Cutting for Stone

hard, they can't flower again. I remember she told me she got sick in the field. She got sick of the fighting, too, I think. She had the baby. Some women she knew in New York had a job for her and offered to help take care of the baby boy. So I didn't really have to do anything for her.”

“My God,” I said, sinking back into the sofa. I was glad I didn't know of this before, glad I didn't know she was in New York. “Is she still there?”

“No.” Tsige hesitated, as if she wasn't sure whether to tell me the rest. “There were lots of rumors. What I heard is … she met a man and they got married. Something happened. She almost killed him. I don't know exactly why or how. All I know is that she's in prison. Her baby was given up for adoption …” Tsige saw the shock on my face. “I'm sorry. I thought you knew all this … I could find out if she is still in jail.”

“No!” I shook my head. “You don't understand. I don't want to ever see her again,” I said. I don't want to see her other than to spit in her face, I thought.

“But she was your own sister.”

“No! Don't say that,” I said sharply.

We sat there in silence. If Tsige found my reaction unexpected, I couldn't blame her. I had to wait a few minutes for the turmoil in me to subside.

“Tsige,” I said, at last, reaching for her hand. “I'm sorry. I must explain. You see, Genet was not my sister. She was the love of my life.”

Tsige was shocked. “You were in love with your own sister?”

“She's not my sister!”

“I am sorry. Of course.”

“What does it matter, Tsige? If she was my sister or not my sister, either way I was in love with her. I couldn't change what I felt for her. We were going to marry after we finished medical school …”

“What happened?”

“My own brother betrayed me. She betrayed me.” This was so hard to say. “They were pillows for each other,” I said, using an Amharic expression.

I realized Id just told Tsige what I'd never told anyone else, not even Hema. I'd come close to telling Thomas Stone in the restaurant, but I hadn't. There was such relief now in the telling. I left nothing out—my being falsely accused, Genet's genital mutilation, Rosina's death, Hema's suspicion that I was responsible. In six years at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, with all the close friends I had made—Deepak, B.C., various medical students—not one of them had I told this tale.

Tsige s hand was over her mouth, her eyes showing her astonishment and empathy. After a while, she put her hand down and shook her head sadly. “Your brother wanted to sleep with me,” Tsige said. She grinned when she saw my jaw drop. “Oh, yes. You both were young then, fourteen or fifteen. Not too young, though. Shiva was so direct. ‘How much to sleep with you?’ “

She laughed at the audacity of this, gazing out of the window, her mind conjuring up that faraway time.

“Did he?” I said at last, my throat so dry that the words could have set fire to the tejin my stomach. She had no idea how important her answer was to me.

“Did he what?”

“Sleep with you?”

“Oh, you sweet thing. No!” She pinched my cheek. “You should see your expression. No, no.” I let out the breath I had been holding. “Don't you know that if it had been you, it would have been different? If you'd ever asked … I owe you, Marion. I still owe you.”

I was sure I was blushing. As quickly as Genet had appeared in my head, she had disappeared. “You don't owe me anything, Tsige. And I'm sorry, I never should've asked you that—it's personal, your business.”

“Marion, you must have lots of girlfriends. A surgeon in New York! How many nurses share your pillow, eh? Where are you going? Why are you standing? What's the matter?”

“Tsige, it is late, I'd better—”

She pulled me firmly down, so that I landed almost on top of her. She held me. The scent of her body and of her perfume had shot up my nostrils. My eyes were on her throat, her chin, her bosom. I had thought of her many a night in the house-staff quarters at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, never imagining that I might really touch her. I was a board-certified general surgeon, but now I felt like a pimply adolescent.

“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