Lagom

From Real Poetic's challenge:

Let me tell you a story.

I know that Mr. Gordon would be really upset if he knew I was doing this, but what else can you do in the winter. It's a cold one, and I have somehow made off with a little paper and a pen I made on my own. Amazed what people will trade for just the chance to say something that will keep; something that will go one when I'm long gone.

My name is Lagom. Yeah, I know it sounds strange. I know what it means now and I have proof enough that this is what I should be called because I have a note that can't be erased.

Branding.

The moment they burned it into my arm - a much warmer day than this one - I would not let anyone forget it. Not the maids, the house servants, delivery boys and pickers with their fingers raw from cotton. They would know. And I was going to know something else.

Those letters...

When you are carrying things out for a family that barely reads, you can take a book and just enjoy yourself with those pages. I was the one they had to bring in fine plates and china and all that glittery stuff to eat with... And I never stole a thing. That's why they trusted me. That's why they kept me, too, especially when they saw how easily I could disappear into the background and do my duties. All that lifting made me strong, but it was what I was lifting that mattered the most.

Books, and books, and more books... Mr. Gordon gave his wife whatever she wanted, and she wanted to line all those shelves with 'the finest works of literature that the world had ever seen' (her line for the collection that took over one dusty room). I knew why she did this. A lost child in birth and no real interest in her man made her dependent on other things, like all those stories.

What I don't know is...why she taught me to read. Her husband would have beaten both of us senseless if he found out. Maybe she wanted to hear a child speak like the one she lost. Maybe having a slave who could read was a novelty (good word she taught me). Maybe she just was tired of staring at those books. She died without making this clear.

It was clear to me.

My name is Lagom - "just the right amount" or "not too much, not too little" - and I can read and see that I need to keep this secret, even as I write in the cold.