We sat on the end of his bed watching the bird dip its head in and out of the glass of water.
How do you like that? he said. He patted me on the knee. Then he went downstairs to watch Hymn Sing, his favourite show, where a group of men and women in black suits and long dresses stand in even lines on risers singing hymns for half an hour. You can watch it with me if you like, he’d said from halfway down the hall. Hmm, I thought. And leave the bird? In Hymn Sing the words bounce along on the bottom of the screen in case you want to sing along, but my dad never does. He just watches. But why would you want to sing along to “He Was Nailed to the Cross for Me”?
I went into my room. I threw a T-shirt over my lamp, lit some of Tash’s incense and put on a Bob Marley album. I played “Redemption Song” about twenty times.
eighteen
I turned thirteen three days before Tash left town with Ian. The drama focused on her and Trudie, really. My dad and I hovered in the wings like stagehands, not entirely sure of what was going on but looking forward to it being over. They spent a lot of time speaking in code, it seemed.
I was sure my sister was a pusher. We’d seen a film in church called Hey Preach, You’re Comin’ Through! and it was all about a girl like Tash who’d gone bad and veered off the road less travelled onto a thoroughfare of sin.
Once, during this perceived pusher period, my dad and I went for a walk and I suggested to him that he hold my hand. He told me he hoped I could thrive from benign neglect, like an African violet.
Well, then I will, I said. And he told me I’d need more than his faint hopes to thrive like a plant. But he did take my hand, and that made me think things might work out, although I still didn’t know exactly what was wrong.
One night Ian dropped Tash off in the middle of the night. I heard his low voice and her soft laughter and the door open and close really, really quietly. I heard my mom open her bedroom door and head down the hall towards the kitchen. After that I couldn’t hear anything and I went back to sleep.
When I woke up a few hours later I went into the kitchen and read a note that was lying on the table: My mom had gone to do some shelving at the library, in the middle of the night, and my dad had gone for what he liked to call a toot, which to him meant a drive. Which made Tash almost wet her pants one day because in her circle toot meant toke. Tash, herself, was asleep on the couch.
I thought she must be in very big trouble this time and I wondered what would happen to her. Nothing bad had ever happened to us before so I didn’t even know what the consequences could be. I went into her room and pulled out her high school yearbook and stared at the black-and-white photographs of her classmates. I lay in her bed and imagined that Ian was lying on top of me, wiping the hair out of my eyes, cupping my face in his strong hands, and telling me how he shouldn’t be doing this but he just couldn’t help himself and we must never tell Tash. Never.
I went into the living room and played an Irish Rovers record loudly until she woke up screaming what the fuck is that? Oh my god! I was sitting in the big green chair, trying to be both sinister and casual. I slowly lowered the newspaper that I’d been pretending to read, and looked at her. So, I said, you’re awake. Perhaps now you’d be willing to answer a few questions? Oh my god, she said, and stumbled out of the room cursing. I had thought a little sketch comedy would soften her. You’ll burn in hell! I screamed. Forever! I thought I heard her laughing in her room, but I couldn’t be sure. I ran to my room and fell into my bed sobbing.
That morning Trudie came home to find both of her daughters crying in their bedrooms, only for entirely different reasons. I was convinced that Tash would fry like butter for her sins and she was…well.
I didn’t know why she was crying, until I heard my mom say honey, what is it? What’s wrong? And Tash said: I think I’ll go crazy. I can’t stand it. It’s all a fucking lie. It’s not right and it’s killing me. It’s killing me! Mom, it really is! And then something happened that took me completely by surprise. I heard my mom say, I know honey, I know it is. And then she began to cry also, not with the same intensity but with a pacing that made it seem like she knew what she was doing and I remember thinking to myself: Are they equally as sad? Why is my mom not angry? What is killing Tash? Drugs? Sinning? Books like The Prophet and Siddhartha and Tropic of Cancer? And when my mom said I know it is, did she mean she knew it, whatever it was, was killing Tash, or did she mean she knew it was all a lie. And I’m pretty sure that’s when my nightly face aches began. Like my head had suddenly been filled with ideas and suggestions that it couldn’t contain. Or maybe I was just choking. I was wrong about everything. I thought that what Tash meant when she said it wasn’t right and it was killing her was the pusher’s lifestyle that I’d imagined she’d been living. Selling drugs in the city, whoring around with a bad boy, cleaving to ideas of communism, telling Dad to go to hell. It was obvious to me. And after a while I started feeling good again because I realized that Tash was about to get back on track, that she had figured out she needed saving, and that God and Mom and Dad and The Mouth and everyone else who mattered would forgive her. And we could go back to being a normal family again, even with small amounts of desperate laughter.
I heard my dad come home and knock quietly on Tash’s bedroom door and my mom saying it’s okay, honey, we’re in here, make yourself a sandwich, there’s fresh ham in the fridge.
I could hear Tash and my mom talking but I couldn’t make out the actual words. Then I heard my mom leave her room and go into the kitchen to talk to my dad. I got up and went into the hall and knocked on Tash’s door. She told me to come in. Her hospitality made me nervous. She was sitting cross-legged and barefoot on her bed in her orange men’s shirt and white choker with the blue bead. It looked so pretty. She’d put a red T-shirt over her lamp so the room had a pink glow. Want to burn some incense? she asked me. Would you like to listen to a record? I sat down beside her and smiled. She looked at me. What’s wrong, she asked. I started laughing which is what I did back then when I was sad or freaked out. It was the kind of laugh that alarmed people. Nomi, she said, don’t. And she put her arms around me and said everything would work out. Everything’s gonna work out, man. I promise. I wouldn’t let her go. Nomi, she said, I know you’re crying. Please don’t cry. I whispered to her that I didn’t want her to go to hell, and she started laughing and said hell was a metaphor. I didn’t know what she meant of course, and it wouldn’t have mattered to me even if I had known. I was a believer and I was convinced that my sister was going down. God is love, Nomi, she said to me. That’s all you need to know, man. God is love. She was so doomed.
When Ian came to pick her up, I went into the living room to read the paper. I put the Irish Rovers on again, loud. Tash came into the living room and said oh my god, Nomi. But this time she was smiling. A really tender genuine smile that killed me. There was no sarcasm, no faking. I knew that something horrible was going to happen. She’d freed herself. That’s what a real smile meant. I knew it. She told me I could have her records.
My mom put some blankets and pillows into a garbage bag and carried it out to Ian’s truck. She put bread and fruit and the fresh ham she’d bought that day into a box and Ian carried that out.
I remembered my mom telling us about the Mennonites in Russia fleeing in the middle of the night, scrambling madly to find a place, any place, where they’d be free. All they needed, she said, was for people to tolerate their unique apartness. Nomi, find my purse, she told me. She could never leave it in the same place. I found it on the floor in the dining room and gave it to her and she took out two fifties and handed them to Tash.