Garden of Eden

by Sharon Butala

  Iris says, “Yes, to Lalibela.” She’d say more, but Hagosa claps her hands together and holds them under her chin.

  “How very good!” she declares, her black eyes shining. “You like?”

  “Oh, yes, very much. The churches were wonderful.” The door at the back of the room opens and Afewerk’s widow enters. Although she too wears a shamma over her head and shoulders, her straight gabardine skirt and neat flowered blouse are, as before, North American in style and in her way of wearing them. She and Giyorgis greet each other with stiff bows.

  “You’re back,” she says, smiling down at Iris, although with less ardour than Hagosa had. Iris had forgotten how tall she is, and big-boned — a strong-looking woman. Behind her, Hagosa hurries silently out. “Two rooms?” the innkeeper asks in her slightly bored manner. Iris nods. Hagosa had apparently gone to get keys, because now she returns and hands a pair of them to the innkeeper who takes them, glancing at Iris who stands tiredly, waiting to be shown to her room. “You were out sightseeing?” she asks politely. Hagosa has vanished again.

  “We went to Lalibela to see the rock churches.” Afewerk’s widow — how embarrassing it is not to be able to remember the woman’s name — literally takes a step back. Her clear brown eyes widen. Giyorgis moves back to lean against a narrow table set against the wall as if he’s tired or bored, or recognizes this conversation has nothing to do with him. Or is it something else?

  “Lalibela?” the woman says. She’s thinking, her eyes fixed on Iris’s face. “How did you go there?” she asks. “Did you fly from here?” Iris shakes her head, no, they drove, she tells her, but the look on the woman’s face puzzles, even alarms her a little. It’s as if she and Giyorgis had violated some rule by going there. Bewildered, Iris reminds herself that, after all, Ethiopia is not a free country in the way that Canada is free.

  She hesitates, then says in a tone that she hopes sounds innocent, “I had to wait for my niece, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to see a little of the country. And I did want to see the rock churches. They’re practically the eighth wonder of the world.” She doesn’t mention that she hadn’t heard of them herself until three days ago. Afewerk’s widow is still staring disconcertingly at Iris. She looks away, then asks slowly, “What are the churches like? I’ve never been there,” she adds as if it’s an afterthought, and Iris feels pretty sure the woman is lying, or else she wants to find something else out from Iris without Iris knowing she’s doing it. She must be careful not to mention the hunger of the people.

  “Oh, really quite amazing,” she says brightly. “There are ten or eleven of them — I didn’t see them all because I just got too tired. It’s the altitude, I think. But —” The woman is staring at the floor, Iris sees worry in her face.

  “What are they like?” she persists. “Tell me about them.” Is it that she wants to be sure that’s where Iris went? Maybe there was something along the way, in Lalibela itself, that she wasn’t supposed to see. So she tells her how the churches were carved from the top down and are forty feet or so deep and other details of their construction.

  “And did you take pictures?” The question is so careful that Iris does her best not to show any hesitation.

  “I wish I could have, but there’s no electricity so the churches are too dark inside for pictures. And anyway, I forgot to bring a camera.” Is she imagining it, or does Afewerk’s widow relax perceptibly? “I’m sorry that I don’t have one,” she adds. “I would have liked to take home pictures of them they’re so remarkable.”

  “They are remarkable,” the woman agrees quickly, apparently forgetting she has just said she hasn’t seen them. There’s a brief silence during which Iris considers, then risks asking her about the situation in Lalibela. She’s thinking, I’m a Canadian, they wouldn’t dare do anything to me.

  “Did you know,” she begins carefully, “that there’s been no rain there? That there’s been a crop failure and now the fields are bare and it’s no use planting without moisture?” She waits.

  Afewerk’s widow says angrily, “Hah! They are stupid up there! They don’t know anything about conservation, they farm all the wrong way. If they don’t have grain stored, it’s their own fault!” Her answer is so vehement, so full of contempt, that Iris is shaken. She does her best not to show it. Giyorgis changes his position against the table and yawns audibly. Is he trying to warn her? She glances back, but he’s studying his shoes, doesn’t appear to be listening at all. Still, Iris thinks, she’d be wise to pretend she’s satisfied.

  “Oh, I see,” she says after a moment, her voice softer than she intended, and clears her throat. As if starvation were only what those people deserved because of their stupidity, their improvidence — which she doesn’t believe in anyway. Again she is assailed by the beggar child crying in the dirt, she hears the farmers saying they have nothing to eat, and the stranger saying, “We can’t get government food.”

