Fae was constantly cleaning up messes, 99.999 percent of the messes that required her cleaning expertise were hers. The phrase commonly used to describe her is clumsy af-as Fae. Not the other f you were thinking about. Whenever someone complained about someone being clumsy around her friends, they would laugh and say not clumsy af, no one was as clumsy as Fae. And it quickly became a thing.
This tendency to stumble was one of the biggest reasons Fae hated and avoided the kitchen. That beautiful room overlooking their backyard garden, individually housed all the sharp, breakable, and hot stuff that could potentially harm or maim a forever stumbling block. She didn’t have enough body parts to count all the times she had broken something in the kitchen, many a glass cup had met the trash courtesy of clumsy Fae. Or the number of times she had done bodily harm to herself. Just last week, she had grabbed the sharp part of the knife, for God knows what reason. The knife was not very sharp thank God, so she had gotten away with nary a scratch. Then the other day she had mistaken her finger for the onion she was slicing and inflicted bloody pain on her poor finger.
Once while preparing ogi (pap), she lost grasp of the omorogun (pestle) and it landed smack dab on her feet, smearing her feet with the hot yellow mash. It missed the floor by an inch. It was so hot, Fae got a burn. Who knew you could get a burn from hot pap? As if getting a burn on her foot was not bad enough, when she bent down to pick up the pestle, she grabbed the hot side. The side that still held the hot mash that just landed on her feet, getting the steaming hot mash all over her hand. Swallowing the curse word that wanted to spring out of her lips, she tossed the godforsaken pestle into the sink, turned on the tap, and rinsed the mash away. The cool water started to soothe her stinging palm but her throbbing foot didn’t allow her to enjoy it. She hobbled to the bathroom to rinse the mash away from said feet, the pap still on fire now burning. Yeah, she burnt pap, Pap! She hobbled out of the bathroom and yanked the pot of pap off the fire, burning the skin off her forefinger because she grabbed the hot side of the pot without a napkin.
The clumsiness was made worse by the absentmindedness that also plagued her. Like beauty influencers would say Faé had combination clumsy forgetful skin. Many an ache, injuries, and bleeding had this condition caused. She would start cooking something and forget it was on fire, only remembering when the smell of burnt food reached her nostrils. Then she would race into the kitchen and do something clumsy like grab the hot side of the pot without a napkin. To date, the smell of burning food invoked panic in her.
And to think she once considered herself a graceful, elegant dancer. Not of ballet of course, never ballet. She won't even be able to get her foot to plie without stumbling and landing in a heap of embarrassment on the floor. But she had once considered dance as the solution to clumsiness. She had thought maybe if she learned balance she won't be so clumsy. Dance was all about balance, right? But Faé quickly realized that she could dance and still be clumsy. It just meant she would lose balance and stumble a few times, a forever stumbling block.
But today, for the first time in forever, clumsy Fae was not the one that made a big mess of things. Yeah, she still had to clean it but she didn’t mind. She had not been the one to create it and that made her giddy. The mess was huge, one of gargantuan proportions. The accident had happened in a split second. Fae had been on the other side of the kitchen washing plates to aid the ongoing meal prep.
It was Sunday—efo (vegetable soup) and swallow day. They had branched the market after church let out. Not even waiting for them to share the grace, their neighbourhood was suffering a blackout, it was very unusual for them but it was happening anyway. It was their current reality. So they bought pepper, all 1500 naira of it, and Fae zoomed off to the grinding machine (ele ro) to blend the pepper. It was a divide-and-conquer situation today. Honmi was buying the other ingredients while Fae was in charge of blending the pepper, and that was all Fae was in charge of because if you overloaded clumsy et forgetful Fae with too many activities she could forget half the things that brought her there. And it had happened before multiple times to be exact. She once blended pepper in the market then promptly forgot it at the blender's shop as she went about her other market runs. Or the time she bought pepper and forgot it at her customer’s stall. Thank God she traveled in front of his shop before she returned home. He had been the one to call out to her asking if this bundle was hers. She checked her tote bag of goods and confirmed that yes her pepper was not in the bag. No wonder it wasn’t as heavy. Combination clumsy forgetful skin!
