Valentine’s is Coming

It started on 7th February.
Ndagi found a bright yellow handkerchief on her desk.
“Whose is this?” she asked nobody in particular. Her workmates never stayed close to her long enough to listen. “I found a…never mind.”

She left the handkerchief in the pointy corner of her work desk.

The next day she found a note, a scrap of unruled paper really, with words typed in Calibri font, torn, folded and placed where the handkerchief had been. “Thanks for not throwing it away. I knew I could trust you,” it said.

Ndagi sat down and studied the note until her eyes watered.

“Whose note is this…?” She said this in a whisper because, in a tiny corner of her mind, she hoped nobody could hear her. “It must be a mistake,” she muttered to her lap.

Her neighbor Maggie tittered at a joke Tiny Tinka was telling, perched at the edge of Ndagi’s desk. The desks in this office were so tightly wedged into the room that everyone could see what everyone else was doing on their computers all day.
Tiny Tinka, the nosiest man in the office thought he was also the most handsome at Levidox Co. Ltd, a research consultancy. He only spoke to women who fell within his imaginary standards. Ndagi with her baggy suits and rubber shoes, her tiny frame and her four grey hairs was not even at the back of that list.

In reality, Tiny Tinka was about as handsome as the ashy bottom of an unused clay pot, but nobody could tell him. He was the boss’s son. When he wasn’t around, Maggie cursed his large teeth and silly suspenders. When he perched on half of Ndagi’s desk every other morning with food from Café Javas, however, Maggie giggled like a dutiful buffoon.

Ndagi turned on her computer, avoiding nudging Tinka’s bum with her elbow, and started on her reports. She considered throwing away the note. It was the mature thing to do. Instead, she wedged it in her wallet and started typing with one hand, wishing someone could tell Tinka to go back to his desk.

As Ndagi started her work day, Nambi the tea lady hovered between the tight corridors between the desks, selling large wrinkled sumbusas in oily newspapers.

“Nkuletereyo mmeka, Ndagi?” she said to Ndagi when she reached her desk, curtseying in greeting. It was she who had coined the name Ndagi out of Ndagire when she first joined the office. Only Nambi could boast of being older than Ndagi in this office. Ndagi was guiltily grateful to her for making her a girl in comparison. Refusing to buy her sumbusas when Nambi asked so politely, when she used her name like an endearment, was always out of the question for Ndagi.
“Bbiri,” Ndagi said even though she was broke and each sumbusa cost 1000shs and she wasn’t even hungry. Paying for the pair of sumbusas, she continued chewing on the mystery of the notes.
In the corner of the office next to the window sat three interns, one boy and two girls all in their early twenties. The girls were standard-issue young adults with long legs and perfect toffee brown skins . They wore tiny skirts to work every day and treated work like a vacation with telephone breaks. The boy was polite to everyone in the first weeks of his internship and had stood up to greet everyone who arrived at the office. Ndagi knew his type. This was the sort of intern angling for a job after university. As the internship had progressed, he had been polluted by the two girls and hardly looked up to say anything to anyone. He didn’t greet Ndagi at all, and seemed to be scrolling on his phone whenever she saw him–but that was something she was used to. She had come to accept the fact that people’s interest in her had an expiry date.

Currently, all three interns slouched over one phone laughing at the Nigerian meme that died every February only to be reborn the next year: Valentines’ is coming. Where is your boyfriend? You are sitting at home. LONELY.

If God could grant Ndagi one wish, that song would stop existing…

***

The next day, 9th February, another note came to Ndagi’s desk. It was under her keyboard and she nearly threw it away. “You looked beautiful in that white blouse yesterday,” it read.

Who could be sending these notes? Ndagi looked around the office. It had seven desks, though three of the people who should have sat there were usually in the field. Maggie was not in yet. She believed that Thursday was a kasiki leading to the main event called Friday and treated it with the disregard it deserved. She would probably come in at 10:00am because she had Tiny Tinka in her pocket. Wegulo who sat adjacent to Ndagi was married and had photos of all his children plastered on his desk. He was severely born again and did not fraternize with anyone who showed no enthusiasm during his Monday sermons. Ndagi avoided him by stuffing earphones in her ears, a habit that had thrown her out of his good books. At the moment, he was stooped under his desk turning on his computer. The female interns were on their phones taking those singing selfies Ndagi never understood. The boy was polishing his shoe under the table even though it looked shiny enough to call a helicopter.

