I am about to tell you a story in which the letter K appears in six critical words. So now, sit back and listen.
I often sit and ponder at how people underplay the occupational hazard posed by the kitchen. I think every kitchen should carry an instruction that says, ‘those who have a grouse with each other should not enter at the same time.’ In my opinion, the kitchen may well be the riskiest place in the house to lose one’s temper. What with the forks and knives, mortar and pestle, cylinders of gases and pots of hot water, and other weapons of domestic destruction that find a natural home there.
So when newly-mad couples take their inflammable quarrels to the kitchen, or when co-wives, co-girlfriends and co-mistresses Twitter in there, trying to settle their man issues with a war of words, do you know what I see? Before you answer, I am about to tell you the story of a young woman who forgot a strange object inside the belly of another woman, which happened in the very holy of holies that is the scene of our narrative today.
To make my storytelling easy, let me take you to a time in the not-so-distant past. You don’t have to be afraid of embarking on some spooky time travel. I will just describe the place and time while you listen.
- It is 1961. The Cold War is on. Kennedy and Khrushchev are the leaders of the USA and the USSR respectively, and the diplomatic temperature of both countries is at its highest. To put a number to it, their relationship is more than one-kilo degree Kelvin. Check it out, Kennedy, Khrushchev, Kelvin and kilo—it’s a quadruple K we have there, isn’t it?
Hope I have your permission to dillydally over the Cold War issue, before our departure to the famous place where one woman, and not one man, deposited something inside another woman’s belly. In those days, both countries had one supreme war room, where their respective presidents could command the launch of nuclear weapons to enemy territories. In case you haven’t heard, a single missile with a nuclear warhead could obliterate one half of the world. Think about the fact that both countries have stockpiles of these weapons in hundreds of thousands. So imagine K and K sitting in the strategic rooms of their different countries during the Cuban Missiles Crisis, each listening to the other say hurtful things about the other country, each saying that the other lacked both strong weapons and real, bold men. Now one of them angers the other beyond his capacity for self-control, and the other goes berserk and gives the supreme command to its military, don’t you think that a destructive ‘boom’ would end the world just as a creative ‘bang’ had begun it?
So when I watched two women getting on each other’s nerves in a certain home at a certain point in time, I felt the time was just perfect for one or the other to leave something where it was not wanted. But I dismissed this thought as quickly as it had entered my mind, the reason being that the calm and unruffled disposition of one of these women had suggested to me that she was incapable of being enmeshed in a bloodbath, let alone causing one herself.
Would you mind if I told you a thing or two about the character of these women? They were as different from each other as fire is from water. On that proverbial day in which darkness struck at midday, I peeped at them through an oval hole that a careless plumber had left on the back wall. I watched as the quiet one walked into the house, and opened the central door with a spare key. That meant her co-title to the house had the master’s blessings! When Madam Legitimate saw the other woman cat-walking across the living room to the staircase that led upstairs, she rushed at her and attempted to block her from making further progress. No need boring you with the barrage of unprintable things Madam Legitimate said to the other woman. The important thing to take home is that the latter never flared up. She even tried answering some of the stupid questions coming from the madam, like ‘why didn’t you greet me when you entered? ‘Where do you think you are going?”
It will interest you to know as I have earlier hinted at, that the other woman kept calm amidst the great downpour of abuses. Do I need to tell you that I was very proud of her? You should have guessed so by now. Such degree of self-control had not been seen of any woman this side of sunshine.
The voice of Madam Legitimate had become my means of locating their position in the house. They were now in the kitchen. That’s the fifth K, you know. The fiery madam could be heard running her voice upandan. Needless to say, her adversary was as quiet as a deep blue lake. “These two are like Xanthippe and Socrates,’’ I concluded firmly, safe in the knowledge of how the fracas would end.
Then Madam Legitimate called the other woman a slut. That was a word no woman ever said to another in Potorico. Their reason was that all women were the same, with loose trappings of hierarchy making the only difference. Not that I believed this argument anyway.
What happened next in the kitchen made me experience a mental somersault. I watched as the other woman picked something. Yea, it was a kitchen knife. I could see it clearly. She moved her hand in a steady, methodical manner. Even Ben Carson could not boast of such firm control of the forelimb. She pushed it into the stomach of Madam Legitimate and quietly left it there.
Instantly, the muscle-filled face of Madam Legitimate writhed in pains. She looked like one who had been forced to swallow glowing coals of fire. I was dead with fright, especially when I found out that the other woman didn’t stay back at the kitchen after she had hung a kitchen knife on another woman’s stomach as a photograph is hung on the wall. Having done that, she walked out of the kitchen. As part of the running game of counting critical Ks in this awkward scene, I had wanted to start considering whether knife could be counted as the sixth. But seeing Madam Legitimate freeze like Lot’s wife, I immediately knew that that game was totally useless to me.
Written by: Dr Paul O Anozie