All My Puny Sorrows

by Miriam Toews

  We drove to the airport and Julie stayed in the car right out front and snoozed with her arms full of meat while I went in to get my cousin and my uncle.

  In the airport we hugged each other all at once, a team huddle but with nothing but a Hail Mary left in our playbook. We’d been through all of this before. We loved each other. We fought for each other. When worlds collapsed we were buried in the rubble together and when we were dug out of the rubble and rescued we all celebrated together. There wasn’t much to say about Elf and Tina. We were going directly to the hospital. We all talked at the same time in the car. Sheila about mountains and inoculations because she was both a mountain climber and a public health nurse and my uncle Frank about the toonie-sized hole in his leg and hyperbaric chambers because he was a diabetic and Julie about how she won her meat and me about car rallies in Morocco. I had a plan to join one that was for women only—we would drive from Dakar to somewhere else and sleep in the desert with camels and Bedouin guides. It might take us two months. Julie would be my partner. I hadn’t told her yet. What? she said. We sleep with Bedouin guides? She’d navigate, I said, and I’d drive. We’d take a mechanics course from Jason before we went and we’d be sponsored by Canada Post. This was my plan. My uncle said that considering how I was driving right now I probably had an excellent chance of winning the race and that it wouldn’t take me two months.

  I dropped them off at the hospital, told them that my mom was in the psych wing with Elf and Tina was in cardio waiting for them. I’d call my mom on her cellphone in a couple of hours and then come and pick everyone up again and we’d go somewhere and have dinner.

  Righto, boss, said my uncle Frank hobbling off to see his wife, while Sheila, like her mother, grabbed me hard and told me we’d get through all of it, we’d fight our way through. I have fifty-six first cousins alone on this side, most of them male, not to mention all of their various spouses and kids, but Sheila is the toughest of them all. She could easily saw off your arm in the wilderness if it was caught in a trap and that was your only way to escape. She fell off a mountain once and lay there with a crushed left leg for an entire day and night until the rescue helicopter figured out how to drop his ladder into the tiny crevice where she had fallen. She told the pilot that she fought off unconsciousness by alphabetizing the first names of every one of her cousins and then going through each one in her mind and describing them to an imaginary audience. She told me she had put me in the S category, for Swivelhead. Sheila’s family and my family are part of the Poor Cousin contingent. We have Rich Cousins who are extremely rich because they are the sons of the sons (our uncles, all dead) who inherited the lucrative family business from our grandfather, the father of Tina and my mother. In the Menno cosmology that’s how it goes down. The sons inherit the wealth and pass it on to their sons and to their sons and to their sons and the daughters get sweet fuck all. We Poor Cousins don’t care at all though, except for when we’re on welfare, broke, starving, unable to buy cool high-tops for our children or pay for their university tuition or purchase massive fourth homes on private islands with helicopter landing pads. But whatever, we descendants of the Girl Line may not have wealth and proper windows in our drafty homes but at least we have rage and we will build empires with that, gentlemen.

  Julie came with me to the track at Kelvin High but we couldn’t see Benito Zetina Morelos there, just students sitting on the track smoking pot and acting cool. When do you have to pick up your kids? I asked Julie. I don’t, she said. Mike has them today which is why I allowed myself the smallest of pleasures at the Legion this afternoon.

  Let’s go to Garbage Hill, I told her.

  Garbage Hill used to be a garbage dump until they planted grass on it and now it’s a place where you can hang out in the summer and toboggan in the winter even though there are giant signs saying No Tobogganing! It had been given some pretty name but nobody remembered it and the sign had been graffitied over. Everyone called it Garbage Hill, even the mayor who wasn’t much of a mayor but more of an auctioneer selling off bits and pieces of the city to the highest bidder. It’s not very high, not much of a hill really, but it’s the highest point in Winnipeg and I thought I needed to get as close to God as I could though for what I wasn’t sure, either to pray to him for mercy or to crush his skull. Or to thank him. This last piece was advice given to me by my aunt Tina when my father died. She told me that even if I didn’t wholeheartedly believe in the existence of God it felt good to close your eyes and make a mental list of all the things you were grateful for.

