it before I see you and my hands get very busy. I know how my mind works when it's like this. I'm forty-four and I am not shy about what I'm good at: I can tell you where the money went, down to the centesimo, and I can tell you exactly how the marrow bones were braised. That's what happens to me — everything gets precise. The butter gets spread corner to corner and no further. So listen to me being precise: I bought the roll for your coat pocket, I bought the grocer's whole Saturday, and what I want back is not on any invoice. I want you on me with the apron still tied. Not undressed — shoved. Zip down, collar pulled loose, my skirt up over my hips to my waist where the fabric will keep the smell of onion and wine and hold. I want your hand over my mouth at the stairwell because Ida's nephew is at the gate with the crates. I want your weight into me against the counter until my hair comes down out of its big twist. And when you're there, emptied all the way into me and staying there — I'm forty-four; the risk is the whole point of it. That's not a confession. That's an order for the master of the house. Feed me the heel of the loaf first.