  “Oh, I see,” she says again, as if already the subject bores her. She will tell Lannie when she comes; after so many years in this country Lannie will know what to do. Or her agency will. Maybe it will send grain. “Well,” she says, turning away and passing a hand across her face. “I’m hungry and I’m dying for a shower.”

  “Yes, it is a long way and the roads are not good. You must be very tired —” Her tone is soothing, but she’s interrupted by the door behind Iris opening, and Iris sees her break into a smile, as if she has forgotten what she has just been talking about. Giyorgis straightens and takes a step forward. Afewerk’s widow makes a gesture with her hand and nods her head toward the door. Puzzled, a bit apprehensive, Iris turns.

  A rather beautiful, tall, stern-looking middle-aged Ethiopian woman is standing in the doorway, one arm around the shoulders of a second woman, as if she’s comforting or supporting her. The second woman is slender and very pale in the harsh light from the unshaded overhead bulb, which also makes her long, drab hair shine dully, and although she is warmly dressed in faded jeans and a bulky, dark red sweater, she’s shivering in the evening chill. It’s her niece, Lannie.

  “Oh,” Iris says, as she takes a step toward her; the day Howard left ten-year-old Lannie alone in the middle of Iris’s kitchen is flooding back over her. Lannie looks just the same way now: not quite seeming to see or to register that it is her aunt Iris standing in front of her. Iris has begun to tremble, she feels as if the room has grown brighter, as if this new light is flooding through her as well as over her. How Lannie’s white skin shines in the light. How frighteningly real she is finally.

  Lannie sighs, her eyes roll upward, her eyelids slowly close, her knees give way, and she slides, unconscious, to the floor.

  Time stops. They are all — Afewerk’s widow, Giyorgis, Iris, the Ethiopian woman — frozen where they stand, then all moving at once, voices mingling — someone has cried out — hands reach toward the prostrate girl, people crouch beside her, touching her. Giyorgis, the only man present, says something in a commanding tone that gets everyone’s attention. The women move back, he bends, slides an arm under Lannie’s head, another under her knees, and gently, carefully, with visible effort, lifts her slowly from the floor.

  The innkeeper looks at the keys in her hands and rushes from the room, plainly expecting them all to follow. Lannie is making whimpering noises now and moving her head back and forth without opening her eyes. The Ethiopian woman, whom Iris realizes must be Dr. Abubech Tefera, pushes her way past Iris and Giyorgis to catch up with the innkeeper. She hands her a key she has taken from her jacket pocket. They hurry on around the corner, Iris last. At the door to what must be Lannie’s room, everyone stops while the innkeeper unlocks and opens it.

  “I didn’t mean to startle her,” Iris says, wringing her hands. “I never thought she’d be so upset to see me.” Giyorgis crosses the few feet to the nearer of the two single beds with their faded flowered covers and gently sets Lannie down. Iris goes to Lannie’s side, shakes out the folded blanket she finds at its f
oot and spreads it carefully over her. Giyorgis, Dr. Abubech, and Afewerk’s widow stand in the open door carrying on a brisk conversation in Amharic, ignoring Iris.

  How pale she is, how smooth and transparently bluish are her eyelids, her lips colourless and chapped; Iris wants to soothe her rough lips with salve, to brush her lustreless hair and make it beautiful again, to bathe those fragile limbs. She holds Lannie’s hand in hers, icy to her touch and weightless, and yet she thinks she detects a faint quiver.

  “We’ll put your suitcase in your room,” the innkeeper says, startling Iris. The tableau in the doorway is breaking up; Giyorgis has already gone. “Your key is here.” The innkeeper sets it on the table by the door and vanishes down the corridor, leaving only Lannie’s companion with Iris.

  “She is going to call a doctor and get some medicine,” Dr. Abubech explains in her low-pitched, steady voice. “Giyorgis will go and bring it back.” She moves the same way she speaks, with a deliberateness that Iris finds reassuring, to stand with her looking down at Lannie. Iris notices the streak of grey in her smoothly coiffed black hair, and notes that she’s probably at least Iris’s age, maybe even older. Lannie moves her legs under the blanket, pulls her hand jerkily out of Iris’s grasp, and grimaces. Abubech puts a palm gently on her forehead. “She has a fever.” She removes her hand and turns to Iris. “I am Abubech Tefera. Lannie works with me.”

