Don't Cry Read online

  The head nun was a tall, erect woman with a still, cold face and fiery eyes—but the fire seemed to come from far away, far down in the hole of herself. We sat with her in her office and she told us the story of another woman who had come to do an independent adoption; the story took almost an hour to tell, and in the end, the woman had left Addis Ababa to look elsewhere. As an afterthought, the nun added that, at present, she had no babies.

  “But what about the girl who was outside the door a few days ago?” asked Katya. “She was obviously very sick and she had a beautiful baby and I was wondering if you took that baby in?”

  The head nun said that if the girl was sick, she was probably with her family now. And then she made it clear we were to leave.

  Some version of this episode was repeated for several days at several different orphanages. Sometimes we were not allowed in at all. Sometimes we were allowed in but not allowed to see anyone in charge. Finally, Katya went to the ministry that oversees adoptions to meet with the man that everyone referred to as “the head;” we never discovered his actual title. He suggested that we go to an orphanage on the outskirts of town, but when we got there, we were told that they had no babies available, either. Just as the supervisor, or whatever she was, told us this, a baby began crying in the next room.

  Katya stood up, one hand on her hip, the other pointed toward the sound. “And what,” she demanded, “is that?”

  “Obviously, that is a baby,” said the woman stiffly. “But as this baby has AIDS, he is not up for adoption in America.”

  Katya sat back down; she put her head in her hands. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I don't mean to be rude.”

  The supervisor sighed and leaned back in her chair. She looked out the window for a long moment. When she looked back, she said, “I should not tell you this, but I am going to tell you. The head of Social Services explicitly told us that you were coming. And he explicitly told us that we were not to do any independent adoptions. That's it. No independent adoptions.”

  Katya jumped up. “But he told us to come here!”

  “If he has changed his mind,” said the woman, “then he needs to put it in writing. You need to get a letter from him stating that he gives permission. And I doubt that he will give it to you.”

  The next day, Katya was sick with diarrhea and couldn't eat anything but clear tea and a banana. Still, we went to see the head of Social Services. Katya went in to meet him in his office; I stayed in the car with Yonas. He talked to me about the election; he said the government had lied about the results in order to hold on to power and that people were going to fight about it. I asked him how he had learned to speak English so well. He said that he had studied it at the university and that driving had given him the chance to practice. He had studied for only a year, even though he loved it; his brother and sister had children and he needed to help make money for them, so they could get the best education possible. He also volunteered for an organization specifically for the education of girls. “Like that girl we saw outside the orphanage,” he said.

  When he asked about my family, I told him about Thomas: that he wrote books about Spanish literature, that he had been an amateur bullfighter when he was young. I described for him a film clip of Thomas leaning into a bull, his brow pressed against the brow of the animal, as if both to conquer it and passionately kiss it. It wasn't as daring as it looked; the animal was about to die. In fact, the next moment, Thomas stepped away from it, and the animal fell and died.

  Katya came out and said, “What a prick!” She got in the car and slammed the door. “Sorry for my language, Yonas. The agencies must've gotten to him; that's the only explanation. He said I don't need a letter, so why should he write me a letter. I said, ‘How am I going to get a child?’ He said, ‘That's your concern, not mine.’”

  Yonas drove us back to the hotel. “I just don't know what to do,” said Katya. “We can't stay here forever. I don't know what to do. God I feel sick.” She took out her cell phone and began rifling through her purse.

  “Who are you calling?” I asked.

