Daughters of Silence

by Rebecca Fisseha

  That day, as I drove, I sensed Aba was on the verge of saying something. An hour later, outside Burlington, he did. “Let’s go home.” That was all. I realized I had just experienced one of Aba’s “thinking drives.”

  I won’t respond to Le’ul. Let him figure it out when he calms down. I throw my phone on the bed.

  Aba never stays out for more than a day. He has never stayed out overnight. These tiny differences are the final pivot toward a truth I’ve already accepted: the girl, my sister, exists.

  I hear again the verses of repentance Aba chanted the night before Ema’s funeral, when we went to see her for the last time. I wonder now if his thinking drives were ever about his books, but instead about his guilt over the part he played in dissuading Ema from bringing her illegitimate daughter into their marriage, and over what he did, or said, to convince her to then be a mother to Le’ul. Such a burden has got to be worth a lifetime of thinking drives.

  Inside Gela’s room, I find the iron on the lower shelf of the coffee table. Rather than haul it into the house, I decide to iron the clothes here. They’re Gela’s own, after all. I set the boom box on the floor, press play on the CD player. “Hab Dahlak.” I turn the volume to low. I wipe down the coffee table with the hem of my hager libs, and plug in the iron.

  Underneath the coffee table, three small drawers beckon with all there is to know about this bossy Gela. I open them one by one. Each is full of fashion magazine cut-outs, dress patterns, snatches of fabric, sewing doodads. Thus animated by the spirit of inquiry — to borrow a line from Isak — I try the dresser drawers, but they stick, threatening noise.

  I test the iron and press it to the skirt. I enjoy pretending to be Gela: in her room, ironing her clothes, listening to her CD. Would she dance? Yes, like me. Undulating her torso to the rhythm of the song, matching it to the rhythm of her ironing. The movement frees up some of the stiffness in my body from yesterday’s long walk and troubled night.

  I finish the dress and start on the blouse. The song repeats. The smell of spicy wot wafts in. When I finish ironing, I change into the clothes. Behind the door, there is something covered with an old bedsheet. I lift a corner. It’s a rinky-dink sewing machine visibly in need of oil. Thinking of Gela trying to piece together something nice for herself, out of fabric swatches, breaks my heart. I roll up the hager libs I’ve been sleeping in and lodge it in the back of the wardrobe for Gela to find someday. It’s not clean, she might have preferred my jeans or blouse, but the hager libs is good as new, and free.

  On the porch, I nudge my grandfather’s broken twig toothbrush from that morning with my shoe. I lean against the porch doorframe, not in or out of the living room, disrupting my grandfather’s view of the courtyard and slice of the sky from his usual seat, his cane hooked on the armrest.

  Before him is a small table on which Gela is placing his breakfast: a glass teacup brimming with cinnamon tea, a plate heavy with firfir, and plain injera in a basket. Steam escapes from the wot-drenched mound of torn-up injera. Gela samples a tiny bite of the food as if my grandfather is a king in danger of assassination.

  He begins to eat. Gela pulls out chairs from the stacks in the middle of the room, and lines them in front of the existing chairs along the walls, creating a second row. The rental chairs are scratched, the grooves caked with dirt from innumerable gatherings, possibly including the farewell party here when we left Ethiopia. Back then they might have been spotless and perfect. What I wouldn’t give to be lounging on one by the side of the Ghion pool, under the stars.

  This is the first time since I arrived that I’m seeing my grandfather eat so heartily, feeding himself gursha that seem as gigantic to me as they did when I was little.

  “You should have come back before dark,” he says. “The time you returned last night was unbecoming for a girl.”

  “Night is not the danger. A girl can get pregnant as easily by day.”

  Gela drops a chair. I’m surprised at myself. I bet Gela thinks I should get a slap for my sass, two slaps that would turn my cheeks as hot as the strips of green chili peppers stuck in the Shaleqa’s dark red breakfast.

  I drag one of the house chairs near to my grandfather and sit.

  “Where are my uncles today?”

