All My Puny Sorrows

Our house was taken away on the back of a truck one afternoon in the summer of 1979. My parents and my older sister and I stood in the middle of the street and watched it disappear, a low-slung bungalow made of wood and brick and plaster slowly making its way down First Street, past the A&W and the deluxe bowling lanes and out on the number twelve highway, where we eventually lost sight of it. I can still see it, said my sister Elfrieda repeatedly, until finally she couldn't. I can still see it, I can still see it. I can still... Okay, nope, it's gone, she said.

From All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews 2014. Published by Alfred A. Knopf.