Assefa
I DID NOT tell Abat. Nor did I tell Enat. I certainly could not tell my grandfather. While I hadn’t entirely created the catastrophe on my own, I was sufficiently responsible for it that I dared not share my shame.
I cannot say I was not angry with my father, though I was hardly the one to judge him for being untrue to one woman with another. I was also angry with my mother for keeping their secret from me and for the fact that it had happened in the first place. That one was just as irrational, but nonetheless true. What is it about a son that he blames his mother when life is terrible? I had no one to ask if that were true for daughters, too.
Nor did I need to ask myself if I was filled with rage toward Stanley H. Fiske. The man was a fraud. Oh, yes, he was undoubtedly as brilliant as my Fleur, but his pretensions to be a good man were as much of a lie as my family’s story of coming to America to avoid war. If they did, the war was personal and had nothing to do with Somalia or Eritrea.
I was a fraud myself, of course, and a fool for thinking of Fleur as “my” Fleur. I myself was a scoundrel, and she—well, the girl might as well have come from another universe. She would never understand the Hanging Man.
Makeda might, but she could not be bothered by him.
I awoke on this particular Monday morning determined to redeem myself by pouring my energies more conscientiously into my work. Showering, I resisted the temptation put forward by some demon to touch my washela. I turned off the hot water tap and laughed. The old saw was true. In the icy shower, my washela contracted like a withered old man.
I rubbed my body roughly with a bath towel, avoiding looking at myself in the mirror. There was no one there I wanted to see.
The street was still quiet as I walked out to my car, although the sun shone like a devil already. How could this be February? In Tikil Dingay, it would be hot, too. Had God decided to visit this heat wave upon Los Angeles to taunt me? I brushed the thought aside as soon as it arose, embarrassed that I would take the weather personally. You are not the center of the universe, Assefa Berhanu.
I was calm but also aware that I was driving faster than usual. Much faster. I should not have been surprised when the creature came out of nowhere to present itself to the front fender of my car. I felt the impact and saw it go flying. My heart racing, I pulled to the curb and ran back. A white cat with black markings and a red leather collar. Someone’s pet. Though its jaw was smashed, its pregnant belly was intact. But the babies would not survive.
And then I remembered. I had never asked. Surely she would have told me.
I shouted at the dead animal. “Why did you do that? You stupid creature! You did not have to die!”
I sensed people coming out of their houses. I lifted the still-warm carcass with my bare hands and laid it at the side of the road. Avoiding censorious stares, I returned to my car and drove off.
The animal’s blank eyes stayed with me. They merged with those of the young kudu I’d seen die as a boy. Struggling to clear my head, I found Bezaworqu Asfaw’s Tizita on my IPod and played it. I was rewarded with a greater clarity than I’d had for some time.
It was good I was going to a hospital.
Entering the elevator, I said hello to three nurses I recognized from cardiology. One of them made some private joke that only they understood, and the other two laughed, eyeing me nervously.
I got off before them and took the steps two at a time back down to the floor I wanted. I found my way to the physical therapy storage room. Pulleys of various sizes were leaning against the wall. I managed to cut the rope free from one of them and was gratified that it seemed long enough.
I held the nylon rope at arm’s length, letting it suspend itself, testing it. It wasn’t thick, but I knew it was strong. Removing papers to make room for it, I tucked it into my valise.
Finding a vacant room was difficult. One after another was occupied by staff. The patient rooms were all full of cotton-gowned men and women captive to the world of illness, in bed or out, some of them with their gowns untied and their back ends revealed.
My heart rate was elevated. A pressure was building inside me that I knew I must relieve. The inability to find a room filled me with outrage. Not one empty room in a hospital of over five hundred beds? Emergency Medicine, in particular, was like a scene from a battle zone. Had the town gone crazy with murders and accidents the night before?
I found a vacant room on the oncology ward. It suited my needs perfectly. The staff had tougher hides here, watching patients they’d grown fond of lose their wars.
Stretching the rope over the television support arm and locking it in place was easy, getting the rope adjusted properly a little harder. It took patience, and it was difficult to have patience now, with this wild buzzing in my ears and my fingers suddenly like rubber.
I prayed no one would enter before I was done.
The thought flashed by, what a strange thing to pray for, but the tension released itself in an instant. I had no more need of prayer.
