Swing Low

by Miriam Toews

  Have read in the paper about a postal worker who was fired for homelessness. He refused to give up his government-issued uniform because as long as he wore it he could ride the bus at no cost, according to policy. He carried the mailbag with him at all times too, stuffed full with his belongings. And so, because he lived on the streets, he became scruffier and scruffier, until finally his uniform became so soiled and tattered that it was unrecognizable as a letter carrier’s outfit and the bus drivers stopped letting him ride for free. Now he walks along his former mail route every day, dressed in rags. The letter carrier currently delivering the mail in that area doesn’t mind if this chap joins him as long as he doesn’t step onto private property or handle any of the mail.

  I mentioned this story to a nurse a while ago and she informed me that the world is full of oddballs.

  Perhaps I should go for a little walk. Though a little walk, or should I say a short walk, may be next to impossible considering my propensity for marathon hikes, but we shall see. Naturally I don’t want to miss my call, but I must weigh the urgency of receiving the call with the urgency of my need for fresh air, and hope for the best.

  I’m back after having gotten as far as the front doors. I forgot to factor in the urgency of the nurses’ need to know where I’m going. I had no answer. I’ve been foiled. Makes me want to scream. I never scream. Must relax.

  Now I am recalling Marj’s youthful face at fifteen, how she so resembled Elvira, and now a hotel room where we all spent the night, the family on vacation, a few tiffs perhaps between the girls, my snoring, of course, a problem, some engine trouble in South Dakota, but otherwise thoroughly enjoyable. And Elvira so very happy to be away from town for a while, never wanting to return. I remember holidays more clearly than home life. I was happy too, it would seem, away from the town. And yet always relieved to have returned, unlike Elvira, who’d rather travel forever … another road trip, piles of Wrigley’s chewing gum wrappers beside me on the car seat, the girls dividing them up to make necklaces, Elvira reading a whodunit, bare feet on the dashboard … Judy Garland’s real name is Frances Gumm, the girls tell me. What would you change your name to if you could, Dad? Hank Aaron, I tell them.

  Those days of misplaced shaving kits were happy times. If my shaving kit was lost, it meant we were together as a family, away somewhere, either at the cottage or on a road trip. Perhaps I intentionally misplaced my shaving kit, a brown leather zippered deal with a looped strap, as a sort of guaranteed shtick that would make the girls laugh.

  Even now my shaving habits are big news with all sorts of people. Today he shaved! No, he hasn’t shaved in weeks. Has he shaved this morning? Encourage him to shave. He won’t shave. He shaved!

  Which reminds me of a recent visit to the doctor. I was, of course, how couldn’t I be, aware of the profound significance of my shaven or unshaven face. I knew that the occasion of a doctor’s appointment necessitated the act of shaving. (Have you shaved? Have you washed? Have you eaten? Have you run the Boston Marathon?) It was only after the appointment, as I stood at the bathroom sink, razor in hand, gazing sadly at my foamy reflection, that Elvira gently reminded me of the sequence. Mel, she said in a soft whisper all empty of hope, you might have shaved before the appointment.

  A nurse has entered my room. She is my least favourite nurse and I have decided that I will continue to write while she fiddles around with things rather than do my usual smiling and chatting. She is looking at my feet as I write. She has just said, Mr. Toews, why won’t you stay off your feet? Why don’t you call us when your blisters open? I am not answering. Mr. Toews, she says in a loud, impatient voice, I’m talking to you! I am not going to stop writing. Mr. Toews! Put down your notepad and look at me!

  I noticed, in my youth, that the women of my community could easily be identified as Bergthalers or Chortitzer or E.M.C. or M.B. or E.M.B. or Kleinegemeinde or Schrodenfitzer depending on their hair. Chortitzers wore wraps or nets over their heads, and they were considered very conservative; Kleinegemeinde women had tight shiny rolls along the edges of their hair, less conservative; and M.B.ers wore all-purpose buns. Landmark women, on the other hand, never wear wraps, nets, rolls, or buns. They have wild uncombed hair that sprays out from the head at all angles, wispy and tangled, and rather alluring in an alarming unconventional way. Landmark women remain a mystery to me, although Elvira befriended one or two of them in her younger days. Once I asked Elvira about the Landmark hairdo and she said, Oh, they have less time to deal with it. Which made me wonder what they do over there in Landmark, Manitoba.

  I believe there is an extremely conservative Mennonite church near Landmark called the Sommerfeld Church, where singing in harmony is not allowed. Perhaps that’s changed. Or is it the church in Lowe Farm? At any rate, the singing is, of course, unaccompanied by piano or organ. (Instruments are worldly.) There is a group of men who lead the congregation in song. They are called the ferzinge, the front singers, or the lead singers. They will set the key and begin to sing, and the congregation will follow half a note behind. At times the ferzinge will stop and start again if the congregation is not in the right key. Wada aunfange, they will say. From the top!

  The nurse is rebandaging my feet now, muttering as she does so about my lack of cooperation and how hard it is for her to do her job with patients like me. I haven’t looked up from my notebook, and I’m desperate for something to write, I can’t let my pen stop, or have her think I’m only scribbling, and so …

  Speaking of school days, I shamefully recall the day I stabbed Elvira with the sharp end of my compass. I suppose I was seven or eight and just beginning to have feelings, unknowable, inexpressible feelings, of … love? No. Infatuation? I’m not sure, even today, what you would call that vague need for approval from the opposite sex. In any case, I wanted Elvira to like me, and in my mind though not consciously at the time, I thought I could spur that approval on by … stabbing her? No, not the actual stabbing, but the display of nerve and timing and discernment (I chose her, after all) that the stabbing act required (I got her in the rear end as she walked past my desk). Let me explain before I go on that stabbing is really too strong a word: no blood was drawn, no stitches required, no charges laid, and I certainly yanked my hand back immediately after my compass made the slightest contact. Elvira said, Ouch! and hit me, and I was made to stand between the sink and the waste paper basket with my face to the wall.

  But this, of course, started something between the two of us, even though it was a mixture of hostility and disdain on Elvira’s part. I was thrilled. I had been noticed! This act of so-called love and bravery was quite a remarkable achievement for a shy boy like me, at least I thought so. Elvira was the feisty one, after all. (She began school at age two because she was tired of sitting around at home all day, although she was made to repeat kindergarten three times until the rest of her peers could catch up to her.)

  Somewhere in my collection there is a school photograph of our kindergarten class. Elvira is wearing a short brown dress, thick knit stockings, sturdy leather shoes, and, unfortunately, two fierce braids (I loathe braids) and is sitting on the grass in the front row with her legs spread, her elbows out like two handles on a teacup, her neck craned forward and her face jutting towards the camera. She is taking up far too much room (in the photo her head is twice the size of everybody else’s), and the girls on either side of her are squished in and trying to hold their own for the shot. She has that expression on her face that seems to say, I’ve just done something extremely naughty and I’m as pleased as punch about it.

  I, on the other hand, am standing nicely and sedately and unobtrusively (this photo was taken two years before the compass incident) in the back row, just to the left of Elvira. My short blond hair is wedged firmly over to one side with the help of my mother’s spit and I am wearing a smart beige sweater with two wide horizontal stripes. I’m smiling, slightly, and nervous. Elvira and I were to be classmates virtually for the rest of our school days.

&
nbsp; Nurse still here. Still muttering. Must think quickly of something to write. If she dares to take my notebook away from me I’ll hit her. No, no I won’t. I don’t know what I’ll do. Keep writing.

  For some reason I recall a conversation Elvira and I had a few years ago. We were driving home from the city, and it was snowing.

  How do you feel? she asked me. Well, it’s different, I said.

  We were quiet for a minute or two.

  In what way is it different? she asked me.

  Well, I said after a lengthy pause, it’s not the same.

  Mel, she said finally, you teach language arts. You teach children how to write. I haven’t heard you use a “feeling” word.

  We smiled. I enjoyed her teasing. We were quiet for another minute or two.

  Are you sad? she asked, knowing.

  I don’t know what point I’m trying to make. It’s just a recollection and I can’t quite remember what we were talking about, what was different and making me sad. I suppose … No, I don’t know. But why didn’t I say more? For a man who loves words, why can’t I speak? Why don’t I talk? What will I talk about? Myself? I probably haven’t said the right things, or the things, in any case, that help to explain who I am. I haven’t talked about myself. Is that ungenerous or self-effacing? Is it bad or is it good? What comes from talking about oneself? Is there a reason for it? Have I withheld words in anger? And if so, who am I punishing with my silence? And why? Or is it the Depression that lodges its evil self within my throat and blocks my speech? Is depression anger? And if so, what am I angry about? Can anger cause a chemical imbalance in the brain (because that is what depression is generally regarded as being these days)? One talks (if one isn’t me) to one’s psychiatrist for approximately fifty minutes, and then is given a prescription for a drug that will, with any luck, make all the talk, the talk of sadness and hopelessness, unnecessary. Eventually, the talking becomes a kind of scripted warm-up exercise, a quick prelude to the real cure, the drug. The talking becomes a means to a better end, that is, the elimination of the need to talk. Doctors are very busy individuals, after all, and a prescription requires less than a minute of one’s time. I should add, however, that I was without a doubt one of the least cooperative psychiatric patients on my doctor’s roster (we’re quite a team), not that I behaved like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (I didn’t get the hype) but because I was consistently pleasant and upbeat. And dishonest. Everything is fine, I assured my doctors, just fine. This was one of the reasons that Elvira had such a difficult time convincing doctors that everything was not fine. That’s why she became so tired. Nobody believed her because I lied and said everything was fine when it wasn’t. It’s how I killed her.

  Mr. Toews! It is time for your medication. You’ll have to stop writing … Mr. Toews!

  Go back to the beginning, Mel, write it all down, write anything, anything at all. I love … No, not that, write down what you remember. A new life strategy? No, no, too late for that. Go back and start again, and this time be honest.

  nine

  The story of my grandfather, the youngest person in the group of Mennonites that came over, in 1874, to Canada from Russia. Queen Victoria saw to it that we Mennonites would be given free farmland in the Prairies, and the Canadian government assured us that we’d be able to live the way we wanted to, apart from the world. His is a very romantic tale of shunning (Mennonite policy of ensuring sinner feels ashamed) and elopement that begins, sadly, with a death.

  My grandfather and my grandmother were a happy young couple way back in the early 1900s. He farmed and she kept house. In short order, while still in their twenties, four children were born, my father, Henry, being the second. My grandmother would complain from time to time of headaches, but naturally there wasn’t much she could do for them other than rest, and with four little children and a multitude of household chores unheard of today, rest was at a premium.

  One day, while preparing a noon meal for her family, my grandmother fell to the floor and died. Later it was determined that she was the victim of a brain aneurysm. Or perhaps, at that time, it was thought that she had a blood clot in her brain. My grandfather, still a young man, was left to raise the four young children on his own, in addition to his full-time farm work. As I recall, the youngest of the four children, a baby named Abe, after his father, Abraham, was soon moved into his grandparents’ home, where he remained permanently and became known in the community as Groutfodasch Abe, or “Grandparents’ Abe.” Every Sunday, my grandfather and the other children would go to my grandfather’s in-laws’ home for a good meal and a visit with Groutfodasch Abe.

  During the day the three remaining children would tumble along behind my grandfather in the field, or ride two or three at a time on top of the plowhorse, while my grandfather did his best to prevent them from being injured. Late in the evening, they would all return to the (increasingly untidy) farmhouse, and my grandfather would cook a large meal of fried eggs. According to the story told to me, it was always fried eggs.

  Occasionally his sisters or one or two ladies from the church would take pity on my grandfather and bring a hot meal of something other than eggs to the house or offer to do the laundry or wash the floors or the children or both. Over the years, however, it became clear that my grandfather would need regular help in the home and with the children, especially during the seeding and harvesting seasons, which found him out on the fields virtually day and night. He had during this time attempted to court a fine young woman from down the road, but alas, she had turned him down.

  After mulling it over a bit with his sisters, it was agreed that my grandfather would “hire a girl” to help him. In exchange for room and board (and all the eggs she could eat) this girl would keep house and mind the children. Word quickly got out that Grandfather was looking for a housekeeper, and in no time a seventeen-year-old Holdeman (an extremely conservative sect of Mennonites) girl was hired by committee (the sisters) and put to work. It turned out to be a very good arrangement for all concerned. My grandfather was able to farm without worrying about the children, the children adored Helen the Holdeman girl, and Helen relished her so-called independence from her strict parents.

  What happened next is predictable. My grandfather and Helen fell in love. How perfect for everyone, you might think, may they all live happily ever after, and may my grandmother rest in peace. Unfortunately, as usual, it was more complicated than that. When Helen’s parents found out she was being courted by my grandfather they forbade her to remain in his employ, took her back home, and locked her in her upstairs bedroom. Why did they object so strongly to any type of romantic entanglement between their daughter and my grandfather? Not because he was an older widower in his early thirties with several dependent children, or that she was a minor, or that he was an impoverished farmer, or that he ate too many eggs, but because he was not a Holdeman, and Holdemans are forbidden to marry outside of their church. And of course at that time one did not have relationships outside of marriage. It would have been assumed that if my grandfather and the Holdeman girl were in love, that they were planning to marry.

  So there was Grandfather, back to square one, except that now instead of losing one woman, he had lost two. The Mennonite church he belonged to grudgingly allowed its members to marry Holdemans, who would then become ordinary Mennonites, but Holdemans were not allowed to marry ordinary Mennonites, who were thought to be too liberal-minded, which is all relative considering that the Ordinary Mennonite Church used to shun and cast out members that bought soft-top cars, owned radios, danced, smoked, drank, doubted, or had red telephones installed in their homes or avocado-coloured fridges.

  My grandfather managed to send a message to Helen. He would appear at her window the next day while her parents were at evangelistic meetings, and, if she were willing, they would go to the city together and elope. If not, he would understand (or try to) and never interfere with her again.

  The next day at the appointed hou
r, my grandfather, perched on a ladder, appeared at her window (I suppose there were no dogs in the yard) and Helen gave him her answer: Yes! But accompanied by tears, no doubt, for she was only seventeen and about to leave childhood behind forever. One day she’s locked up in her bedroom like an unruly child and the next she’s the wife of a thirty-four-year-old farmer and stepmother of four! I wonder sometimes if, by eloping with Helen, my grandfather was acting selfishly, but that’s a troublesome thought that brings into question the very nature of love and need and so on and I haven’t the time to delve into it.

  The two of them caught a train in Giroux and spent a day in the city of Winnipeg having their picture taken (not allowed by Grandfather’s church, too vain) and shopping for new clothes (ditto, clothes were to be made by hand) and, ultimately, being married by a justice of the peace (not done!).

  I’m not sure who took care of the children while Helen and my grandfather were sinning in the city, but I imagine the older girl, who was to become my kindly Aunt Margaret, would have known how to prepare eggs at least.

  For some reason or other, maybe because the elders of the church pitied my unfortunate grandfather, his wife’s death, failing crops, hungry kids, or maybe because a collective inner secret part of them admired his pluck, who knows, they shunned him and his bride for three months only. My grandfather was required to confess his sins to the Brotherhood, a group of church elders, and then was asked to wait in the church lobby while the Brotherhood hammered out the details of his shunning. When the elders finally emerged from the sanctuary with the verdict, they found my grandfather slumped over on a wooden chair, fast asleep.

  That is my favourite detail in the story. The Brotherhood could do with him what they liked. He had what he wanted. He and Helen went on to have thirteen children together in addition to Groutfodasch Abe and the three older kids at home.