"There Is No Me Without You" Excerpt
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It was early evening. Slender and tentative as a fawn, Meskerem tiptoed into the house and peered around, but then her grief drowned out her curiosity; her brown lips trembled and turned down at the corners; she threw her arms across her face and wailed. Genet, flipping through an old magazine in the front room, was bored by the display, as if she couldn't believe she was supposed to spend her evening listening to this.
Selamawit's first impulse was to pick up Meskerem and give her a grand welcoming hug; but the thinner, grief-stricken, same-age girl would have none of it and fought her way free. Meskerem was newly orphaned and was holding on to a tiny bit of hope that her mother, Yeshi, would recover and come find her. Everyone and everything else in the world — Haregewoin, Selamawit, Genet, the house, the car, the compound — screamed to her that they were not Yeshi and had never belonged to Yeshi. They didn't exist for her.
Haregewoin drew Meskerem into her own bedroom, dressed the child in a flannel nightgown, tucked her into her own bed, and brought her a hot cup of tea. Genet loudly sighed with restlessness every time Haregewoin hurried past on missions of mercy for Meskerem. Selamawit bounced in and out of the room, excited to have been given a new friend. "What happened to her mother?" she asked loudly.
"What happened to her father?
"Why coudn't anyone else take care of her?
"Is she going to stay here forever?
"What's wrong with her?"
"Genet!" called Haregewoin in desperation, and the sullen older girl drew Selamawit away from the bedroom.
Finally Abel came home and the two teens made themselves something to eat in the kitchen, with plenty of laughter and cigarette smoke. Selamawit now annoyed them: "Are you boyfriend and girlfriend?...Are you going to get married?...Who's older, him or you?"
In the night, Meskerem woke up missing her mother. She began crying before she was even awake, a high nasal sound like a siren in the distance. Her anguish woke up Haregewoin and made the old lady cry, too. In the darkness she found and stroked the child's head. Meskerem's hair was a glossy and tangled mass like seaweed. Haregewoin pushed herself up against the wall and took thin Meskerem into her arms; she rocked her there in the bed, singing softly to her. She could smell on the child's breath the sweet grapes she'd eaten at dinner and the sugar she'd dumped into her tea. When Meskerem relaxed back into sleep, Haregewoin rolled her onto the pillow, but was left wide-awake. Carefully, so as not to wake Meskerem and Selamawit, and not to disturb Genet on the bedroll on the floor, she slipped off her bed.
She pulled her cotton shawl from a chair and wrapped it around her, then stepped out the front door. She breathed in the mountain air and closed her eyes. "Thank you," she said to the universe. Hadn't God, hadn't Atetegeb [Editors' note: Haregewoin's daughter], sent her these children? Another Suzie, another Atetegeb? A replica of the daughter she had, a replica of the daughter she had lost?
Meskerem had entered straight into her heart of hearts, her holy of holies. Meskerem looked to her just like Atetegeb.
Suddenly there were errands to run, pencils and notebooks to buy for school, and socks and sneakers and toothbrushes. Meskerem and Selamawit rode with her in the car.
"Call me Amaye," Haregewoin urged both little girls.
Selamawit complied immediately, with a huge smile.
But the request made Meskerem's eyes fill with tears. The word amaye belonged only to Yeshi; she would never speak that word again unless to her own poor mother.
My lungs are filling with air again, Haregewoin thought. She grew rotund again. She used a hair dye to restore a shiny blackness to her head, befitting a mother of young children. She visited the neighborhood school, introduced herself to teachers. She chatted with other mothers in the lane. She bought knickknacks, doilies, dolls, to make the little house cheerier. She started over.
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