“Yes?” He slowly shut the trunk. “Yes?” He checked his watch, there were still hours until curfew.
The knocks again. One, two, three in rapid succession. Yonas stood for a moment trying to decide what to do, then opened the door and braced himself for a row of military fatigues.
On the ground curled into himself was a man older than he but younger than his father. His mouth was swollen; gashes crisscrossed his shaved scalp. He reached for Yonas with a hand from which one broken finger hung.
“They’re coming,” he said at the same time that Yonas heard a truck screech and felt the shudder of thick military boots stomping towards them. It was when a soldier broke away from the line of others that everything froze.
Then Mickey put his hand out to Yonas. “He’s escaped,” he said. His extended hand dangled in the space between them as he blinked behind thick glasses. “We’re just taking him back. That’s all.” He dropped his hand and looked down at the man. “It’s my job.”
The man tried to raise himself on all fours. “Please,” he said. “Peace.” Yonas saw a boot crash into his ribs and heard the crack of a rifle butt connect with skull. The man tried to shield his head with his arms, but the blows came from all directions.
Mickey flinched. “Go back inside,” he said. “Please.”
It was the sharp crease in Mickey’s new uniform that brought Yonas’s memories rushing to him, images of a young Mickey dressed in worn trousers with the same sharp crease, watching Dawit fight another boy for him, begging them to stop punching.
“Leave him alone,” Yonas said. But he spoke too late. They were already dragging the man to the truck. And Yonas would have shouted, would have taken Mickey by the shirt and slammed him against the wall and beat him the way he deserved. For once, he would have relished the giving up and giving in to his blinding rage without guilt. But in his father’s garage, hidden under a heavy blanket, were cartons of pamphlets, and that cut off any other protest from him.
DAWIT WAS SITTING at the dining room table talking with Tizita and Sara when Yonas walked into the room. He pulled Tizita away from Dawit.
“Go play upstairs,” Yonas told her.
“I was telling Dawit about school,” Tizita said.
“What’s wrong?” Sara asked.
“Are you okay?” Dawit asked.
Yonas’s brown eyes, usually soft with kindness, were stony; his full lips were folded tight against his teeth.
Yonas leaned into Sara’s ear. “Get her out of here.”
Sara stood right away. “Tizzie, help me roast coffee.” She nudged the girl towards the kitchen. “Go.”
Tizita ran into the kitchen.
Yonas moved towards Dawit so quickly that he pushed Sara against the table. Dawit jerked up, remembering boyhood fights with his brother, and shielded his face with one hand and made a fist with the other.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Dawit’s voice cracked. His head was tucked into his chest. One hand now rested on his skull to protect it. “What’s wrong with him?”
Sara had seen Yonas mad. His temper was intense but always brief. This was different. It frightened her. She shouldered herself between them and turned to Dawit.
“Get out of here,” she said.
“What the hell is wrong with him?” Dawit asked again. He was ready now for Yonas’s next move.
Yonas grabbed Dawit’s arm and pulled him close, knocking Sara away. With one sharp swing, he slapped him hard across the face. The force sent Dawit crashing into the china cabinet.
“Stop!” Sara screamed. She covered Dawit’s body with her own.
Yonas looked past her to Dawit, his expression rigid and blank, his mouth curled in distaste. “Do you think I’m a coward?” he said.
Yonas swung again, this time with a knotted fist. It landed squarely on Dawit’s chin and Sara heard the crack of teeth knocked against each other. Yonas reared back, yanked Dawit by the shirt, threw him to the ground, and knelt on his chest. He had a choke hold on Dawit’s collar, jerking him up till they met face-to-face.
“Am I a coward to you?” he hissed. He slammed his forehead into Dawit’s.
“Stop!” Sara tried to pull him away. “You’re hurting him!”
Dawit roused and tried to push. He bucked and kicked, but Yonas deflected each move. Sara finally threw herself on top of Dawit and screamed at the first blow that fell into her back.
