The next time Meskerem went to Shiro Meda, she needed gifts to send back to America.
She’d promised her boyfriend she would return after taking care of Almaz’s funeral, but weeks later the thought of leaving her great-aunt’s flat caused her anguish. She could hear the irritation bubbling up in John’s voice every time he asked why her trip had been extended a week, and then another week, and then another. She missed him, but John would have to wait. She hoped a set of paintings from back home, maybe some jewelry or a netela for his mother, would help ease his anxieties. Day after day she went to Shiro Meda, telling herself she’d keep going until she found the perfect gifts to make up for her absence.
Most days, Meskerem just walked to the market. Passing the campus where her mother had studied and her great-aunt had taught became a soothing ritual, a way to bide the time while she delayed her trip back to America. Each day, new people greeted her along the road, but it was the familiar faces who punctuated her path. When she walked past the embassies, important-looking men took stock of her all-black attire and asked who she’d lost. She didn’t know where to start, so she’d laugh and tell them, “No one.”
One morning, Meskerem sacrificed this curious anonymity for something even more peculiar: a sense of direction The general came to pick her up in his truck, having promised to steer her toward the things she needed to see. In the weeks leading up to Genna, the market was even more busy than usual. Diaspora returnees with stories less tragic than Meskerem’s flooded its streets with their fast-paced strutting and their embarrassing Amharigna. A group of them gawked at her as she hopped out of a military truck they’d only seen in movies. Shopkeepers stared as she stood next to the man who’d been driving: she was General Robel Girma’s daughter, and she was no longer a secret.
Chickens ran around her ankles, and Meskerem laughed. This wasn’t quite home, but it was something like it. The general (she couldn’t bring herself to call him “Dad,” not after all these years) picked out some housewares and “manly” art for John (“Habesha aydelem?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. Meskerem raised hers back; the general wasn’t allowed to ask those questions yet). He insisted on paying for the gifts then and later for pastries from Enrico’s, and Meskerem protested only once in the grateful, facetious way all Ethiopian children do.
Meskerem walked back into Almaz’s apartment that afternoon feeling lighter. She placed John’s gifts in a drawer near Almaz’s bed, taking care not to upset the balance of the dresser’s contents. She wanted to leave before Genna, she decided. She’d already missed Christmas with John in the US, and the prospect of bypassing the awkwardness of the Ethiopian holiday by going back to the States seemed perfect. The general was friendly, but he was not yet family. Leaving would be for the best. It would be like Christmas had never come at all.
She nodded to herself, pacing around the bedroom after grabbing her laptop. Yes, this was right. She would head to the nearest Internet café and buy her ticket now before having dinner at the general’s home. It would be easier that way, to let go of all the pleasantries at once. There would be no fight over how long she should stay, no obligatory suggestions that she and his other children get to know each other.
Meskerem had settled into the kitchen easily, cooking herself shiro and kik alicha almost nightly. The bedroom had taken longer; for the first four nights, she’d slept on the love seat in the living room. When her neck protested violently, she conceded, eventually rummaging through Almaz’s closet in search of the outfits that most reminded her of the woman whose spirit still moved through the space. But it had taken weeks for Meskerem to let herself open the door to Almaz’s office — the space felt sacred, like the source of her brilliance. She knew it was the space her great-aunt had cherished most.
Meskerem opened the door slowly, like she might still be caught. She walked to the bookshelf instinctively, hands grazing the spines of the books she’d read here as a teenager and the many that had been added in the time since. Pausing to sit at Almaz’s desk for a moment and let the scent of their pages wash over her, Meskerem noticed a thick piece of paper sticking out of the same Baldwin novel Almaz read every year. Almaz had treated Giovanni’s Room with more tenderness than she treated most humans; Meskerem knew she would never shove a random paper into its pages so carelessly.
Pulling it out slowly, Meskerem braced herself for what she immediately sensed would be something she shouldn’t see: WE WILL FIND HER THERE. WE WILL FINISH WHAT WE STARTED.
Meskerem stared at the thick, torn sheet. She turned it over, searching for any sign of its origin. The script itself was nondescript, the English letters resembling fidel in the way every Ethiopian’s handwriting did. Sighing to herself and unsure of what to do, she stuffed the sheet into her pocket and ran out the door.
The general lived in a massive house near the American embassy, the kind that dwarfed all buildings in its immediate area, not for practicality, but to make a statement. When she was younger, Meskerem had walked past these houses and scoffed at the arrogance of the people she’d imagined living inside their walls. What kind of people built monuments to their own grandeur?
Meskerem had been uncertain what to wear for dinner, but she knew nothing she’d packed was right. She had no intention of wearing any color other than black, so she settled for the same black jeans she’d worn earlier that day at Shiro Meda. They still smelled of dust, chickens, and children. She grabbed a top from Almaz’s closet, a blouse she’d always loved. It still smelled of Almaz’s perfume. Dior.
The family was pleasant enough. The general’s wife didn’t seem to have a name or many original thoughts. His son, Elias, stared at her from across the table, asking repeatedly why she didn’t play video games. He did not call her “Sister,” and for that she was eternally grateful.
When the house staff cleared up after dessert and the general’s wife retired to her parlor, Meskerem asked to see her father’s office.
The two walked the two-kilometer path talking mostly about why she still smelled of the market. She may not have been ready to call him “Father” yet, he insisted, but surely she could at least try to act like a general’s daughter. The thought bothered her, but Meskerem tried to laugh anyway. The sound of her ambivalent chuckle reverberated off the trees lining the road.
“I think John will really like the jebena,” she offered. “I don’t make coffee, but he loves it. I told him about it before I came to dinner, and he sounded so happy,” she said, unsure of what compelled her to add a lie.
The general was pleased to hear his suggestion would be adored, even if it was by a man he’d never met. He reveled in the feeling of being needed somehow. When he opened the door to his office, he offered Meskerem some whiskey. Turning away from her for a moment, he walked toward his desk to pour from the decanter he saved for special guests.
“Usually this is for diplomats. Or colonels. Sometimes kings even,” he said, back still turned. Meskerem stared at him in this environment, suddenly struck by how harsh his consonants sounded when they echoed among all the oak. The door was so heavy, the chairs so tall. She didn’t belong here.
As the general moved toward her, Meskerem slipped her hand in the pocket of her jeans and pulled out the piece of paper.
“Do... do you know what this means?” she stammered, shoving the sheet toward his face, filled with rage.
The force of her movement caught him off balance, and he fell to the floor. His glass crashed down with him, shards embedding into his palm as the whiskey mixed with his blood. Meskerem screamed at the sight of the blood, then started to crouch toward him until she saw the look in his eyes.