Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness

Sometimes parents would bring their kids into the library to chew them out about misbehaving during the sermon. One time I heard a little three-year-old kid screaming: I didn’t bite him! I didn’t kick him! I didn’t pinch him! I’m a good Christian!

After church my dad would come downstairs to get us and we’d all go home. My mom worked at the library a lot, it seemed. My dad sometimes built new shelves for the books and she’d sit on her desk, legs swinging, and tell him where to put them. The Mouth told her it was nice to see her taking ownership of her job and being an obedient soldier of Christ. My dad was happy to help out whenever he could. He just wanted to be with her. It didn’t matter where.

Speaking of obedient soldiers, Tash wasn’t one. She secretly got her ears pierced with a needle and a potato. She kept her eyes half closed all the time when she talked to us which was hardly ever. She’d mumble stuff sometimes and if you asked her what she said she’d say nothing, forget it. She started bringing her radio and candles into the bathroom with her when she had a bath. My dad would gaffer-tape her radio to the counter so it wouldn’t fall in the tub and kill her. She wrote Patti Smith lyrics on her bedroom wall, and also the words: DON’T IMPOSE YOUR NOSTALGIA ON ME.

She started going out with Ian, who instead of Greb Kodiaks wore motorcycle boots with chains on them and put his hand on her ass when they walked around town which they didn’t do very often because obviously they wouldn’t walk. And they never ran either. Tash had warned me about running. It’s for idiots and children. Ian had a faded red Econoline van with no windows in the back, just a mattress and a cooler. They had matching home-made tattoos of small blue stars. Ian sometimes wore eyeliner. Tash had shown him how to put it on really thick so that it highlighted his pupils and made him look dead. He liked napes, which he compared to vaginas. He told me what mitosis was. I loved the way his voice sounded when he said: Two daughter cells. I loved the way he took my sister’s hand like he was sure she’d let him. He had wet brown eyes, really long arms, and a slight underbite like Keith Richards’. He once gave me five bucks to go away.

Tash just shot up one night. My mom said, Tash, you must have shot up in your sleep. Tash said she didn’t think it was possible to shoot up in your sleep and Trudie told her that of course it was possible and Tash was saying yeah? Really? Okay, how? She liked to pretend she was this wasted junkie girl but I think Trudie just played along to hear her laugh at something because Tash hardly ever laughed around us any more and derisive laughter was better than nothing, I guess.

In the morning when she came to breakfast we all stared at her. She really was about a foot taller than the day before. Are you standing on something, my mom asked. Do your joints ache? Oh my god, said Tash. Trudie put her arm around her and asked her how a girl who was still growing in her sleep could be so tough. Tash told her that made a lot of sense, meaning that it didn’t, but at least they were having a conversation. Tash had string bikini underwear and a light blue bra. I loved to watch her get dressed for school in the morning. She liked to use Nazareth’s “Love Hurts” as a soundtrack to getting dressed. Every morning was the same. We’d all get ready for school and work, my dad shaving, my mom making lunches, while a litany of bad things love can do blasted out of Tash’s stereo speakers. I loved the professional way she put on her bra, fastening it in the front and then whipping it around to the back and sticking both arms through the straps in one smooth motion. She could remove her bra while walking home from school by doing different things under her shirt and pulling it out of her sleeve. She wore orange men’s shirts, or sometimes white ones, low-riding Lee jeans with a leather belt that had a Wesson gun buckle on it, and a choker woven out of white leather, with a blue bead in the middle. Her hair was black and straight and parted in the middle. She had very pale skin and dark green eyes like Ray’s. She took excellent care of her teeth. She introduced the concept of flossing into our home. Her perfume was Love’s Baby Soft. She taught me how to spray it away from me and then walk through the misty cloud for a subtler scent. She understood the meaning of fascism. She had three small drops of white paint on one of her jean legs and tiny, minuscule, pink embroidered letters that spelled EAT SHIT AND DIE. She was in possession of real textbooks. Math, science…She was more than I could ever hope to be.

It may have been the light at 5:36 on a June evening or it may have been the smell of dust combined with sprinkler water or the sound of the neighbour kid screaming I’ll kill you but suddenly it was like I was dying, the way I missed her. Like I was swooning, like I was going to fall over and pass out. It was like being shot in the back. It was such a surprise, but not a very good one. And then it went away. The way it does. But it exhausted me, like a seizure.

I wrote Travis’s name in the margins of my notebook today. There are still smudges where I erased all the Travises. I left a print of my right elbow too. It could be useful for identifying my body at some point in time if my teeth can’t be found.

He wouldn’t let me call him Trav. Trav-iss, he said.

Do you know, he asked me, that Günter Grass refers to our people as coarse? What a cunt, I said. I had meant it to be a joke but Travis said no, he was a great writer and I didn’t have the energy to explain anything so I just said oh, yeah, I know.

Travis showed me the Vistula River on a map on his bedroom wall. And Danzig, which was also called Gdansk. I watched his finger snake around the Vistula and felt my stomach flip. I imagined the coarseness of our people. What did they do, I asked Travis. He shrugged. They burned down feed mills, he said. Feed mills that didn’t belong to them. Oh, I said, that’s pretty coarse, right?

Travis put his hand under my shirt and began to suck on my neck. I wish my last name was Grass, I said to him.

Change it then, he said.

I was joking, I said. Travis said oh and then I told him that I almost never meant what I said and he asked me why I was so hedgy and I said it wasn’t that, it was because I never knew what to say and yet felt the pressure to say things so I would try to but when I did they lacked all conviction and nothing made much sense.

He ran his finger down the section between my breasts and told me I was sweating a little. I know, I said, I’m always nervous except for when I’m stoned and even then I am.

Nomi Grass, he said. It’s kind of nice.

I laughed. I couldn’t change my name, ever, because then how would I be found by my mother or my sister, but I didn’t tell Travis that because he would have said oh God no, Nomi, not your little scenario again. Or something along those lines.

Why don’t you play your song for me, I asked him. What song, he asked. I have all sorts of songs.

Oh, you know, I said.

“Fire and Rain”? he asked.

Yeah, I said, it might relax me.

I’ll draw you while you play.

As in sketch? he asked. Can you draw?

I said no, but that wouldn’t matter because it would be an abstract representation of a boy playing his guitar for a girl. It’ll be my feelings in charcoal. I thought that sounded amazingly cool and Travis seemed to think so also. When he had finished singing I showed him the picture I had drawn.

Who are these people, he asked.

The Grass family, I said.

You drew a picture of your family to represent me playing my song for you? he asked. He looked disappointed.

I’m sorry, I said. It was when you were singing that part about endless…about days not…