Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness

It felt good to be alone, jumping, while the rest of the town remained unconscious, and I tried with every bounce to go higher and higher without knocking my head against the hydro wire. I tried to sort out my problems by putting them into categories. Travis. School. Environment. I wasn’t pretty enough to be the complex, silent girl and yet I never knew what to say. I didn’t want to be the ugly, quiet girl. There was no such thing as the ugly, mysterious girl. I could be the tortured, self-destructive girl. But where does that lead? I remembered a conversation I’d had with Tash on the same trampoline a hundred years ago when it only cost a nickel.

Tash: What do you say to a boy you like when he passes you in the hall?

Me: Hello?

Tash: Nope.

Me: Hi, how are you?

Tash: Nooooo.

Me: Okay. Bonjour?

Tash: (says nothing, gives me a look)

Me: What then?

Tash: Nothing.

I jumped up and down, hands at my side like a punk until I heard the Trampoline House people open their door and take their can with my dime inside which meant they were closed. I had to go to school in two hours and write a fifteen-hundred-word story that included a triggering point, a climax and a resolution. On my way home I came up with my first sentence: The administration passed her around for beatings like a hookah pipe at a Turkish wedding.

Which got panned by Mr. Quiring. No…no, he said. He tapped me hard on my forehead. He didn’t even bother reading the rest of it. So far in English I was not allowed to write about Kahlil Gibran, Marianne Faithfull lyrics, marigold seeds, Holden Caulfield, Nietzsche, Django, Nabokov, preternatural gifts for self-analysis, urges, blowtorches, and now Turkish weddings.

So what should I write about? I asked him. He sat on my desk and crossed his legs and clung to one knee with both hands like it was hurting him. I stared at his belt buckle. Hmmm…he said. Let’s use our imaginations. What do you see when you close your eyes? Nothing, I said. He frowned. Are you not upset when you get your paper back and everything is underlined in red, he asked. No, I said, not really, in the Bible the words of Je—

Get out, he said. I got up and walked away and he threw my pencil case at me. It hit me in the small of my back, near my kidneys. I thanked him, picked it up, and left. I went into the doorless girls’ can and threw up, said hello to the stoners sitting on the sinks throwing wet toilet paper at the ceiling and walked out into the killer sunshine. It was 9:08 a.m.

Suddenly I wished I owned a dog. He and I would spend the day exploring some place off in the bush, maybe make a fire, roast a gopher he’d have caught. Fall gently asleep together in a pile of leaves. Maybe save a life. I decided to walk downtown and check out the latest old-man boots at the Style-Rite.

I saw my simple cousin Norm sitting at his lottery booth outside Economy Foods. When me and Tash were younger we weren’t allowed to sit on his lap. I waved from a distance and he said what he always says: Awwww, c’maawwwnn. I sat for a while with my other simple cousin, Jakie, at the post office and smoked a Sweet Cap. We watched sixteen Hutterites emerge from a parked Land Rover.

I shook hands with Jakie. That’s a big hand, I said, and he looked at it. Then I got him to tell me the day I was born. Thursday. I told him he was automatically saved. He nodded his head slowly for a really long time, like he was listening to music.

Jakie used to have a full-time position sitting on the bench with the high school boys’ basketball team. I never knew what that was all about. They just let him sit there during the games and at half-time he’d get up and shoot hoops with them. He’d always get up and do the three cheers thing with them too and then shake hands with the other team. He loved shaking hands. I never knew why he stopped doing the bench thing, unless it made some people nervous to have a forty-year-old guy in a ball cap sitting next to their kid. But the team didn’t mind at all. They sometimes let him go with them to away games.

I never made it to the Style-Rite. Jakie and I shared a bag of chips and a Coke and I got him to tell me the birthdays of everyone I knew. That’s cool, I told him, reaching out to take his hand. I’m a character, he said. I asked him how many hours a day he sat at the post office and he stared off at something and said dogs love better, which made me wonder if he was psychic because I’d just been thinking about dogs. We shook hands again. And then again. When I said goodbye he looked away.

I passed the church and read the sign outside: AND THEY SHALL GO FORTH, AND LOOK UPON THE CARCASSES OF THE MEN THAT HAVE TRANSGRESSED AGAINST ME: FOR THEIR WORM SHALL NOT DIE, NEITHER SHALL THEIR FIRE BE QUENCHED; AND THEY SHALL BE AN ABHORRING UNTO ALL FLESH.

How sweet. The Mouth must have been in a good mood when he dug up that ol’ chestnut. I walked down the shady side of Main Street thinking about triggering points.

There was a new sign in the Tomboy window. COME ON IN AND CHECK OUT OUR NEW MEAT DEPARTMENT! I stared at it for a while. And then I crossed the little parking lot and went in and walked to the back of the store and looked at the pieces of meat behind the glass. The butcher, who was also the man who opened the windows in church with a long stick that had a hook on the end of it, said hello and wondered if there was something he could do for me. I told him I was just checking out the meat.

Is this the new meat department? I asked.

That’s right, he said. We’ve expanded our selection. He spread his arms.

I nodded. It’s nice, I said. It’s very um…you have a lot of interesting meat products here.

Yes, he said, we’re very happy with it.

Yeah, I said. Well, me too. I smiled. He smiled.

Is there anything I can help you with, he asked me. He seemed much friendlier now than in church when he sombrely walked down the aisles unhooking windows with the broom handle.

Do you sell Klik? I asked him.

Klik? he said. You mean the luncheon meat? I nodded. Well, this here is fresh meat. This is the fresh meat area. Canned meats are in aisle four near the pet food.

Oh, right, I said. Yeah. I nodded. Sorry.

That’s okay, he said. He looked a little sad and I didn’t want to disappoint him so I asked for a pound of meat.

What kind of meat would you like? he asked.

Well, I said, um, just…meat that I could make for my dad. He likes meat. He enjoys meat.

Hmmm, said the butcher, how about a roast?

Yeah, that would be perfect, I said. I left the store with a giant roast gift-wrapped in brown paper and string. He’d written the price on it with a Magic Marker.

I stood at the new crosswalk for a long time with my arm out. I pushed the button to get the lights to flash. The crosswalk was a new concept in town. It was feared and loathed as an extravagant expense.

Nobody stopped, although a couple of guys in a truck slowed down long enough for me to hear them shout Nomi you doob. Doobs are what we call condoms around here. I don’t know why. Voices inside my head told me not to throw the roast at the truck.

I met Marina Dyck and Patty Pauls on Autumnwood Drive pulling the Funk kids in a wagon and they told me they were babysitting and I could come back with them to the Funk house for some Bundt cake and vodka from the hidden stash. We were there for a while watching TV and eating cake, but I was waiting for the vodka.

Then Marina said, oh the parents are coming home soon, you guys better go. So Patty and I took off in separate directions. About ten minutes later I was standing in the kitchen drinking water looking out the window and I saw Pat going back over to the Funks’. Oh, I thought, I get it. I understand. I am a doob.