Free Irma Voth by Miriam Toews Page B

brother? I asked her.
    Inside, she said. We’re on our way to the last ditch hotel. They’re supposed to make excellent smoothies there, that’s all I know, and that’s all my stomach can absorb. My brother will drop me off and only pick me up again if I’m clean at the end of it. Otherwise I’ll just be released into the atmosphere like a toxic gas. I’ll just wander around the desert like Neal Cassady or whatever and eventually lie down for a nap on railway tracks.
    She told the kid to go and find his dad. She told us that her brain had disintegrated to the point where her eyeballs had minds of their own and that even when she knew she was staring straight ahead her eyeballs would do their own thing and look elsewhere, off to the side or up towards the sky. She told us that even her one-thousand-dollar-a-day rehab facility in Malibu with equine therapy had failed to take. They think my brother will help me but he won’t. He’s fed up. She pointed at the store. I have to want to stay alive or not. I told her it looked like she wanted to.
    Do you? said Aggie. She had stood up and was facing Lindsay Beth with her hands on her hips.
    Well, she said, I want my hair to stop falling out. She pulled out a chunk of her hair and showed it to us. She held it tenderly in her hand like a wounded bird. Aggie stared at it for a long time and seemed distressed when the girl finally threw it into the wind and it flew off towards El Paso. We talked for a while about things and played a little hide-and-seek game with the boy and waited and waited.

FOUR
    BY THE TIME WE GOT HOME a little apocalypse was brewing. I saw smoke coming from the field behind my house and told Aggie to stay put and then ran over to investigate. I saw the car. I saw the fire. I saw Jorge.
    You’re home! I said. I ran up to kiss him and hug him. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to feel the hard slope of his back. I wanted to put my head under his shirt and pinhim to the ground and listen to his heart beating but he was busy throwing stuff into the fire.
    Where were you? he asked.
    Where were you ? I said.
    Help me put this shit away, he said. We carried his boxes into the back shed and he hoisted them up into the rafters. After that he relaxed a bit and smiled and even made a few jokes and was almost like his old self and we went into the house and I made him something to eat and he gave me a new pair of sunglasses which I put on and then he gave me a new pair of jeans which I also put on under my dress.
    We fooled around for a while, throwing grapes into each other’s mouths and then bouncing them off the wall and seeing if we could still catch them in our mouths.
    How’s your mom? I asked him.
    Good, he said. Says hi.
    Jorge said he wanted to teach me some dance move he’d learned in Chihuahua city. You stand like this, he said. He turned me around so he was behind me.
    How’d you learn this dance? I said.
    Then slowly grind down to the floor by moving your hips like this, he said. He demonstrated.
    But where’d you learn to dance like this? I said.
    Like a rotor, he said, and while you’re doing that, I’ll stand behind you with my hands on your hips like this and I’ll grind down too. Okay, go. Slowly.
    I tried to remember the instructions. I knew the objective was to get down to the floor in a squatting position.
    No, he said, you’re dropping way too fast, like you’re dodging a punch or something. You have to make small,slow circles with your hips, like gradually, until you’re down. I tried again.
    Irma, he said, it’s not that hard. What’s your problem? Look. He showed me what to do.
    See? he said. Stop laughing. Try again.
    I stood up and shook my head. I can’t, I said. I’m sorry, but—
    Take your dress off, he said. Okay?
    I don’t have a top on under, I said.
    Yeah, I know, he said. That’s okay, it’s nice. It’ll be nice. I took my dress off and stood there topless in my new stiff jeans and sunglasses.
    Yeah, he said, you