Miriam Toews - Irma Voth

I was starting to sound like Jorge.

You can’t tell me what to do, she said.

You’re an idiot, I said. You have no idea.

Most of the crew had fallen asleep on a tarp, surrounded by equipment and empty water bottles, and Diego and José were talking quietly in the truck. I knocked on the window.

I need to get Aggie home, I said.

Diego got out of the truck and stood there squinting up at the sky. We’ll give up on today, he said. I thought it was the rainy season now.

It’s supposed to be, I said.

Do you think God is punishing us? said Diego.

Why, what did you do? I said. He told me he was just joking.

Will you be able to make a meal for the crew when we get back? he said. A woman from the village was supposed to come but she took my money and never came. Her brother told me she went to America. Or she is dead. I’m not sure.

I’m not sure I have time, I said. Aggie has to get back and I’m worried—

Now you’re worried, said Diego. First Marijke, now you. You girls are professional worriers, I’ll say this.

I’m not going back, Irm, so don’t worry your pretty little head over me, said Aggie.

You don’t know that expression, I said.

You don’t know everything, said Aggie.

We’ll stop and buy some food and it’ll be green and good for your anemia, said Diego.

Not mine, Marijke’s, I said.

Okay, said Diego. I could make it myself but José and I have paperwork to fill out and the guys are still feeling a little sick. Plus, I promised in their contracts there would be meals and I’m worried about a mutiny. Please, Irma, I really need your help.

I didn’t say anything. I waited to feel that old familiar pain in my chest, my cue to continue.

I’ll do it, said Aggie.

No, you won’t, I said. She can’t.

Why not? said Diego. It makes no difference, you or her.

I want to do it, said Aggie.

No, I’ll do it, I said. It’s fine. No sweat.

Aggie started to say something to me in German, but Diego cut her off in English. You and Aggie can sit in the cab with José and me, said Diego. Marijke will drive with Alfredo.

What? I said. I told you, remember, that Marijke doesn’t want to drive with Alfredo. She’s worried that—

It’s all right, said Diego. I talked to Alfredo. I ran four times around the pasture with him and afterwards he was healthy.

José opened the passenger door for Aggie and me and we got in. Oveja jumped up and down throwing himself against the window, crying and howling. Aggie said we had to let him in and Diego said no, not possible, he had to ride in the other truck and Aggie said fine, let her out then, but the other truck had already taken off so Diego had to let Oveja ride with Aggie. The truck got stuck in the muddy field and we had to push ourselves out and José helped but fell and was covered completely in mud and very angry because he hadn’t brought extra clothes from Mexico City. We had to stop all over the place to buy supplies, food and water and beer and gas and some new pants for José.

Aggie and Oveja and I sat on a box outside a store in Rubio and looked around. Aggie couldn’t remember the last time she’d been to town. She was making some jokes and goofing around but I was trying to ignore her. Did you know that there’s this country that nobody really knows about that’s kept in an office building in Paris? she said.

A girl wandered over to us and asked if she could sit down too, and we all moved over a bit and waited. She didn’t look much older than Aggie. She was drinking some juice out of a plastic bag. She told us her name was Lindsay Beth and that she was from Indianapolis. We told her we were Irma and Aggie from nearby and that the dog was Oveja.

Why are you dressed like that? she said. We shrugged and looked around some more. That a pit bull? she asked. We nodded.

Are you here all by yourself? said Aggie.

Yeah, she said. They had to keep me in a cage.

Who kept you in a cage? said Aggie.

Rehab, she said. She told us they had thrown a box of soap in her cage and she was supposed to use it to carve her urges into shapes and she’d carved a giant key.

I would kill for OxyContin, she said.

Then how are you allowed to travel all by yourself? I asked her.

It’s about establishing trust, she said.

What is OxyContin? said Aggie.

This is the last time my parents are going to bail me out, said Lindsay Beth. I’m not actually by myself.

She was wearing pyjama bottoms that said dark side of the moon all over them. A little boy who had been playing around in the dirt came over and practised his reading on her legs. He poked at her pyjamas. His small finger traced the words. Dark. Side. Of. The. Moon, he said. Dark side of the moon. Dark side of the moon. Dark side of the … He pulled the fabric a bit where it had crinkled … moon.

This is my brother’s kid, she said. We waved at him.

Where’s your brother? I asked her.

Inside, she said. We’re on our way to the last ditch hotel. They’re supposed to make excellent smoothies there, that’s all I know, and that’s all my stomach can absorb. My brother will drop me off and only pick me up again if I’m clean at the end of it. Otherwise I’ll just be released into the atmosphere like a toxic gas. I’ll just wander around the desert like Neal Cassady or whatever and eventually lie down for a nap on railway tracks.

She told the kid to go and find his dad. She told us that her brain had disintegrated to the point where her eyeballs had minds of their own and that even when she knew she was staring straight ahead her eyeballs would do their own thing and look elsewhere, off to the side or up towards the sky. She told us that even her one-thousand-dollar-a-day rehab facility in Malibu with equine therapy had failed to take. They think my brother will help me but he won’t. He’s fed up. She pointed at the store. I have to want to stay alive or not. I told her it looked like she wanted to.

Do you? said Aggie. She had stood up and was facing Lindsay Beth with her hands on her hips.

Well, she said, I want my hair to stop falling out. She pulled out a chunk of her hair and showed it to us. She held it tenderly in her hand like a wounded bird. Aggie stared at it for a long time and seemed distressed when the girl finally threw it into the wind and it flew off towards El Paso. We talked for a while about things and played a little hide-and-seek game with the boy and waited and waited.

BY THE TIME WE GOT HOME a little apocalypse was brewing. I saw smoke coming from the field behind my house and told Aggie to stay put and then ran over to investigate. I saw the car. I saw the fire. I saw Jorge.

You’re home! I said. I ran up to kiss him and hug him. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to feel the hard slope of his back. I wanted to put my head under his shirt and pin him to the ground and listen to his heart beating but he was busy throwing stuff into the fire.

Where were you? he asked.

Where were you ? I said.

Help me put this shit away, he said. We carried his boxes into the back shed and he hoisted them up into the rafters. After that he relaxed a bit and smiled and even made a few jokes and was almost like his old self and we went into the house and I made him something to eat and he gave me a new pair of sunglasses which I put on and then he gave me a new pair of jeans which I also put on under my dress.

We fooled around for a while, throwing grapes into each other’s mouths and then bouncing them off the wall and seeing if we could still catch them in our mouths.

How’s your mom? I asked him.

Good, he said. Says hi.

Jorge said he wanted to teach me some dance move he’d learned in Chihuahua city. You stand like this, he said. He turned me around so he was behind me.