  Over the past days, I have remembered how I know the other three old men, like a developing Polaroid that captures the best parts of my girlhood in the before-time. They were frequent guests of my parents, three not-really-uncle uncles who only ever wanted to see me laugh, have fun, do mischief. Uncle Whiskey, a Dubai merchant who used to sneak me the dregs of his watered-down Scotch. Uncle Bug, an en­tomologist who would pin me high up against the wall like a specimen. Uncle Pilot, who brought me apples and other exotic fruits from outside-country.

  “They know I will not be at home. There is a place you must see, and a task we must do together.”

  My heart skips. Just us two all day? My four-year-old self squeals and leaps with glee. Then I remember I’m hurt. I tear a piece of injera from the basket and stuff it in my mouth.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To arrange matters for Tobya’s return.”

  Yes, I think, chewing the injera into a mush, let us arrange matters. I don’t care about the interruption in the generations of our family’s bones interred in this land, in marked and unmarked graves. I don’t have such grand notions like my grandfather. I just want what I am due. Aba lied to me yesterday. My parents hid a sister from me all my life. They owe me a sister. Ema will have to come back to Ethiopia, if that’s what it takes. Aba will have to make it happen. He will not refuse me when I confront him with the truth of what I have evidence of, a primary source, the highly valued type. I could have had a real sister all along, a protector from my pretend brother.

  I wish I could cry until I get so exhausted that I either throw up or doze off. I should feel good. Soon, I’ll get what I have wished for since I was five. So why do I feel ill? Maybe because none of them — not Aba, not Ema, not the Shaleqa — deserve my full loyalty, or even the greater part, but I wish one of them did, so that I wouldn’t feel pulled in so many directions away from myself, even as I choose to do this one thing for the after-girl.

  I swallow, suck the tangy aftertaste of the injera from my tongue.

  My grandfather says, “We have to do all we can for Tobya’s return while I have you. Who knows when you will leave?” Again. The unsaid last word hangs heavy in the air. Gela doesn’t try to hide that she’s listening to every word we’re saying. If arranging the chairs slowly is her way of lingering, I don’t mind. I need someone to be here to witness how I try to be good, agreeable. She’s more family, in a way, than I will ever be. She’s here for the day-to-day. She and my grandfather have shorthand, an unspoken understanding about everything, that I’m not a part of. My superior claim of blood is purely ceremonial.

  “Save me those,” I say to Gela, pointing at the final version of Ema’s tezkar program pages snug in their open delivery boxes. They must have come at some point yesterday, while I was roaming the city in a way most unbecoming for a girl.

  “As the daughter present, I should be the one to sort and fold them, no?” I say to my grandfather.

  “All yours,” she answers.

  “Okay, we will go,” I say.

  My grandfather keeps his focus on scooping the firfir with injera. He’s taken my obedience for granted. I find it painful to think of this cruel man sitting before me as Babbaye. Babbaye, who I missed, who I wanted to live with when I was a teenager, who I stood up for when Aba and Le’ul were so dismissive of his wishes. That Babbaye would not have let me find out about my sister this way. He would not make me jump through flaming hoops to meet her. My sister is not making me earn her love, either. She had nothing to do with this. I loved and wanted her before I even knew she existed. She feels the same about me. I’m sure our grandfather forced her to give up her letters, and stay away until Tobya was returned to him. My grandfather is powerful when it comes to
ensuring mute compliance. Our mother should know.

  A truck roars past on the neighbourhood road. The sound makes me long for the majestic, fuming beastliness of airplanes. My grandfather extends a gursha. I receive the bite from his hand, cupping my palm under my chin to catch the bits that fall so I can nibble them up. The breakfast is nothing special, just onions, tomatoes, garlic, oil, berbere, cardamom, but together with the pleasure of being fed, they mask my stale tongue. I feel like I have all of Ethiopia in my mouth.

  FOURTEEN

  I never imagined that when I finally did get my grandfather all to myself, I would invite someone else along. I hire Wondu to drive us for the day, figuring his entertaining banter would distract me from my churning thoughts. I sit in the front passenger seat for the long drive to the outskirts of Addis Ababa to our first stop, Kidus Yosef Cemetery, and try to get Wondu talking. In my grandfather’s presence, he zips up. He responds to me in formal monosyllables, as though he has never met me. At Kidus Yosef, he even opens the door for my grandfather, bows to him as he gets out, and stands at attention until my grandfather reaches the entrance before getting back into the car to wait for us.