The only good thing about this condition was that Fae forgot all the clumsy things that happened as soon as they occur.
This is why Fae had the most comprehensive market lists ever. Her market list mimicked her movement along the market, meaning she wrote the list according to what was done first. So pepper was always first on the list because the pepper seller’s stall was the first one encountered. Everything that needed to be done in and around the market went on this list. So if she needed to withdraw some cash for all the things to be bought, she wrote it down. If she needed to find out the price of something but not buy it, it went on the list with specifics. She always did one final read-through before she left the market. Always!
Honmi, the resident chef of the family, grabbed the cellophane filled with red liquid carefully, then cut into it with scissors. She grabbed the pot she would pour the liquid into, she was holding the pot in one hand, the bag of red in the other. As she moved to place the bag in the pot, the pot slipped out of her hand clinging and clanging over the floor, Fae turned from her perch at the sink to ascertain if all was okay. Horror washed all over my sister's face as the nylon spewed venom poured all over her hands, laps, and the cream tile.
There was a sea of red scattered over their cream tile floor. Their once pristine kitchen now looked like the scene of a very gory murder. Yep, it looked like someone had bled and died all over their kitchen floor. But nothing had died except Fae's hopes and dreams of eating sweet vegetable stew that evening. Fae probably had a reservation in hell for her giddiness over this 1700-naira accident but she didn’t care. For once, it wasn’t her clumsy self that caused the ghastly accident, and that made her downright joyous. She just hoped her giddy excitement wasn’t too obvious, she tried to keep a straight face even though she was doing internal cartwheels of excitement.
Honmi’s face was painted with disbelief, things like this never, ever happened to her. She was so rattled; she took two steps away from the wreck.
“I-I” she stammered her mouth open in shock.
She looked from one end of the kitchen to the other, she didn’t know what to do first. But not Fae. Fae, master in cleaning up messes sprang to action, obeying the first rule of mess cleanup; start immediately.
“Step back,” Fae called out to Honmi. “Go and rinse the pepper off you. I will clean up here.”
But her sister didn’t move, Fae had cleaned up so many messes it didn’t faze her anymore.
“Go and rinse off,” she said as she pulled her sister out of the wreck.
She assessed the mess and decided on the best way to go about cleaning it up. Then she grabbed the needed tools; broom, dustpan, mop, and mop bucket out of the closet then tossed it on the floor. She got to work, scooping the liquid and pouring it into the mop bucket. She scooped and scooped on autopilot, barely holding in the hum that wanted to burst out. While her sister rinsed off the evidence of the crime in the bathroom.
She did a mental wiggle of joy, grabbed the mop bucket, and carted it outside. She rinsed the filthy liquid away and filled it with clean water. Today the bloody mess on the floor was not Fae’s fault. Yes, she still had to clean it up but at least she could glory in the fact that she hadn't made the mess.
“Well done,” Her now clean sister gave her a grateful smile. Fae just smiled in response, this was the first mess she didn’t mind cleaning, she just needed to do one more round of cleaning to make their tile cream again. She tiptoed slowly out of the room, carting the dirty water away carefully. She didn’t trip and pour the water on the floor and had to clean it all over again. That had actually happened to her once, it was a very frustrating process. She was tempted to toss the water in the sink but it was too unsanitary to think of. Tossing this blood-red water in the sink was akin to washing her panties or bloody pad in the kitchen skin. She just couldn’t do it. Plus, her mom would scream bloody murder if she found out. She tossed the dirty water in the bathroom rinsed the bucket and bathroom, and then fetched a little more water to mop the second time.
“You won’t believe what just happened!” She heard her sister calling somebody and recounting what had just transpired, her voice still full of confusion.
“Thank God for Fae,” she said as she rounded off the call. Fae stood in the now clean kitchen unable to keep her giddy smile off her face. Today was a good day to be Clumsy AF because today Clumsy Fae wasn’t clumsy. But being clumsy helped her keep her head straight and clean the mess. Looks like being clumsy Fae was good for something after all.