Don't Cry Stories Part 11

"Look around you!" I was trembling, still dripping tears with no force. "They're in the middle of a war and you think the police are going to come because of my rings?"

"Janice-"

"Shut up!"

I turned to get away, to go back to the B and B. In my head was Thomas well and virile, Thomas sick, our house with its marble shower, its riches of detail, its condiments and candies, paintings and knickknacks, baskets on the wall, baskets from all over the world, from places we had traveled together, shelves of books, the books he had written, the languages he had spoken, his children, my students- Now I don't have anything. But once I'd had everything; I had betrayed everything so I could f.u.c.k somebody I didn't love, "Stop." Someone touched my arm from behind; I turned. A very small old man stood before me.

"What?" I asked, or thought.

"Stop," he said. "Don't cry. Please. It's okay." He said "Please," but his eyes had an expression of command. I lifted my hand to wipe my eyes. He reached out and took it. He held it palm up; he put my rings in my hand and closed my fingers over them. "Okay?" he said.

"But how-M m He shook his head and said, "Just don't cry. Okay?"

I stopped crying. He turned to go.

"Wait," I said. "There was a chain, too?"

He turned his head and looked hard at me.

"The rings were on a chain. Do you know about that?"

He shook his head and walked away.

Years later, I told this story at a party at the university. I told it to a woman who had traveled extensively in Africa. She was a big woman, very grand, with a high chest and a chunky necklace made of precious stones. When I told her how I had lost my rings and how the old man had given them back, she made a face. She said, "Really, you make too big a fuss of yourself. You should not go to Africa and then make such a fuss." I answered her vaguely. I let myself be chastised. Because in that room, she was right. In that room, I was a privileged and foolish woman running around bawling about rings while a whole city fell apart and people were killed.

But I didn't meet the old man in that room. I met him in a place of biblical times and modern times, where people walked back and forth between times, all times. In this place, I walked back and forth between the time of the living and the time of the dead. In the middle of my walking, war broke out, and the path between I the living and the dead opened up and everything dear to me fell down the crack. I fell, too, and I might've fallen forever-but the I old man came and said, "Stop." And I stopped.

That same night at the university, another person asked, "Did you thank him?" And I was amazed to realize I didn't know. Probably I did not. How could I? Thanking him would have been like thanking an angel.

I sit in my darkened house sometimes, holding a gla.s.s of wine, and I thank him.

The next day, we rode through the streets, crouched on the floor of a car Yonas had borrowed from his uncle. We rode to the American emba.s.sy, sharing the car with five Ethiopians, women and girls whom Yonas was taking "to safety." He didn't dare drive his cab lest taxi drivers striking on behalf of the protestors turn it over and-burn it. But there were no taxis in the street, no cars, no people. There were huge high trucks full of soldiers in camouflage with automatic weapons. Still, the Ethiopian women sat on the seat and we crouched on the floor, hiding the whiteness that declared us paying customers. One of the women, a girl really, held Sonny against her breast. A military truck pa.s.sed close by, bristling with guns. The girl holding our baby looked at me with wide, frightened eyes. Katya pressed her forehead to the sweat-drenched seat and stretched her hand up to clasp Sonny's foot as though it were a hand.

Outside, the emba.s.sy was surrounded by guards with machine guns; inside, it was jammed with frightened people and officials behind windows. We took a number and waited. Waiting next to us was an American doctor who had been on emergency-room duty when gunshot victims began to come in. He was calm, overcalm, but he smelled like fear, and when he got up to one of the windows, he began talking loud and fast, telling someone, really everyone, that there had been many killings, many more than the reported twenty-five. The whole room smelled of fear. Something was missing from Sonny's file, and Katya was shouting at someone, her jaw moving like cheap animation on her stark chalk white face, her body giving off a smell that was nearly savage, the smell of something ready to attack. She turned to me suddenly and I flinched. "I've got to go," she said. "I'll be back." She was already dialing Yonas on her cell.

I went to take Sonny from her, but the child refused; he hadn't let me hold him since I'd handed him off and run down the middle of the street and come back howling in pain. So I held his hand and walked out to the hall with him. Thomas walked out of the sun-shadowy water, stepping on his elegant pants, damp and sagging, and his shoes squishy wet, smiling as he handed me the dog's chewed-up ball, the dog, standing on its hind legs, dancing. With an ecstatic face, Sonny took the steps two at a time. Thomas's mother smiled and boarded the bus, the sun s.h.i.+ning on her beautiful hair. Sonny looked up at me, gurgling with pleasure, forehead s.h.i.+ning with effort. I stroked his hair. I thought of his mother s beaten face, her torn ears, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s hanging down. The child grabbed my hem with his tiny fist. Katya came back beaming, papers in her hand, her sweat rank and innocent.

That night, I dreamed Katya and I were in a small dark house of mud and thatch. Thomas was there, too, asleep on a dirty mat, and so was Sonny's mother, who was terribly sick. Katya kept trying to nurse the mother, to suckle her at her breast, but the woman couldn't hold her , head up, and I kept wanting to say, Stop. It's ridiculous. She's the mother. But I was distracted by Thomas's mother in the next room, laughing as she played with Sonny; I was distracted, too, by gunfire, which came closer and closer....

I woke in the dark with my heart pounding; I reached for my wedding rings on the table beside me.

"Katya," I whispered, only half-expecting her to be awake, too.

She replied unintelligibly.

"When Sonny gets older, and he asks you about his mother, what are you going to tell him?"

She didn't answer. Shortly, she began to snore.

But the next day, when we were at the airport, she answered. She said, "If he asks, I'll tell him that his mother was a great woman. That she was a fighter, and because she had to fight so hard, she gave me her most precious child to keep him safe. Something like that. Here." Without thinking, she handed me the baby, and bent to pick up her bag. I stiffened, expecting Sonny to protest. But he didn't; he reached for me. For the first time since I'd run down the street, Sonny let me hold him. I thrive, his body said to mine, I will thrive. I put my hand on the back of his head and held it to my shoulder, my cheek against his hair. It was time to go.

Table of Contents.

The Agonized Face.

Today I'm Yours.

Oooh, that's gotta hurtI Six months ago, he would not have been able to hold back. He would've gotten into it with this woman, shut I came out of the alley to find my way back to Kat Table of Contents.

The Agonized Face.

Today I'm Yours.

Oooh, that's gotta hurtI Six months ago, he would not have been able to hold back. He would've gotten into it with this woman, shut I came out of the alley to find my way back to Kat

end.