by Astor W. Heinemann
Back home when I was young we always had help around the house. They cooked, cleaned, did the laundry, watched my brother and me while mom was working. We had I don't know how many maids, more than I can remember, but a few of them always stand out. There was stinky, who always seemed to be drunk, horny, who kept telling us stories about guys she let into her bedroom when the family was asleep, the tall, dark, skinny old lady that had a permanent smile on her face, she was my favorite of them all. There was something comforting about leaving home and coming back to a friendly granny smile and she always kept the food warm for us. She was a good cook and my clothing has never looked as sharp or smelled as good as it did back then.
But the one that I have permanently engraved in my fragile, sensitive little mind was this fat, light skinned woman. She had a very unnerving expressionless face that always creeped the hell out of us, well, me, I don't think my brother paid enough attention to notice. She smelled weird too, not like stinky, who always had a different combination of sweat, cheap soap and booze, no, this one smelled as you imagine death smells like. Her head was big and round, it seemed that she was balding, she had no neck, as if her head just sprouted from her shoulders one day, thick, flabby arms and her thighs were so wide and thick that when she walked she had to rotate her whole waist from side to side just to make one leg go ahead from the other.
She never spoke unless spoken to and her responses were always brief, but somewhat vague. I don't think I saw her smile once and the food she made was terrible. I saw her clean the house constantly, but it always felt dirty regardless of how much she broomed and swept and dusted the place.
One Sunday morning I got up, it must have been around nine or nine thirty. I went to the dining room and sat down for my breakfast. While I awaited my food reading a magazine, mom came out and was fiddling about the kitchen doing who knows what. That's when it happened. I heard the most horrific statement I could imagine. "I had a girl last night". I kept staring at the pages, trying to shake off what I had heard, wishing, pleading for it to be my wild imagination playing tricks on me. I heard my mom drop a pot and ask "what are you talking about?" The woman reiterated that she had given birth to a baby girl the night before. Apparently she had been pregnant the whole time and none of us could tell, she didn't bother to let anyone know either.
By now my breakfast had been served, but I hadn't started eating yet. I stared at these two women discussing the birth details in mortified disbelief. I heard the woman explain how she had used the metal cap from a soda pop bottle to cut her umbilical cord and disposed of the "extra stuff" in the toilet. At that point I looked at my food and wondered if my scrambled eggs with tomato sauce and vegetables had been spiced with her placenta, you know, the "extra stuff". I mean, how could she have flushed that down the toilet? Wouldn't it back up and make a huge mess? How could she not make a single sound during labor on her own? And where was this small creature she spoke of?
My mom moved back a few steps and started asking if she was insane, how could she not let anyone know, she could have died, the baby could have died, yada-yada-yada. She called a friend to take this woman and her baby to the hospital, meanwhile I'm just staring at my eggs.
The woman was fired, given three months pay in advance. My mom always had a mother Theresa complex and actually intended to hire her back a few months later. After a lot of kicking and screaming I finally convinced her not to, but for some reason the woman showed up at my mom's house every few months on unexpectedly creepy Sunday afternoons. I found out why, I caught her stealing money from my mom's purse. When she saw me that last time staring back at her, she slowly put the money back, no change on her facial expression, went outside, picked up her baby and left. Silent. She never came back.
To this day I can't have scrambled eggs with tomato sauce and vegetables without thinking of that placenta. It may have been my morbid curiosity or just the fact that I was so hungry, but I ended up devouring those eggs that morning. It was the only meal she had ever prepared that actually tasted good.
Ende.