Miriam Toews - Summer of My Amazing Luck

Sing Dylan said this was a load of crap: it doesn’t matter how often shit falls on your head, it still smells bad. Sing Dylan had been hit by the flood three times. After the second time he didn’t even bother getting his carpet cleaned and putting it back in. He made sure all of his stuff was in plastic pails or high up on boards or in closets. Every time he went out he unplugged everything. Sarah helped him keep back the rain water as best she could. He couldn’t apply to the disaster relief agency for money to cover his losses or to cover cleaning costs and repairs because he was an illegal immigrant and he worried they’d find him out. The public housing agency in charge of Half-a-Life knew he was here illegally and so they knew he wouldn’t complain to anyone if they didn’t immediately clean up his apartment and replace the damaged stuff. About all Sing Dylan could do was curse the skies like everyone else. In the meantime Sarah let him store some stuff, pictures of his family in India, letters, and rare books he had brought over to Canada, in Emmanuel’s empty bedroom. Sing Dylan would say, “Only until the boy returns home. Thank you. Thank you kindly.” Sing Dylan always said that. Thank you. Thank you kindly. Never just Thank you or Thanks or just Thank you kindly but always Thank you. Thank you kindly.

Sing Dylan came from The Punjab, Lish said. I had never heard of The Punjab. It was the place in India where a lot of Sikhs come from, Lish said. She told me the Sikhs want their own country. They’re not thrilled with the Indian government and they want to change the name of The Punjab to Khalistan. So naturally there was some fighting going on and Lish figured maybe Sing Dylan was involved in it. Lish thought that maybe Sing Dylan came to Canada because his life was in danger. But we didn’t want to ask. I thought Khalistan sounded a lot more sophisticated than The Punjab. So anyway, it made sense that Sing Dylan always said to Sarah, “Only until the boy returns home.” Sing Dylan was the kind of guy who could really believe that one day Emmanuel would come home. He had to. Just like he believed that one day he could go back to his home, his Khalistan. Emmanuel and Sing Dylan were two homeless guys.

Lish told me about Sing Dylan first coming to Half-a-Life. She told me that every morning when he first arrived he put a pot of coffee on his stove. He would have one cup and keep the rest for company. But company never came. Everyone in Halfa-Life was freaked by having a wild Sikh freedom fighter as their caretaker. At 11:30 every morning Sing Dylan turned off the element under the coffee and poured the coffee down the drain in his kitchen sink. Lish found out about it because one morning she went down to Sing Dylan’s place for a mop and he invited her in. He said, “I’m sorry, my coffee is gone.” He explained to Lish his morning ritual. Lish just said, “Oh yeah? Well, thanks anyway,” and took the mop and left. Then she started to ask people in the block if they had ever gone down to Sing Dylan’s for a cup of coffee and everybody said no, no, no, no way, are you kidding, why, what, no, no. No. On and on until she had asked everyone in the block.

Eventually Sarah went down. Mute Sarah. They had a cup of coffee together. Both sitting there, quietly, Sing Dylan wanting his Khalistan and Sarah wanting her Emmanuel. Lish said not a lot of people visited Sarah either, not because she was that weird really, but because she didn’t talk. And so conversations, well, you know. Lish said that if Sing Dylan took off his turban and if Sarah talked, life would be different for them.

Lately Sarah had been talking a bit more. Her droopy eyes were opening up a bit and she was even playing music in her apartment. Lish told me that Family Services was considering extending Sarah’s visiting rights with Emmanuel. The boy had told his social worker that he didn’t care who his father or his grandfather was and whether or not they were the same person. He missed his mom. At the same time, Sarah told her social worker that she promised to talk normally and to send Emmanuel to school. She told her social worker that she was over the trauma that had paralyzed her and she really wanted to get on with her life together with Emmanuel. These visits with the social worker exhausted her. We coached her on what to say, not that we really knew. We told her to stay calm and focussed and always agreeable no matter what the social worker said. We told her to tell the social worker that she did not consider welfare a career option and that she would like to get into a helping profession because from her experience they were all doing such a good job. She understood what had happened, why it had happened and her role in it, and that the future was not bright or easy but that she would do her best to create a positive home environment for Emmanuel. We told her to tell her social worker, when she was leaving, that she appreciated everything she was doing for Emmanuel and for herself, to smile graciously and to say “Bye bye for now,” instead of “Kay” when the social worker said, “We’ll see you in two months’ time.”

The last time Sarah had a meeting with her social worker, she walked home in the rain. A few of us watched out the window as she got off the bus in front of Half-a-Life. She had a Safeway bag with a few groceries in it. She walked through a puddle in the parking lot instead of around it. Lish said that was a good sign; I said it was a bad sign.

It turned out to be a good sign, though, because that evening Sarah and Sing Dylan were back at the wall trying to wash the FUCK THE RICH THAN EAT THEM graffiti, and Sarah sprayed Sing Dylan with the hose. They looked like a beer commercial, spraying each other: a non-drinking sikh and a welfare mom whose child had been apprehended. It could be called Real Beer. Still — they were having fun. Scrubbing the paint off the wall was very difficult and time-consuming, but Sing Dylan’s plan was to wash off the first letter of each word at least so the message would be more obscure, less obscene. So far he had UCK HE ICH HAN EAT THEM. Lish and I agreed this was much classier than before. Lish said she was going to write “Confucius” under it, but she didn’t want to piss off Sing Dylan.

That evening I sneaked Dill’s dirty disposable diapers past Terrapin’s place. I knew she was disappointed that I was still using them instead of cloth ones or tree moss or whatever it was her kids peed on. She told me wildlife had been found with bits of disposable diapers lodged in their throats. I said, “Oh my goodness, they must have misread the instructions on the package. Ha ha.” Anyway, I was sneaking the diapers down, in the dark, to the BFI container. There was Sing Dylan at the wall, alone and still scrubbing.

“Hi, Sing Dylan.”

“Hello, Lucy.”

“Still scrubbing, eh?”

“Here today. Here tomorrow,” he said. He was smiling.

Sing Dylan hardly spoke any English, but I thought that was a pretty good joke. “Well. Good! Luck! … with the wall, I mean.”

“Thank you. Thank you kindly.”

You would not believe the amount of noodles we consumed in Half-a-Life. Noodles were the national dish of Half-a-Life. We all had different ways of preparing them, but still the humble noodle was the starting point of most of our meals, Lish prepared rotini noodles, sometimes herbal ones, with a lot of garlic which she shaved with a razor, and extra virgin olive oil. Sometimes she added mushrooms or a green or red pepper for a dash of colour and zippy taste. I poured tomato sauce on mine and grated Parmesan cheese. Teresa heaped butter and ketchup onto hers. But our kids ate the noodles plain, sometimes with a bit of butter or cheese, but never any sauce — and god forbid garlic or peppers. Simplicity was the key with noodles. Don’t overboil them or they’re mushy and lifeless. Don’t add too many spices or too many vegetables or the noodles get upstaged and their taste is lost and they just end up as filling, fattening dead weight in the pit of your stomach. Savour the taste and the texture of the noodles. Especially the homemade Italian ones that we got for cheap from Mario’s because Tanya gave him a cut rate on her beer and because Teresa had slept with one of his younger brothers and found out that his grocery was really just a front for the local Mafia. A laundromat really. Roberto had hit Teresa for some reason and she said, “if you ever do that again I will blow this illegal laundering joint right out of the water and you’ll be picking olives back in Sicily so fast you won’t know what hit you!” Roberto told Mario and Mario told him to tell Teresa that she and all the whores in Half-a-Life could have special rates on pasta as long as they kept their mouths shut.