Toilet Paper
Evan Zilber
“NIKITA!” babushka Tanya yelled from the kitchen.
Heavy footsteps scuttered up from downstairs. In seconds, Tanya and Vanya were confronted by an oily colossus dressed in a black t-shirt and a black pair of briefs.
“What?” Nikita asked.
“Tell Vanya what you meant when you asked me if I want you to wipe my ass.” Tanya’s zeal reduced the impediment of her thick Russian accent.
Tanya had asked Nikita to do his chores earlier that day. Thirty-five years old and allotted the entire basement of his mother’s house, Nikita was fed up with his mother not recognizing his independence.
“You want me to wipe your ass, too?” he had asked under his breath.
“Shto?!” Tanya responded. “Tee gavareesh gadyesti ceechass?!”
Vanya couldn’t help but giggle at this exchange but knew laughing too obviously would add fuel to the ass-wiping flame. He repressed his desire to instigate, aware of the latent power in his grandma and uncle’s argument.
Now, in the kitchen, Vanya unleashed it, innocently asking his grandma why her son wipes her ass.
“Well,” Nikita said, responding to his mother, “it was sarcasm.”
“Yeah,” Tanya said to Vanya, “do you know something about sarcasm?”
Vanya was silent for a few seconds. “No.”
“Explain to him what is sarcasm,” Tanya told her son.
“It’s, it’s,” Nikita struggled, “it’s an untruth said in a jokingly fashion.”
“Oh!” Vanya responded, “so when you wipe Tanya’s ass, it’s just a joke?”
“Ughhhh,” Nikita said, disgusted, and his mom shooed him from the kitchen in frustration.
Evan Zilber, class of 2026, is from Montgomery, NJ, and is an English and Russian major. He writes, “The above story is a true account of an interaction between my uncle, grandma, and myself (Vanya). I hope they won’t mind that this piece appears in the Rutgers literary magazine; it’s kind of flattering, right?”
Zilber wrote “Toilet Paper” in a creative writing course taught by Professor Murray, who selected the piece for inclusion in WHR.