  “A guy named Kebede. Meselu gave me his number. He's a sort of liaison between the hospital and orphanages in Arba Minch. I didn't want to call, because he's in a whole other city But I don't know what else to try”

  Yonas muttered unhappily; we were suddenly floating in a flood of people and donkeys. Katya got Kebede on the phone. Music came from somewhere, lots of instruments blended energetically. I smiled; I remembered the first time Thomas and I had had great sex. Right after, he'd put on an old pop song and danced in his underwear. He danced comically but also intently The song went: “I've got a hard-ass pair of shoulders / I've got a love you can't imagine.” Katya frowned, covering her other ear. “Really?” she said. “You know the head of Social Services?” Suddenly, her voice was round and shining. A boy shot past us on his bike, no-handed, beating time to the music with plastic bottles. Thomas danced; the car bucked forward; we rolled past a graveyard of white tombs and faceless angels standing guard over the dead. Katya hung up the phone. “He has a child,” she said. A love you can't imagine. “A boy Almost two. His mother dropped him off at the local hospital and hasn't been back for six months. The hospital just gave the child to Kebede and he's at Kebede's house, he hasn't gone into the orphanage yet. The rules don't apply to him. Kebede says to call back tomorrow.” She looked like she'd been struck by lightning.

  Two days later we were on a plane to Arba Minch. The weather was turbulent and the small jet bucked like an open boat on choppy water. Katya clutched her armrests and for the dozenth time went over the details of her conversation with Kebede. She had been too sick to her stomach to eat for several days, and her thinness made the taut, tense nature of her will more visible.

  The plane banged around; a woman gasped so loudly it was nearly a scream. I stood slightly and looked at the cockpit; it was open and I could see the pilots. They were leaning back in their seats, laughing and talking as if they were sharing a very good joke.

  I said, “The pilots look drunk.”

  “Oh, sit down,” said Katya.

  I sat down and looked out the window; the wing was vibrating ferociously. I began to sweat.

  “I loved Thomas,” I said. “I loved him right up until the end.”

  “I know,” said Katya. “I know you did.”

  The plane dropped suddenly, then steadied, then rose above the clouds. The sun hit the wing with piercing brilliance.

  “I loved him,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Katya.

  “But I was unfaithful.”

  Katya turned to face me, her fear interrupted by her surprise.

  “It was only once. One person, once. A student. Not even technically a student—he had just graduated.” I spoke rapidly, almost pattering. The plane jerked quickly to the side, then righted itself.

  “How did it happen?”

  “He was someone I really disliked—rude in class, so arrogant that it made him stupid. It was clear that he disliked me, too. I was glad to be getting rid of him. Then we saw each other at the graduation party and he came over to talk to me. I was surprised at first. Then I realized after about two minutes that it wasn't exactly dislike he felt for me. And I didn't dislike him, either. And Thomas wouldn't be surprised if I came home late.”

  “Was Thomas sick by then?”

  It was a blow, but I could not be angry at her for striking it. “Yes,” I said, “but I didn't know it yet. He had become very bad-tempered and strange—he was always starting fights and yelling at me—cursing at me, which he'd never done before. I was really mad at him. That partly explains why I did it, but not fully I can't explain it fully I wanted sex and I wanted it to hurt. Not physically but …”

  “I know,” said Katya. She said it quickly, as though to stop me from saying any more. “That was there, in the situation.”

  I looked out the window. Below us was a forest of textured green, a still mass of depth and roughness, of mesmerizi
ng sameness. I looked at it and my thoughts dissolved like foam on an ocean. Again came the image of my face and spread knees on the floor. Unthinking darkness rose inside me, darkness and numbness. The plane steadied.

  “I didn't know that he was sick,” I said. “But I could tell that something was changing, that he was leaving me. The parts of Thomas that I knew as Thomas were leaving.”

  Katya put her hand on my arm and stroked it. Beneath us the forest fell away We flew over bare ocher earth. I sat on the bed next to Thomas and tried to coax a spoon of soup into his mouth. He would not take it. I closed my eyes. On one side of me was the dark image of my grief. On the other side was bright sky, a rattling plastic window, and the torn edge of my seat cushion. How strange the contrast. How strange that I wished I could return to that moment of sitting on the bed, trying to get Thomas to take a spoon of soup.

  We began our descent. I turned away from the window and saw Katya sitting very erect and tense; I was struck by the intensity of her thinness and paleness, the swollen darkness under her eyes. Her face said, Don't desert me. Link with me. Link your will with mine. With a mental side step, I did. The plane hit the ground with an exuberant thud; a woman burst into laughter.

