Miriam Toews - Irma Voth

One more time, said Noehmi. Can you say it in a softer voice? Almost a whisper. Remember, your voice is being heard by a man dying of thirst and shame.

If you work hard, I whispered. If you want something badly enough. If you believe in yourself and never give up …

That’s good, said Noehmi. But just try it with a bit more of a pause in between the sentences.

Okay, I said. If you work hard. If you want something badly enough. If you believe in yourself and never give up … I asked Noehmi if she thought it was true, what I was saying.

I don’t know, she said. Do you?

I don’t know, I said.

But it’s the kind of thing a grade school teacher tells a kid, right? said Noehmi. It’s a cliché and it’s meant to be ironic in this context. Like, look where he is, right?

But he remembers it, I said.

Yeah, said Noehmi. For some reason it’s one of the things he remembers.

Because he had a crush on her?

Yeah, said Noehmi. Sort of, that’s a part of it. I don’t know. She was just that person in his life who felt he had something to offer to the world.

When we were finished it was too late for Noehmi to go home so I got her a rollaway cot out of the shed and we hauled that upstairs to our room and she slept over and in the morning Natalie and Hubertus were so happy to see her that they made breakfast for all of us and I got to postpone going to work for a while. Dupont came to pick Noehmi up and I tried not to stare at them while they kissed. I tried not to notice how their lips met and opened and how they held each other close and casually in a loving embrace. They left and then Natalie asked me if I had noticed that Aggie seemed to be in a really bad mood.

Yeah, I said. She’ll get over it. It’s her age, I think.

Yeah, said Natalie. All those hormones.

Yeah, I said. And everything changing.

Yeah, said Natalie. Or not.

Yeah, I said.

Later that evening, when Aggie finally came home from school, which I think she was skipping with Israel these days mostly to hang out in Parque México with a pack of dogs, she told me that she was going to call the cops to tell them that our father was a murderer.

Aggie, I said. You are not.

Yeah, I am, she said. That’s what normal people do.

What cops are you gonna call? I said. Cops in Chihuahua? In Canada?

Cops right here in D.F., she said.

They won’t care, I said. They’ll just laugh at you and tell you to stop bugging them.

Then in Chihuahua, said Aggie.

Same thing, I said. They won’t believe you. Or even if they do they won’t give a shit.

Fine, then in Canada, said Aggie.

Don’t you think they already know? I said. Why would we have left for Mexico right after they came to talk to us if Dad didn’t have something to hide?

So, she said. Now they can come and find him. We’ll tell them where he is.

Aggie, I said, it doesn’t work that way.

And then Mom and the boys can come and live with us in Mexico City and we can get a real house to live in instead of a hotel room.

It’s not that simple, I said. The cops in Chihuahua would have to want to co-operate with the cops in Canada and they won’t. They won’t care and besides Dad has his own story.

You don’t care about justice? said Aggie. You don’t care about the truth? Don’t you care about Katie? How do you know Dad isn’t gonna kill someone else?

Well, I said. That’s why we’re fucking here! I didn’t tell you the truth to make you all mad and do stupid things. I told you the truth because you had done up the room with the stars and the wind and I wanted to give you something in return. I told you the truth because I wanted you to stop hoping that Katie would somehow come back home and now I wish I hadn’t.

I knew Katie wasn’t going to come back home, said Aggie. Do you think I’m an idiot? Do you think I thought she could find us in the fucking desert?

Yeah, but that’s not because we were lost, it’s because she’s dead! I said.

I know! said Aggie. I just thought maybe she wasn’t. I thought maybe she was still in Vancouver.

Not still in Vancouver, I said. She never made it to fucking Vancouver!

Fine! said Aggie. Then just still alive, okay?

I know! I said. And that’s why I wanted you to know the truth!

So okay, fine! said Aggie. Now I know the truth and I have to call the cops because that’s what people do when they find out that someone has been murdered. Were you aware of that?

Do you know what would happen if you called the cops? I said. Then they’d know where you are and they’d be on Dad’s side because he’d give them some money and they’d call you a mischief-making runaway and they’d take you and Ximena back home and that would be the end of it except for Dad beating the shit out of you and probably out of Mom for lying to him about Ximena being dead and I would never see you again and it wouldn’t bring Katie back to life and you’d be dead inside forever! So, go ahead and make the call. Here, use my cell.

I threw my cellphone at her and missed. It hit the wall and a piece of it flew off and then the battery fell out of it. Ximena woke up and started laughing at us and jumping hard in her crib so that it rolled on its little wheels from one end of the room to the other. The people in the room below us banged on their ceiling. Aggie picked up the pieces of my phone and reassembled it and gave it back to me. I held it in my hand like an injured bird, tenderly. Aggie went and lifted Ximena out of her crib and changed her soaking diaper. I put my phone down on the bed and went into the bathroom to wash my face. I stood on the toilet and looked through the tiny barred window out at Mexico City. I couldn’t see the end of it, the horizon where the sky met the earth, but I could remember clearly where it was. I could remember my father sobbing in the barn three days after we moved to Chihuahua. My mother had asked me to find him and tell him that supper was ready and I stood in the doorway of the barn and watched him cry, he was sitting on a bale and he had taken off his hat and he hadn’t seen me in the darkness and then I cleared my throat and told him we were eating and he looked up at me and he said Irma, why did you tell me she was leaving? Why did you do that?

The next morning I was cleaning the big room on the second floor, the one that looked into the courtyard and not out towards the city, and I noticed an open newspaper lying on the floor beside the bed. There was a photograph of Diego Nolasco and the article was about the Mexico City premiere of his new movie Campo Siete . I looked at his picture and smiled hello, how are you? Then I ran upstairs to my room and got my notebook and ran back down and copied all the information. I folded the paper and put it on top of the little table by the window. It had never occurred to me that one day Diego’s movie would be finished and available for the world to see. It hadn’t occurred to me that all that energy, all that running around, all that waiting and all that anguish could result in one coherent song. I don’t know why I thought of Diego’s movie as a song. I had nothing else to compare it to, I guess, besides the Bible. The story hadn’t made any sense to me, not really. It was all so chaotic and haphazard, like a dream with missing pieces, and rushed and then delayed and then right and then wrong and then broke and then euphoric and the skies weren’t perfect and then they were and the real tears were fake and the fake tears were real and everyone was fighting and angry and having sex with each other and getting arrested and making threats and freezing at night and burning in the day and starving and stoned and exhausted and confused and sick and lonely and terrified. I wanted to see it. The idea alone of seeing Campo Siete obsessed and exhausted me.