“Emaye!” Tizita came running from the kitchen holding a bag of coffee beans. “Don’t hit my mommy! No!” She ran to her mother and clutched her waist, her face buried in Sara’s back.
Yonas recoiled. He looked from his sobbing daughter to his wife, and then to his brother, still on the floor, his forehead bruised, his mouth bloody. “Tizita,” he said. He stood up to hold his daughter.
She inched herself away from him and closer to Sara.
“Move.” Dawit got to his feet, using the table for support.
“No more, please.” Sara wrapped her arms around her daughter and lifted her up.
The two brothers stared at each other in silence, fists curled, until Yonas spoke.
“I warned you,” he said. “Your stupid, childish games.” He sank into a chair and put his head in his hands. His knuckles were cut and swollen. “ Your stupid, senseless ideas.” He made a noise and then his shoulders shook. Dawit saw him wipe tears away.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” He was afraid to move closer.
Hailu walked in cupping a small brown paper bag. He looked at Dawit’s bleeding mouth and the angry purple welt on his forehead.
“Explain yourself,” Yonas said. He balled Dawit’s hands around a crumpled pamphlet. “Show him.”
Dawit went slack. “I was going to get those out.”
Yonas shoved him.
“This was the last time, anyway!” Dawit shouted.
“It’s too late,” Yonas said. He walked upstairs to his bedroom and slammed the door. The house rattled from the impact.
SARA RUBBED YONAS’S BACK. His body jerked in spasms so forceful and sharp that a few times he’d almost fallen off their bed. He hadn’t spoken a word. His eyes were fixed on a point beyond anywhere she could see.
“Talk to me.” Sara pressed herself against him. He was cold. “Tell me.” She draped an arm over him and felt his heart beating so hard she grew alarmed. “What happened?”
Yonas began backwards, and told her about his encounter with Mickey.
“His mother said he got another promotion last week. I thought it was just in an office,” Sara said.
“I didn’t do anything,” he said. He sat up. “Nothing. Nothing.”
“What could you do? Nardos’s husband was shot for trying to pull their daughter away from them. Then they took both the children.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.
Yonas shook his head. “I could have stopped them. I could have made Mickey leave the man alone, but I didn’t.”
She stroked his face. “He would have taken you in, he’s changed.”
Yonas stood. “Next time you drive my car, check inside the trunk. Be careful.”
“Why? What’s there?”
He walked out. “I’m going to pray,” he said.
36.
THE HUMAN HEART, Hailu knew, can stop for many reasons. It is a fragile, hollow muscle the size of a fist, shaped like a cone, divided into four chambers separated by a wall. Each chamber has a valve, each valve has a set of flaps as delicate and frail as wings. They open and close, open and close, steady and organized, fluttering against currents of blood. The heart is merely a hand that has closed around empty space, contracting and expanding. What keeps a heart going is the constant, unending act of being pushed, and the relentless, anticipated response of pushing back. Pressure is the life force.
Hailu understood that a change in the heart can stall a beat, it can flood arteries with too much blood and violently throw its owner into pain. A sudden jerk can shift and topple one beat onto anothe
r. The heart can attack, it can pound relentlessly on the walls of the sternum, swell, and squeeze roughly against lungs until it cripples its owner. He was aware of the power and frailty of this thing he felt thumping now against his chest, loud and fast in his empty living room. A beat, the first push and nudge of pressure in a heart, he knew, was generated by an electrical impulse in a small bundle of cells tucked into one side of the organ. But the pace of the syncopated beats is affected by feeling, and no one, least of all he, could comprehend the sudden, impulsive, lingering control emotions played on the heart. He had once seen a young patient die from what his mother insisted was a crumbling heart that had finally collapsed on itself. A missing beat can fell a man. A healthy heart can be stilled by nearly anything: hope, anguish, fear, love. A woman’s heart is smaller, even more fragile, than a man’s.
It wouldn’t be so surprising, then, that the girl had died. Hailu would simply point to her heart. It would be enough to explain everything.
