Read Online A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews - Free Book Online Page B

Detroit or St. Louis for providing some colour in my life. I’ve often wanted to send a message back to them.
    Nomi from Nowhere says hello.
    But the train doesn’t stop here and I don’t have any spray paint. At night, I like to go to Purple City. It’s when you stare at the giant caged light in front of the post office for exactly sixty seconds and then you stare at all the lights in people’s houses and every single one is purple. The moon and the stars, if there are any, are also purple. Nobody but me and Lids knows about it. We are the only two residents of Purple City.
    I like to ride my bike to the old fairground and smoke in the rodeo announcers’ booth and look at the things written on the walls. THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH. DON’T WAIT TIL PAYDAY. WHO ARE THE PEOPLE WHO TIE KNOTS IN BARBED WIRE FENCES? MY FAMILY DOES NOT HAVE A DISEASE RIDDLED HISTORY AND I AM ESSENTIALLY NORMAL. IS THERE A CRIMEA RIVER? I USED TO LIVE HERE.
    That last one is my favourite. I often wonder if my sister wrote it, and if so did she write it before she left, or did she come back. But it could have been someone else.
    I like to ride my bike on the highway and hang on to the back of RVs with American plates going seventy-five miles an hour. I once caught a ride all the way to Falcon Lake on the back of an Airstream trailer from California. A little girl stared at me through the back window and held up stuff to show me. A pinwheel, a stuffed bear, a drawing she’d made, a tiara. I’d nod and smile, my hair whipping all over my face in the wind, and she’d go off to get something else. Her parents must have wondered why she was so quiet back there. When they stopped at a gas station I rode away and the California girl waved goodbye to me and made her bear wave goodbye too.
     
    When Tash was twelve one of her molars came out and she put it in a glass on the bathroom counter so she wouldn’t lose it and a while later I came in from playing kick the can and filled the glass up with water and drank it and accidentally swallowed her tooth. It’s still in my stomach, my doctor, an irritable man, is sure of it. And it’ll probably stay there forever, like the image of the little California girl waving goodbye in her tiara, which makes me happy.
     
    I’ve decided to walk around today and say goodbye to people despite the fact that I’m not going anywhere.
    Bye Gloria, I said to Gloria.
    She said hey, we used to play soccer together when we were, what, five, right? She reminded me of the only two rules that the coach had given us: No hugging and no picking flowers. All I remembered was him lining us up against thesnow fence and kicking frozen balls at us while we scrambled, screaming, to get out of the way.
    I laughed for way too long and then she told me I could have my Coke for free because her manager was gone.
    Right arm, I said. (I wished I hadn’t.) Gloria had given herself an anarchy tattoo, near her wrist.
    Is that a promise ring, I asked her.
    Oh this, she said, holding out her hand.
    Yeah, I guess, technically, she said.
    To who, I asked.
    Marvin Fast, she said.
    Seriously? I asked.
    I guess, she said, and laughed hard.
    Marvin Fast used to chase me home from school and whip me with branches and then the next day he’d give me five bucks, I said.
    Really, she asked. That must have been after he was run over with a combine and had his neck broken.
    Well, congratulations, I said.
    Ew, she said, it’s not official.
    Where are you going, she asked.
    Well, I said, starters the city. It wasn’t true, just a thing I liked to hear myself say. She nodded and said the big schmake eh? Good luck.
    The city was the dark side, the whale’s stomach. It flickered off and on in the distance like pain. It was the worst thing that could happen to you. If you go for any length of time you don’t come back, and if you don’t come back you forfeit your place in heaven’s lineup.
    Hey, she said, is that a picture of you in the new building?