  Julie and I sat cross-legged on the top of the hill in the prickly brown grass and reminisced about a photo shoot she’d done there four hundred years ago when we were triumphant high-schoolers.

  Are you tired? she asked.

  I’m making a list in my head, I told her.

  Of what?

  Things I’m thankful for.

  Am I on it?

  Are you on it! I said.

  She closed her eyes and made her own list.

  Can it be something as small as discovering that your bread isn’t mouldy after all so there’ll be toast for the kids for breakfast? she asked.

  Yes, I said. My eyes were still closed. Right now I’m thanking God for twist-offs.

  Oh, good one, she said. And prehensile thumbs.

  Are you still drunk? I asked her.

  No, she said.

  So, I googled it and it’ll cost me—

  What did you google?

  The Swiss clinic in Zurich.

  Oh! Okay.

  I googled it and it’ll cost five thousand two hundred and sixty-three dollars and sixteen cents for the treatment and another nine thousand two hundred and ten dollars and fifty-three cents for related costs.

  What are related costs? she said.

  Medical costs and official fees and a funeral.

  But you wouldn’t have the funeral there, would you?

  No, that’s true, I’d bring her body back.

  But cremated? she asked.

  Yeah, definitely. So that costs too, I imagine.

  How much does it cost? she said.

  I have no idea.

  I still don’t think you should do it, she said. I think it’s only for people who are dying anyway.

  No, I said, it’s for mentally ill people too—it’s called “weariness of life” and they have the same rights as anybody else who wants to die according to Swiss law. You can argue that she is dying. She’s weary of life, that’s for sure.

  We looked at the city, the sky, ourselves. Julie smiled and said my name. I said hers. I don’t know, she said.

  I don’t want her to die, I said, but she’s begging me. She’s literally begging me. What do I do?

  Julie shook her head and said she didn’t know. Then she suggested that I wait a bit, see if the treatment or pills would work for her this time, just wait it out. I could do that, I agreed, but was afraid they’d let her go and that would be it, she’d be gone.

  But this whole Zurich thing seems so improbable, said Julie.

  I know, I said, but it’s not, it’s possible, and I could do it for her. I should do it for her.

  Well, not necessarily, said Julie. Just wait a bit, see what happens.

  Twenty-one percent of the patients at the Swiss clinic are patients who aren’t physically terminally ill but who are weary of life.

  Do you think you could live with yourself if you did it? she asked.

  Or if I didn’t? I said.

  Either way, she said.

  I had to get back to the hospital to pick up the crew and forage for food somewhere because we had to eat after all, again, eating—it seemed so embarrassing and ridiculous at this point— and Julie was going to see her Jungian therapist. Don’t tell him about this conversation, I said. Don’t worry, said Julie, everything is confidential. No but seriously, I said, they can report things to the cops if they think there’s the possibility of a crime or whatever. She hugged me. She promised not to tell a
nyone about our conversation, including her therapist. You’re trembling, she said. I can feel your heart banging away at your rib cage. We heard voices in the distance. A woman saying okay, you know what, seriously? Fuck you. And a guy saying oh, okay, seriously, you know what? Fuck you. Then the woman: Do you know how much money I spent? And the guy: Do you know how much money I spent?

  Wow, said Julie. You’d really want that guy on your debating team. Amazing rebuttals, dude.

  Just then a Frisbee came sailing past our heads, missing Julie by a hair.

  Oh my god, she said, do you realize that the word dude could have been the last word I spoke on earth? Would you promise to tell people it was something different, for my sake?

  I would, I said. You can count on me. Like what word would you like?

  Oh, I don’t know, she said. Like presto or something.

  You mean like as in now you see me, now you don’t?

  Yeah, she said.

  Okay, I said. I’ll tell your kids and parents and everyone that your last word was presto.

  Thank you.