  A watchman shows my grandfather a tattered notice posted on the gate. Large sections of the cemetery are being demolished to make space for a new highway to pass through, so families within the marked zone have one year to pay one thousand birr and remove the remains of their loved ones. My grandfather turns his back on him while he’s mid-sentence. Meaning the expansion does not touch the graves of whoever we are here to see, or he is again refusing to accommodate reality — I am not sure.

  We walk down a long asphalt road through the middle of the cemetery, past clumps of broken cement surrounding holes where remains have been exhumed. We turn onto a well-trodden path between intact graves. Occasionally, I stop to scan the area, one hand on my hip, the other shielding my eyes from the sun, for the boundaries of the cemetery. Not even in its earliest days could Kidus Yosef have been anything more than a place of absolute neglect, I think, as we march through loose rocks, mud, and underbrush.

  He stops between a collection of raised graves protected by rusting cage enclosures, the marble netted by branches as dry as kindling.

  “This is your family,” he says touching the iron grille. “Your grandmother, her mother and father.”

  Behind ovals of cracked glass embedded in the marble of the headstones, there are black-and-white photos, so faded that they could be snapshots of ghosts. The engravings, long unpunctuated sentences in Amharic, describe of whom each was born, on what date, in which province, city, area, the reason for their rest, who has dedicated this monument.

  My grandfather points out an empty, weed-infested space next to them and waits for me to understand its significance.

  “For you?” I say.

  “No.”

  “Who then? Emmahoy?”

  “Nuns prefer to die in Debre Libanos monastery. Here is where my Tobya will be, encircled by her own.”

  I readjust my footing. I feel sharp pebbles, or dry clumps of mud as hard as pebbles, through the bottoms of my canvas slip-ons. The edge of Gela’s long dress tickles my bare ankles. I will not be able to spend time with Ema here after she is reburied. I will never want to see again this dilapidated excuse for a resting place. I mean, there isn’t even anywhere to sit nor a view to make the stay worthwhile. One step at a time, I think. Get Ema here, then find a better cemetery in Addis Ababa.

  “Where is your people’s place?” I have never dreamed of asking my grandfather — or anyone — such a question. But there it is.

  “They are in Ambassel. But for arbegna there is a special place in Selassie Cathedral.”

  Of course there is. “How about for little arbegna?”

  “This land is for Tobya. I paid for it a long time ago.”

  I look at my watchless wrist as if I am expected somewhere. I’ve left my phone at the house. I sigh. “In this crowded wasteland, a space for Ema was available in this spot exactly? No one thought she would die.”

  “I have held this land for nineteen years.”

  “For your boys. You expected them to be found. That is why you bought this spot.”

  “For her.”

  “For your boys. Everything has always been for your boys.”

  “This land has never been for anyone but Tobya.”

  “Did she know you had it ready for her?”

  He doesn’t answer. I’m learning to distinguish which silences mean yes, no, or no comment. He walks past me, leading us out the way we came. What kind of parent buys a burial plot in advance for their child? Not even my grandfather, for whom death had long ceased to come as a surprise.

  I follow him, talking to his back. “The land Ema is buried in, over there in Canada, is under Aba’s name. By law, Aba owns it, same as you do this spot.”

  “No, not same. Only Ethiopian land is truly ours.”

  “I’m saying no one can move her or do anything to her grave without his signature.”

  He marches on. “I entrust your father to you.”

  “Someone else will be buried in that ground.”

  “They for their land. We for our land.”

  That is all my grandfather ever wanted, since the day after the farewell party. Habeshas should live and die in Ethiopia. Those who choose or are forced to stay away should be brought back. Tell her it was for her own good.

  “What does the girl look like?” I will find out for myself, but I can’t help asking.

