A Complicated Kindness (10 page)

twelve

O
ne summer when I was eleven and Tash was fourteen, she and my mom went away for two weeks to work at a Christian camp on an island in the Lake of the Woods. You’ll be able to take care of Dad, won’t you, she asked me. How hard can it be, I said. Yeah, said Ray, throw a piece of meat in the cage every once in a while.

Tash was really excited because it was a boys’ camp. My mom was going to work in the infirmary and Tash was just going to fool around and look hot and drive guys crazy.

That’s when my dad and I developed the alphabet routine that has served us so well since. I started with Alphaghetti and then moved on to Bread and Cake. After that, my dad took us out to the Sunset Diner for a break and because I couldn’t think of a
D.

Tash came home from the camp and told me she had had the most amazing romance with a junior counsellor named Mason McClury. God, even that name, she said. He was nuts about her and kept leaving his group of nine-year-olds asleep in their cabin so they could go skinny-dipping together. But, okay, I said. Weren’t you like the only girl on the island that whole summer? She hissed at me and held up her hand like a claw. It reminded me of when we used to play White Fang in the backyard.

She told me that when she and my mom had left the island on the camp boat, Mason had stood on the dock blowing her kisses and then, oh my god it was so sweet, he dove into the water in his clothes and pretended to swim out to the boat because he couldn’t let her go. Did he make it to the boat, I asked. No, obviously not, she said. It had a motor on it. It was a gesture, Nomi. Like, of love. She told me that Mason had promised to write her and that they’d somehow hook up together in the future, when he got off the island at the end of summer.

When fall came around he still hadn’t written and Tash said that he’d probably lost her address, that was so like him, but that he had told her he played basketball for his school team and that he was from a small town and sometimes his team played our boys’ team and so she started going to all the games even though she hated sports and one time his town’s team was there and she asked all these people if they knew Mason McClury and they said no, who’s he? And she sat there for the whole game pretending to cheer for our team and smiling a lot and trying not to cry hot tears of shame. And when she walked home along the highway she thought about what it would feel like to throw herself in front of a livestock truck. She wondered who would miss her, really, and concluded no one. She didn’t tell me any of that, actually. I read it in her diary. I was impressed with
hot tears of shame
.

After that I tried to be really nice to her and when she went places I’d say why do you have to go or I sure hope you’re coming back, but she wondered what my problem was. And then she burned her diary in this ceremony that indicated the end of her little-girl period and threw the ashes into the Rat River, a properly embittered woman.

Recently, in the top drawer of her dresser, I found a little card and envelope with her name on it. Natasha, my love, “And the
Lord will guide you continually and satisfy your desire with good things and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters fail not.” I wish you joy, peace and contentment. My thoughts will be continually with you, and they will be thoughts of love and goodwill. I will picture you in safety and beauty. Mom.

Puzzling. Had Trudie known all along that Tash would one day leave? Or had Trudie been fooling around with the idea of leaving herself and then stashed this card into Tash’s dresser. If so, where was
my
card? But also, Tash left months before my mom did which would mean…I don’t know. Either my mom was saying goodbye to Tash, knowing she was on her way out of town, and Tash either didn’t find the card before she left or found it and forgot it OR my mom was saying goodbye to Tash long before she herself actually left. A dress rehearsal. Before she had the guts to really leave? Before she felt she had to leave for Ray’s sake? It’s raining questions around here. A person could drown in them.

Travis is putting blinds up today for his dad. We sat in his dad’s work truck on my driveway and he told me that I should go on the Pill. I thought yeah, probably. Good idea. Travis had quit school to work for his dad and learn things on his own. He had just turned eighteen. I liked to tell him things that reinforced his idea that school was ridiculous.