—
HE’D BEEN ALONE in the room, the soldiers smoking outside. He could see their shadows lengthening over the bare and brittle lawn as the sun swung low, then lower, then finally sank under the weight of night. It was easy to imagine that the dark blanket outside had also swept into the hospital room, even though the lights were on. It was the stillness, the absolute absence of movement, which convinced him that they, too, this girl and he, were just an extension of the heaviness that lay beyond the window.
She’d been getting progressively better, had begun to wake for hours at a time and gaze, terrified, at the two soldiers sitting across from her. The soldiers had watched her recovery with relief, then confusion, and eventually, guilt. Hailu could see their shame keeping them hunched over monotonous card games.
It hadn’t been so difficult to get the cyanide. He’d simply walked into the supply office behind the pharmacy counter, waved at the bored pharmacist, and pulled the cyanide from a drawer that housed a dwindling supply of penicillin. Back in the room, Hailu prayed and made the sign of the cross over the girl. Then he opened her mouth and slipped the tiny capsule between her teeth. What happened next happened without the intrusion of words, without the clash of meaning and language. The girl flexed her jaw and tugged at his hand so he was forced to meet her stare. Terror had made a home in this girl and this moment was no exception. She shivered though the night was warm and the room, hotter. Then she pushed her jaw shut and Hailu heard the crisp snap of the capsule and the girl’s muffled groan. The smell of almonds, sticky and sweet, rose from her mouth. She gasped for air, but Hailu knew she was already suffocating from the poison; she was choking. She took his hand and moved it to her heart and pressed it down. He wanted to think that last look before she closed her eyes was gratitude.
IT WAS ONLY ALMAZ who’d recognized the vivid flush of the girl’s face, the faint hint of bitter almonds, and known what had happened. She’d walked in just as Hailu was explaining to the soldiers how the electric shocks she’d received had damaged her internally.
“Oh,” she said, “yes.” She collected herself. “It was too much for her. Too much infection.”
The soldiers were agitated. They paced back and forth. They asked Hailu again and again to explain exactly what had happened.
“The infection was climbing from her feet to her heart,” he repeated. “There was no way to stop it. She was too weak to fight it.”
“But she was waking up, getting better.”
Hailu’s palms were sweaty. He heard a ringing in his ears that seemed to get louder as he talked. He cleared his throat. “It was a surprise for all of us.”
The girl’s body was still in the bed, covered completely in a sheet. They hadn’t filled out the necessary forms, the soldiers had yet to acknowledge these next steps.
“You have to do something,” the deep-voiced soldier demanded. He grabbed Hailu’s arm and shook it. “We reported she’d be able to leave in a few days. People are expecting her.” He tightened his grip. “Do something.”
The skinny soldier sat back down in his chair and began to rock. “What are we going to say? They’ll send us to jail.” He shrank back against an imaginary blow.
“I’ll write up the death certificate,” Hailu said. “Everything will be explained there.”
“I’m a witness,” Almaz said. “There was nothing we could do.”
The soldier stopped rocking and looked at his partner. “We can’t say anything for a few days.” He nodded to the girl. “Just yesterday we told them she was fine.”
The other soldier nodded. “We should wait.” He looked at Hailu, his eyes growing cold. “They’ll want to ask you more questions, I’m sure of it. She was an important prisoner.”
So it was that the girl was still in the hospital room tonight, dead, being watched by two frightened soldiers who could do nothing but stare in front of them and shudder at the reaction their report would bring. Hailu had wanted to stay, to sit with the girl, but Almaz had ordered him home.
“Nothing changes,” she advised. “I’ll be here anyway.” She’d handed him a small brown paper bag just before he walked out of the hospital. “It’s the girl’s. She had it on when she came here and I was keeping it for her.” She squeezed his arm. “Keep it.”
Inside the bag, in the brown hollow of space entirely too large for it, was a slender, delicate gold necklace with an oval pendant of Saint Mary holding her child. He held up the necklace and watched as it swung daintily under the glow of his lamp. Cold, bright light caught the pendant and shot glints against the windshield.
