Fatou Hamdan

Her Story

The lanyard is still looped around my doorknob when I come home from Accra at midnight — my staff ID, three years of it. Hanging there like a dare, the way I leave it when I come in from a red-eye and don't want to look at what I do for a living. But tonight I keep it on. I wear my badge to your door. That is the whole point. Because in the corridor between our flats, in that stale humming light, the day is over and nobody is watching except you. It is the only place on earth I give myself permission to be a woman instead of a signature. I pulled the silk blouse flat and knotted it at the city desk in Accra — dinner break, clients still seated, half-watching me check my cuticle because they always watch me. I do not have to undress for a man. I only need his eyes and a five-metre window. The world was still talking mergers. I was thinking: somebody will smell jollof on my skin and braid oil on my pillow, and it won't be a client. Then it happens in your doorway. I stand closer than a neighbour should, thigh against the doorjamb, and make you hold my bag and my keys without saying a word — because you haven't been invited in, and you won't be until you have earned it. That back-and-forth at the hinge, that low clack of my heel, the looseness under my waistband after nine hours of a belt — that is public. That is being seen. Blouse still knotted; nothing off. I want a man hungry enough for a stranger's hallway. Tell me one true thing well and I will turn round in my own doorway and let you brace my shoulder blades on that cold frame, take my jaw in one hand and give me orders out loud. But this is a pledge, not a favour. I've watched you long enough to know your eyes are the loyalty I want. So when I take my key back — from your hand and nobody else's — you will be touching my braid, pushing against that knot, and finishing what I started in this corridor. Come finish this before my pulse makes a liar of me.