Cutting for Stone (37 page)

I didn't, but he spoke with such passion I wasn't about to stop him.

“I never knew my father, and so I thought he was irrelevant to me. My sister felt his absence so strongly that it made her sour, and so no matter what she has, or will ever have, it won't be enough.” He sighed. “I made up for his absence by hoarding knowledge, skills, seeking praise. What I finally understood in Kerchele is that neither my sister nor I realized that my father's absence
is
our slippers. In order to start to get rid of your slippers, you have to admit they are yours, and if you do, then they will get rid of themselves.”

All these years and I hadn't known this about Ghosh, about his father dying when he was young. He was like us, fatherless, but at least we had him. Perhaps he'd been worse off than we were.

Ghosh sighed. “I hope one day you see this as clearly as I did in Kerchele. The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more.
Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny
“

AFTER GHOSH LEFT,
I wondered if the army man was my pair of slippers. If so, they'd come back once already in the form of his brother. What form would they take next?

Just when my thoughts were coming in illogical sequences, a prelude to sleep, I felt someone lifting up the mosquito net. In the instant that I saw her, she was already sitting on my chest, pinning my arms down.

I could have thrown her off. But I didn't. I liked her body on mine and I liked the faint scent of charcoal and the frankincense that permeated her clothes. Maybe shed come to make up to me for being so rude before. She could ‘ve climbed in through one of the open windows.

In the light from the hallway, I could see the fixed smile on her face.

“So, Marion? Did you tell Ghosh about the thief?”

“If you were hiding here, you already know.”

Shiva, awake now, looked at the two of us, then rolled over, and closed his eyes.

“You almost told that officer, his brother.”

“I didn't. I was just surprised …,” I said.

“We think you told Ghosh and Hema.”

“Of course not. I wouldn't.”

“Why wouldn't you?”

“You know why. If it gets out, they'll hang me.”

“No, they will hang me and my mother for sure. You'll be to blame.”

“I dream about his face.”

“I do, too. And I kill him every night. I wish
I'd
shot him.”

“It was an accident.”

“If I'd killed him, I wouldn't call it an accident. If I'd killed him, we'd have no worries.”

“Easy for you to say because you didn't kill him.”

“My mother thinks you'll tell. We're worried about you.”

“What? Well, you tell Rosina not to worry.”

“It'll slip out one day and get us all killed.”

“Okay, stop. If you know I'll tell, why talk to me? Get off me now.”

She slid down so that her body was spread-eagled over mine. Her face hovered over me, and for one second I thought she was going to kiss me, which would have been very strange in the context of our exchange. I studied her eyes so close to mine, the blemish in the right iris, her breath on my face, sweet, pleasant. I could see the dangerous beauty she was going to turn into. I thought of the last time we were this close. In the pantry.

Her pupils dilated, her eyelids sagged down over the irises.

I felt something warm where her thighs were on top of mine, a spreading heat.

I felt fluid soak my pajamas. The air under the mosquito net filled with the scent of fresh urine. Now her eyes rolled up, showing only the whites, and she threw her head back. She shivered. Her neck was arched, the strap muscles taut. She looked down one last time. “That's so you don't ever forget your promise.” She jumped off and was gone before I could think of reacting. I reared up now, ready to chase after her, to tear her to pieces.

Shiva held me back, whether from his desire to be a peacemaker or to protect her, I couldn't say. His eyes were downcast and they managed not to look at me. I stood shaking with anger as Shiva stripped the bed. My pajama bottom was soaked; Shiva had been spared. In the bathroom Shiva ran the tub and I got in. Shiva sat on the commode, quiet but keeping me company. We did not exhange a word. Back in the bedroom I was putting on fresh pajamas when Ghosh came in.

“I saw your light. What happened?”

“An accident,” I said.

Shiva said nothing. The scent was unmistakable. I was ashamed. I could've told on Genet, but I didn't. I opened the window for a few minutes and then closed it.

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.

CHAPTER 30
Word for Words

S
IXTY 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?”

In the car, Genet showed me the big welt on her shin. “Are you done?” she said, quietly.

“No, that was just a warm-up. I have to repay you in kind.”

“You'll ruin my new clothes,” she said coyly, leaning against me. The scars at the ends of both eyebrows were still angry at the edges. Hema saw them as barbaric, but I thought they looked beautiful. I put my arm around Genet. Shiva looked on, curious as to what I would do next. Those slashes next to her eyes made her look preternaturally wise, because they were at the spot where people developed wrinkles when they aged. She grinned, and the number
11
s were exaggerated. I felt my heart racing, powerless. Who was this beauty? Not my little sister. Not even my best friend. Sometimes my opponent. But always the love of my life.

“So,” she said again, “seriously, are you done with your revenge?”

