“You are turning so red! Are you all right? Oh, bless me, Mary … blessed Gabriel and the saints … you are still a virgin, aren't you?”
I nodded sheepishly “Why are you crying?” I asked.
She would only shake her head, studying my face while swiping at her eyes. At last, holding my cheeks in her hands, she said, “I am crying because it's so beautiful.”
“It isn't beautiful, Tsige. It's stupid.”
“No, it's not,” she said.
“I saved myself for Genet. Yes, I know—ridiculous. But then when she and Shiva … I threw myself into my studies. The worst part is I still loved her. Shiva didn't. I loved her. I felt responsible when she almost died. Can you believe that? Shiva slept with her, and I felt responsible? Then, when she and her friends stole that plane, she betrayed me again. She never worried what might happen to me or Hema or Shiva. But at least at that moment, on the day I left Ethiopia, I was free of her. When I came here, I tried to forget her. I hoped she was dead in that stupid war—her damn war. Now I find she's here. Maybe I should leave the country, Tsige. Go to Brazil. Or India. I don't want to be on the same continent as that woman.”
“Stop it, Marion. Don't talk foolishly. How much tej did you drink? This is a big country and you're a big man. Forget about her! Look where you are and look where she is. She's in jail, for God's sake!” She touched my hair, and then she pulled me to her bosom. “You are the kind of man that women dream about.”
I was aroused. There was nothing about my life that I could hide from her, even if I wanted to. Not my shame, not my secrets, not my embarrassment.
She kissed me on my lips, a brief exploratory brush first, then a leisurely probing kiss. I could feel the adrenaline pouring out of me, the reserves of unused, stockpiled testosterone announcing their availability. So this is how it is going to happen, I thought. On the day I pass my surgical boards. How fitting. My hands reached for her.
She sighed and pulled back, pushing me upright, then straightening her hair. Her expression was serious, like that of a clinician making a pronouncement after the detailed physical exam.
“Wait, my Marion. You've saved yourself all these years. That is not a small thing. I want you to go home. After you have thought about it, if you want me, I will be here. You can come back here or we can go away, go on a trip together. Or I will come to New York and we will take a beautiful hotel room.” She read the disappointment on my face, the rejection. “Don't be sad. I am doing this out of love for you. When you have something this precious, you must think carefully how you give it away. I'll understand if you don't give it to me. If you choose me, I will be honored, and I will honor you. Now, I'll get a taxi to take you. Go, my sweet man. Go with God. There is no one else like you.”
This is my life, I thought, as my taxi slogged through heavy traffic and inched through the tunnel to Logan Airport. I have excised the cancer from my past, cut it out; I have crossed the high plains, descended into the desert, traversed oceans, and planted my feet in new soil; I have been the apprentice, paid my dues, and have just become master of my ship. But when I look down, why do I see the ancient, tarred, mud-stained slippers that I buried at the start of the journey still stuck to my feet?
50. Slit the Thew
NOW THAT I HAD the income of an attending surgeon, I bought a duplex at one end of a row of such units in Queens. The roofline above the dormer window on one side was peaked like an eyebrow, and it cast a proprietary gaze over an overgrown wedge of land, thick with maples. In summer, I put my jasmine pots on the little patio and I grew salad staples in a tiny garden. In winter, I brought the jasmine indoors while the empty wire cages outside stood as memorials to the succulent, blood-red tomatoes the earth had given up. I painted walls; I repaired roof shingles; I installed bookshelves. Uprooted from Africa, I was satisfying a nesting impulse. I'd found my version of happiness in America. Six years had gone by, and though I should have visited Ethiopia, somehow I could never quite break free.
One day, when coming out of an ice-cream shop, a tall elegantly dressed black woman, her leather coat dancing above her ankles, brushed past me. I held the door for her, and as she slid past, an intense disquiet came over me. She turned back to look at me, smiling. Another evening, while driving back through Manhattan from a trauma conference in New Jersey, a streetwalker caught my eye as she stepped out from under an awning near the Holland Tunnel. She was ghost lit by car headlamps and reflections off the puddles. She tit-flashed me in the rain. Or I imagined she did. I felt the disquiet again, like the hint of something afire, but one doesn't know where. I circled the block, but she was gone.
At home, I prepared for the next day's work. I could have gone into private practice when I finished my five-year residency, or else I could have gone to some other teaching institution. But I felt a great loyalty to Our Lady. And now, Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio and Walter Reed in Washington were sending us a few of their senior surgical residents. In peacetime, we provided the closest thing to a war zone, a place where they could hone their skills. I was Our Lady's Head of Trauma; we were blessed with new resources and more personnel. There was no reason for me to be unhappy. But that night, with a fire going in the grate, I felt restless, as if a paralysis would soon set in if I didn't take certain measures.
That weekend, I decided my life needed a dimension that did not involve work. I looked over the Times for events, readings, openings, plays, lectures, and other matters of interest. I forced myself to leave the house on Saturday and again on Sunday.
THE FOLLOWING FRIDAY, I came home after work and deposited my briefcase and the mail in my library. In the kitchen, I lit the candle, set the table, and warmed up the last portion of a chicken casserole that I had cooked the previous Sunday from a Times recipe.
There was a knock on the door.
I panicked.
Had I invited someone over for dinner and forgotten? Other than Deepak coming over once, no one had ever been here. Could it be that Tsige from Boston had decided to take matters into her own hands, since I had failed to call her? I'd picked up the receiver a dozen times, and then lost courage. Or could this be Thomas Stone knocking? I hadn't told him where I lived, but he could have found out easily from Deepak.
I looked through the peephole.
In that convex fish-eye image, I saw eyes, a nose, cheekbones, lips … My brain tried to juggle and rearrange the parts to come up with a face and a name.
It wasn't Stone or Deepak or Tsige.
There was no mistaking who it was.
She turned to leave, went down the two steps.
I could have watched her walk away.
I opened the door. She stood frozen, her body facing the street, her face turned back to the door. She was taller than I recalled, or perhaps it was that she was thinner. She looked to see that it was me, then she dropped her gaze to a spot near my left elbow. This allowed me to study her at will, to decide whether to slam the door on her.
Her hair was straightened, lank, without benefit of ribbons or bows or even a good combing. The cheekbones were intact, more prominent than ever, as if to better buttress those oval, slanting eyes which were her prettiest feature. Even without makeup, hers would always be a stunning face. Although it was summer, she wore a long wool coat tied tight around the waist, and she hugged herself as if she were cold. She stood there motionless, like a small animal caught invading the territory of a predator, paralyzed and unable to move.