Flash fiction
“Give me the scissors.”
Alani, my flatmate, like a proper woman commando, orders her daughter who perpetually looks lazy around the house. She watches her daughter’s reflection in the mirror as she continues to tug at the hair of her third customer of the day. Alani doesn’t rest and doesn’t think anyone else deserves it too. Our offense? Being at peace while she works harder-than-normal to pay back her UK study loans. The kitchen table is littered with unwashed plates and pots, leaving no space to lay my food tray. This woke generation is pushing the agenda for “it’s ok to be messy” but what happens to proper hygiene and decency especially around where we prepare food?
Did I even mention the synthetic and natural hair strands romancing the kitchen floor? My Lagos home is far cleaner than this smart apartment in the UK. Used towels are draped all over the living room while the bathroom hanger remains vacant. Alani is a different breed of a disorganised person. She has no schedule for kitchen use. A few times that our paths had crossed, she was bearing down on me like a defender does to an opponent on a football field. Cooking feels like competition; racing to start a meal before she takes over to fry stuff without using the ventilator.
The only reason she has a ventilator is to ensure the aroma of my meals does not assail her nostrils. Once the tantalising smell of barbecue or garlic seasoning on chicken rents the air, her spirit is troubled. She abandons everything and dashes to the African store nearby to buy food stuff. If I prepare a pot of stew, she prepares three pots of stew and tucks them away in bowls in the fridge leaving no room for me to keep my leftovers.
Just yesterday, blood stains paid homage to my tired eyes as I arrived from a workshop in Manchester. Alani would buy meat from the butchers, drop them onto the fridge and let it drip.
The sight is nauseous.
Despite all her imperfections, she often engages her customers in small talk sometimes loud enough for me to hear how much she cleans the flat while her “efiko” flatmate is gallivanting around England looking for a husband at middle age. Alani quickly fixes her bad behaviour with a warm smile anytime I walk into such conversation. While I’m still within earshot, she tells them strange stories about me that are so untrue.
Not only is Alani breaking the law by conducting a commercial business in a private residence, she is also defaming me before strangers. My internal clock rouses me daily at 3:30 am to begin cleaning the kitchen and bathroom. But when I return in the evening, it’s all messy again. Alani and her daughter need to be scolded together like spoilt children.
The night I received a call from Lagos that I lost my brother- the only sponsor of my UK education, Alani offered condolence without emotion and walked into her room to make a call to her brother, pouring words of endearment- as though showing off that she still has a brother.
But I have come a long way to get to the UK so instances like this should not bother me at all. I’m only writing this for the sake of others who may want to share apartments in future with an old acquaintance. Some Nigerians are really evil abroad.