Miriam Toews - The Flying Troutmans

Yeah.

Yeah…but I kind of know, I said.

No, you don’t, he said. But it doesn’t matter. He smiled sympathetically, then picked up a magazine and started to read.

I WANTED US TO PACK EVERYTHING UP, load the van, lock up the house, get maps, all that stuff, and then pick up Thebes at school on our way out of town. But Logan said no, Thebes would want to pack her own stuff, she had weird habits and needed weird things with her at all times. So we did everything we could without packing her stuff and then Logan moved some of the furniture and tried to teach me how to do a pick-and-roll and some other basketball manoeuvres for a few hours (Like this? No, no. Like this? No, no. Like this? No, no.) while we waited for her to get home.

Bonjourno! she said when she finally arrived, her trademark greeting, apparently. She dropped her backpack on the kitchen floor and bolted for the remote before Logan could get it.

Theodora! I said. Welcome home, pack your stuff, we’re leaving.

How do you spell peyote ? asked Logan. He was making a list of supplies we’d have to pick up before we left.

N-O, I said.

Okay, I have to phone Abbey and cancel rehearsals, said Thebes.

If, along the way, something is gained, then something will also be lost. Those words had been emblazoned on Min’s bedroom wall, burned into the wallpaper with a charred wine-bottle cork. Our parents dismissed them as pseudo-profound, angsty-adolescent babble, but they haunted me. Why should that be? I wondered. How did she know that? Did she really believe it, or did she just like the way those words looked in burnt cork?

I heard the universe answering back in the form of the wind and the sun and the earth’s orbit and the ocean’s tide and the world’s wild rivers and the nomadic peoples of Outer Mongolia…Things move, Hattie. Perpetual motion. Dig it or die…You’ve got a crumb on your lip.

Actually, that was Marc I was hearing on our last day in Paris as he explained to me exactly why he really needed to morph from a tangible boyfriend into a painful memory.

But couldn’t I move with you? I also enjoy the sensations of motion, I told him. I flapped my arms around and did a little dance in my petite wrought-iron chair. Do not ever return to this café, I told myself.

Marc said it was important for us to detach, to stand alone, to experience ourselves, to answer to our inner something, to recognize the divinity that resides within each of us.

But what if our in-house divinities are telling us exactly the same thing? I asked him. Like, how many ideas are out there, anyway? Ours may match.

Hattie, said Marc, be well. Find your centre. Be happy. Stand alone for a while and see what it’s like.

I asked him if I could get away with lying down alone for a while instead, like maybe on a desolate stretch of railroad. He smiled and hugged me. Love is the answer, he said.

To what? I asked him.

Everything! he said.

Cool, cool, I said.

He asked me if I could maybe get the cheque because he’d already changed all his euros into rupees.

You have to phone my school, said Logan. He was sitting on the floor surrounded by a mountain range of CDs that he was organizing for the trip.

Why? I asked him. You’re expelled. What’s to say?

They want to know that you know, said Logan.

Let me! said Thebes. I’m good at being Min. Logan slid the phone across the floor.

Yes, she said, my name is Min Troutman and I’m — Min Troutman. Yeah. T-R-O-U-T-M-A-N. And I’m — Min. Yeah, Min. M-I-N.

I’m his mother.

Yeah, totally! Full-time job, eh?

That’s not how Min talks, I whispered to Logan.

He shrugged.

Thebes, I said, give me the phone. She turned her back to me and kept on talking.

What? said Thebes. Oh. Logan. Troutman… T-R-O U-T-M-A-N …What?…Yo! Logan! He goes to that school! Don’t you know his name? Logan!.. L-O-G-A-N!

Thebes, I said. Give me the phone right now.

It’s a big school? said Thebes. Well, then, you’ll be happy to be rid of one, eh?

Logan and I were trying not to laugh. I held out my hand for the phone.

I know it’s serious, right! said Thebes. This kid is driving me crazy, trust me. We’re taking him to a, like a, like an al-Qaeda training camp, but not really. It’s one of those boot camps for—

I grabbed the phone out of her hand and said hello. There was silence on the other end. Whoever Thebes had been talking to had hung up. Should I call back? I asked Logan.

No, don’t bother, he said, it won’t make any difference. They’ll figure it out.

I called Thebes’s school and told the secretary that we were going on a road trip so Thebes wouldn’t be there for a week or so. The woman said Thebes was a great student and it wouldn’t make any difference.

Is this Min? asked the woman.

No, I said. This is Min’s sister.

Oh, said the woman, is everything okay at home?

Mostly, I said. More or less. The woman said she hoped we had a great time. Well, thank you! I said.

Yeah, um…, she said.

Is there a problem? I asked her.

No, no, no, she said, there’s not a problem. It’s just that Thebes, you know…well, she regrets being born.

What? I said. What do you mean?

She said it again, today, said the woman.

Today? I thought. After her hyper, jazzed-up start in the morning?

She doesn’t want anybody to know, said the woman. Particularly her mother. She doesn’t want to worry her.

Yeah, I said.

The woman asked me if I knew that Thebes had written something on the girls’ bathroom wall in indelible ink.

No, I said, I didn’t know that. I looked at Thebes. She was stuffing coloured construction paper into a backpack. What did she write? I whispered.

The woman said Thebes had written, Wanna do a walk-around in dreamtime, gonna seek my old bush soul.

That’s what she wrote on the bathroom wall?

Mmmm, yeah, said the woman. She had to paint over it because the custodian couldn’t get it off with soap.

Okay, I said, well, thanks for letting me know. Thebes had finished filling her backpack with paper and was drawing something on her foot. I hung up and told Thebes that everything was cool at her school. They’ll miss you, though, I said.

Oh, they don’t care, Thebes said. We don’t do anything in June anyway except clean up and have talking circles and go on lame field trips to the mint and I always have to be partners with Rajbeer because he’s new and shy and my teacher pretends that he needs me instead of admitting the truth, which is that nobody else wants to be my partner. I don’t even think Rajbeer wants to be my partner but he’s forced to be. He doesn’t even think I’m a person.

Logan put his arm around Thebes. It’s not easy being a girl, he said. Like you, he added.

True dat, my brotha, said Thebes. She stopped drawing on her foot and wrapped her arms around his skinny waist.

But, Thebie, he said, just remember you’re a little white kid. He rubbed her matted purple head. She snapped the elastic waistband of his boxers, which were foaming out around the top of his XXX pants. You don’t always have to talk like Chuck D, or whatever. In fact, I really wish you wouldn’t, especially on the road, like, in America. ’Cause that’ll be really embarrassing.

Dawg, said Thebes, I gotta—

Seriously, Thebie. You have to stop doing that.

Oh, fine, said Thebes. She looked tired, a little deflated.

I sat at the dining room table and drew a map of the universe as I knew it at that precise moment. The planet of Min, the planet of Cherkis, the stars of Thebes and Logan, vast and perilous milky distances in between. Enemy space stations in the form of foster homes and me as a UFO. Min didn’t want to see her kids. Min didn’t want to see me. Her kids wanted nothing more than to be with her. I wanted my sister back. Cherkis had wanted to be with his kids but Min had sent him packing. Min says she’ll kill herself if Cherkis takes the kids but now she seems to want to die anyway.