  Kebede was waiting for us in an old pickup truck. He was a small fine-boned man with a high-bridged nose, unsmiling, his eyes quick and clear. He asked whether we wanted to see the baby now, or go to the hotel first. Katya said, “The baby, please.”

  I had wanted Kevin to hurt me. I also feared it terribly. We went to a hotel. I was so afraid, I couldn't walk without trembling. If he had not taken my hand at the threshold of our rented room, I might have stopped and walked away—but he did take my hand. I looked at him and saw that his eyes were wide and determined, which made me understand that he was actually uncertain and possibly a little afraid himself. I put my arm around him and leaned my head against his shoulder. We went into the room.

  As we neared the town, the vegetation became more lush. We glimpsed a great blue body of water between the trees and rich greenery. We turned down a street of stone houses mostly hidden behind walls and gates; we saw courtyards through the gates; we saw somebody's garage painted with flamboyant brown spots, like the hide of a cow.

  Kebede's house was small but elegantly constructed of big smooth stones, contrasted by a door made of rough wooden planks. His young daughter greeted us and led us into a long, narrow, vaguely furnished room. A woman in a vermilion dress emerged from a side room with a crying baby in her arms. “This is Sofia, my wife,” said Kebede. Smiling, Sofia handed the baby to Katya. The baby stopped crying. Cradling him, Katya looked at us, grinning as if she had given birth.

  The baby was beautiful, fragile and small for his age, with a severe mouth, a high forehead, almond-shaped eyes, and slightly pointed ears that made his gaze seem radically attuned. When you held him, you felt the pure unprotected tenderness of an infant, but in those eyes there also was something uncanny and strong, nascent and vibrating with the desire to take form. He had come to the hospital half-starved from pneumonia and parasites, and although he was now healthy, he was still undernourished and weak. I thought, It matters who this child is, specifically. Sofia made us all a pasta dish with spicy onion puree, so spicy that I could barely eat it, so spicy that Katya didn't dare eat it. I wouldn't have expected even a robust baby to eat something so strong, but this baby ate it. He ate and conveyed with each bite, I intend to thrive. “Son,” said Katya. “Sonny. I'm going to name him Sonny”

  When we were done eating, we took Sonny back to the hotel. Sofia and her other daughter, an eleven-year-old in braids, whose name was Mekdes, went with us. Mekdes was amazed at the hotel's plumbing; she kept turning the water on and off. Katya was itching to buy baby food and clothes—what Sonny had on was filthy—and so Sofia made Mekdes calm down and instructed her to watch the baby while we went shopping.

  “Can she do that?” asked Katya. “At her age?”

  “Of course she can,” said Sofia. “She's cared for children younger than this one.”

  The clothing store was a dark little hole stuffed with boxes of ridiculously ugly baby clothes from Eastern Europe; Katya loaded her arms with them. Sofia's phone rang and she turned her back to us to answer it. A small girl capered as she walked in behind her mother; the mother frowned, planted herself in front of a box, and started digging. Still capering, the child made a beautiful gesture with her head, nuzzling the air the way a kitten might rub against its mother. Smiling, Katya held up an orange corduroy jumper with a lavender collar. Sofia turned to us. “Stop,” she said. “You have to stop. This is my husband. The mother just came back to the hospital. She is very angry She wants her baby back.”

  Kebede drove us to the hospital. Sofia held Sonny; Katya didn't want to. She had pulled into herself and become very contained. Kebede told us that the hospital staff was very upset with the mother for showing up after leaving the child for so long.

  “Why?” said Katya tonelessly “It's her right.”

  “She's a day laborer,” said Kebede. “She lives outdoors; she lives from hand to mouth. The hospital staff say she's retarded. The baby will die with her.”

