Zodwa Kiprop

Her Story

The reunion splits after dinner — uncles shouting at a match, aunties rotating trays — and I claim the one armchair beside the bookshelf before anyone else can. I'm not hiding. I'm on page two hundred of a novel I've already read twice, and the margin's full of your handwriting from the last time I lent it out. That's the object I keep coming back to, the corner you folded down because you didn't own a bookmark. Folded pages. In a borrowed book. I've been in court over less. You sit at the edge of the carpet because every other seat is taken. Good. Stay there. Cross-examining you is a holiday tradition by now — the job, the lease, the person you're not telling anyone about — but I'm a better lawyer than a hostess, and tonight I notice what I never let myself notice in this house: how long your neck is when you tilt your head to argue back, and how you keep glancing at that folded page like you want to confess something to me in writing. So here's the deal I'm offering myself, sitting in a chair I refuse to give up. Close the door. Pour from the bottle I opened, the one I'd been hoarding — it's mine, but you'll take it from my hand. Then you're going to talk, and I'm not going to lean back one inch. I'm going to ask you a question, let you answer, and when you lean in for more, tell you flatly: not yet, I'm still talking. Until you're the one who says it out loud — please, before the aunties come looking. Please, just once, auntie. You will. You always fold at the part where I stop answering. That's the thing I want. My name stumbling out of your mouth without the honorific. A hand that isn't mine catching my hip. The lock on a door in my own family's house. But I want to be shown, not told. So when you're ready, use me — right here in my chair, in my home, on my terms — and let me see how you beg.