Miriam Toews - A Complicated Kindness

I didn’t want to go home. I couldn’t get my hands to turn the steering wheel towards home. So I just kept driving around and around the same roads and my dad kept staring out the window like he’d never seen any of it before.

Me and Travis sat on top of the monkey bars at Ash Park in the moonlight swinging our legs and slamming back warm Baby Duck. We tried to hang upside down and drink but it didn’t work very well and I dropped the bottle from laughing too hard and it broke and Travis used a piece of it to carve half an N for Nomi into his arm before it started hurting too much and he asked if he could stop.

After that we walked slowly around talking about stuff until we found a shopping cart and he lifted me up and put me inside and pushed me all the way to the RK Ranch. We went into the barn and gave each other haircuts with this horse razor we found on a shelf in the tack room and then made out soporifically in some hay in an empty stall until we heard one of the ranch guys drive up (he was whistling “We Are the Champions”) and we ran out the back door laughing our heads off because it was getting light outside and we could see how awful our hair looked.

We ran all the way to Main Street and climbed up to the top of the fire escape of the feed mill which was the highest place in town and kissed like crazy hoping some early morning farmer out in his field would see us silhouetted against the rising sun and feel excited knowing happiness was a possibility even in a town with no bar and no train.

Mist was coming off the Rat River and the fields around the town were blue and yellow and the little trees in all the yards were pink and purple and the heat was about ready to start shimmering and everything was so quiet and beautiful like a secret Shangri-La. It was the outdoor version of waking up to your mom making breakfast and your dad sitting confidently at the table with no plan to sell it and your sister saying something like Nomi, I’ve never really noticed before but you have nice teeth.

Used Tash’s Lady Schick to finally reveal my entire head to the whole fuckin’ world and found my old fish-hook scar again. I put in all my earrings, threw on a ton of mascara and eyeliner, and my cut-offs and a bikini top and my giant police boots and rode my bike to school.

Mr. Quiring told me he was still waiting for my written assignments. I…yeah…I will, I said.

You seem to have forgotten the school’s makeup and jewellery policy, he told me.

No…I said. I just…I didn’t forget.

So you’re flouting the policy intentionally? he asked.

No…I said…what? I mean…what?

Should you be seeing the guidance counsellor, Nomi? he asked.

Should you? I said. I’d reverted to age nine. I was sitting on the floor in front of my locker. I turned my cheek to feel the cool green metal.

Mr. Quiring grabbed my chin and said look at me, are you having a nervous breakdown? I told him not to touch me and he told me to get out.

I have to graduate, I told him. He said that wasn’t his problem which struck me as an honest thing for him to say.

One day, when I was nine years old, I got up early and went for a walk around town. I wore a thin white cotton T-shirt, navy-blue polyester pants meant to resemble real denim, and North Star runners with no socks. I walked around and around and I felt so good. I felt happier than I had ever felt in my entire life, perfectly content and absolutely carefree.

When I got to school I told my teacher I was on cloud nine. I told her I was so happy I thought I could fly. I told her I felt so great I wanted to dance like Fred Astaire.

She said life was not a dream. And dancing was a sin. Now get off it and sit back down. It was the first time in my life that I had been aware of my own existence. It was the first time in my life I had realized that I was alive. And if I was alive, then I could die, and I mean forever. Forever dead. Not heaven, not eternal life on some other plane…just darkness, curtain, scene. Permanently. And that was the key to my new religion, I figured. That’s why life was so fucking great.

I want that day back. I want to be nine again and be told, Nomi: someday you’ll be gone, you’ll be dust, and then even less than dust. Nothing. There’s no other place to be. This world is good enough for you because it has to be. Go ahead and love it. (Menno was wrong.)

Rolled a giant spool of purple hydro cable up and down William Avenue for old times’ sake. I went to my dad’s school and tapped on his classroom window. He didn’t hear me at first but I could hear his voice through the screen. He was talking about his class doing some kind of performance, maybe choral or poetry or something like that. He was sitting on his desk which was crowded with containers of lilacs the kids had picked for him.

There’s something I need to tell you, I heard him say to the class. And I’ll say this even though it might hurt, he continued.

I thought he was going to tell his kids they were all hopeless monotones, that they couldn’t carry a tune in a paper bag or some such thing. I saw him grimace and fold his arms across his chest, hating himself for being the bearer of bad news.

It’s a good idea to smile periodically at the audience, he said. His grimace didn’t fade, not even slightly, and he appeared to be looking at the floor, embarrassed.

I should have empathized with his suffering but I started to laugh and that’s when he heard me and looked up. He came outside and stood in the shade with me beside a stucco wall. His sleeves were rolled up and his tie was stuck between his buttons.

Whatcha doing? I asked him.

What I do, he said.

Same old thing, eh? He said yup.

And you? he said. I shrugged.

I see the idea of attending school today left you…cold?

Yeah, I agreed. It did kind of. He nodded and stared off at the parking lot. He told me he’d better go back inside or it’d be a zoo in there. I could see some of his kids staring at us through the window. I waved and they got shy and ducked.

They’re so cute, I told my dad. They’re good kids, he said. Then we said goodbye and he went back in.

I went home and tried to read The Screwtape Letters. I tried to make another list of ways to self-improve. I got as far as: Pretend you’ve already died and things will matter less. I lay in my bed and tried to relax to a degree that would allow me to levitate. I fell asleep.

When I woke up I went into the living room and discovered the body of an old woman lying on the floor next to the stereo and Ray standing at the kitchen sink staring out the window with a glass of water in his hand. Oh, he said, shhh. He opened the back door and gently pulled me outside into the yard. I found her wandering around the halls at school, he said. She’s completely disoriented. He told me that she was an adjudicator from the city and that she was here to give marks to all the choral and poetry groups. I think it’s the heat, he said.

I asked him why he brought her home and he said that she needed to rest. A couch would have been good for that, I said. He nodded. He’d forgotten about the couch not being here any more.

I’ll make her some tea, he said. She can have it when she wakes up.

I asked him if his class had performed yet.

Tomorrow, he said.

I went back into the house quietly to have a peek at the woman but she wasn’t in the living room. I heard the toilet flush and the bathroom door open and then the woman came walking down the hall and into the living room.

Hello, I said.

She smiled and shook her head and said oh boy, that was…She wore a turquoise woollen skirt and jacket ensemble. I think she was about seventy years old. Ray came in and asked her how she was doing and she said much better and he introduced her to me, her name was Edwina McGillivray, and then the three of us stood there smiling at each other until I offered to make the tea and Ray suggested they go outside and sit on the front step and get some air, it was cooler now, and after that he could drive her back to the school.