  There was a crowd of hospital staff gathered in front of the hospital, and they came forward to meet us when we got out of the car. They were all talking loudly, but my eyes went to the only silent one among them: a small beaten-looking woman with long dirty hair and flat breasts hanging way down her body. She was dressed in filthy ragged clothes and the earrings had been torn from her ears. Her eyes were small and hot and I could not read their expression; it came from too far back in her head. I looked at her and thought, This woman is not retarded. Her eyes went past me and fell on Katya; her deep expression came forward slightly Katya steadily returned the look; I could not read her expression, either. Sofia went forward and put the baby in his mother's arms. Everyone fell silent. The mother glanced at Sofia, went toward Katya, and tried to hand the baby to her. Everybody burst out talking. Katya automatically reached for the baby, but before she could take him, Kebede stepped in and took him. The baby screamed and reached for his mother. Looking meaningfully at the mother, Kebede gave the sobbing baby to a female hospital staffer. The staffer handed the child back to his mother. The mother took the child, walked around the staffer, and tried to approach Katya again. Everybody was yelling then. Kebede moved in front of the mother, blocking her. The baby screamed. Katya hung her head and turned back to the car, both hands pressed against her chest.

  It was over in less than five minutes. After the mother walked away with the baby, Sofia went to the car to comfort Katya. I was too stunned by the scene to leave it that quickly. Kebede stood for a while talking with the hospital people, but I could not understand what they were saying.

  When we got back to the hotel, Katya lay down in bed. It was getting dark, but I did not turn on the lights. The room was stifling, but I made no move to open the windows. Katya spoke with her back to me.

  “This was a mistake,” she said. “An arrogant mistake. People told me that, and they were right. I have been lazy and selfish all my life and I think I can just come and buy a kid after living in a world that stole the ground out from under their parents and their grandparents and sucked the blood out of them and—”

  I said, “Don't start with that. You aren't buying a kid; you're not giving anyone money. Even as a metaphor, it doesn't work; Ethiopia never sold slaves.”

  “Don't give me that shit. This isn't an English class. You know there's truth in what I say. And anyway, I am sick of everything always being wrong. With every relationship I've ever had, there's been some reason it can't work. Even with sex half the time, there's something in the way; somebody is scared or married, or you touched him the wrong way, or he said the wrong thing and it's gone. Or it's there for six weeks and then it's gone. And now this. Maybe I deserve it.”

  “Katya,” I said. “That mother wants you to have her baby. I saw it. You saw it. Wait and see what happens.” />
  She turned to face me. Her lips and eyelids were swollen pitifully. Unable to breathe, I got up to open the windows and saw there were no screens. The air was thick with mosquitoes; it was malaria season and we had not brought any antimalarial drugs with us. I closed the window. Katya reminded me that she had packed a mosquito net, but when she got up to help me with it, we discovered that there was no way to put it up over the bed.

  We lay in the darkness and heat and talked about the baby and the mother and how the mother had looked when she had seen Katya; we tried to understand what her expression had meant. Soon it was too hot to talk, too hot to think. The few mosquitoes that had gotten in when I opened the window bit us, and we itched. We sweated so, we soaked our sheets. Again and again, we got up for water. Then we got up to piss and it came out scalding. The dark and heat became a private maze we wandered, in and out of a delirium that passed as sleep. Far away, I stood in front of a classroom, talking about a girl carrying her dead baby through a dark forest. There were a dozen students in that class, but Kevin was the only one whose face I saw before me. He had been right to despise me—I who had no child lecturing on this experience, like I knew. Yours is not the worst of sorrows.

  But it was. I had wanted him to hurt me and he had. Or at least I thought he had. In fact, the real shock and pain came later, along with something worse: Weeks after I went into the hotel room, Thomas was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Now he was hurt and I had done it to him. Or at least it felt as if I had.

  I touched the rings on the chain around my neck; I felt Thomas there, and his presence was not reproachful. But it was painful anyway. It was painful to know that even if my mind saw him, he wasn't there, that my mind was at odds with reality and that my mind could do nothing to change reality I could see him. He wasn't there. The emptiness between the two states was pitiless.