Free A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews Page A

bored expression on his face. There was a tiny scar near his left eye. I asked Mrs. Peters if I could touch his arm and she said yes. I asked her if she was sad, and she said yes again. I stared at him for a long time. I moved my small grubby hand slowly up and down his cool forearm. I think I felt him move, I told her. She said no. Other people came to look at him. She hugged them but they didn’t talk. She asked me if I was needed at home. I didn’t understand the question, and said nothing. Finally she suggested that I go home for supper because it would be dark soon.
     
    She had chocolate puffed wheat balls this time. Clayton had loved them. She was older than most parents of kids my age. Even her husband had died, or been called home, and her other children lived in Bolivia and Akron, Pennsylvania. I changed a light bulb for her and cut her bangs after she wet them in the kitchen sink. She had all-white appliances in her kitchen because she said that coloured stoves and fridges were pre-sins, like pre-cancerous cells. Same with touch-tone telephones and soft-top cars.
    I can’t believe he’d be graduating from high school already, she said. What will you do afterwards, she asked me.
    I moved her wet hair to one side like Clayton’s. I don’t know, I said. (I did know. Hello, abattoir!)
    No, I don’t imagine he’d have known either, she said.
    Was he like that, I asked.
    In some ways, she said. But not in others. I nodded. She told me she liked her hair to be asymmetrical.
    That’s a good choice, I said. That’s my signature cut.
    Clayton would have liked this too, she said. She was pointing at a thin piece of leather I’d tied around my wrist.
    Yeah? I said.
    She said yes, he would have. Very much.
    When I was done cutting she got up and looked at herself in the toaster. Perfect, she said. Thank you.
    She got a broom out of the pantry and started sweeping up the bits of feathery white hair.
    What do you do these days, she asked me.
    I didn’t want to tell her the truth. I didn’t want her to imagine Clayton doing what I did. Well, I said. I walk around a lot.
    Do you enjoy it, she asked me.
    Sometimes, I said.
    Clayton liked to run, she said. She told me how he’d been running down the sidewalk one day and had tripped on his new shoes which she’d bought a couple of sizes too big, for the savings. He had a hole in his head the size of an Aspirin, she said. At the hospital he’d been so brave. When they asked him his name he’d said: My name is Clayton. Clayton Peters. The real Batman.
    What did they say when he said that, I asked.
    They said next time he was in such a hurry he should take the…what did they call it?
    The Batmobile, I said.
    That’s right, she said. The Batmobile.
    Did he get stitches, I asked.
    Yes, she said, right here. She touched her temple.
    How many, I asked. She loved to answer questions about Clayton.
    Was it three or four, she wondered. Three, I think, she said. I lifted my shoulders and held them for a few seconds near my ears before letting them drop.
    She said something in the odd unwritten language of our people, a language that is said to sound vaguely Yiddish.
    Can you translate that, I asked.
    She thought. Then she said: I don’t know. I just don’t know. To the point of knowing I will never not know as much about something as what I don’t know about him.
    She smiled. I can’t wait to see him in heaven, she said.
    I said yeah and looked at my feet. Will he recognize you, I asked.
    Of course he will, Nomi, he’s my son.
    But I mean you’ll have aged, right, I asked.
    Oh no, she said, I’ll be young again.
    But I mean, how young, I asked. Young like when you had Clayton? Or young like…
    Don’t worry, she said, we’ll recognize each other. God will make sure of that.
    Who would you say hi to first, your husband or your son, I asked.
    Oh, now that’s a good question, she said.
    What if you had remarried, I asked her. And that husband had died too, and then when