When I lost my mother, my father quickly married Borka. When my father died, I quickly became their maid. That is how it goes on our street above Bilmište: whoever is quietest in the house carries the bags of ironing. Borka and her daughters Betina and Berta called me Aneta when they called me. Mostly they called me "hey."
One Saturday they started getting ready for the charity ball at the hotel by the Bosna, for the hospital fund. Berta tried on eleven dresses. Betina tried on the same eleven, only louder. I ironed, zipped, fed the cat, and listened to Borka explain that you do not go to such events with a kitchen face. "You stay," she said. "Somebody has to watch the house." I asked who would watch me. They did not laugh.
As soon as they left, my neighbor Blaženka knocked, eighty-two years old, a box under her arm. Inside were gray satin shoes and a dress from 1989, in which, she claimed, she had won over the chairman of the local community council. "Be back by midnight," she said. "The shoes are mine, and I have no other pair for funerals." She ordered a taxi, and the driver checked the address twice.
At the ball nobody recognized me. Borka looked through me, Berta looked at her phone, and Betina told some doctor about her life, which seemed long to both him and me. I ate cake and listened to the speakers. One of them was a young municipal clerk, Čamil Šabanović, in a jacket one size too big, with the face of a man who had not slept because he had been writing a speech about the fund. He delivered it so sincerely badly that I was the first to applaud.
Midnight arrived faster than the electric bill. I ran down the stairs because I could not get home after Borka, and on the last step one shoe stayed behind. I left in a sock. The taxi driver asked nothing. In the morning Blaženka said only: "One I will forgive. Both, never."
Čamil found the shoe on the steps. By the hotel's rules, any forgotten item is returned by the organizer, that is, the municipality, that is, him. On Monday he walked the streets of Zenica with the shoe in a grocery-store bag and a list of sixty-three guests. By Wednesday he understood that many women wore the shoe in their imaginations and none on their feet.
He reached our house too. Borka received him like a future son-in-law. Berta pushed her foot so hard that she yelped, and Betina pulled on two socks and got in halfway. "We are all here," Borka said, "everything you need." Čamil looked into the kitchen, where I was scrubbing the stove, then back at Borka. "Is there anyone else in the house?" "Only the maid." "Good," he said. "Let the maid be included."
The shoe fit as if it had been waiting. Borka said it was a mistake. Čamil said there were no mistakes in the rules. Betina said I had stolen it. I said I had returned it, but that it was Blaženka's and I would be glad not to take it off until it warmed up. Čamil took out a notebook and wrote: "Owner found. Awaiting transport."
Today I work in the accounting office of the fund, which was Čamil's idea and Borka's horror. Berta and Betina iron for themselves and call me over for coffee so I can tell them how it is done. Blaženka got both shoes back, with a receipt bearing the municipal stamp. She says it is called a lawful return of property.