Cutting for Stone

seated on the steps of the locked building. Here I was telling him to be nice to the probationer, but he could argue that hed given the probationer just what she'd wanted while I'd been anything but nice to her. Meanwhile, I was saving myself for one woman. My abstinence felt noble because it was so very difficult. I burned with my celibacy and I wanted it to impress Genet. How could it not?

It had been clear to me ever since that sunny Saturday three years before when Genet returned from her holiday in Asmara that puberty for her was all but complete. Her growth spurt that winter made everything longer: legs, fingers, even lashes. Her eyelids turned sleepy looking, and her eyes seemed even more widely spaced. After her return from Asmara, she'd begun to drive the household mad. According to Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics, breast buds and pubic hair were the first signs of puberty in girls. How strange that Nelson overlooked the first sign I noted, namely, a heady, mature scent that beckoned like a Siren. When she wore perfume, the two scents would mingle, and what emerged made me dizzy. All I could imagine was tearing off her clothes and drinking from the source.

Genet's changes galvanized Rosina—I could see that clearly. Hema and Rosina were allies, united by their desire to protect Genet from the predators, the boys. But the two mothers were never protective enough for my tastes, and they sabotaged their own efforts by buying her the kinds of clothes and accessories that made her more attractive to the opposite sex. The hounds—judging by how I felt—couldn't help sniffing at our doorstep, and what's more, Genet, by her own admission, was in heat.

THAT TERM, on a Thursday, Genet sent word that she wouldn't be riding back to school in our taxi. She said she'd come home on her own. As Shiva and I walked the last fifty yards up our driveway, a sleek black Mercedes- Benz dropped Genet off.

Shiva went on into the house, but I waited.

“I don't like you coming back with Rudy,” I said to her. It was such an understatement—that luxurious car made me feel so inadequate and it made my blood boil. Rudy's father had the porcelain and bathroom fixture monopoly in Addis. There were perhaps two other kids in the school who drove their own cars. What rankled most was that Rudy had once been one of my best friends.

“You sound like my mother,” Genet said, oblivious to my distress.

“Rudy is the crown prince of the toilets. He just wants to sleep with you.”

“Don't you?” she said looking at me coyly, tilting her head.

“Yes. But I want to sleep only with you. And I love you. So it's different.”

For all my shyness around women, I didn't have a problem telling Genet how I felt. Perhaps it was a mistake to show my hand so easily. It gave a shallow woman great power over you, but my faith insisted she couldn't be shallow, that such love, such commitment from me, would empower her, free her.

“Will you do it with me?” she asked.

“Of course I will. I dream of it every night. We only have to wait three more years, Genet, and we can get married. And then we will lose our virginity in this place,” I said pulling out a much-folded picture I had torn out of National Geographic. It showed the Lake Palace in Udaipur, a gleaming white hotel in the middle of a pristine blue lake. “I want to marry in India,” I said. I had visions of me, the groom, riding in on an elephant, a symbol of the desire and the frustration I had repressed— only an elephant (or a jumbo jet) would do. And beautiful Genet, bejew-eled and dressed in a gold sari, jasmine all around … I could see every detail. I even had the perfume picked out for her—Motiya Bela made from jasmine flowers. “And this is the honeymoon suite.” The flip side showed a room with a giant four-poster bed, with huge French doors beyond that opened out onto the lake. “Notice the bathroom with a claw-foot tub and a bidet.” The crown prince of toilets could never top that.

Genet was surprised and touched by the photographs and the fact that I would be carrying that page in my wallet. My tigress fixed her gaze on me with new interest.

“Marion, you've really thought about this, haven't you?”

I described the white silk sheets on the bed, how the sheer cotton curtains would enclose it in the daytime, but at night, they'd be open, as would the doors to the veranda. “I'll cover the bed with rose petals, and when I undress you, I'm going to lick and kiss every inch of your body, starting with your toes …”

She moaned. She put a finger on my lips, her eyeballs rolling back in her head, showing me her throat. “My God, you better stop before I go crazy.” She sighed. “But listen, Marion, what if I tell you that I don't want to get married? I don't want to wait. I want to be deflowered. Now. Not in three years.”

“But what about Hema? Or your mother?”

“I don't want them to deflower me. I want you.”

“That's not—”

A peal of laughter, for which I forgave her because it lifted my spirits. “I know what you mean, silly. What if I don't have your strength to resist? Some days I just want to do it. Don't you? Just to get it over with! Just to know.” She sighed. “If you won't do it, maybe I should ask Shiva? Or Rudy?”

“Not that toilet prince. And Shiva … well, Shiva is no longer a virgin. He's done it already. Besides, I thought you loved me.”

“What?” She clapped her hands in delight, and looked around for Shiva. “Shiva?” She was almost jumping for joy. She'd sidestepped the question of her love for me. She was too shy to profess it, I told myself. “Oh, Shiva, Shiva! We must get all the details from him. Shiva, no longer a virgin, you say? What are you and I waiting for, then?”

“I'm waiting for you and—”

“Oh, stop. You sound like a stupid romance novel. You sound like a girl, for God's sake! If you want first shot you better move fast, Marion.” She seemed serious, no trace of humor in her face. She scared me when she spoke that way. “Otherwise, I have some others in mind. Your friend Gaby, or even the toilet prince, though his breath stinks of cheese.” She burst out laughing again, enjoying my distress but also showing me that she was just joking, thank God.

I couldn't take much more teasing; it was hard to hear her mention the names of other suitors. I spied the stack of women's fashion magazines in her hands. “What's happened to you?” I demanded. I was angry now. I remembered the girl who had mastered Bickham's Penmanship, and who, after Zemui's death, had read books voraciously, anything that Hema fed her. “You used to be … serious,” I said. Now her best friends were two beautiful Armenian sisters. The three of them went shopping together in the afternoons or to the movies where they observed actors whose dress and behavior they held to be the gold standard. They kept all the boys guessing. Genet's grades had once been so good that she skipped a grade and joined our class. But of late she rarely studied, and her grades were average. “What's going on, Genet? Don't you want to be a doctor?”

“Yes, Doctor, I want to be a doctor,” she said coming very close to me. “Doctor, I want you to give me a checkup.” She held her arms apart, the book bag in one hand, the fashion magazines in her other hand. She brought her body close to mine and thrust her hips into me. “I hurt down here, Doctor.”

Rosina jumped out of the front door of our quarters like a jack-in-the-box. Her sudden appearance was startling, and I admit it was comical, but I didn't think that the way Genet burst out laughing would please Rosina.

In a torrent of Tigrinya, with italinya thrown in, Rosina screamed at Genet and descended on us. Genet danced around me to stay out of Rosina's reach, finding even more humor in her mother chasing her. I understood Rosina's words here and there and guessed what she was saying: Where are your brains and what do you think you were doing just now? Who is that boy with the car and do you know he only wants one thing? Why are you pressing against Marion as if you are a bar girl? Each question provoked fresh laughter from Genet.

Rosina glared at me, as if I should answer for her daughter. This was the second time she'd caught Genet and me in a compromising position. She switched to Amharic as she grilled me. “You! Why didn't she come back with you and Shiva? And what were you two doing just now?”

“We're going to be doctors, don't you know, Mother?” Genet shouted in Amharic, tears in her eyes, barely able to speak. “I was teaching him how to examine a woman!”

Rosina's shocked face was Genet's reward, and she found this so hysterical that she dropped her magazines and her book bag, clutched at her stomach, and staggered away in the direction of their quarters. The two of us watched her sashay away, holding her sides. Rosina turned to me, hiding her dark confusion by putting on the stern