Miriam Toews - Irma Voth

All right, said Diego, we’ll shoot that part another time when nobody is watching. He put his pants back on but by this time Elias, Sebastian and Wilson were all in the pool in their underwear trying to keep the camera from slipping off the inner tube that they had tied it to. Some of the women watching had taken their kids away and a few of them were standing with their arms folded laughing at the half-naked crew and whispering. I ran back to Marijke and sat down with her in the sun and she put her arms around my shoulders and asked me how things were going.

Life is a bitter gift, no? she said.

So, now, in this shot, I said, when Alfredo tells you that you’re a good mother you smile softly, like this, and look at him and say thank you, but how would you know? And when Alfredo tells you that you make good soap or whatever his line is you nod and say yes, but you’re sick of making soap and thinking of just buying it in the store from now on. And again, I said, try not to look directly at the camera. Marijke nodded and got up. Thanks, Irma, she said.

No sweat, I said.

We smiled and I told her she was beautiful. Radiant. I told her I thought her neck was as long if not longer than my forearm, like Nefertiti. She told me she felt like shit in the dress she was wearing and then looked at mine and apologized and said that it was weird that her dress was a costume and mine was just a dress even when they were virtually identical and then she apologized again, she put her hand on her throat as though that was the place where regrettable words sprang from, and I waved it all away, it didn’t matter. I had befriended a horse wearing this dress. For some reason I thought it would be funny for me to tell Marijke that but she was already gliding away towards Diego and the others.

The next day everybody was sick, probably from the dirty water in the pool and nobody had anything to say. Through the kitchen window I could see Oveja napping under the truck. I pulled the notebook from the pocket of my dress and pressed it to my forehead. It felt cool on my warm skin.

Diego has asked me if I’d be willing to clean the house and do the crew’s laundry. Marijke and the crew are huddled around the TV watching something with no sound and looking green and exhausted. I don’t know how to ask Diego if he’ll pay me extra for cleaning. In addition to the word samizdat I’m now pondering the meaning of the word despondent . My English is fine. I lived in Canada for thirteen years and went to a normal school with normal kids. But there are words that drift around in my head like memories from the Jazz Age or something. I want to say them but they’re not really mine to feel. Here comes Diego again. The end.

Okay, I said. I’ll clean the house.

He said he’d still take the crew out to shoot some stuff but that Marijke could have the day off and stay in bed or do whatever she wanted to do.

Where’s Wilson? I asked.

He went back to Caracas, said Diego.

Why? I said.

We had a fight, said Diego. I keep forgetting how sensitive he is. He erupts like shrapnel and then goes psycho still, like numb inside. His eyes go like this. I don’t understand him. He wants me to write an introduction to his book of stories. But now we all have extra work. Irma, I have a question to ask you. Do you know that song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”? Do you know this? A-gonna ?

No, I said.

Diego went back into the living room to talk to the others and I wandered into Wilson’s room and looked around. He wasn’t there. So, that was true at least. I sat on Wilson’s bed and felt the mattress sag a bit beneath me. He hadn’t forgotten to take his notebook.

After the others had left, Marijke went into the yard and threw up next to the pump. She washed her face and then stuck her whole head under the water and then took off her T-shirt and lay on the grass on her back with her breasts exposed to the sun and the wind and God. I lay down in the grass on my side with my back to her.

Marijke, I said, what kind of a Mennonite are you? I said it quietly and in Spanish. In fact, I may not have said it at all.

Irma, she said, do you have any real idea of what this movie is about?

Well, it’s about the meaning of life? I said. I mean not life, life, but some lives? That’s all I can think of. Leave-taking.

What did you say? she said.

Leave-taking, I said. I wasn’t sure how to use that word in a sentence. Our leave-taking from Canada was abrupt and permanent. Our poignant leave-taking left me breathless and … I wasn’t sure.

You miss Wilson, she said. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t see her. She put her hand on my back and I went stiff like a stillborn calf. I felt like I was being branded. I thought I’d start to cry.

No, I said, I miss Jorge.

When we first got married Jorge was at home all the time but then he went to his mom’s place in Chihuahua city one weekend to visit and he met some guys who offered him real money. All he’d have to do was store their boxes of hierba in our grain shed because we lived in the middle of nowhere but only a few hours from the border and it was all perfect, and Jorge said sure, that sounded good, all he’d be doing was storing it, and he had held my hands and told me it would be a great opportunity for us, that it might help us to make enough money to leave the campo so he wouldn’t have to work for nothing for my father anymore and he’d take care of me and we’d have babies and move away from here and get that boat we’d been talking about. And then he started bringing stuff back to our place.

I think Diego might want to sleep with me, she said.

What? I said. Why do you think that? You don’t even know what he’s saying.

I don’t have to know what he’s saying, she said.

Well, I said. I wouldn’t if I were you.

Why not? she said. What if I’m feeling lost and lonely?

Are you? I said.

Of course I am, Irma! she said. Look around. Can I talk to anybody but you? Do I have my husband and son here with me? Do I have friends? Do I know what I’m doing? Do I understand this story? Do I have anything to do but lie around and try to remember not to look directly at the thing that’s always looking at me?

No, I said. I guess not.

I’m trying not to let my anger bubble to the surface and infect my mood, she said. Have you ever stomped down on a ceramic tile on your kitchen floor? It keeps popping up. I’m not going to sleep with him, don’t worry.

I’m not worried, I said.

My anger, I said to myself. I liked the sound of that. I needed something of my own, something I could keep. My anger. I’d embroider these words into my underwear. I felt like Frankenstein. I punched myself in the forehead. My mother thought I was retarded when I was a baby because I’d bite myself and pull my own hair. Well, whose hair was I supposed to pull? I’d ask her.

Marijke lit a cigarette and started humming.

Well, the tile just needs to be glued down, I said.

Hey, she said, do you mind asking Diego if it’s possible to get more leafy vegetables around here? I was looking at the whites of my eyes this morning and I think I’m developing anemia.

I turned around and looked deeply into the whites of her eyes and tried to detect a problem.

Then she told me she’d like to meet my family and I told her why that was pretty much impossible and then just at that moment as though we’d conjured her up like a dream Aggie was standing next to us with a suitcase and there we were, three Mennonite girls in an empty field, one bare-chested, one bewildered and one on the run.

Diego and the crew came roaring back into the yard in two trucks and Elias and Oveja ran over to us and Elias said we had to go shoot right then, immediately. Because the light, he said. And we had to bring Oveja with us for some reason I couldn’t quite understand. Either because we would need protection or because he, Oveja, needed protection.