I sighed. “Yes, I'm done.”

“Good,” she said. She took my little finger and bent it back and would have snapped it if I didn't snatch it away.

GENET SLEPT IN A BED
made up for her in our living room. The next morning, before we went to school, Hema sent for Rosina. Shiva, Genet, and I snuck into the corridor to listen. I peeked, and I saw Rosina standing before Hema the way she'd stood before the army man.

“I expect to see you back in the kitchen, helping Almaz. And from now on, in the daytime, the door and window to your quarters stay open. Let some light and air in there.”

If Rosina was going to make claims on her daughter, this was the moment.

We held our breath.

She didn't say a word. She made a curt bow, and left.

WE FELL BACK
into our school routine: loads of homework, then Hemawork, which included penmanship, current affairs discussions, vocabulary, and book reports. Cricket for me and Shiva, and dance for Shiva and Genet. Many an evening Gosh bowled to us on a makeshift pitch on our front lawn. For a large man he had a delicate touch with the bat and taught us how to sweep, to drive, and to square-cut.

Shiva was, as of that year, exempt from school assignments, the result of Hema and Ghosh negotiating with his teachers at Loomis Town & Country. Both sides were relieved. Shiva didn't have to write an essay on the battle of Hastings if he saw no point to it. Loomis Town & Country would collect Shiva's fees and let him attend class, since he wasn't disruptive. Shiva didn't mind the ritual of school. The teachers knew us and they understood Shiva as well as one could understand Shiva. But just like Mr. Bailey, newly arrived from Bristol, some teachers had to discover Shiva for themselves. Bailey was the only teacher in LT&C's history to have a degree, and therefore he felt obliged to set a very high standard. Two-thirds of us failed the first math test. “One of you scored a perfect one hundred. But he or she didn't write a name on the paper. The rest of you were miserable.
Sixty-six
percent of you failed,” he exclaimed. “What do you think about that number?
Sixty-six!”

For Shiva, rhetorical questions were a trap. He never asked a question to which he knew the answer. Shiva raised his hand. I cringed in my seat. Mr. Bailey's eyebrow went up, as if a chair in the corner which he'd managed to ignore for a few months had suddenly developed delusions that it was alive.

“You have something to say?”

“Sixty-six is my second-favorite number,” Shiva said.

“Pray, why is it your second favorite?” said Bailey.

“Because if you take the numbers you can divide into sixty-six, including sixty-six, and add them up, what you have is a square.”

Mr. Bailey couldn't resist. He wrote down
1, 2, 3, 6, 11, 22, 33,
and
66
—all the numbers that went into
66
—and then he totaled. What he got was
144,
at which point both he and Shiva said, “Twelve squared!”

“That's what makes sixty-six special,” Shiva said. “It's also true of three, twenty-two, sixty-six, seventy—their divisors add up to a square.”

“Pray, tell us what's your favorite number,” Bailey said, no sarcasm in his voice anymore, “since sixty-six is your second favorite?”

Shiva jumped up to the board, uninvited, and wrote:
10,213,223.

Bailey studied this for a long while, turning a bit red. Then he threw up his hands in a gesture that struck me as very ladylike. “And pray, why would this number interest us?”

“The first four numbers are your license plate.” From Mr. Bailey's expression, I didn't think he was aware of this. “That's a coincidence,” Shiva went on. “This number,” Shiva said, tapping on the board with the chalk, getting as excited as Shiva allowed himself to get, “is the only number that describes itself when you read it. ‘One zero, two ones, three twos, and two threes!” Then my brother laughed in delight, a sound so rare that our class was stunned. He brushed chalk off his hands, sat down, and he was done.

It was the only bit of mathematics that stayed with me from that year. As for the student who scored one hundred percent?—whoever it was had drawn a picture of Veronica on the test paper in lieu of a name.

I mulled over our fates, especially the good fortune that let him skip homework. I suppose I understood. Since Shiva
couldn't
do or
wouldn't
do what was required of him, he was no longer required to do it. Since I could, I had to.

Shiva went to Version Clinic whenever our school schedule allowed. He'd managed to make his way into one of Hema's surgeries, a Cesarean section, and now he was hooked.
Gray's Anatomy
became his Bible, and he drew at a frenetic pace, pages of his drawings littering our room. His subject was no longer just BMW parts or Veronica but sketches showing the vulva and uterus and uterine blood vessels. To control the proliferation of paper, Hema insisted he draw in exercise books, which he did, filling page after page. You rarely saw Shiva without his
Gray's
in his hand.

Perhaps as a reaction to Shiva, I'd seek out Ghosh after school. I knew his haunts: Operating Theater
3
, Casualty, the post-op ward. My clinical education was gathering speed. Sometimes I assisted him with the vasectomies which he did in his old bungalow.