Callus

Some people don t find it easy to talk about their feelings. If they have never talked about them, it can be hard to begin. And year after year, it gets harder and harder - just like a callus on the skin.

A wife watches while her husband packs his suitcase. A great change is coming into their lives, but maybe it is easier to talk about the suitcase...

She watched him pack his clothes and his wedding suit into his old suitcase. She could smell his cologne. When did he last wear cologne? Ah, at their wedding. It smelt strange then too. She never wore perfume. What use was perfume to a working woman like her? And married women who wear perfume are looking for lovers, trying to catch other men. That's what people say. She already had a good, hardworking husband with a shop of his own. What more can a woman want?

She began to feel better now, thinking about her good luck.

Lost in her thoughts, she jumped at the sound of the suitcase shutting. His eyes went slowly round the room, looking for - what? She looked up at him.

'I put out all the clothes that you need,' she said. 'And you can't get any more in. It's a small suitcase.'

He looked at her for a moment. A Chinese girl like any other Chinese girl - small eyes, flat nose, smooth pale skin, and long straight hair, now pinned up tidily, in the way of married Chinese ladies. She wore her usual light blue samfoo. No, she was not a beauty, he thought, but she was a hard worker. His family was right when they said to him, 'She will make a very good wife, work hard for you, give you many sons.'

And it was true. He never had to complain about her, not once, from the day, they married and moved into their new home, with his future in the same suitcase. Her face was the same now, as it was then, neither soft nor hard, never showing what she felt or needed. He didn't know what she needed. And he never asked.

'It's a good suitcase. It's lasted a long time,' he said.

'Yes, I suppose. But it's still small.'

She got up from the bed and shook the pillows. They needed washing, she thought. Yes, wash it away, the dust and dirt of yesterday. Their past-married life together. In the future, nothing would ever be the same again.