  “Her face shows little of Tobya,” he says, unwilling to say she resembles her father. I doubt my grandfather has ever laid eyes on the fellow. I feel a chill. What if my grandfather killed him? This fragile old man using the headstones like a second cane is the Shaleqa, not squeamish about blood on his hands. Or maybe Yene Abeba’s dad also went the way of the martyrs. How strange, I hadn’t thought of a father until now. I imagined the girl as if she were an outgrowth of Ema.

  Yene Abeba, did you ever see our mother so scared, you could see her body tremble? I have, on the day she came to pick me up from school in the middle of one morning. I thought she was trembling because of my letter. I was eight, in second grade at school, the year my English teacher had paired each of us in class with a pen pal in outside-country. My girl was in Canada. Her name was Anja. We were to write the letters on our own, and seal them. We would then give them to our parents, to send them and pick up the replies for us from the post office.

  In our first letters, Anja and I wrote about our schools, our friends, teachers, what we eat and drink, how we celebrate our holidays. Then, it was time to write about our families. In her letter Anja wrote to me that if she doesn’t make her bed in the morning before school, her mother does not put a cookie in her lunchbox. In my reply, I wrote to Anja about what Le’ul said never to tell anyone, or else he would kill me. He didn’t say I couldn’t write it down, in English, to a stranger who is far away in outside-country.

  I forgot to seal the envelope when I gave it to my mother. He didn’t say I couldn’t do that either.

  The day Ema picked me up from school in the middle of the morning and took me to her office, I thought she was going to talk to me about the letter. But she had to go to a meeting first. I walked around her desk, waiting. In the wastebasket I saw torn-up pieces of paper with my handwriting. I took out one piece. It was my last letter to Anja. For a long time I sat holding the little piece as small as a stamp. Ema came back to the office. I hid the stamp piece in my mouth. She sat down. I knew she was worried because she wouldn’t look at me. I thought, now she will talk to me about the letter. But she didn’t. I pretended I was looking out the window. I peeled the piece of paper from my tongue and stuck it to a corner of the glass.

  At the end of the day, I was scared to go home. What if Ema talked to Le’ul first? I would die. She didn’t know that part. But at home, nothing happened. That night, when she was tucking me in to sleep, I told Ema that I couldn’t wait until Anja wrote me
back. Ema said I might not get a letter back from Anja this time, because all the politics trouble in our country was disrupting the mail service. I would have believed her, if I had not seen what was in her wastebasket. Ema read my letter, tore it up, left the pieces in her trash. I felt Ema had torn me up and thrown me away.

  There was one more month of school left before kiremt, but we didn’t go back after the twentieth of Ginbot. Because, Aba said, Babbaye’s enemy the dictator had run away, scared of Babbaye’s enemy’s enemy. They were three teams of freedom-fighters from the north who were entering Addis Ababa at last. Aba stopped teaching classes at the university. He stayed home. He started taking me and Le’ul with him when he picked up Ema from the ministry at the end of the workday.

  The air in Addis Ababa was different. There were tanks in the street. At the ministry parking lot, mothers and children stayed in their cars, the motors humming. The mothers used to open their doors and drop their high heels outside to give their feet air. Boys used to run around yanking at the thin vine plant growing on the fence just to upset the old guard so he would chase them. When Ema came out of the revolving doors of the honeycomb building, Aba didn’t walk out to meet her to stroll back to the car together. He leaned over from his seat and pushed the passenger door open for her.

  Every day, from the car, I saw my little piece of letter on Ema’s window. The curtains were white, so the paper was easier to see if they were open. Even when they were closed anybody could see it, if they knew it was there. But no one had reason to search. Anyway what was paper stuck on glass? Just one more thing the maid missed.

  One of those afternoons was when Aba said that I would start third grade and Le’ul would start eleventh grade in outside-country. Ema had a new job in a place called Vienna Embassy. “Young, accomplished, brimming with promise — Emwodish is the quintessential face of this new Democratic Republic,” he said.

  I thought if Vienna was close to Canada, I would find Anja. I would tell her what was in my letter. On the morning after the farewell party at Babbaye’s, we all went to the airport together but Aba and Le’ul got on a different plane from Ema and me. Suddenly, I had Ema all to myself. I was so happy, the happiest ever. That day, I finally went as fast as an airplane.