Partners in Crime

There were certain perks to having a younger brother who is closer to your age and is not a tattle tale, 17 year old Eno had come to agree. Certain incidents were easier to hide.

She smiled as thought of this as she and her mum sat in the kitchen to gist about the wedding she had just come back from, her mother oblivious to what had gone down to retain the pristine state of this kitchen less than 10 minutes ago.

About 2 hours ago, she and her brother Edi who was two years younger than she was had been using the router at home on their individual laptops with the TV showing a Disney show in the background. Edi had just checked the rice he was cooking.

“There is still some water in it”, He said when he got back.

“Alright.”

Eno went back to the picture she was trying to edit for her online store. Time went by and Eno could smell something.

“Is it just me or is there a funny smell in the air?”

“Oh no! Edi, the rice.”

She abruptly stood up from the rug where she was sitting and ran towards the kitchen with Edi following right behind her. Thick smoke was emanating from the kitchen and had diffused around the whole house. She was almost choking. She quickly put off the burner in which the rice was supposed to be boiling and opened the pot. Half of the rice was burnt. It was so bad that even the rice grains that didn’t get burnt were brown already.

She opened the door that led to the kitchen balcony so that the smoke could escape through the net door.
Her head was spinning from all the insults and verbal onslaught she imagined would get from her parents especially her mum if they got back and found out about this. She didn’t like the image at all. Things were hard enough already for them. They would just turn the frustration on her. Hopefully, since they were coming from a wedding, they were likely to be in a good mood and might be more forgiving. She was beginning to blame herself for letting Edi make that rice himself. It wouldn’t matter if he was the one who was making it anyways, she would still get blamed for it.

“Edidiong Akpan, I didn’t ask you to check what you were meant to be cooking so you just forgot abi?”

“To be fair, mummy said you should cook the rice.”

“Really?!” Eno asked not knowing whether to laugh or cry or gorge his eyes out at this moment.

He was now playing that card with her?

“You said you wanted to do it so I let you. So I guess I have become the bad person then.” She continued.

“Anyways, we have to clean up this mess now. I’ll take the blame. It’s all my fault for thinking you were responsible enough not to screw this up.” She concluded feeling quite angry now rather than weary.

It was a good thing their parents had gone for a wedding today. However they could come back at any time since it was already late in the evening. She had to work fast to salvage the situation. The blame game could only go on for so long. She set down the burnt pot of rice from the gas cooker, took a spoon and scraped off the top that didn’t get burnt. The whole pot didn’t have to go to waste, she thought to herself. She got Edi to get her a bowl where she put it in.

Next she scraped off the burnt part of the food and poured it into a black nylon. She scraped as much as she could. Then she poured a little water in the pot and place it on the cooker to boil. She had learned that trick in school from a friend when the pot they used to cook noodles got burnt. It helped soften the burnt residue in the pot.

While waiting for the water to boil she got a smaller pot from the drawer and poured the rice in the bowl into it and added a little water into it. It was almost done. It needed to be a little bit softer.

“Edi, get the loaf of bread from the food shelf.”

Edi handed her the bread loaf and she took a slice and set it on top of the rice in the pot.

“What’s the bread for?”

“To absorb the burnt smell.”

“Oh…”

“I hope it works though. It’s the first time I am trying it.”

The water in the burnt pot had started boiling so she took the pot of the cooker and place the smaller one with rice on the lit burner.

She could still smell the smoke but it wasn’t as bad as before. She poured the blackish water from the burnt pot and used an iron sponge they had just brought out some minutes ago to scrub the pot, scrubbing vigorously to remove the burnt stain in the pot.

She was eventually able to get the burnt stain off the pot with some scouring powder they had in the house and the pot was almost as good as new. The remainder of the rice she had salvaged was now cooked so she poured it back into the first pot they cooked it in. The burnt smell was definitely still there but it was barely noticeable.

She could relax a bit. She had to let this smoky smell out of the whole house. She opened up all the windows and curtains, then turned off the lights so that people outside couldn’t look into the house.

After that, she headed to the kitchen and started parboiling another cup of rice for their parents. She knew that there was no way they would eat the salvaged rice. Minutes later, fresh rice was boiling on the gas cooker, Eno and Edi had dished out the salvaged rice and shared it between the two of them and the pot was washed again. It was this this point their mum called to check in on them.

“Hello.”

“Hey mum.”

“Have you guys eaten?”

“We’re eating right now. Are you and daddy on your way back?”

“We’re just getting to Abule Egba bus stop.”

“Oh okay. You two should be coming then.”

“Okay. Bye.”

Words couldn’t express how relived she was. The rice would be ready even before they got back. The water was almost dried up.

“Hey I have an idea”, Edi said.

“What?”

“We should take some of the rice from the fresh one so that it looks like that’s where we ate from. You know you’ve already told mum we were eating.”

“Even better. I could make it look like we scooped some while it’s till on fire. I would just take some from the corner and pour it on top then smoothen it out.”

And that was what she ended up doing. The rice was ready and now she was cleaning up the burnt residue on the gas cooker. Not too long after that they heard a horn at the date. Their parents were home. What a stroke of luck.