Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [168]
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