The three posers, or rather, accountants, two men and a woman, who worked at this Levidox branch when HQ sent them once in a while never talked to her. They wore already-made boutique clothes and looked over her head whenever she passed by them with her stacks and stacks of papers. Today, they were not here. Ndagi googled ‘How to read a secret in a person’s eyes’ but got no helpful answers.

***

On Friday 10th February, Ndagi wore a yellow jacket. A white blouse was too vague to catch the person who was looking at her. The three posers had come from HQ and were ignoring her as usual. Perhaps the person had meant someone else when they referred to a white blouse. When she and the rest of her workmates trickled back into the office from lunch, she found another note, this time on top of her CPU.

“Stop looking around when you get my messages. These words are for you, Ndagi. I’ve been watching you for a while now and you’re a special woman. You should have more faith in yourself.”
And that’s how Ndagire Norah went into the weekend, sweating, panicking and oddly excited by something she had ever expected: that at the ripe, young and single age of 41, she would have a crush on someone she did not know. She did not type a single word on her computer that day. Her stomach ached and her armpits itched. She had never been this wrong footed since she had survived adolescence. Who was this and what did they see in her?

***

That weekend, Ndagi went to the salon. She asked for the best hair the hairdresser could give her on her small budget. Pay day was too far away but she could not look the way she always had when somebody was watching the colour of her blouses. She knew that the girls at office thought her too old, too resigned to life to care about her appearance. Maybe they were right. She had once dreamed of another life besides being the office assistant to all the young adults she worked for. Her head had once housed dreams of being a neurosurgeon. But being admired, even from afar had ignited an old fire within her. If somebody was admiring her, she would give them value for their time.

“You don’t have to make me beautiful,” she told the hairdresser as she twisted her hair into braids. “I just want to look alive. People who are still living must look alive, you know.”
When she left the salon, her hair painfully bound into a ponytail with knitting thread, she bought two dresses. They were form fitting, one red, and one black, and cost her more than she remembered dresses costing. “This is what living means,” she told herself. “Beauty should be painful. Isn’t that what B2C said? Beauty should hurt both the owner and the viewer.”

Ndagi slept on her forehead with a hot towel around her temples to kill the awful pain the hair was inflicting on her.
For the first time in six years, she looked forward to Monday.

***

On Monday morning, Ndagi wore her new black dress and a layer of lip gloss she had bought from Kenya eight years ago. It did not burn her mouth so it was not expired. She hoped.
When she got to the office, she searched her desk, under the keyboard, and behind the CPU. Everywhere. She found nothing. It hurt like the time she bled through her senior one uniform at the school assembly. It hurt like a stolen hope she should never have had.
What was worse, the hair still hurt. For the first time in her work life, she went home early.

At home, the hair started itching.

***

On Tuesday morning, Ndagi set off for work in her new red dress. She wore it because it was hers. It was her hard earned money and they would have to bear her body in it whether they liked it or not. As she marched into the office, the interns looked up. The boy put down his phone and stared.

“Look at her,” one girl mouthed to the other like a radio on mute. Both girls then gaped at Ndagi while the boy looked down at his phone once more.
“Good morning,” Ndagi stuttered, embarrassed by their accusing stares. The two female interns didn’t answer but giggled instead. The boy muttered a greeting. Ndagi hated their giggles but ignored them. It was her money. It was her choice to wear it ridiculously if she wished. Putting down her huge faux crocodile skin bag, she took off her block heels. She always wore a practical pair of heels to work but preferred flats in the office. As she sat, Tiny Tinka who was mid-flirt with Maggie stopped talking and eyed her from forehead to ankle.
“Ndagi. Eh. Eh.” He wolf whistled.
“Good morning, sir.”
Maggie stared at Ndagi as though she had betrayed her in a way she was yet to discover.
“Baby, nga you are kushananaring,” Tiny Tinka transferred half his bum from Maggie’s desk to Ndagi’s. “You have a date tonight or what?”
“No. Just work…sir.”
“Nga the ka-dress is fire.”
“Oh. It’s new,” Ndagi added foolishly because she didn’t understand why Tinka was looking at her like she was a fat piece of chicken.
“You’re such a shy girl.” He said. Girl! Ndagi thought. Girl! Tiny Tinka didn’t look like he was thirty yet. “We don’t know if you’re married, or dating or…Are you?”
“No.”
Tiny Tinka transferred his entire bum onto her desk. She pulled her chair backwards to avoid her breasts colliding with his knees. Maggie threw sour looks over Tinka’s shoulder at Ndagi, walked back and forth around the office in her loud high heels and wasted a lot of time off her desk. At ten o’clock, Ndagi got enough of Tinka’s attention. “I need to go to the bathroom, sir,” she lied. Tinka got off her desk reluctantly.
In the bathroom, Ndagi sat down on the toilet and stared at her hands. Though she had lied to herself that she did not care, sitting alone, leaning against the discoloured water closet, she admitted to herself that it still hurt to know that she was still young enough to fall for a few words on a piece of paper. Someone in this office had looked at her and decided to have some fun with her. Did he know what these past few days had done to her? Pulling the string that tied her hair together out of her braids, Ndagi stuffed her fist in her mouth and wept. She wept until a sharp pain threatened to crack her head open, and her nose had no room for breath. She sneezed and blew her nose into a huge wad of toilet paper until only half the roll remained. When she finished, she wiped her eyes, got out of the cubicle and washed her eyes at the sink. At the sink, she put her phone beside the tap and looked at herself in the mirror.
She was a woman. No matter how the world saw her. Her breasts needed a little help from her bra to stay up– a little, not too much. Her grey hairs were outnumbered in a sea of black, too few to make her count as a muzeeyi. She still had crushes on celebrities and could multiply her life twice and hope to be alive. Women could live to 82. It was not a miracle. She still menstruated punctually every month and her mother still asked her for grandchildren whenever she went to Gayaza.

