A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews Page A

there, I asked. She opened it up and showed me the contents: a lipstick and a gun, a plastic one. You’re all set, I said. Then she asked me if I knew Jesus drank wine. I said no and she said see, nobody knows the bad side of Jesus. I walked across the yard with her hanging on my leg. The only way I could get her to let go was by agreeing to make my famous face. And then pretend my face wouldn’t go back to normal and get all panicky about it. It was a routine, I guess. An uninspired one but it cracked her up.
    She had a carton of chocolate milk with her and she told me to watch as she drank the whole thing in one gulp. When she was finished she said listen to this and started jumping up and down and sure enough I could hear the chocolate milk sloshing around inside her stomach.
    My life is an embarrassment of riches. On the way to Abe’s Hill I passed The Mouth and his wife going for a bike ride. Hello Nomi, said The Mouth. Vo est deet, he said in the non-romance language of our people. He had so many large grey teeth. Some were jagged, some pointy, like a mountain range. His wife mimed some kind of weak acknowledgment. I exhaled a little louder than usual. It was about all I could muster in terms of a greeting. That’s your mother tongue, he said, referring to the bit of unwritten language he’d just laid on me. He wanted people to speak it all the time. English pained him.
    They had a daughter who was living in the Black Forest. She also enjoyed physical exercise. She used to be my Sunday-school teacher and she sometimes cried over us because she loved us and couldn’t bear to think of us in charred pieces. Our classroom window led onto the fire exit at the back of the church and we’d often escape when she left the room for felt-board supplies. She could really get a buzz on from arts and crafts, particularly the ancient art of gluing macaroni onto jars and spray-painting them gold. Isn’t it exciting, she told us, how many ways there are to serve Jesus? She once asked me and the other girls in our class if we were gymnasts, but really fat ones, would we think we could just go out and win an Olympic medal one day? No? Well, that’s what Christianity is all about, she said.
     
    The Mouth’s wife never spoke. She was in charge of Brides of Christ so maybe she spoke then but what do you say to the Brides of Christ? I once liked one of their sons for a while and he and I would sit in the empty school buses when they were parked in a field for the summer and talk and sometimes hold hands or even kiss. We didn’t let the fact that we were cousins stop us from fooling around. We played Bus Driver and Lost Girl. He was the bus driver and I was the lost girl. I would have to let him kiss me if I wanted him to take me home.
    After spring break he started liking another girl who stole STP motor-oil stickers for him to put on his banana seat, and he doubled her all over town until I gradually realized we were through.
     
    The Mouth spoke. How’s your dad, Nomi, he asked. Why don’t you ask him, I said, and rode away.

    I tried to ride my bike uphill but it didn’t work very well. I’d get about twenty feet up the hill and then roll backwards. Then I’d try again. It would have been a fun thing to do with someone else. It was very hard work. It made me think I should stop smoking. Instead, I left my bike at the bottom and trudged up the hill on foot.
     
    It’s sad but I don’t know what I’d do without my cigarettes. I’ve tried to quit. I’ve tried to switch to cigarettes that have less tar, but I don’t think I’ll ever quite forget the feeling I get from a Sweet Cap. They’re my brand. It’s hard to explain but it feels good to own something, like a brand. When I go to the store to buy cigarettes I’ll think to myself oh there, I see my brand on the shelf, and it’s comforting. This your brand? the cashier will ask, and I’ll say yeah, those are mine. It’s like some people with their TV shows, the