  We had dinner in a tiny café on Provencher Boulevard close to the hospital and then we all went back to my mom’s place and played our Mennonite-sanctioned Dutch Blitz card game, screaming the word blitz when we won. My mom and my uncle Frank swore in Plautdietsch and everyone hollered and shrieked and cards flew, and my mom had to stop to catch her breath and use her nitro spray and my uncle had to shoot up with insulin. Afterwards I found enough clean linen and blankets to make up beds for Sheila and my uncle—I’d sleep on an air mattress—and I bid them all good night, we’d rally in the morning at five. Before she went to sleep Sheila and I sat on her bed and talked about our sisters, Leni and Elf, and their unfathomable sadness, and about our mothers, Lottie and Tina, and their perpetual optimism. What’s holding your leg together now? I asked her. Nuts and bolts and scrap metal and baling wire, she said. She showed me the scars that ran up and down the entire length of her crushed leg. She brought out a box of chocolates and we each had two. I’m sure your mom will be okay, I told her. She’s unbelievably tenacious. That’s true, said Sheila. She’s the Iggy Pop of old Mennonite ladies. We ate two more chocolates each. And then I zipped back to the hospital to see Elf.

  I took my dad’s old bike, which my mom kept in her storage cage in the basement, and sped along the path that ran next to the exploding river. At the hospital I didn’t even bother locking it up, just flung it onto the grass next to the front doors of the Palaveri ward like I was a kid all over again and running late for the six p.m. start of The Wonderful World of Disney. The nurse at the desk said it was too late but I told her that I had some very important news that couldn’t wait. She didn’t believe me, that was obvious, but told me to go ahead anyway, she had no backup staff for fighting and was deep into the final chapters of The Da Vinci Code.

  Elf was asleep on her side, her face to the wall, and I lifted the blanket and crawled in next to her. She had her back to me but her hand was resting there on her shoulder, like she’d been hugging herself as she fell asleep, and I touched it. I squeezed it softly and held it. I thought how strange it was that this limp, bony piece of flesh could produce such powerful music. I timed my breathing to hers, slow and steady. I closed my eyes and slept with her for a while, I think it was an hour or two or maybe only twenty minutes.

  When Elf was a kid she walked and talked in her sleep all the time. My parents had to rig up booby traps by the doors so she wouldn’t leave the house altogether. I hummed a song about ducks swimming in the sea, a little song she had taught me when I was a kid. A song about bravery, about being a freak. She didn’t wake up. I don’t think she woke up. I didn’t want to leave but I knew I had to. When I left the nurse asked me to please respect the visiting hours in the future and I told her yes, I will. In the future I will respect everything. My dad’s bike was still there, damp in the dewy grass, and I picked it up, it seemed lighter than it had been and I looked to make sure it was the same bike, a faded red CCM three-speed, and it was the same one—how could there be two? it wasn’t a parade—and I hopped on and rode off into the rest of the night.

  Everyone was asleep in my mom’s apartment waiting through dreams for tomorrow. I lay on an air mattress on the living room floor. There was a small blue bookshelf beside me. There was the obligatory collection of my Rhonda books (all inscribed with love and gratitude) on one of the shelves, stiff and quirkily CanLitty with their signature spines, and a slew of whodunits crammed in there next to them, well read and better loved. Some of them, the fatter ones, were cut in half or even threes and held together with rubber bands because my mom didn’t like to haul entire giant books around with her all over tarnation and she didn’t go anywhere without a book, or a partial book, in her big brown bag. Next to the whodunits were a few books written by other people she knew, sons and daughters of friends, people in her church, old classics and a book of poetry by Coleridge, Elf’s ex-boyfriend. I took it from the shelf and read a few poems, including this one:

  In fancy (well I know)

  From business wand’ring far and local cares,

  Thou creepest round a dear-lov’d Sister’s bed

  With noiseless step, and watchest the faint look,

  Soothing each pang with fond solicitude,

  And tenderest tones medicinal of love.

  I too a SISTER had, an only Sister—

  She lov’d me dearly, and I doted on her!

  To her I pour’d forth all my puny sorrows

  (As a sick Patient in his Nurse’s arms)

  And of the heart those hidden maladies

  That shrink asham’d from even Friendship’s eye.

