The Rice That Almost Ended a Marriage

My wife, Amaka, does not cook rice. She hosts it. There is a greeting. There is a timeline. There is a small speech about how today the pot will behave.

On Thursday she came out of the kitchen like a minister about to commission a road.

'This,' she said, 'is the best jollof you have ever tasted. Don't argue. Wash your hands.'

I washed my hands. I am not a foolish man. I have seen what happens to men who review food before the cook has sat down.

The lid comes off

She lifted it the way people lift covers off cakes on television. Steam rose. The kitchen smelled like party and good decisions. I leaned in, because I had been invited to lean in, and I saw rice that was, in all honesty, a strong seven. A confident seven. The kind of seven that gets you invited back.

What happened next will shock you only if you have never met a husband with no survival instinct.

'Is it supposed to be this colour?' I asked.

The room changed temperature. The gas did not go off, but I heard it consider it. Amaka put the lid back on with the care of a person closing a case.

'Which colour,' she said, 'were you expecting? Blue?'

The trial

I tried to recover. I said it smelled incredible, which was true, and that I was asking from a place of curiosity, which was a lie. Curiosity does not live in a kitchen at 7 p.m. Hunger lives there, and fear, and the memory of every man who has ever said 'it's a bit dry' and then slept at his uncle's house.

She served me anyway, because Amaka is not wicked. She is precise. She watched me take the first spoon like a judge watching a witness who has already confessed.

It was good. It was, annoyingly, better than a seven. I told her so. She nodded the nod of a woman adding a new exhibit to a file labelled Things Chinedu Has Said.

'Next time,' she said, 'you will say thank you. Then you will eat. Then, if you are still alive, you may have an opinion.'

The treaty

We ate in a silence that was mostly peace. I did the plates without being asked, which is the international language of apology. At the sink she bumped my shoulder.

'It was the best, though,' she said.

'It was,' I said. 'I will write it on the pot.'

She almost smiled. 'Don't touch my pot.'

The rice did not end the marriage. The sentence almost did. I have retired from colour commentary. If you need me, I am the man at the table saying thank you with his whole chest, and meaning it, because the alternative is a long walk and a cold evening.