Tizita Read online

  Father Wendimu, too, beamed at her, then turned to me. “I think you can trust her instinct, young man. Rubbing that belly of hers like that, I’ve never known her to be wrong.” He immediately stooped to swoop up one of the children and turn him upside down, making little clucking sounds to accompany the boy’s delighted laughter. The other children shouted to be given a turn, and he complied with a few of them. Putting the last one down, he felt around his back, groaning overdramatically.

  “Mintifeligialesh?” What do you want? “Can’t you see I am an old man? My back is breaking. You should be carrying me!”

  The children laughed as if they had never heard anything so funny. I found myself feeling sorry for my erstwhile traveling partner Bertie the Episcopalian. It would take him years, if ever, to achieve the ease with such fate-trampled children that came as naturally as shitting to Father Wendimu. I marveled at the man’s seemingly endless fund of good cheer.

  But then I saw him shoot a look of what seemed to be raw grief at Makeda, and more stinging still, saw her return it. For a brief moment, the sky went blacker than that cloud-stricken expanse of my boyhood, but I was still waiting for the thunder.

  It would not come for several hours. When it did, I would wish I had never returned to the land of my birth.

  But fate had to soften me up for the blow. Until then, there was a feast to take part in, sitting in the middle of the cluster of children who clung to Makeda and Father Wendimu like a cloud of buzzing bees.

  I’d followed them all past a thatch-roofed tukul smelling strongly of goat into the largest of the trio of rough dwellings on the property. There seemed to be no other adults here besides the one woman who emerged from a room to the left with a copper pot and basin. I introduced myself, and she mumbled something that sounded like “Adey Gatimo” before slipping past me. I noted that she wore her shama medegdeg-style, with her shawl’s shiny tassels hanging down, which I knew meant she’d recently lost someone close to her. The day now coming to a lingering close had been hot and humid, and my mouth began to water as the smells of onion, cloves, cinnamon and a host of other spices widened my nostrils. There was a wild rush to the score of stools around the worn mesab, whose hourglass wicker design was a far cry from the tall, rectangular pine dining table my parents had purchased at the Rose Bowl swap meet not long after we made the move to Pasadena; Enat had polished it to a shiny patina that Fleur’s mother had groaned to see, claiming, “But, my dear, it’s meant to look rustic!”

  But after we all said a simple grace and cleaned our hands under Adey Gatimo’s poured water, the injera and rich red wat and vegetable-crammed alecha made me feel entirely at home. Father Wendimu gestured toward the injera, indicating that, as host, he was forgoing his prerogative to serve himself first. I tugged off a square of the gray flatbread and scooped up some wat that I figured had probably been made freshly from a relative of one of the scores of chickens roaming free outside. I assumed that the larger portion of food was a milder alecha for the children.

  As a blast of red chili burst open on my tongue, I wasted not another moment before tugging another piece from the pancake of the edible tablecloth. I was starving. It dawned on me that I’d only had a Coke to sustain me for most of the day. But then I noticed that Makeda and Father Wendimu hadn’t yet touched food to lip, tending instead to the younger children, making sure they had their own portions, straightening limbs so they didn’t fall off their stools or lean too close to their partners. Father Wendimu took a moment to tenderly wipe the rather unappetizing drippy nose of one of the smaller boys across the table with a handkerchief he’d whipped out with the ease of familiarity from his trouser pocket. I saw the serving woman step in again with her jug and an expression of forbearance, as if she’d had to do this mid-meal a million times before.

  It was a lively gathering, the children jabbering so quickly in Amharic I had to struggle to keep up with them, especially after downing a bottle of Hakim Stout to soothe my burning mouth. Our native tongue was one I rarely spoke myself, having learned early on that my parents preferred to use it with each other when they wanted to keep something from me. You’d think I would have been nosier, but I was a boy eager to fit into his new world, and being burdened by the accent of my heritage was the last thing I needed. Or so I’d thought then.

