Miriam Toews - All My Puny Sorrows

Yolandi, she said, listen to me. Listen very carefully, okay? Mom and Nic can’t know. They wouldn’t let me go. Nic still believes in some kind of medicine that will cure me and mom believes in … I don’t know what exactly, maybe God, or odds, I don’t know, but she’ll never give up. I’m begging you, Yoli, you’re the only one who understands. Don’t you?

Do you mean we would sneak off to Zurich? I asked. Just the two of us? That would never work.

Why not?

Because doctors there have to determine that you’re sane!

I am sane, she said. So you’ve checked it out already?

I googled it.

And it makes sense, right? said Elf.

I don’t know about that, I said. I couldn’t look at her. Her eyes were huge. Her nails were hurting me.

Yoli, she said. I’m afraid to die alone.

Well what about not dying at all? I said.

Yoli, she said. I feel like I’m begging for my life.

Okay but Nic would obviously notice within five minutes that you were gone and he’d find you, he’d figure it out somehow, some kind of paper trail and then he’d hate me and mom would have a heart attack and it probably wouldn’t even work out. It’s just so improbable, Elf, it’s ridiculous. You can’t just sneak off to freaking Zurich in the night. It’s not like a neighbour’s backyard pool—

Yoli, if you love—

I DO love you! God!

I heard our mother speaking in her calm but lethal voice outside Elf’s door. She was telling the nurse that Elf hadn’t seen a doctor in days. The nurse told my mom the doctor was very busy. My mom told the nurse what she had told me the night before, that Elf was a human being. The nurse wasn’t Janice. My mom was asking where Janice was. The nurse who was not Janice was telling my mom that she agreed with her, Elf was a human being, but that she was also a patient in the hospital and was expected to co-operate. Why? asked my mother. What does co-operation have to do with her getting well? Is co-operation even a symptom of mental health or just something you need from the patients to be able to control every last damn person here with medication and browbeating? She’ll eat when she feels like eating. Like you, like me, not when we’re told to eat. And if she doesn’t want to talk, so what? My daughter is more intelligent than the entire psychiatric staff put—

Mom! I said. Come in here. My mom came into the room and the nurse escaped to her post.

Sweetheart, my mom said, and kissed Elf on the brow. Elf smiled and said hi and asked her if she was okay and said she was shocked to hear about Auntie Tina needing surgery.

Oh I’m absolutely fine, said my mom. And Tina will be okay. I had the exact same surgery, remember? After that safari? How are you? Elf shrugged and looked around the shitty room in a type of awe like it was one of the great cathedrals of Europe.

How does the poem go again? I asked my mom.

What? she said. What poem?

That Ezra Pound poem. Your favourite one.

Oh! “In a Station of the Metro”?

Yeah, that’s it, I said. What is it about it that you like so much? I don’t know, said my mom. It’s short. She laughed. Why do you ask?

I don’t know, I said, no reason. I was just curious. I have to sign my divorce papers this afternoon.

The Vegas wedding was legit? said Elf. She turned to our mother. You know about Pound’s fascist leanings, don’t you, mom?

Honey, the nurses want you to eat a little something, said my mom. I didn’t know he was a fascist!

How are the kids? my sister asked.

My mother looked at me.

Good, I think, I said. Will’s occupying some politician’s office today in Toronto protesting a crime bill or something like that and you can watch a live feed of it online. He’s staying with Nora.

What do you mean? asked my mom.

You can watch it while it’s happening, I said. On your computer.

Good grief, said my mom. What channel?

Elf smiled faintly and said to say hi to him and Nora. She asked what had been happening the last time I checked out the live feed of his protest. Honey, is this a hard day for you? asked my mom. We both looked at her. They were batting balloons around and some of them were lying in sleeping bags, I said. The cops came and then left again so who knows. Will said they’ll leave if the cops ask them to. What crime bill? asked my mom. Having to do with prisons and policing, I said. He’s an anarchist now.

Will is? said my mom. Oh no!

No, no, I’m kidding, I said, unsure if I was or wasn’t. I had forgotten about my mother’s Russian association with murderous anarchists. She excused herself to use the bathroom and I whispered to Elf just let me think, okay? And you think too, like really think.

Yo, I have thought, said Elf. That’s all I’ve been doing. Is it not obvious?

I know, I said, but can’t you just think about it a bit longer? Or then stop thinking and start just observing things around you. I can’t do it without Nic being there, definitely not — plus this is so crazy. It’s not—

Why not? said Elf. I’m not his child. I can go with or without his permission. Obviously I want him to be there with us but he would never let it happen. We could go now while he’s away.

No way.

What do you mean just observing? It’s impossible not to have thoughts. Even if they’re superficial that doesn’t mean there isn’t some form of brain activity—

I know, I said, but don’t you want him to—

Hey why don’t I get some lunch from the cafeteria and bring it here, said my mom. We hadn’t noticed she was back from the washroom. We can have lunch in here, the three of us! And I’ll check on Tina on my way back.

They won’t let you, said Elf. I’m supposed to go to the cafeteria at mealtimes.

I’ll hide it, said my mom. I’ll smuggle it in.

Let me go, I said. You can barely breathe. They’ll end up admitting you too. And I have a backpack for stashing the food.

A nurse came in with an enormous bouquet of flowers. These came for you just now, said the nurse. Aren’t they beautiful?

Oh, they are! said my mother. Wow! I nodded and smiled and leaned over to smell them.

From Joanna and Ekko. Is Ekko her husband or something? I asked. Elf nodded. The nurse said she’d try to find a vase big enough for the flowers. I thanked her profusely. I was trying to get her to approve of at least one of our miscreant members.

Well these are a lovely addition to the room, don’t you think, Elf, said my mom. How thoughtful of them!

Look at these blue ones, I said. How do you get blue flowers?

Honey, said my mom. Blue flowers do exist in nature. They’re symbols of something, I think. In poetry.

Oh really? I said.

Of inspiration, maybe, or of the infinite, said my mother. Die blaue blume.

Can you take them out? said Elf. Can you take them away?

I flew into my aunt’s room, said hi, ta-dah! I put the giant bouquet onto her bedside table and she laughed. My goodness! How delightful! she said. They’re from Elf, I said.

I told her I was sorry about the latest developments, that Elf and my mom and I were going to have a quick lunch and then my mom and I would both come back here, to her ward, and visit properly. She waved off any urgency, meh, relax, if your mother can do it I can do it, and laughed again. She was talking about the surgery. She held up her arm, the one with the plaster cast, and said it was really bugging her. Did I want to write something on it? I wrote I love you, Auntie Tina! She looked at it and told me she loved me too. She asked me to get her a pen or a stir stick or something that she could stick into her cast so she could scratch her arm. It was driving her nuts. What are these numbers? I asked her. She told me she had written down Sheila’s and Esther’s cellphone numbers on her cast. Sheila and Esther were her daughters, my cousins. They were older than me and Leni, their sister who died, and often babysat us by giving us giant bags of red Twizzlers as hush money and sneaking out with their boyfriends. Leni and I would wait for them to leave and then go out and wander around town by ourselves until we’d eaten all the Twizzlers and the bedtime siren had gone off at the fire hall. Tina asked me to bring her a Starbucks coffee — but don’t tell the nurses. Just sneak it in. Small black. I told her I was a mule already, no problem, she could count on me.