The Halfwit’s Toilet

Lela worked as a scullery maid for the Leibarzt family. The Leibarzt family consisted of three children, two dimwits and a halfwit, their momma and Milberg their dada, who had mahjongg yellowed teeth an anchor tattoo on his left bicep. She cooked and cleaned for the family, picking up things and putting them in the rightful place. She lived at the back of the house in the summer kitchen, ate radishes and bulb onions, which she stole from the Leibarzt family garden, and slept in until 9:27 on Sundays and every second Thursday. The Leibarzt family ate boiled cabbage and ratfish, hooked to the surface of the aqueduct with pikes, and drank tinned milk Saturdays and every third Wednesday.

One day while tending to the halfwit’s toilet Lela fell upon a glove in the clothes basket next to the cistern. She reached into the basket, a bedlam of soiled nappies and torn stockings, and put the glove into her pocket, the smell of dander and feces filling her nose with otherworldly thoughts. Returning to the summer kitchen she looked both ways, chary that Milberg or his fat wife might be lurking in the shadows. She laid the glove on her bed and closed the heavy wooden door, the sun slanting in through the window, her thoughts on things she had forgotten and things she had yet to remember. Lela turned the glove inside out, the fur lining matted with sweat and perfume, the stitching doubled where the fingers were sewn into the palms. The glove smelled of black pepper and olestra, sinfulness and heaving.