  As the supper wound down, with me surreptitiously loosening the top button of my slacks to accommodate the results of my gluttony, the old woman took the now quiescent children away, presumably for their baths and bed, the older ones leading or actually carrying the littler ones in the age-old way of large families.

  Father Wendimu motioned for me to follow him, while Makeda stood to clear the table. I offered to help, but she held up a hand. “No, please. I’ve got to tuck them in. You go on ahead. I won’t be long.” It was hard to leave her. I would have been quite happy to watch her sing those babies to sleep.

  Suddenly I was overcome with a memory so real that I lost sense of where I was, narrowly averting stepping on Father Wendimu’s heels. I was seeing Makeda’s mother Genet tucking Makeda and me into my friend’s stone-hard bed, softened only by Makeda herself and a layering of flannel blankets, one mulberry, one copper, one gold. We were quite young. And very mischievous. As soon as Genet sang us into what she thought was sleep with her slightly off-key version of Ehsururu, Makeda whipped out a piece of injera she’d plucked earlier from the table and hidden in her pajama pocket. She tore off a ragged half of it for me, and we proceeded with an old game, rolling little teff pancakes into peas that we stuck into our ears and nostrils.

  It just so happened that I had spied my parents performing intriguing acrobatics on their bed the previous week, so I suggested we see where else we could stick our rolled dough. I instructed her what to do. Obediently, she pushed away the covers and completely unselfconsciously spread her spindly brown legs. My observation of my parents had stimulated something strangely compelling in me, and I sensed that we were about to cross into a whole new territory. So, too, the ancient Adam must have felt when Eve dangled before him her vernal, nectarous fruit. Makeda put her fingers to the small cleft between her thighs and stretched it wide enough for me to lodge several small teff balls inside. Maybe it was the tightness of the fit, or perhaps she was reacting to my breathing, which had become quicker than usual, and my unusual silence, because she made a nervous little face, and I wasn’t sure if she liked it.

  We heard a sound coming from the corridor and, suddenly frantic, Makeda hissed, “Take them out.” So I scraped away at the hallway just inside the tiny, purplish doors of hers, my gaze traveling back and forth between those odd little lips and an unreadable cast to her familiar face.

  It occurred to me now that her face had borne, all those years ago, the same mysterious St. Maryum Sion expression she’d displayed today out in the yard. I shook my head to push away the provocative memory. Father Wendimu had stopped and was gesturing for me to join him at the entry to a second building. “Not proper etiquette for a man in this country,” he explained, “to sleep so close to the women and girls.” We walked past a goat and her kid, who actually put its forelegs up on my chest until the priest admonished sharply, “Menelik!” I shot him a look of surprise before he motioned me to follow him through a shallow doorway to a small room with a single bed made up with a white cotton sheet and a few colorful pillows, a dresser, and a straight-backed chair, to which he motioned me.

  There was a small, yellowed basin in the corner. If the priest had taken me by surprise with his goat’s name, I was gobsmacked when he offered me a pinch of khat. I shook my head. Only slightly sheepishly did he mumble, “Just use it for special occasions, you know. Truth be told, this batch is less strong than bunna. Buy it from the shopkeeper down the road. The man’s got five kids and a sister with AIDS to feed. You probably bought that old used map from him.” I looked down at my shirt pocket, where the mangled edge of my map was sticking up. “Remind me to give you a more current one before you hit the road.�
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  I did accept his offer of a Nyala cigarette, something Fleur would never forgive me for if she’d known. Thinking of her, I felt a pang all the way from my heart to the groin that I couldn’t begin to convince myself was heartburn. It was as if someone had given the hanging man a shove. He dangled precariously over a vast chasm.

