March 6

 

For an unknown reason I am on foot and I need to find a place to spend the night. I realize that I am near my uncle’s house, so I approach. He lives there with my cousin who is a grown woman and has never married. I’m hesitantly invited into their home, but it becomes clear that they don’t really want me there. As soon as I enter the house, they both retreat into different rooms and ignore me. Not knowing what to do, I sit in the foyer on a wooden bench that resembles a church pew and is just as uncomfortable. The house is cold so I keep my winter jacket on and huddle as best as I can to stay warm. I realize that they have no intention of inviting me into another more comfortable part of the house. After a while I fall asleep. When I wake up I notice that my uncle and cousin are seated to the left of me on a separate bench. They are sleeping and his arm hangs loosely across my cousin’s shoulder. The fact that they are sleeping there is very odd and I wonder if they are intentionally keeping an eye on me. I also think it’s odd that my uncle has slung his arm across my cousin. I cannot fall back asleep because I have to go to the bathroom very badly. I know where the bathroom is, I can see it from where I am sitting, but the door is shut. I hesitate but then I realize that we are the only three people in the house so it must be unoccupied. I quietly walk past my sleeping relatives because I don’t want to wake them. I decide I’ll go use the bathroom and then I’ll leave. I open the bathroom door and find that the floor is flooded. There is at least one inch of water and clothes left lying there, a bath mat, and other assorted items are saturated. There is no way to reach the toilet without slogging through the mess and I don’t want to do that. As I’m standing there wondering what to do my cousin walks up behind me and heads to the toilet seeming unbothered by the flooding and oblivious to my presence. I’m simultaneously contemplating whether I should walk out while she is peeing, why the hell she is not perturbed by any of this, and how the water is managing to not run into the adjoining hallway. Before I can say anything, my cousin flushes the toilet. When she does, the water from the floor rushes into a drain I had not noticed before as if the floor were one big shower area. I stand there wondering whether I should now use the bathroom but decide that it’s best to leave.