Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese [247]
For the next few minutes I solemnly shook the hand of every person in the house.
LATER I SAT WITH TSIGE on a sofa in a living room upstairs. She had kicked off her heels and tucked her feet up under her. Still holding my hand, she touched my cheek often to exclaim how happy she was to see me.
I had plans to return to New York that afternoon, but Tsige insisted on sending Mesfin away. “You can take a later flight,” she said.
“Are you sure I can find a taxi here?” I said, pretending to be serious.
After a beat, she threw her head back and laughed. “See, you have changed! You used to be so shy.”
Through the window I saw six or seven baby goats in a large wire enclosure. Behind that was a chicken coop. A dreamy-looking boy with a long narrow head sat stroking one of the goats. “He's my cousin,” Tsige said. “You can see the forceps marks on his forehead. He has some problems. But he loves to take care of the animals. You should come here when we celebrate Meskel on Meskerem Day. We slaughter the goats and cook outdoors. You will see not just taxis, but police cars. They come from the Roxbury and South End stations to eat.”
Tsige said she left Addis a few months after me. A patron of the bar, a corporal in the army, had wanted to marry her. “He was nobody. But in the revolution, even the privates became powerful.” When she declined his advances, she was falsely accused of imperialist activities and imprisoned. “I bought my way out after two weeks. In the time I was in Kerchele, they confiscated my house. He came to see me, pretending he had nothing to do with my arrest. If I married him, he said, everything would come back to us. The country was being run by dogs like him. I had money hidden away. I never looked back. I left.
“In Khartoum, I waited a month for asylum from the American Embassy. I worked as a servant for the Hankins, a British family. They were nice. I learned English by taking care of their children. That was the only good thing that came out of Khartoum. I don't mind the cold in Boston because every cold day reminds me how good it is to be out of Khartoum.
“I worked hard here, Marion. Quick-Mart—often I did two shifts. Then five nights I worked at a parking garage. I saved and saved. I became the first Ethiopian woman to drive a taxi in Boston. I learned the city. I found work for Ethiopians. Stock boy, parking attendant, taxi driver, or counter girl at the hotel gift shop. I lent money on interest to Ethiopians. Tayitu used to work for me in the bar, so when she came, I rented this house. She cooked. Then I bought the house. Now, my God, there is much to be done: grind tef, make injera, clean chicken, make wot, sweep the house. It takes three or four people. Ethiopians arrive at my door like newborn lambs, everything they have tied up in bedsheets, their X-rays still in their hands. I try to help them.”
“You really are the Queen of Sheba.”
There was an impish grin on her face. She switched to English, a language I had never heard her speak. “Marion, you know what I had to do to feed my baby in Addis. Then in Sudan, I was even lower than that— I was no better than a bariya,” she said, using the slang word for “slave.” “In America they said you can be anything. I believed it. I worked hard. So when they say, ‘Queen of Sheba,’ I think to myself, Yes, from bariya to queen.”
I told Tsige about seeing her on the day I left Addis so hastily,