Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness

No, I said, wrong.

C’mon, he said, why not? Montreal’s cool. I’ll play for money in the metro and you can pose naked for art classes and stuff and we’ll find a really cheap flat, eat bread and cheese.

Did you say flat? I asked him. He nodded. Just for that I’m not going with you, I said. I got up and walked down the hill except halfway down I tripped and fell and just for the hell of it rolled all the way down to the gravelly bottom and lay there in a clump while Travis sat on the top going Nomi? Don’t be that way!

When I got home my dad was in his goddamn lawn chair in front of the bullet hole doing some kind of watercolour painting. Is that all you’re gonna do? I asked him. Sit in the dark and paint?

Where’s Travis? he asked.

Who cares, I said.

Should we go for an ice cream? was all I heard before I slammed the door and walked into the kitchen for a couple of my sister’s expired Valium.

I noticed that the dining-room table was missing. I went back outside to ask my dad where it was.

I sold it, he said. We never used it anyway. I also sold the freezer in the garage. While I was emptying the contents I found that stray cat of Tash’s and thought you and I could bury it in the backyard.

Blackula? I asked.

Yeah, he said, wrapped up in some kind of cape. A red velvet cape. Kind of shocking, he said.

She was gonna bury it when the ground thawed, I told him.

Well, said my dad, she must have forgotten about it. We should do it tonight probably before it starts to decompose.

The evening was getting better and better. My dad dug a hole and I tried to make a stupid wooden cross but I was so strung out I could barely understand what I was doing. It was like my hands were moving around with wood in them like I was a drummer or something and a hammer lay on the ground next to me and next to the hammer was a little jam jar of nails but other than that I didn’t have a clue. Eventually I just gave up and lay in the grass watching my dad dig.

I’ll put a concrete slab on top of it so animals don’t get at him, he said.

Yeah, I said, but more like yeeeaaaaahhhhh.

Or maybe we should cremate him first? asked my dad and I said naaaaahhhhhh. I was trying to pull myself up with a branch that was about fifty feet in the air. Finally I gave up and lay there, spreadeagled like a wheel. It was really dark outside and I thought how white my dad’s shirt was. He’d tucked his tie in between the buttons.

Tired? he asked.

No, just lazy, I said. Travis had taught me the importance of denying fatigue. He was always telling me not to yawn. My dad suggested that my phosphates might need replenishing. Phosphates, I thought to myself. Phosphates.

Dad, I said, why aren’t trains allowed here again?

What? he said.

No trains here? I said.

Neither one of us knew what I was talking about. But then after a minute or two my dad said: Oh, the train. Yes. The elders thought it would bring with it worldly influences.

With it worldly influences? I asked.

My dad looked up from his digging and said: It would make it easier to come and go. Especially go.

Oooooohhhhhh, I said. Don’t let me die out here, dude, I said, and my dad went: No, no. He smiled at me. I could make his teeth out in the dark. I wanted to lie there forever.

I said: I want to lie here forever and my dad said no, no, that’s Blackula’s job now, heh, heh.

Everything felt really, really nice. The grass, the dark sky and stars and my dad smiling and wearing his white, white shirt and cracking awful jokes that weren’t even jokes, and the smell of the fresh dirt and some faraway stubble fire.

What are the blue fields again? I asked him.

Blue? he said. That would be alfalfa.

Yeaaaahhhhh, I said. Affafa, alfffa, alfafafa.

Alfalfa! said my dad.

Okaaaaaayyyy, I said.

And still the night wasn’t over. My dad left me lying in the grass next to Blackula and told me I needed to work on my rest, an idea I kept repeating over and over in my mind because I thought it was interesting, anachronistically.

I watched the sky turn purple and listened to the late-night sound of doors closing. Fluffy white things were floating around and I spent a long time trying to catch one in my hand. I felt the bumps on my head. I examined the various plates of my skull. I need a razor for my bangs, I thought. I crawled slowly through the grass towards the back door. Its brown sections reminded me of a Jersey Milk bar.

Travis liked straight bangs but Travis was going to Montreal. I liked the way my bangs looked razored. I put on Tash’s Thelonius Monk record quietly and stared at myself in the mirror. I could hear my dad snoring. I turned down the volume and waited for him to stop breathing.

I’d forgotten how to count. I remembered my grandpa telling me he was so old they didn’t have numbers when he was a kid.

I put on Tash’s baby-blue kangaroo jacket and tied the hood around my razored head. I walked out the front door, past the bullet hole and down the driveway, across the number twelve, through my neighbour’s yard, into their clothesline, down First Street, up Friesen, and onto Main. I sat down on the sparkly granite of the cenotaph next to the post office and read the names of people who had died four million years ago and then I heard my name being called.

Nomi, said Tash. I like what you’ve done to your hair. But who said you could wear my jacket?

This piece of shit? I asked. You left it behind. It’s mine now.

It looked better on me, she said. You gotta boyfriend now, eh?

Yeah. Are you still with Ian?

No, I left him in Flagstaff. Prick.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Is he sweet? she asked.

Who? I said.

Your boyfriend.

Sort of, I guess. Yeah.

That’s why you’re all alone out here? she asked.

You’re here, though, I told her. Right?

God. Not only was I incapable of having an articulate conversation, I couldn’t even imagine one.

When I got home I sat on the floor of the garage and tied the hood as tightly as I could around my face, leaving an opening only large enough to accommodate a Sweet Cap. It was a good night. Maybe someday I could be a photographer, I thought. And then, unpredictably, a corner of the garage roof collapsed.

School the next day. I fell asleep in math. And geography. The principal invited me into his office.

I decided not to say a word. I picked a spot on the wall to stare at the way they tell you to when you’re in labour. Clearly these are not the best years of your life, he said to me.

I felt almost drunk with gratitude when he said that. I felt as though he had entered my mind and, like a weapons inspector, had thoroughly assessed the situation with a cool, slick professionalism and was, even as we spoke, formulating some kind of counteraction. It was a type of understanding. I thought he was going to rescue me. But that’s where it ended.

At lunch Travis came to pick me up. Then left again all pissed off when the first thing I said to him was: Tell me you’re not wearing a poncho. He spun out of the gravel and a tiny stone hit my binder. I wondered if I might have been killed if it hadn’t been for the binder. Other kids were sitting in the grass eating their lunches and I had to walk past them to get back into the school. Time to find another boyfriend, said this primate, Gordo. I’ll take yours, I said. Fuck you, bitch, he screamed. You’ll get over it, I said. I fell asleep in American History. But it was the kind of non-committal sleep that allowed my memory to function, only in the role of a dream. I could hear people talking about Crazy Horse and Wounded Knee but all I could see and smell and touch was Trudie.