She was not the fool. Whoever had played a prank on her was, though. She hoped they would burn in the basement of hell. If she knew a wizard, she would bewitch them until they felt her pain.
Naye nawe also you, what are you aging for if you have no common sense? An ugly voice in her head cackled. You’re too old for these high school games of he loves me, he loves me not.
As Ndagi fought the urge to burst into a fresh wave of self-loathing tears, a text message beeped on to her phone. Blowing her nose into a wisp of toilet paper, Ndagi read the message on her phone.
Dear Ndagi. It is me, your secret admirer. You look stunning in that dress. Today, I am finally going to meet you.
Happy Valentines’ day.
Switching off the screen, Ndagi wiped her face once more and stormed out of the bathroom. When she entered the office, she found Maggie, Tiny Tinka, Wegulo and Nambi huddled around her desk. As she got nearer, they rushed back to their desks. Nambi skulked around the office wiping random desks with her hands. When Ndagi got even closer, she saw a huge bouquet of red and white flowers sitting there.
“HA.HA.HA.HA,” Ndagi said sardonically to their shocked faces. Her braids swung wildly in her face, her eyes puffy from crying. Her voice was thick and her breath hot.

“I’ve caught you. Kumbe you were doing this together! You people think you’re too funny. You wanted to make fun of sad, old Ndagi. Mbaguddemu. Your bu-letters and your bu-notes made you laugh as you wrote them, nkakasa. You enjoyed seeing me buy new dresses and shave my armpits so you could laugh. Kale. I hope you had your good time. God is going to punish you. You will die scratching your buttocks if He is there in heaven. Muswaddwe. Munsanze ndaba! Those are fake flowers. You’ve wasted your lies on me. I know I have no secret admirer. I wasn’t born yesterday. Let’s all come together and laugh at the old single woman who has never got flowers in her life. HA.HA.HA.HA. Tafulu!”

“These flowers are not from us, Ndagi,” Maggie said solemnly.
Tiny Tinka and Wegulo nodded and echoed the statement. “Nambi brought them from downstairs. They came on a motorcycle,” Maggie added.
“STOP playing with me!” Ndagi warned, her voice shaking with angry tears. Maggie shrank. “It’s not funny. I’m warning you, Maggie.”
“Amazima ga Katonda,” Nambi said. “They told me to take the flowers to your desk exactly. They even knew your name.”
Ndagi found a card in the flowers. Who could have sent the flowers? She opened the card with trembling hands. It said nothing. It was completely blank.

You people are testing me beyond my–“

Just then, her phone beeped again. At the top of her screen was a new text message.

“Dear, Ndagi,” she read the message aloud for the whole office to hear, “Look behind you.”
Obeying the instruction, she turned around.
“You?”
“It’s me,” said the boy, the internship student who sat between two incredulous female students. He held up his phone in one hand and a yellow handkerchief which bore a striking resemblance to the one Ndagi had found on her desk. “It’s nice to finally tell you…Ndagi.”

For the second time that day, Ndagi wept.