  “I suppose you think all this is odd from an ex-priest. You’re probably wondering how I came to be a priest at all. Perhaps you’ll be less surprised if I tell you that it was the only guarantee as a child that I’d eat, and my mother had put great thought into which of her children was worth offering to the church. Since I was the resident bleeding heart of our family, I drew the short or long straw, depending on your point of view. Being an ugly man with two undescended testicles, it turned out to be a good match. Celibacy was the least of my sacrifices. It wasn’t why I left the priesthood, by the way.” He squinted at me, then laughed as he stuffed another small leaf into his mouth. “I figure God will forgive me a little mood-lifter, given what Makeda and I have to witness each day.” He shook his head. “These children have been through much, deserve more, but our resources are very limited. I can’t tell you how infrequently we manage to get a doctor out here. And some of our AIDS orphans are HIV-positive themselves.”

  I winced. “That’s terrible. But if you’ve got your khat, what’s Makeda’s comfort, then?”

  He laughed, leaning back against a small yellow and green embroidered pillow on the bed. “Comfort? Ah, my young man, you may be well on your way to becoming a doctor, but you clearly don’t know much about women. This work is Makeda’s flowing breast, the smile of a child her full reward.”

  “Yes, but what about her sacrifice? She could have her own children to nourish and watch grow. And,” I added wistfully, “a man to help her do it.”

  But at this moment Makeda glided into the room. She and I both caught the look the priest shot her. She looked away. Father Wendimu stood up.

  “There’s something I ...” he mumbled, fishing around the top of his dresser. “Where did I? The iPod that last set of adoptive parents gave me. I can’t seem to find it.”

  Makeda gave him a long-suffering grin and shook a finger. “Father, if you can’t remember to hide your iPod away, I can’t help you. It’s probably Dawit. Mark my words, that boy will be a seasoned thief long before his eighteenth birthday.” She made a half-turn. “Let me go see.”

  “No, no,” Father Wendimu rose suddenly to head her off. “The boy has so much trouble sleeping. Don’t bother him. We can deal with it tomorrow.”

  Makeda’s eyes flashed. “He has trouble sleeping because he also knows how to ‘liberate’ pinches of that khat of yours.”

  Father Wendimu shifted his posture guiltily, nearly falling against the iPod player on his dresser.

  Makeda sighed. “Forget it. I shouldn’t put you in the position of lying about your khat habit. Who would you confess to?” She swept her hand across a nonexistent wrinkle on the bed. “This place is a bottomless pit of need. Why should I begrudge you a little relief?” I had the distinct impression that, of the two of them, Father Wendimu wasn’t exactly the one in charge. “So what did you want to play?” she asked him, wrists pressed winsomely against her hipbones.

  Father Wendimu revealed a slight dimple in his cheek with his sideways grin. “Tizita?”

  She threw back her head and had a nice, long laugh. “You are spreading it a bit thick, aren’t you? If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to tempt poor Assefa into working with us.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Father Wendimu replied in a falsely affronted tone.

  “Now you’re being dishonest again. Didn’t you say just yesterday that you’d give anything to have someone on staff with real medical knowledge? Then along comes our old neighbor Assefa, intern now at one of the best medical schools in the U.S., and you mean to tell me the thought hadn’t crossed your mind?”

  She turned on her heels and walked out.

  Father Wendimu looked up at me in appeal and lifted his shoulders. “What did I do?”

  But Makeda was back in no time with the device. A faint line of perspiration called even greater attention to her cushiony lips. I had to look away.

  I was disconcerted to recognize the version of Tizita that she played. I had a couple of Teddy Afro CDs myself, purchased with Fleur on a shabby stretch of Pico Boulevard. We had discovered the hole-in-the-wall reggae record store when we took her mother’s high-end vacuum to a Miele repair shop improbably located on a corner of a rundown African American neighborhood.

  The melody was intoxicating, as was the very fact of listening to it on an iPod speaker here in my native land. Ironically, it felt like a message from an alternate universe. Fleur and I had made love to the song. She had gotten so carried away by it that she’d made me lie still on my back so that she could trail her silky hair up and down my chest, belly, and thighs before circling her lips around my member. She made me play it all over again while I licked her little man until she climaxed, releasing a long wail like an orphaned dik-dik.