I told him that my English teacher didn’t know what a codpiece was. He called them grossly enlarged sex organs. Codpieces were the height of fashion in Shakespeare’s time, said Travis. He says
height of fashion
in a way that bugs me. I told him that my biology teacher, while teaching us about the
reproductive system, pointed at the penis on the overhead and mumbled er, no function. Simians, said Travis. I made a mental note to look up
codpiece
and
simian
in the dictionary when I got home. Then off he went to hang blinds. I had to go to a farmer’s field with my history class and pick rocks. It was supposed to help us appreciate how excellent our current lives were.

In the field a few of us spelled out
SOS
with the rocks although nothing but a crop-duster flew over us and we almost died choking on the poison. It was so hot our eyes dried out to the horrific extent that we couldn’t blink and Mr. Quiring had to open up the first aid kit for drops.

I found a note blowing around the field that had been torn in half, right down the middle. It said: I’m sittin in I want to get drunk but I have no flo’? kid here at S.H. that name’s Andrew. I ugly but the point are bitching that guys. So one day you with some sexy off, ha ha. Well shit face, me and Sherise ways I guess I’m just my sister for a while if you forgot my pants hope you won’t ght you should ditch you could do so much She always a bitch, you don’t do what erv, walking around She’s gonna trap your thing!! I’m just biz, I’m your gurl here or not. I’ll always playboy. Your gurl!

A couple of us looked around for the other half but the wind must have blown it to another town. I knew exactly what your gurl was talking about because I also only ever said half of what I meant and only half of that made any sense, which is, I admit, a generous appraisal of my communication skills.

I had a thought, on the way home from the rock field, that the things we don’t know about a person are the things that make them human, and it made me feel sad to think that, but sad in that reassuring way that some sadness has, a sadness that says welcome home in twelve different languages.

When we got back to school our principal told us he had cancelled the Queen City Kids from playing in our cafeteria on the last day of school because a number of large parents had complained about the negative ramifications. Instead, we were given tablets that turned our mouths pink to indicate cavities. Hard to keep up with the changes around here.

After school I went home and had a nap. When I woke up I discovered bite marks on my arm. I bit my arm, experimentally, and the patterns matched. I wondered if this was the beginning of insanity. My
Christina’s World
poster fell on my head again because Ray disapproved of tacks in the wall. I got pink shit from my mouth all over my Noah’s Ark pillowcase. I thought to myself: The world can be divided into two types of people. That’s where I stopped. Travis had suggested I broaden my horizons and attempt to finish my thoughts. He said I should make a list of ways to improve. Oh that’ll help, I thought.

1. Topics chosen for conversations: To be filled in later.

2. Plan of action: Read books by philosophers (
The Outsider
by Albert Camus).

3. Form opinions about news stories, possibly read world news section.

4. Become really funny.

5. Pin down current definition of existentialism.

6. Career options: School superintendent, city planner, stone breaker, freelance detective, underwater explorer.

7. Personality development: Read Jung, Adler, Freud. Listen to The Jam.

I went into the living room and stared at the piles of newspapers. I read: Summer, 1982, is the season of the nautical stripe.

I went back into my bedroom and knelt at my bed the way I did when I was a kid. I folded my hands and pressed the top knuckle joints of my thumbs hard into my forehead. Dear God. I don’t know what I want or who I am. Apparently you do. Um…that’s great. Never mind. You have a terrible reputation here. You should know that. Oh, but I guess you do know that. Save me now. Or when it’s convenient. We could run away together. This is stupid. What am I doing? I guess this is a prayer. I feel like an idiot, but I guess you knew that already, too. My sister said that god is music. Goodbye. Amen. I lay in my bed and waited for that thick, sweet feeling to wash over me, for that unreal semi-conscious state where the story begins and takes on a life of its own and all you have to do is close your eyes and give in and let go and give in and let go and go and go and go.

thirteen

T
rudie lost her job in the crying room when the wife of Uncle Hands, my Aunt Gonad, snuck up on us one morning and caught us grooving to The Knack instead of to her husband.

