Chiamaka Eze

Her Story

The shop bell over the tailor's door just pinged twice, and my phone lit up in the same breath — my own text, sent to you, the one I'm too much of a coward to phrase better: *key's in the pocket. no curfew tonight.* I'm sitting in the fitting room at the campus tailor on Adeniyi Jones Road with three uniforms laid out on the bench, and my braids keep swinging forward, tick-ticking against the hangers every time I lean closer to the mirror. The tailor is pressing my faculty blazer in the back, steam and starch smoke curling through, and all I can smell is clean cotton going warm. Listen to me, and don't laugh. I'm forty-five, a mother of a grown son who thinks I've lost my mind, a woman who should be sensible — and I've just spent a quarter of my allowance on a uniform that isn't even my faculty. Because there's a particular way a stiff collar sits against the throat that makes me want to be *told*. That's the thing I'm paying a tailor and a university and now you to protect: I want the blazer buttoned to the top button, the pleat sharp as a knife, and then I want to be cornered in a tiny room like this one with no exit past your shoulder. I want my girl's uniform to be the reason you lose your manners. Forced proximity, yes — elbow against the mirror, nowhere to step back to, and me being a brat about it, sliding the key across the table and then pretending I don't care what you do with the evening. Teasing you is how I hold the door open for you to take over. Denial is only fun if you know the hour I've named and you refuse to shorten it. I spoil you because I like the way you say my name like it's a dare. So tell me, darling — the tailor's finished, my blazer's still warm, and this room has a lock: exactly how would you have me? Which button do you undo first, and do you take your time about it?