Aregash never said so to him, but she understood that and more. She knew to never steal small, meaningless amounts of money and make her employers suspicious. That was why she did what she did one Sunday shortly after New Year’s Day, while Helen and Dawit were out visiting relatives. She was at home alone watching ETV, a show about a doctor who removed tattoos. She froze at the mention of that dreaded word that always lingered in the back of her mind: nikisat. As the doctor explained the technology behind it and a woman gave her testimony showing her spotless cheeks, chin, and neck, Aregash touched her own nikisat. She wanted to remove it so much that she had noticeably scarred her face, trying to scrape it off with her nails, to undo what her family had done to her in Gojjam when she was a little girl. For her, to be free from the tattoo was to be a presentable woman: less of an Aregash, more of a Meron. As long as she had it, she had to compensate for it.
While she was writing down the doctor’s name in barely legible handwriting, there was a knock at the door. It was a visitor for Helen and Dawit. Aregash sat the guest down in the living room and went to call Helen on the phone. When Helen told her the visitor was her uncle, Aregash insisted the man have lunch and she dished up doro wot and the feresegna. After he left, Aregash spotted a shiny something on the center table. She picked it up and marveled at it up close. It was a gold Lion of Judah ring. More than four grams, she thought, weighing it in her palm — she could easily get two thousand for it. That evening, Helen almost flew into a rage when she couldn’t find the feresegna, thinking that Aregash had secretly eaten it.
“I served it to your uncle today at lunch!”
Helen held her forehead. “But that was for Dawit! It is his favorite and he’s always the one who eats it!”
Aregash said nothing.
“And you know that!” Helen snapped.
“What if we told Gashie Dawit this doro didn’t have a feresegna?” Aregash asked.
Helen stared at her.
“Or, let me tell him that the housemaid should get the backbone sometimes.”
Helen couldn’t help but laugh.
Aregash slowly took out the gold ring from her apron’s front pocket. “Helen, your uncle left this on the table today. I think he took it off when I came with water for his hands and forgot to put it back on.”
Taking the ring, Helen forgot about the feresegna and thought how blessed she was to have such a trustworthy housemaid.
The Saturday Meron disappeared with the 35,000 birr from Helen’s closet, Helen had returned home from the hair salon, her hair shiny and straight, to find the apartment door open. She immediately realized something was wrong. Meron was always very careful and would never even leave the windows open if she went out. Helen called out for her, searching the kitchen and even the bathroom, but Meron was nowhere in the apartment. She went into the bedroom and saw the bottom of her closet. The drawer was open all the way, and she already knew she had been robbed before looking inside.
Helen rushed to her cell phone and called Meron, hoping to hear her voice saying, Hello, Helen, I was out shopping. I’m on my way back. But Meron’s phone rang and rang and there was no answer. Then Helen called Dawit. Sorry, the subscriber’s phone you dialed cannot be reached at this time. It was the annoying operator again, who terribly mispronounced the word “dialed.” She went to the kitchen and looked inside the big plastic bag that Meron used as her suitcase. It was crammed with useless items, some of which Helen herself had thrown in the trash: old packaging, dried pens, and a German housewares catalog. She pulled out old, cheap clothes that were flimsy and filthy. She examined the folds of the mattress and found only dirty underwear. Then, along with some papers, she came across a Kebele ID. She regarded the black-and-white image and the name written with a typewriter — Aregash Kitaw. She then found a passport-size photo of a man. His appearance was jarring: an awkward diamond-shaped face with the traditional cross tattoos on his temples and his broad, almost flat hairless head. She ran back to her closet and tried to sort through the thousand thoughts crowding her mind. She wondered if maybe Dawit had deposited the money in the bank because he’d found out she was going to buy him the latest iPhone as a you-deserve-it-although-we-can’t-afford-it birthday gift. But she knew Dawit hadn’t taken the money. Meron had grabbed it while Helen was out at the hair salon, her closet key still in the door lock.
Every birr of the 35,000 was already accounted for: 6,000 was for the iPhone, 3,500 was for church and tithe, and the rest was strictly to go to her savings account. Helen didn’t know who else to call. She kept redialing Dawit’s number while considering the worst. They would have no savings, Dawit would not get his iPhone, and she wondered if you had to pay tithe on stolen money. She couldn’t call the police because they wouldn’t be much help — she had a better chance trying to catch the thief herself. The police you go to later, to formalize things. Helen tried hard to think where Meron could be with her money.
Then her phone rang. It was Dawit.
“I got your message. What is it?”
“Dawit! You won’t believe it. Meron is not Meron. Her name is Aregash and she’s just robbed me!”
Long silence. Then: “What did she take?”
“She took the 35,000 birr from my drawer in the closet!”
Silence again. “When was this? Didn’t you see her leave?”
She told him how it happened. “But she can’t be far, it’s less than a half hour since she left.”
“You can’t be sure of that,” Dawit dismissed her.
“I am. I called right before I left the hair salon and told her to make shiro, and she has.”
“All right, I’m coming home. Where does she go when she goes on leave?”
“I don’t know.”
Aregash decided to take the main road because it was safer than the shortcut Helen had suggested when Derib first said to meet him at Fantastic Hotel. She had woken up early and bathed the first day when she went on leave. She had gotten dressed in her best clothes and asked Helen where Fantastic Hotel was, because Derib had said to her when they made an appointment: “It’s next to Fantastic Hotel. Ask anyone. They will show you.”
That day, Helen had sensed what was going on, remembering how it was in her early days with Dawit, how much she wanted to look pretty. So she searched in her closet for something that would fit Meron. “Take these and try them,” Helen had said, handing her a bag of clothes and black leather flats.
After leaving the apartment with the money, Aregash had walked rapidly out of the gated compound and crossed the city railway track, oblivious to the eyes following her with curiosity, feeling warm and full at the knowledge of all those green 100-birr notes in one place.
The distance to the pension felt far because she kept thinking about her next steps. After meeting Derib there, they would have to plan what to do next and then run away. At the pension, she checked herself into room number five and locked the metal door. Derib would arrive soon. She looked out the window and drew the curtains shut before she pulled out the four stacks of money from her underwear and sat on the bed. She was shivering a little from both excitement and nervousness. The concrete walls and cement floor of the room made her feel safe. She had to count each bill to figure out how much it was. She had never been to a bank and was disappointed when the final stack of fifties was 5,000 and not 10,000 like the others.