Ghosh wiped down the mattress. He helped us flip it over. He brought fresh sheets, made the bed for us. I could tell that he was distressed.
“Go back to the guests,” I said. “We're all right. Really.”
“My boys, my boys,” he said, sitting on the edge of the mattress. I know he thought I had wet the bed. “I can't imagine what you have been through.”
That was true. He couldn't imagine. And we probably wouldn't know what he'd been through either.
He sighed. “I'll never leave you again.”
I felt a twinge in my chest at those words, a desire to make him take them back. He'd spoken as if it were all in his hands to decide. As if he had forgotten about fate and slippers.
30. Word for Words
SIXTY DAYS HAD PASSED since Zemui's death, and Genet was still confined to the house. Rosina, sinister with her missing tooth, was unsmiling and prickly like an Abyssinian boar.
“Enough,” Gebrew told her on the Feast of St. Gabriel. “I'll melt a cross to get you a silver tooth. It's time to smile and to find white in your clothing. God wishes it. You are making His world gloomy. Even Zemui's legal wife has given up mourning.”
“You call that harlot his wife?” she screamed at Gebrew. “That woman's legs swing open when a breeze comes through the door. Don't talk to me about her.” The next day Rosina boiled up a big basin of black dye and into this she tossed all her remaining clothes as well as a good many of Genet's school clothes.
When Hema tried to get Genet to go back to LT&C, Rosina rebuffed her. “She's still in mourning.”
Two days later, on a Saturday, I heard a lululu of celebration from Rosina's quarters as I was coming into the kitchen. I knocked. Rosina opened it just a crack, peering out at me with a hunter's eye, a blade in her hand.
“Is everything all right?”
“Fine, thank you,” she said and closed the door, but not before I saw Genet, a towel pressed to her face, and bloody rags on the floor.
I couldn't keep this knowledge to myself. I told Hema and now she knocked on their door.
Rosina hesitated. “Come in if you must,” she said, her manner surly. “We're all done.”
The room was redolent of cloistered women. And frankincense and something else—the scent of fresh blood. It was difficult to breathe. The naked bulb hanging from the ceiling was off. “Close the door,” Rosina snapped at me.
“Leave it open, Marion,” Hema said. “And turn on the light.”
A razor blade, a spirit lamp, and a bloody cloth were by Genet's bed.
Genet sat demure, her hands pressed to both sides of her face, her elbows resting on her knees. The posture of a thinker, but for the rags in each hand.
Hema pulled Genet's fingers away to reveal two deep vertical cuts, like the number 11, just past the outer end of each eyebrow. A total of four cuts. The blood that welled up looked as dark as tar.
“Who did this?” Hema said, covering the wound and applying pressure.
The two occupants were silent. Rosina's eyes were locked on the far wall, a smirk on her face.
“I said, who did this?” Hema's voice was sharper than the razor that made the cuts.
Genet replied in English. “I wanted her to do it, Ma.”
Rosina said something sharp to Genet in Tigrinya. I knew that short guttural phrase meant Shut your mouth.
Genet ignored her. “This is the sign of my people,” she went on, “my father's tribe. If my father were alive he would have been so proud.”
Hema opened her mouth as if considering what to say. Her face softened a bit. “Your father isn't alive, child. By the grace of God, you are.”
Rosina frowned, not liking this much of an exchange in English.
“Come with me. Let me take care of that,” Hema said more gently.
I knelt beside Genet. “Come with us, please?”
Genet glanced nervously at her mother, then hissed, “You'll only make it harder for me. I wanted these marks as much as she did. Please, please go.”
GHOSH COUNSELED PATIENCE. “She isn't our daughter.”
“You're wrong, Ghosh. She ate at our table. We send her to school at our expense. When something bad is happening to her, we can't say, ‘She isn't our daughter.’”
I was stunned to hear what Hema said. It was noble. But if Hema saw Genet as my sister, this introduced complications as far as my feelings for Genet …
Ghosh said soothingly, “It's just to keep away the buda, the evil eye. Like the pottu on the forehead in India, darling.”
“My pottu comes off, darling. No blood is shed.”
A WEEK LATER, when Hema and Ghosh came home from work, they heard Rosina's wailing soliloquy, loud as ever, no different than when theyd left for work that morning. She bemoaned fate, God, the Emperor, and chastised Zemui for leaving her.
“That's it,” Hema said. “The poor child will go mad. Are we going to stand by while that happens?”
Hema gathered Almaz, Gebrew, W.W., Ghosh, Shiva, and me. En masse we went to Rosina's door and pushed it open. Hema grabbed Genet by the arm and brought her into our house, leaving the rest of us to pacify Rosina who screamed to the world that her daughter was being abducted.
BEHIND THE CLOSED DOOR of Hema's bedroom, we could hear the sounds of Genet in the tub. Hema came out to get milk and asked Almaz to slice up papaya and pour lemon and sugar over it. Soon Almaz disappeared into the bedroom and stayed there.
An hour later, Hema and Genet emerged arm in arm. Genet was in a sequined yellow blouse and a glittering green skirt—parts of Hema's Bharatnatyam dance outfit. Her hair was pulled back off her forehead, and Hema had darkened her eyes with a kohl pencil. Genet stood regal, happy, her head high, her carriage that of a queen who'd been unshackled and restored to her throne. She was my queen, the one I wanted by my side. I was so proud, so drawn to her. How could she ever be my sister when she was already something else to me? Hema's glittering green sari matched Genet's colors. We almost missed the sight of Almaz, ducking away to the kitchen, her eyes darkened, her lips red, blush on her cheeks, and huge dangling earrings framing that strong face.
The five of us piled into the car, Genet in the backseat between me and Shiva. At the Merkato Hema got a new set of clothes for Genet. It was Christmas and Diwali and Meskel all rolled into one.
We finished up at Enrico's. Genet sat across from me, smiling at me as she licked her ice cream. Hesitantly at first, but then gathering speed, she chattered away. If she'd been brainwashed as Hema said, her brain was drying out.
I picked my moment, having scouted the obstacles under the table. I loved her so much, but I hadn't forgotten the indignity of her visit to my bed not two weeks before, and the wet present she left me. I loved the image of her hovering over me, a moment of such rare beauty. But I wanted to erase the wet part.
I kicked her shin savagely with my toe cap. She managed not to make a sound, but the pain showed in her face and in the tears that sprung to her eyes. “What's the matter?” Ghosh said.
She managed to say, “I ate my ice cream too fast.”
“Ah! Ice-cream headache. Strange phenomenon. You know, that is something we ought to study, don't you think, Hema? Is it a migraine equivalent? Is everyone susceptible? What is its average duration? Are there complications?”
“Darling,” Hema said, kissing him on the cheek, such a rare display of affection in a public place, “of all the things you've wanted to study, you've finally found one I'd love to study with you. I'm assuming it will involve lots of ice cream?”