For a while Uncle Hands made my mom take a bunch of girls, including me and Tash, to the foul-smelling Rest Haven, to sing hymns for The Oldest Mennonites in the World. They sat hunched over in wheelchairs with trays and gas tanks and as we filed past some of them would moan and reach out and try to grab us with spotted papery hands from another century. One man in particular would smack his wet lips together about forty times and wave his one good hand around until the nurse made us go over there and sing “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” and he’d sing along but not with words or melody. The grip some of them had was amazing and terrifying. I wasn’t sure if they were trying to drag me along home to heaven with them or if they were desperate for me to pull them back to safety, to a life of running and playing and independent breathing. A nicely dressed woman who seemed functional and completely out of place there sometimes came out of her room to listen to us sing and one time when we were just about to leave I went up to her and said hello, my name is Nomi, and she told me to go to hell.

Tash and I begged Trudie not to take us there ever again and she knew what we were talking about. I guess that’ll be my life eventually. First about fifty years of killing chickens and then the Rest Haven. What a relief that will be. I’ll probably also be the type of old woman to tell friendly little girls to go to hell.

After the Rest Haven, Trudie got that job as the church librarian. She liked people a lot, anthropologically speaking, so it wasn’t too bad at first. She enjoyed helping them find just the book they were looking for. Would you like three weeks for that? she’d ask them. Two weeks was the standard time, but my mom wanted them to be able to finish the books without getting anxious about the due date.

Sometimes she’d let me and Tash skip out of church upstairs and hang out with her, putting books on shelves, sticking numbers on their spines, reading. We read every single Sugar Creek Gang book, stories about a group of mischievous Christian children. Bad things happen. They get into trouble. But always, always, they learn something about sin and forgiveness at the end. We read books by Billy Graham, and books about staying quiet and clean when your husband comes home from work, and books about punishing your children.

It was okay. I liked the way the library smelled and the way the rads would hiss and clank and scare the shit out of us. For some reason, when we were in the library, Tash and I often pretended that we were German spies and we called ourselves Platzy and Strassy. We’d hide bits of information in books and then give each other clues about how to find them. There are probably still little notes stuck in Billy Graham books that say things like: I was brutally tortured for several hours this afternoon but I am fine. Let’s meet for drinks at the Über-Swank at eight. Platzy.

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…

What? he said. How is that…I kissed him slowly on the mouth and closed my eyes and held his head so he couldn’t move it very well and I did it for a long time even when he tried to move me back a bit with his hands on my shoulders and remove my shirt and put on a record with one hand and switch off the light and move all the shit off his bed and get his guitar out of the way I kept kissing him and kissing him until I had stopped crying long enough for him not to notice.

He went upstairs and got me a glass of water and a pepperoni stick and told me I was bony and hot.

You’re beautiful, I told him, and…kind of mean. No, I didn’t say that last part. And he said he liked it when I took the initiative once in a while and I said well, baby, you really
schteck me ohn,
which in our town means, baby you light my fire (if Jesus really was watching over me he would have prevented me from saying such retarded things to people I was hoping to impress), and then I flicked the lights off and on while he did a Donna Summer routine for me that made me laugh hysterically and also worry about whether or not I was a manic depressive.

I have a feeling, a sneaking suspicion, that Mr. Quiring thinks I’m nuts.

I mean, just because he knows my family history and all that. The problems it caused. The messy endings. The whole town knows, right? How could they not? He’s probably thinking hey, this girl does have a legitimate claim. And I wouldn’t blame him or anything. How can you argue with the crazy genes? But don’t worry, I’m hanging in there, remembering to keep my pants on, etc., etc. My school assignments have helped me to focus and organize some of my thoughts. And soon I’ll be able to spend my pre–Rest Haven days murdering chickens which should help me to release some of my pent-up psychosis.

But still, it bugs me slightly to think that Mr. Quiring thinks I’m insane. Not that I can be bothered trying to convince him otherwise. Today in school he sat on my desk and told me it was against the law to mow your lawn on Sunday morning in East Village. Tell your dad, he said. You know he was out there at 7 a.m. the other Sunday mowing his lawn?