Miriam Toews - Irma Voth

Aggie! My God! Are you fucking insane?

Fine! she said.

I ran to the shed and stood on a bale and started hauling Jorge’s boxes out of the rafters. Aggie backed the truck up to the shed and hit the corner of it with the bumper. I yelled at her to stop. She got out of the truck and came into the shed and I told her to start loading the boxes into the back.

What is this? she said.

Something for Carlito Wiebe, I said. Let’s go.

Wait, she said, let’s take Oveja.

No, I said. He’s running around with the cows. We’ll come back and get him after. And besides, Carlito has a dog too, and they’d just fight.

Carlito Wiebe was angry with us for waking him up in the middle of the night but then he saw what was going on and he became less angry. He took the boxes out of the back of the truck and brought them into his dingy little kitchen and piled them up on top of each other. He leaned on the boxes and said a bunch of things and I wanted him to hurry up and buy the stuff and give me the money so we could leave.

I don’t have enough on me right now, he said.

Well, how much do you have? I said.

I don’t know, he said, I’ll have to take a look.

He went off into another room and Aggie and I stood there. She was yawning. Off in the other room Carlito put on some kind of cowboy music and we heard water running for a minute.

Irma? she said. Are you a narco?

No, I said. Shhh.

Jorge’s gonna kill you, she said.

Nah, I said.

Carlito came back and said he could give me about thirty thousand pesos. I like that music, he said. Do you?

Yeah, said Aggie, it’s pretty good.

It’s a new band from Durango, said Carlito. The singer just got out of jail.

Jorge told me it was worth at least a million pesos, I told him.

He’s wrong, said Carlito. He was just talking big. I’m going back to bed if you’re not interested.

I’ll give you thirty thousand pesos’ worth, then, and take the rest back, I said.

No, Irma, said Carlito. I don’t mean to be a hard-ass but you don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t even know how much thirty thousand is. Besides what are you going to do with it? Carry it around with you in the back of that truck?

Aggie cleared her throat and I looked into her translucent eyes for a second and felt weakness leave my body like blood.

Nah, forget it, I said. I’ll find someone else. C’mon, Aggie, help me load this shit back into the truck. I yanked the back of her dress.

Hang on, said Carlito. Tell you what. I’ll give you forty thousand pesos. That’s a good deal.

Fuck off, Carlito, I said.

Fuck off, Carlito, said Aggie. We went into the yard and hopped back into the truck.

He’s coming outside, said Aggie. What if he shoots us?

That would solve so many problems, I said. I rolled my window down and pointed my pen flashlight into his eyes. He put his arm up to cover them and I turned it off.

Sorry, I said. I had to make sure it was you.

Irma, he said. I don’t mean to pry but what the heck are you doing?

I’m selling drugs! I said. Jesus Christ, man. What the hell do you think I’m doing?

Irma, said Aggie. You sound a tiny bit hysterical.

Does Jorge know you’re doing this? said Carlito. Did he send you?

No, he didn’t, okay? I said. Just, you know, whatever. Give me forty thousand then. I have to go.

Tell you what, said Carlito. I’ll give you fifty. But promise me you won’t tell anybody, especially Jorge, who you sold it to. And also, do you girls want a bag of oranges? We waited for Carlito to run into his house and out again with a big sack of oranges that he put into the back of the truck.

Danke schön, I said.

Bitte, he said. And may God be with you.

Thanks, Carlito, I said. And with you.

Count the money, I told Aggie.

No, she said. I’m afraid it won’t be the right amount.

Oh, okay, I said, you’re right. Never mind. I told Aggie what the next step was and she put her feet on the dash and said she’d like to make a comment if she could, something having to do with what she called the paucity of my business sense, but I said no. We flew back to our parents’ house and went running in to tell our father that the cows were loose, that Klaus Kroeker, the guy he’d hired to do the milking, must not have known how to close the gate properly. My father grabbed his gun from the rack in the kitchen and put on his boots and told me and Aggie to help him round them up. His face was burnt bright red from stubbornly standing in the sun all that day. I told him that we’d take the truck and go over to the south side of the field, near the broken crop-duster, and stop them there. It didn’t really make any sense but he didn’t seem to notice and he left, swearing and bleary-eyed.

We went into our parents’ bedroom looking for our mother and there she was with the top of her nightgown down and she was nursing a baby. We all stared at each other except for the baby who kept sucking and gurgling and then our mother said in a soft, quiet voice, girls, what are you doing here? What’s going on? And Aggie said you’ve had your baby! Nobody told us! Shhhh, said our mother. She was smiling. Come sit here with me, she said. And then we both went and lay down on either side of our mother and her new baby for a while and we touched the baby very gently so we wouldn’t disturb it from eating and I told my mother that we had some hard news.

My mother was quiet for a long time. I wanted her to say something. The baby fell asleep and my mother took her nipple out of its mouth and gently laid the baby down beside her so it was tucked in between her and Aggie and then she put the top of her nightgown back on. She asked me to move so that she could get out of bed and she asked Aggie to stay with the baby and I helped her walk to the kitchen because she was still sore from the birth and she asked me to sit down at the table. She sat down too and put her hands on my hands.

How are you, Irma? she said. She touched my cheek and my forehead. We were whispering.

I’m okay, I said. How are you?

She smiled and said she was okay except that I was holding on to her hand so tightly she thought it might break.

Does Jorge know? she said.

No, I said.

But he’s your husband, she said.

I know, I said. She was quiet for a bit, staring at something invisible on the wall.

Are you cold? she said.

No, I said.

Are you hungry? she said.

No, I said.

Will you be brave? she said.

I’ll try, I said.

I love you, Irma, she said.

I love you too.

I pressed my fingers hard to my eyes. I put my head in my mother’s lap and she stroked my hair. My precious Irma, she said. Then she sang a little bit of this hymn we all knew called “Children of the Heavenly Father.” When she was finished singing she was quiet for a minute. She kept stroking my hair.

Your braids need redoing, she said.

I know, I said.

But there isn’t time now, she said.

That’s true, I said. She tried to help me up. She whispered to me that I should kiss the boys goodbye, they wouldn’t wake up, and she would talk for a bit with Aggie. I got up and went into the boys’ bedroom and looked at them. Doft was buried under his blanket, his fuzzy little head just barely poking out, and Jacobo had thrown his covers onto the floor. I leaned over each of my sleeping brothers and kissed them. They smelled like hay and sweat. I wanted to give them something to remember me by but I didn’t have anything. I kissed each of them again. Then I remembered the oranges and I went out to the truck and took two of them out of the bag and brought them back in and went and put one orange each beside my brothers’ heads. I went back into the hallway and I heard Aggie and my mother talking in her room. I heard Aggie say hold me closer, Mom, squeeze hard. They were both crying. I walked back to the kitchen and waited.