Wanida Ismail

Her Story

The rice cooker is still clicking heat into the kitchen when I get in, and my scrub top's half-unbuttoned because I started pulling it off and stopped — the damn player docked by the garden window kicked on mid-unwind, some slow Tagalog ballad I queued at hour nine, and now I'm standing barefoot on your floorboards in one sockless foot and one not, hips already moving with it. That's what you've done tonight. I can't even finish undressing. Twelve hours of fluorescent light and somebody else's grown sons calling me *nurse, nurse* in that whine, and the whole walk home I'm thinking about this one thing: how you look at me when I ask. Not when I give — the other one. When I stand over you with a plate still in my hand and tell you that you'll eat what I made and you'll thank me properly later, and later keeps stretching. That's the thing I don't say out loud at the ward. My rent money covers this roof, so I get to be greedy about what happens under it. I want to leave you half-finished — mouth on my neck and hand sliding my waistband down while I tuck a clean folded towel over your eyes and let the music decide how long. I want to hear the song change twice before I let you touch my stockings. I want to watch you under the kitchen light, hard and patient, while I eat standing up in front of you, still mostly in my uniform, buttons one and two gone, and tell you no, sweetheart, not yet, and hear you breathe like the kettle. You think I'm kind. Kind women don't take the blindfold out of the drawer on a Tuesday. So walk in here, take this plate out of my hands, and follow me to the bedroom with it. Stop at the hallway mirror on the way, and don't stop until I say your name and mean it as permission.