A Complicated Kindness: Chapter Eleven Summary & Analysis

Nomi stays at the hill for a long time. In the dirt she practices the new signature that Travis helped her design. Once Nomi was called Naomi, but young Tash couldn’t pronounce her name, so it was shortened. Nomi remembers Tash, as a young girl, planning to go to Kazakhstan, liberate the Mennonite children exiled there by Stalin, and take them to live in Prague and have Czech lovers. On her way home, Nomi passes her English teacher, Mr. Quiring, in the street, but he doesn’t notice her. She remembers that Trudie used to take her for long walks at night. Ray is sitting in his lawn chair when she gets home. Nomi thinks that Travis might be right after all: Ray is goofy.

Ray comes inside to “have a staring contest with the kitchen table.” Nomi puts on a record and lies in bed. She looks at a bloodstain on her wall and remembers how it got there years ago. Tash had sent her on an emergency run for sanitary pads, and while biking furiously home Nomi lost control of her bike and flies into someone’s driveway. She gave Tash the pads and then retreated to the room to pick gravel out of her nose, smearing the blood from her face onto the wall. Every time she looks at the bloodstain now, she’s reminded that she’s not currently bleeding from her face, something she finds empowering.

Nomi thinks about her mother. Living in East Village, Trudie has Ray, her children, and books to keep her occupied, and everyone in the town knows who she is and where she belongs. She grew up in a big house with 13 siblings and a father, Nicodemus, who wrote all their names down—sometimes spelled wrong—in the family Bible. Nomi thinks that Trudie often misses Nicodemus, who taught her to love long car rides.

In church, Trudie enjoys hymns and always sings loudly. During Communion, she and the other women wash each other’s feet without removing their nylons. But Trudie doesn’t like to hang around and shake hands after the service; while Ray lingers, she takes Nomi and Tash to sit in the car. Nomi knows she’s a disappointment to Menno Simons, but thinks maybe he’d be pleased to know of her new faith—she believes firmly that her family will be together one day in New York City, where they’ll live with Lou Reed and play in Central Park all day.

Trudie often talks about her happy childhood in East Village, and when Tash complains that the town is fake, Trudie reminds her that if the Mennonites had stayed in Europe they would have been persecuted and killed. Trudie tells stories of her family, who fled Russia with hardly any possessions or money.

Nomi’s grandmother often reprimands Trudie for letting the house get messy. When the Rapture occurs, she tells Trudie, Jesus will be able to tell his people apart by the cleanliness of their houses. Trudie always nods at these speeches, but the house never becomes more orderly. Ray doesn’t pay attention, preferring to focus on science and isotopes. He likes to talk to Nomi about the laws of thermodynamics.

Trudie loves to play Dutch Blitz, an Amish card game. She often keeps Nomi up late at night to play with her; it’s only years later that Nomi realizes Trudie was trying to keep herself awake until Tash came home from hanging out with her friends.

Nomi remembers one day when The Mouth comes over and asks to speak to Trudie privately. From the window, Tash and Nomi watched as The Mouth lectured, and Trudie threw up her hands. Tash said that The Mouth was trying to get Trudie to do something. Trudie turned to smile at the girls, but it looked like she was crying. When Trudie came inside, Nomi pestered her about the conversation, but Trudie would only say that The Mouth wanted her to work at the church library. She smiled a “big, fake spooky smile” at Nomi.