37.
SOFIA PINCHED ROBEL’S cheeks to get him to smile as she poured water into the large can she used as a teakettle. She pushed a wooden stick through two holes she’d cut into it. The can swung on the stick like a bottom-heavy bridge. She lit the small mound of charcoal and twigs and let Robel blow on the coals, smiling as his eyes brightened when the coal flared a brilliant red. She hugged him tightly.
“It’s your brother’s first day of work,” she said. “Go wake him up.”
They were outside their small shanty, in front of the dugout Sofia used for cooking meals.
Robel hesitated. “He should go to school,” he said, pulling out of her embrace and frowning. He added twigs to the fire and stared into the sputtering flames. He was twelve years old but had already begun to carry himself like a man since Daniel’s disappearance.
“We need the money,” she said, rubbing the bridge of his nose where his eyebrows met as he frowned. “It’s bad luck,” she reminded him.
He relaxed his face, his brows wide apart again. “But I promised I’d make sure he went to school.”
“If Berhane sells newspapers, it’ll help.” She kissed his cheek. She knew of the silent promises Robel made to his father. He’d begun keeping a growing list of them on a sheet of paper he carried everywhere. “He’ll go to school one day,” she assured him. “You, too.” She dropped a few leaves of tea into the water. “Go on, wake him.”
Robel went inside.
“Emaye, I’m ready for work,” Berhane said, stepping out with his arms open wide for a hug.
She held him, squeezing until he giggled. “Come have tea.” She poured even amounts of the pale, sweet water into two smaller cans.
“I’m big now,” he said.
Sofia’s stomach turned at the thought of her youngest son selling newspapers on the street. Things were never supposed to be this way. Both her sons should have been in school. Daniel had taken the job as a guard to pay for the best education for Robel and save for Berhane’s. Now everything was different. Every plan she’d ever had had collapsed into a pile of dust.
She could cope with the hollowness of Daniel’s absence. She’d already begun to learn ways to mask the empty side of her pillow. She’d started to sleep with one of Daniel’s shirts next to her head. She vowed to do this for the rest of her life. She planned to wake each morning before her sons, tuck the shirt back in a plastic bag, and preserve a bit of her
husband every night. She could do this until the day she died. It would not be enough, but it was something. But the children. Our sons were born poor, Daniel, but they were never meant to stay poor, she thought.
Berhane slurped his tea and smiled. “It’s sweet.” He touched his stomach.
Today, her youngest son, her special boy, was going to start selling newspapers on the same street Robel shined shoes. They would work until she came home. Long days like these were never meant for children.
She leaned in to kiss his cheek. “Wear your shoes, you’ll be walking a lot.”
Berhane held up a calloused foot. “Tizita says my feet are the strongest.”
“I still want you to wear the shoes,” Sofia said, referring to the worn pair of slippers that had once belonged to Robel. They were too big for Berhane, but they’d protect him from the glass and rocks on the road. Robel, at her insistence, had finally agreed to wear a pair of Daniel’s shoes on cold days, stuffing the toes with cloth to keep them from slipping off.
Berhane stood up to reveal dark red shorts that were much too large for his thin frame and sagged around his waist.
“Why aren’t you wearing your blue ones?” she asked.
“Red is Tizita’s favorite color,” Robel said.
“Give him your belt.” Sofia motioned to the worn leather belt around Robel’s waist. “I’ll try to find you another one so you don’t have to share.”
Sofia watched her two boys run back into their home to prepare for their day. She angled her face towards the sun rising in the horizon. Out of habit, her eyes raked the road that stretched around their cluster of shanties, searching for Daniel.
DAWIT AND HAILU stared at each other in the shrinking space of Dawit’s bedroom. The air was charged.
“I found this,” Hailu said. He raised his hands to his chest. In the center of his open palms lay a pistol. “Where the hell did you get this?” His hands shook as if the weapon was too heavy. He stood so stiff he was sure his son could see the pounding of his heart through his hospital jacket.
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