  It was no accident that tizita was regularly compared to the American blues. I’d explained to Fleur as we’d lain in bed after our lovemaking that Tizita wasn’t just the title of a song, but referred, as well, to any Ethiopian or Eritrean song with a particularly distinctive musical style or qenet. When I added that the word tizita roughly translated into English as a cross between memory and longing, she’d murmured languorously, “I think it sounds like a cross between sorrow and ecstasy.”

  My reverie was interrupted by Father Wendimu’s dismissive grunt, “He’s out of jail now, isn’t he, Teddy Afro?”

  I saw Makeda’s eyes flash. “Yes. I know you disagree, but he never should have been sent there in the first place. The whole thing was a sham. His real crime was taking a stand for peace and unity.”

  The hanging man could relate to that. He could use a little unity himself.

  Father Wendimu scratched his armpit and yawned. “Well, I don’t know if he’s a good man or a bad man. But I can tell you that nobody sings Tizita like Seyfou Yohannes.” He beckoned me with his fingers, reminding me of nothing but England’s queen waving to the crowd from her car, and I followed him into a decent-sized closet, which seemed to contain fewer articles of clothing than stacks of L.P.’s. A rather battered old record player assumed pride of place atop what looked to be a tall plant stand. Father Wendimu had to stand on tiptoe to drop the needle onto the record that was already in place. I felt Makeda crowd in behind me.

  The three of us swayed together in that cramped closet, listening to a scratchy recording of Ethiopian blues by one of its masters. Seyfou’s version had a decidedly Arabic, undulating rhythm—like something sung on a camel, or to an unwinding snake. I could smell Makeda, her perfume a lush mélange of sweat, frankincense from the charcoal stove, dish soap, and something else—something like desire. Or dread. Father Wendimu seemed to sense the shift in energy. He pulled up the needle as soon as the last notes sounded. Nodding somberly, he gestured for us to return to the larger room.

  “I’ll leave you two children to talk. I know you have much to reminisce about.” He flicked a glance over to Makeda. “But don’t forget, our Assefa here didn’t come here for a vacation. Your intuitive belly or not, he’s going to want to locate that father of his.” He paused. “Besides, it’s clinic tomorrow morning.” I couldn’t escape the suspicion that his words were code for, “Don’t go too far, Makeda.” He was like a father to her. I could tell. But what had happened to her own father? And mother, for that matter?

  I hoped she hadn’t become an orphan herself.

  Chapter Six

  Fleur

  “OW!”

  “What is it, Fleuricita?” Ignacio shot me a solicitous glance from the striking array of Abraham Darbies he was tending.

  “Thorn.” I licked my thumb, then eyeballed it in dismay. “I think I managed to push it in pretty far.”

  T
ossing down his shears so he could remove his mud-caked glove, he crossed the lawn toward the Claire Austin I’d been pruning, murmuring, “Pobrecita. Let me see.”

  I let him have his way with my hand. While he turned it this way and that, I gave Claire Austin’s last few delicate white blooms a forgiving smile. Only under the gathering cloud of climate change would we be enduring such an unbelievable heat wave the day before Christmas. The previous summer had stayed June gloomish through October, and now the city was threatening rolling blackouts thanks to a million air conditioners whistling away at full speed.

  Ignacio sighed in exasperation. “You should have worn the gloves.”

  Embarrassed, I looked down at Mother’s perfectly manicured rye lawn, where I’d discarded the floral gardening gloves he’d brought out for me. They’d landed with fingertips pointing toward each other, as if in prayer. “I know, I know. Assefa tells me all the time how stubborn I am. But I like to actually feel what I’m touching. With the gloves on, I feel like I have too little control.”

  I, of all people, should have known that there are things over which we have no control. Rose thorns were probably somewhere near the top of the list. Affairs of the heart had to be pretty high up there, too. I’d tried telling myself that Assefa could no more forget the girl he’d grown up with in his first incarnation than I could my grandfather or Nana. Like the rhythm of our mother’s heartbeat, our earliest connections are root systems that nourish and define us.