I was still pleased to be out of school, but the anxiety on the faces of the adults had rubbed off. Ghosh and Matron returned to the hospital to prepare for casualties. Hema had her Version Clinic that afternoon. Shiva, who till then had little interest in what was going on, was uneasy, as if he sensed something no one else did. Unusual for Shiva, he asked Hema if she would stay home and not to go to work.
“I don't want to leave, my love,” she said, agonizing over what to do, “but I have Version Clinic.”
“Take us with you,” Shiva said. Then he added, “We practiced Bick-ham. See my paper? Just as you told us.” His calligraphy was better than the examples of the ornate and round style in the book. “So please?”
“I really can't …,” Hema said. “I have to go to the labor room first before clinic.”
“We'll go with you,” Shiva said.
“No. I won't have you in the labor room.” She could see the disappointment in Shiva's face. “I tell you what, you boys go to the Version Clinic and wait for me. Whatever you do, stay together.”
This was the rarest of invitations. Unlike Ghosh, if Hema carried a stethoscope, she didn't bring it home. The white coat we glimpsed her wearing in the hospital stayed there. I rarely thought of Hema as a doctor because at home she was all mother. Ghosh constantly talked medicine, but Hema never did. We knew she went to Labor and Delivery and that she operated on Mondays and Wednesdays. From what we overheard, she was very good and in great demand, but the specifics were not mentionable to us. She wanted us to always know that her eyes were on us, and no doctoring would distract her from that vigilance. The Version Clinic was a good example. We'd heard of it for years, but we hadn't the least idea what went on there. According to the dictionary, one meaning of “version” was from the Latin, versus—”to turn.”
Hema's departures in the night came with cryptic phrases, words stranger than “version” tossed over her shoulder: “eclampsia” or “post-partum hemorrhage” or, that most chilling term of all, the “Delayed Afterbird.” That one wasn't even in the medical dictionary. And you never heard of the Afterbird except when it was Delayed. It was feared, and yet its arrival was necessary. Shiva and I looked for that Delayed Afterbird on the trees of Missing, or high up in the sky.
Shiva drew the Afterbird, and in his many renderings it was like a flying wing, an elongated triangle, sightless, legless, but beautiful, sleek, aerodynamic, and utterly mysterious. Could our mother's death be linked to the Delayed Afterbird? It would have been so easy to ask Hema. But the topic was off-limits. At least that was how Hema made it feel.
THE WOMEN'S CLINIC behind the main hospital building deviated from the whitewashed decor of Missing, because it had lime-green paint on the outer walls and blue banisters. A hygenia tree dropped orange blossoms on the steps. The soil underneath the tree was aflame with blue lobelia and pink clover. We found a gaggle of pregnant patients seated on the steps, their hair covered by shashes. While waiting, theyd tucked fresh blossoms behind their ears and stretched their legs out in front of them. Their white shamas glowed in the sun, and with bellies swollen, clutching their pink outpatient cards, they resembled a flock of lively geese. Some were barefoot, and those who weren't had eased off their plastic shoes. It was tense in the city, but looking at these woman, and hearing their laughter, their complaints about swollen ankles, husbands, or heartburn, you would never have known.
When they spotted us, they called us over to shake our hands, ask our names, our age, fuss with our hair, and remark on our similarity. They insisted that we sit with them, and I would have declined, except Shiva happily said yes. I sat there embarrassed, like a chick squished between hens. Shiva seemed to be in heaven.
So often we never truly see our own family and it is for others to tell us that they've grown taller or older. I confess, I mostly took Shiva's appearance for granted—he was my twin after all. But at that moment, I was seeing my brother anew: the large rounded forehead, the curls that piled up on his head, threatening to fall forward and obscure his sight, the equanimity around the brow and eyes, and his mannerism of putting his finger alongside his cheek just like the Nehru portrait on our wall at home. What was completely new was this smile which transformed my wombmate into a blue-eyed stranger, rendering a lightness to his being, so that were it not for the sturdy female arms draped over his shoulders, caresssing his hair, he would have floated off those steps.
A woman read a pink pamphlet that had been dropped over the Piazza and Merkato by an air force plane. She was the lone woman who could read, albeit slowly: “Message from His Holiness, Patriarch of the Church, Abuna Basilios,” she said, and heads at once bowed, and hands made the sign of the cross, as if His Holiness were on the steps with them. “To my children, the Christians of Ethiopia and to the entire Ethiopian people. Yesterday, at about ten in the evening, the Imperial Bodyguard soldiers who were entrusted with the safety and welfare of the royal family committed crimes of treachery against their country …”
Seated in their midst, sweating in the sun, I shivered. I could see that the patriarch's words rang true for these ladies. He was speaking for God. This did not bode well for the man we so admired, General Mebratu.
The women turned naughty after that, mocking the Bodyguard and then men in general, laughing and carrying on as if they were at a wedding. Shiva was in rapture, grinning from ear to ear. His earlier apprehension had vanished. It was as if hed found his ideal spot, surrounded by pregnant women. There was much about my brother I did not understand.
When Hema appeared, the women struggled to their feet, despite Hema's protests. A mother's pride showed in Hema's eyes to see us adopted by her patients.
THREE AT A TIME, the women mounted the examining tables. They pushed their skirts down just below their bellies and pulled their chemises up to expose their watermelon swellings. When one of the patients on the table waved to Shiva to come close and hold her hand, he stepped in, and I followed. Hema bit her tongue.
“All late third trimester,” Hema said, after a while, without explaining what that meant. She used both hands to confirm that the baby's position was “something other than head down. A baby can't come out easily unless its head is pointing down to the mother's feet. That is why the Prenatal Clinic sent them here to Version Clinic,” she said, mentioning another clinic which we knew she attended in this very room but on a different day.
She pulled out a strange, stunted version of a stethoscope—a feto-scope. The bell of the stethoscope had a U-shaped metal bracket on which she could rest her forehead, and then use the weight of her head to press the bell into the skin, leaving her hands free to stabilize the belly. She held up a finger like a conductor signaling for quiet. Conversation stopped, and the patients on the stretchers and the throng around the door held their breaths, till Hema raised up and said, “Galloping like a stallion!” A score of voices added, “Praise the saints!” Hema didn't offer to let us listen.
She got down to business. “With this hand I cup the baby's head. My other hand I put here where the baby's bottom is—how do I know?” She looked at Shiva as if his question was impertinent. Then she laughed. “Do you know how many thousands of babies I've felt this way, my son? I don't have to think. The head is this coconutlike hardness. The bottom is softer, not as distinct. My hands give me a picture,” she said, outlining a shape in the air above the exposed belly. “The baby's back is to me. Now watch.” She set her feet, then using firm and steady pressure of her cupped hands, she pushed the head one way, the butt the other way, while also pushing her hands toward each other as if to keep the baby curled up. Something in the way her thumbs were aligned with the rest of her fingers, all held close together, reminded me of her Bharatnatyam dance gestures. “There! You see? An initial resistance, a stickiness, then it gives, and the baby tumbles over.” I saw nothing. “Well, of course you didn't see. The baby's floating in water. Once I start the turn, the baby finishes the last quarter turn by itself. Now it's not a breech baby. It's a head presentation. Normal.” She listened to the fetal heart again to be sure it was still strong.