“Speak for yourself, Marion,” she said.
“I did. Why can't we—I—go play?”
Shiva already had his cartridge loaded.
“Why? I'll tell you why. Because your school is nothing but play
Genet quietly took her seat.
“No,” I said. “This isn't fair. Besides, it won't help Shiva.”
“Marion, before I twist your ear—”
With that, I dashed out. I flew around one the corner of the house, gathering speed on the turn. At the second corner, I ran straight into Zemui's broad chest. My first thought was Hema had sent the military to get me.
“Cousin, where is the war?” Zemui said, smiling, peeling me free. His olive uniform was as crisp as ever, the belt, holster, and boots all brown and gleaming. As a reflex, he stomped his right foot and snapped a salute with enough vigor for his fingers to sail off.
Sergeant Zemui was the driver to a man who was now full colonel in the Imperial Bodyguard—Colonel Mebratu. Ghosh had saved his life in surgery years before. Colonel Mebratu was once under suspicion, but now he was in the Emperor's favor. He was both senior commander of the Imperial Bodyguard and liaison to the military attaches from Brit ain, India, Belgium, and America, all of whom had a presence in Ethio pia. The Colonel's job involved frequent diplomatic receptions and parties, not to mention the regular bridge nights at our place. Poor Zemui could only begin his long walk home to his wife and children when his boss's head was on the pillow and the staff car parked in the shed. The Colonel had assigned Zemui a motorcycle to make it easier for him to get back and forth. Since Zemui, who lived near Missing, didn't want to ruin his tires on the crude stone and shingle track that led to his shack, he got Ghosh's permission to park the bike under our carport. There his precious machine was sheltered from the elements and from vandals.
“Just the person I was hoping to see,” Zemui said. “What's the matter, my little master?”
“Nothing,” I said, suddenly embarrassed. My troubles seemed minor when talking to a soldier who'd just done his tour with the UN peacekeeping forces in the civil war in the Congo. “How come you're picking up your motorcycle so late?” I asked.
“The boss was at a party till four in the morning. When I got him home, the sun was coming up. He told me I could come back in the evening. Listen, come, sit down. I want you to read me this letter again.” He parked himself on the edge of the front porch, took the blue-and-red aerogram from his front pocket, and handed it to me. He took off his pith helmet to extract a half-smoked cigarette tucked carefully under one of the straps on the outside. The pith topee, in the manner of white explorers of old, was unique to the Imperial Bodyguard, recognizable at a distance.
“Zemui,” I said, “can I read it later? Hema is after me. I talked back to her. She'll cut off my tongue if she catches me.”
“Oh, that's serious. Of course we can do it later,” Zemui said, springing up. He put the letter away, but I could sense his disappointment. “Do you think Darwin got my letter by now?”
“I am sure his letter is coming. Any day.”
He saluted me and went on to the back of the house.
Darwin was a Canadian soldier who'd been wounded in Katanga; I'd read his letter to Zemui so often I knew it by heart. He said it was cold and snowing in Toronto. At times he was discouraged and he didn't know if he could ever get used to a wooden leg. “Are there women in Eytopia intrusted in a one-leg white man with a scard face? Ha-ha!” He did not have much, but if his pal Zemui ever needed anything, he, Darwin, would do it because he'd never forget how Zemui saved his life. I'd written back in English for Zemui, translating as best I could. I wondered how the two had conversed in the Congo. Zemui showed me a pinwheel gold pendant which he wore around his neck, a St. Bridget's cross. The wounded Darwin had pressed it on Zemui when they parted on the battlefield.
The sight of Rosina, peering back at me as Zemui walked toward her, made me start running again. I felt a vacuum where my brother should have been running next to me.
MY MOTHER'S GRAVE, with its halo of fresh cut apothecary blooms and its inscription of ?AFE in APM? OF JE?U? held no fascination for me. But in the autoclave room next to Operating Theater 3, I sensed her presence, a scent, a feel so linked to mine. That was where my feet took me. It wasn't the smartest choice as a place to hide.
I never understood Shiva's reluctance to visit this room. Perhaps he saw it as a betrayal of Hema, who had watched over his every breath, who had linked herself by a cord to his anklet. Coming here was one of the few things I did alone.
Seated in my mother's chair, the scent of Cuticura in the cardigan, I spoke to her, or perhaps I spoke to myself. I complained about injustice at home; I confessed my worst fear: that Hema and Ghosh might one day disappear, just as Stone and Sister were no longer in our lives. It was one reason I loitered around Missing's front gate—who was to say Thomas Stone might not come back? My fantasy was that on a sunny morning when the air was so crisp that you could hear it crackle, Gebrew would open Missing's gates, and instead of the stampede of patients, Thomas Stone would be standing there. The fact that I had no idea what he looked like, or what my mother looked like, was inconsequential to this fantasy. His eyes would fall on me. After a few seconds he would smile with pride.
I needed to believe that.
I RETURNED TO OUR BUNGALOW to face the music. There was music, all right, and the sight of Hema leading Genet and Shiva in dance. All three of them wore dance anklets, not Shiva's usual kind, but big leather thongs with four concentric rings of brass bells. They had moved the dining table against the wall. Indian classical music with a snappy tabla beat marked time. Hema had tucked her sari so that one loop ran between her legs, creating what looked like pantaloons. She'd taught Shiva and Genet a complex series of steps and poses in the time I'd been out. Arms in, arms out, arms together, pointing, dipping, drawing a bow, firing an imaginary arrow, the eyes looking this way and that, the feet sliding, a cymbal clash of anklets every time their heels thumped the floor. It hurt me to see this.
Shiva, Genet, and I had entered the world almost in unison. (Genet was a half step behind and a womb across from us, but she'd caught up.) As toddlers, we had freely traded milk bottles and pacifiers, much to Hema's dismay. Shiva's propensity to jump into buckets, puddles, or ditches full of water terrified the adults, who feared he'd drown. To keep him from deeper water, Matron purchased a Jolly Baby wading pool. Here the three of us splashed naked and posed for pictures that would embarrass us one day. Our first circus, our first matinee, our first dead body—we arrived at these milestones together. In our tree house, we'd picked at scabs until we found red, and then we took a blood oath that we Three Missketeers would stand together and admit no other.
Now, we'd arrived at another first: a separation. I stood outside, looking in. Hema beckoned me to join. She was no longer angry. Her forehead glinted with perspiration, strands of hair stuck to her cheeks. If she planned to punish me, perhaps she saw in my expression that it had already happened.
Genet, with an anklet, looked more feminine, more like a girl than the tomboy I knew. I never gave much thought to that sort of thing. In the games we played, she was like any boy. Now, as she danced, she was a step off, struggling; despite that she was graceful, extraordinarily so, as if the anklet had unlocked this quality in her. Even when she missed her cue, or bungled the turn, suddenly she was—and I couldn't help but notice—all girl.
My twin had no miscues. Hed learned the dance in a flash, I could see. He had a way of holding his chin high as if fearful that otherwise the curls he balanced on his head would slide off, and it made him seem taller, more upright than me. That mannerism of his was exaggerated in the dance. When Shiva was excited, his irises turned from brown to blue, and they were that way now as his heels hit the floor in unison with Hema's, and he matched her every dip and flourish. It was as if his anklet moved him, and that in copying the sound of Hema's anklets, the requisite movement of his body came about. I studied this lean, supple creature as if seeing him for the first time.
My brother who could draw anything from memory, who could juggle huge numbers in his head with ease, had now found a new vehicle for locomotion and a new language for his will to express itself, separate from me. I