  O! I have woke at midnight, and have wept,

  Because SHE WAS NOT! …

  I had found Elf’s Coleridge poem! The one she’d taken her signature AMPS from. All my puny sorrows. I lay on the air mattress. I fell asleep, but not fully. It wasn’t a deep sleep and somewhere in the spaces between sleep and lucid dreaming and full consciousness I had an idea. An idea came to me. I would invite Elf to Toronto to stay with me for a while when she was released from the hospital. I’d be there to take her home with me for a visit. We could walk and talk and rest and there would be no pressure and I would be at home, working, sort of, so she wouldn’t be alone. And Nora would be there too. Then we could really examine this Zurich thing at length and if she still wanted to go it would be so easy to leave from Toronto instead of Winnipeg. Nobody else would have to know until it was over and then I’d figure out how to deal with all of that then.

  In the morning we all crawled out of our beds and clustered like baby birds at the dining room table, poking at our food, hopping up and down for jam and salt and cream, goading one another on with fake enthusiasm. Piled into the car—Jason had dropped it off in visitor parking with the keys under the mat, the driver’s door opened now—and took off for our new clubhouse, the Ste. Odile Hospital. It was too early to see Elf but we all gathered around my aunt’s bed and hugged her and kissed her and told her this surgery thing would be a snap, a breeze, a walk in the park. Yeah, yeah, she knew that, good grief, enough of these morbid pep talks, let’s get the show on the road. Sheila gently massaged Tina’s arms and legs. My mother held her hand. My uncle Frank promised he’d have her Starbucks coffee ready and waiting for her after the surgery and she told us to go somewhere and relax for Pete’s sake. The anaesthetic was beginning to take effect. Tina’s eyes were glassy. Her words came more slowly. She had a mysterious expression on her face. They wheeled her into the operating room and we stood together under a fluorescent light, praying maybe, or maybe not, and not moving one way or another.

  At a certain time—when Tina was still being operated on, having veins taken out of her leg and put into her chest, and the word from the doc was that everything was going very well—my mom and I and my cousin Sheila and my uncle Frank trekked over to psych to say good morning to Elf. We’d managed to find a wheelchair for my uncle—he
hadn’t wanted to use it but we insisted and he tried to do a couple of wheelies down the hall. We filed past the nurses’ desk in psych like some pathetic army’s last line of defence and one of them said oh, um, how many of you are there? And my mother said there’s one of each of us. But, said the nurse, you can’t all go in at the same time. We know that, said my mom, and kept walking. We all fell in behind our field commander and marched (and wheeled) onward, ever onward.

  Elf was sitting on her bed writing. I looked at her notebook and saw the word pain written at least fifty times. I picked it up. Shopping list? I said. I flipped it over so the others wouldn’t see it and we sent silent messages to each other with our eyes. We all had a conversation then about god knows what. Sheila told us about a young mom she was treating for tuberculosis. She was so young when she had her kids, said Sheila, that when they caught the chicken pox she did too. She was so young that on the day she finally married the father of her kids she also lost a twelve-year-old molar.

  Elf picked up her notebook and tore out a blank page and wrote a short letter, folded it and gave it to our uncle to give to Tina after her surgery. He put his arm around her and said blessings on you, girl, and she told him she was sorry that he had to visit her here. He said no. We don’t apologize for being sick, for being human, for being weary (Uncle Frank has obviously never been a woman). Elf said but still, she was. Elf was an atheist normally but these days she didn’t seem to mind people promoting comfort in His name. My mom and Sheila and I talked louder about nothing much so that Elf and my uncle could think they were having a private conversation about sadness and giving up and strength.

  We talked about the Blue Jays spring training for a while. Starters and Closers. Then we were all holding hands. My uncle then initiated a prayer session. And my mother softly began to sing du again, you, you, you are always in my thoughts, you, you, you give me much pain, you, you, you don’t know how much I love you. My mother and my uncle sang it out in Plautdietsch, they knew the words by heart, and Sheila, Elf and I certainly knew the du, du, du part which we sang resolutely. Then we sang a hymn, “From Whom All Blessings Flow.” Mennonites like to sing in tense situations. It’s one option if you’re not allowed to scream or go nuts emptying a magazine into a crowded plaza. I began to cry and couldn’t stop no matter how hard I tried. When the others left Elf’s room to go back to see how Tina was doing I lingered behind and whispered to my sister it’s time to fight now. Yolandi, she said, I’ve been fighting for thirty years. So you’re leaving me to fight alone? I asked her. She didn’t answer me.