Miriam Toews - Irma Voth

I’m trying to work something out, I told her.

What are you trying to work out?

I don’t know, I said.

That’s why the storms?

Do you study English in school? I asked her.

Israel’s mom thinks you should talk to a priest.

I’m not Catholic, I said.

She said it doesn’t matter, said Aggie. You get to hear him say my daughter.

Say my daughter?

He has to call you my daughter, she said. It’s just how they talk.

You went? I said.

Yeah, I go sometimes with Israel. His mom makes him.

Really? I said.

So the next day I asked Natalie if she could watch X. for an hour or so while I went to church and she said sure and I found a church and walked into a confession booth. I waited for the priest to call me his daughter but he didn’t. He waited for me to speak, to confess something, and I wanted to tell him all about the lies and the stealing and the murders but I couldn’t speak. I didn’t want to tell him anything because I was still afraid that if I did, something bad would happen to my father. I was silent. The priest asked me if I was going to talk to him and I said no. Then after a little while he told me that he had quite a lot of people to talk to that day. I didn’t say anything. He said so if I wanted to come back another time that would be okay with him but that he should probably make himself available for other people now. He said it kindly. He apologized for his awkwardness. I waited for him to say my daughter. I didn’t say anything. He asked me again if I would prefer to come back another time and I still didn’t say anything and then he said please, my daughter, I honestly don’t know what to tell you.

I was back in my bed with lightning raining down on my cerebral cortex and Ximena’s screams drifting up from the courtyard. I was still trying to form a picture of Jorge in my mind. I saw Katie getting ready to leave, stuffing clothes into a backpack and begging me to promise not to tell. I saw my father as a little boy on a road in Russia. I was trying to get to the bottom of things. I was trying to formulate a thought. Or a cure. Even a cure that had only one part would be enough for now. Aggie was walking around with Ximena trying to get her to calm down after she bit into a live electrical cord. She was singing to her, a silly little Low German song about ducks swimming in the sea. It was a new kind of scream for Ximena. She was in real pain. She had suffered a serious shock. I was familiar with her entire repertoire of screams and what they meant but this was something much different. She was surprised and hurt. She was fragile after all, a helpless baby. I listened to her screams and then I put the pillow over my head but I could still hear them. And then, because my little sister had bit into an electrical cord and would not be consoled, or something, I’m not sure why, really, the gathering storms in my head disappeared and I had figured out the solution to my own problem. I understood what it was to want someone to stay. And I knew what to do next. And I knew the answer to my own question: if this was the last day of your life what kind of a story would you write?

YOU MUST BE PREPARED TO DIE!

I read over the original heading in my notebook, the one that Diego had given me a long time ago to record my thoughts and observations. I pondered his dark advice. I scratched out the word DIE and wrote LIVE. Then that seemed cheesy and too uncooly emphatic so I added the words SORT OF. AT LEAST TRY. Even that seemed bossy so I added, in parentheses, a joke: OR DIE TRYING. Then I told myself that it wasn’t funny and crossed it all, every word of it, out and started again.

I’m on a plane to Chihuahua city. I have a photograph for my mother that she will have to hide and only look at while my father’s in the field. It’s of the three of us, her Mexico City girls. Aggie has a pierced eyebrow now and the craziest smile and most beautiful eyes and Ximena is struggling to get out of my arms so that she can assault the photographer (Noehmi). I’m holding on to her and saying something. My mouth is half open and my eyebrows are furrowed, like always.

Natalie and Hubertus gave me the money for a ticket and said all they wanted in return was for me to promise to come back. Aggie didn’t want to come with me which is good because I didn’t want her to either. She’s young enough that my father could force her to stay at home and I didn’t want to go through that again. Aggie wants to go see thousands of naked people in the Zócalo having their picture taken. Noehmi is on her spring break from university so she’s going to take care of Ximena (whom she has started calling Cricket) so that Aggie can still go to school while I’m gone and Natalie’s friend Fernande is going to do my job for me for the few days that I’m away because she needs extra money to pay her divorce lawyer. Ximena can’t come, obviously, because she’s not even supposed to be alive. This time, if my father asks me where my sister is, I’ll ask him the same question.

I’m on the plane. I don’t know what to write.

Should I write down my dreams?

The time is 11:02 a.m. My name is Irma Voth. I’m on a plane. I’m not a good person. I’m not a smart person. I might be a free person. If this is how it feels.

I scratched that out because there were only parts of it I thought were true and closed my notebook and looked out the window at air. I opened my notebook again thinking that I had all sorts of ideas and things to write about but now I’m not sure. I heard my mother’s voice. Irma, she said, just begin.

I want to be forgiven. I want to be forgiven for causing the deaths of so many people I’ve loved. I feel like that might never happen. I don’t know how it will happen or if it will happen. I don’t think it will but I want it to. I don’t feel forgiven by God. I want to be forgiven by the people I love. Wilson told me that art is redemptive. My father told me that art is a lie. I can’t forgive myself but I can forgive my father. And my hope is that we’ll both be brought back to life.

I rented a small red car at the airport in Chihuahua city and drove the twisty desert mountain road to Cuauhtémoc and then I drove the flat, hot highway home to Campo 6.5. I drove past Carlito’s rundown house and Alfredo’s well-kept farm with plastic flowers in the planters and past the crashed crop-duster where I’d asked Jorge to meet me for the first time. I saw a cow with his hoof stuck in the runner bars that were there to prevent him from escaping. I knew from experience not to try to help him because he’d be violent and enraged. I drove past the filmmakers’ old house which had been my cousins’ old house. I felt the tender touch of Wilson’s dying hand on my body, on every part of it, and heard him call me beautiful. Are you still alive? I said.

The house that Jorge and I had lived in was missing. There was black grass where it had been. That’s all. No sheds either. Nothing. Jorge, I said. I’m so sorry. I pictured us in a lighthouse in the Yucatán, slow dancing in a round room, looking out towards the Caribbean Sea.

I kept driving. I saw my little brothers playing with a dead snake or something on the driveway and my mother leaning against the fence like she’d been out there for a long time, weeks, maybe months, just waiting for me to show up. I got out of the car and waved to her and started walking towards her and then she began to run. She was running and laughing. She was running and laughing! And then we were hugging each other so hard, my God, she was strong. She wouldn’t let me go. My brothers joined us in this wild, joyful embrace and then I saw my father coming out of the house, using his hand to shade the sun from his eyes, and he also came towards us, not running and laughing but walking firmly and steadily. And I remembered a few sentences from Jakob von Gunten , which the bookseller in the park had given me: