A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews

loved the sound of that.
    And everybody was sad, I’d say. Right? Yes, everybody was sad. It was a very difficult position to be in not only for the person who was shunned but for the people who loved them. God especially, I’d say. Right? Yes, God especially. I loved that hook. Even though he was the ultimate punisher, he got no satisfaction from it. It hurt him, but it had to be done. I thought that was damn heroic.
    But Nomi, she’d say, there was always the possibility of forgiveness. Remember that. I didn’t like that part. It muddied my crystal-clear waters. But probably not, I’d say. Probably not.
    One night my mom said she’d had enough of that story. She didn’t like it any more and wanted to tell another one. Andthey lived like ghosts in their own town, right, I’d ask. No friends, no family. Floating around. Bound for hell, right? Crying all the time? Hey, Mom! For fooling around? Right? She’d make up excuses to leave my room. Oh, Dad needs help choosing his shirts for next week, she’d say. And gently close my door.
    My mom had told me about the table trick. How if, say, your wife was shunned, you weren’t allowed to sit at the same table as her but if you put two tables together, with an inch between them, and then put a tablecloth over them, it would seem like you were at the same table, which would be nice, but you wouldn’t be at the same table, so you wouldn’t be breaking any rules.
    Tash often threw me out of her room with the words I shun thee! She didn’t take things as seriously as she should have. Like my uncle, The Mouth of Darkness, said, there were eternal issues at stake. And when discipline is properly applied, the one under it needs the humility to come home.
    My uncle’s name is Hans Rosenfeldt. He is the pastor of our church. He is my mother’s brother. Tash once said The Mouth of Darkness has pulled up onto our driveway. Shall I let him in? From then on she and I called him The Mouth, which, if not smart or funny or anything like that, is apt.
    There is a woman in this town who was shunned for adultery but didn’t leave. She’s one of the ghosts. She has health problems and sometimes she just faints on the street, usually in front of Tomboy. People will leave sausages or cheese next to her sometimes but that’s as much as they can do. Although I did once see an older woman give her skirt a tug after it had ridden up above her knees.
    My mother once told me that her blackouts had to do with stress, which fascinated me. That you could collapse on the spot and wake up a few minutes later feeling ready to go on.I wanted to be able to do that, although I think my minutes would stretch to days or possibly even years. My mother once told me that there were no adults in our town. But what do you mean by that, I’d asked her. What do I mean by that? she answered. I was never amused when my questions and her answers were the same thing. When she washed the dishes she’d have conversations with invisible people. I’d watch her from the dining room, shaking her head, moving her lips, shrugging, flicking her hand periodically to punctuate some imaginary point. Who are you talking to, I’d ask and she’d look at me and laugh, of course, telling me she didn’t know who she was talking to, or what did I mean, or talking? Was I talking? Yeah, I’d say, you were and you seemed ticked off. I did? she’d say, all innocently. That’s strange, she’d say. How odd. She’d try to compensate, afterwards, with an abundance of fake enthusiasm that literally felt like an attack. It stung my skin and I’d usually leave the room after enduring a few direct hits of good cheer . I wanted to know who the hell she was talking to in the first place.
    You know how some people, I’m not sure which people, say that something that happens on one part of the planet can make something else happen on another part of the planet? Usually, I think, they mean some kind of geological event, but I’m sure