Whose panties are they?
Mathilda, Oscar’s mom, asked him to go to the basement of their apartment building and put the washed clothes in the dryer. Oscar hated the basement. The roaches there were large and vicious and he saw them eyeing him always ready to pounce.
Mathilda stood next to a huge pot of boiling water in her classic refugee apron with their useless little pockets, “Oh Oscar I know you hate the basement but I am in the middle of stuffing sausage meat and my hands are greasy and I know you are a big brave boy and so it will just take a few minutes to put clothes into the dryer”.
Oscar took the elevator down to the basement where the roaches were waiting for him and he could see his brother Egon, laughing and imagined him shouting, “Oscar is a scardy cat.”
Oscar hurried to the washing machine and started to empty the wet clothes into the dryer and then suddenly stopped. In his hands were a pair of black and red lacey panties. He muttered to himself, “What the hell is going on here. Whose panties are these and ..and I don’t get it, makes no sense and as he was thinking about whose panties they were he threw them into the dryer along with the rest of the wet clothes, put some coins into the dryer coin receptacle, turned on the dryer, and then ran towards the elevator. He couldn’t wait to tell his brother what he found in the washing machine.
He ran past his mother who was standing at the sink who was putting raw sausage into the boiling pot of water and bounded into the room he shared with Egon who was working on some math problem puzzle, his favorite game.
“Egon, Egon, guess what I just found when I went to put moms wash into the dryer. I found a pair of black and red sexy panties.”
Egon responded, “What do you mean you found panties in our wash. Has to be some sort of mistake.”
Oscar responded immediately, “Mistake, what kind of mistake? No one stuck their panties into mom’s laundry but there they were. Can’t be moms. Maybe they belonged to Ruth when she visited last month but ….no that was too long ago and I just don’t get it. Mom would never wear panties like the ones I found. Imagine them on her along with her ‘burlap’ stockings suitable for storing rice. Also, where would she have bought them not in our neighborhood refugee’s favorite lingerie store that features only girdles in a variety of colors as long as they were a stiff white.
Egon added, “and that creepy owner’s young son is in charge of peaking at the women trying to squeeze into their body armor.”
The brothers laughed about that but then Oscar came back to “Whose panties are they.”
Mom would never wear them but wait…is it possible that she did wear them not for Pop but someone else? Nah. Mom would never do that. That is impossible. Mom is mom and not someone who…..no impossible, not Mathilda but then again whose panties are they?