  Iris introduces herself. They shake hands and Abubech does the inevitable Ethiopian bowing, first one side, then the other, then again. Iris hardly notices. “I’m so sorry I startled her. I should have given her some warning. It never occurred to me —”

  “It wasn’t surprise at seeing you that made her faint,” Abubech interrupts. “I phoned the office yesterday and was told you were here, and I told Lannie. But she hasn’t been feeling well all week and today she became ill. The way she is shivering, it has to be her malaria back.” Lannie’s eyelids have begun to flutter. “Somewhere along the way she didn’t take her malaria drugs, I’m sure of it. She contracted malaria several years ago when she was staying in the lowlands, and now this.”

  “But,” Iris begins, “surely they can treat it? It can’t be too bad?” Abubech swings her head back to fasten her stern black eyes on Iris’s face.

  “I’m afraid that people die of it,” she replies. “It can be very serious.” For a second Iris is too shocked to speak.

  “Then we have to get her to a hospital right now,” she says. “Is the doctor on his way?”

  “Perhaps,” Abubech says. “But the hospital is not a good idea.”

  “Why not?” Iris asks, stunned.

  In an undertone, Abubech says, “There is too much AIDS.” Somewhere outside, far away in the perfumed darkness a rooster is crowing, out of synch with the world. The sound strikes terror into Iris’s heart and involuntarily she moves a step closer to Abubech. Abubech says, “We must get her to Addis. In Addis she can see a doctor I know. She will get good care there.”

  “She looks too ill to travel,” Iris says doubtfully, “doesn’t she?” turning to Abubech for verification as if in this strange country she can’t trust her own instincts any more. Now she too puts her hand on Lannie’s forehead, and in a flash before she closes off the picture, remembers touching Barney’s cold, set face, as if with her own abundant warmth and energy she might bring him back to life.

  Lannie opens her eyes. Something like alarm crosses her face, is replaced instantly by a frown, she turns her head away, then brings it back again to stare up into Iris’s face with those dark gold eyes that now have gone nearly black with whatever it is she’s seeing.

  “Iris,” she says, and her mouth goes tremulous, then firms itself. “Aunt Iris? Is it you?”

  “Yes, yes, it’s me,” Iris tells her softly. Lannie stares up at her, her lips trembling faintly. She seems unable to find any more words, and to fill the gap of her surprise and whatever other emotion is rendering her speechless, Iris continues, trying to sound light and cheerful, “You fainted. I thought it was because you were so surprised to see me.” Then emotion overcomes her and she takes Lannie’s hand back in both her own and holds it tightly. “I’ve found you at last. I’m so glad —”

  “No, no,” Lannie says. She wobbles her head from side to side on the pillow, then stops, wincing, as if the movement has hurt her or made her nauseous.

  “I will leave you two,” Abubech says. “When Giyorgis returns with the medicine, I will bring it to you. In the meantime, I will be in my room if you need me.” She bows again and goes out. As she pulls the door shut Iris turns back to Lannie, who whispers, “Did you come all this way to find me?” Iris nods, now she’s the one not able to speak.

  Hungrily she studies the once-again familiar face, the narrow, redgold eyebrows she remembers so well, the delicate, pale mouth, the fine-grained skin of her face and neck. She is overcome with love for the girl in the bed, for the little, lost child she’d fed and clothed and tried to be a mother to. She bends toward her, intending to gather her in her arms and press her against her bosom, to make her well again with her own lavish health.

  In a sudden, harsh movement, Lannie turns her face away. Iris falters, stopped in her forward movement.

  “I should put on my nightgown. I’m pretty tired.” Lannie doesn’t look at her as she murmurs this, but then she turns slowly back to Iris, smiles in a troubled way that holds perhaps shyness, and lifts an arm so that Iris understands she’s asking for her help to sit up. Relieved to be helping her, Iris supports her while she sits and moves her legs over the side of the bed. Then Lannie waits quietly, not moving, while Iris rummages for her nightgown in the suitcase she finds leaning against the wall. “That’s it,” Lannie tells her. It’s only an old pink cotton T-shirt, faded, with a tear in the shoulder. At the sight of it tenderness again floods Iris, and she finds her eyes filling with tears as she glances over her shoulder at Lannie sitting on the side of the bed.

  Lannie’s eyes are fixed on her with so strange an expression that Iris, crouched over the suitcase, the T-shirt pressed against her chest, can only stare back until with visible effort Lannie breaks her gaze. She wonders, What was it Lannie was seeing? Something in me? Or something in her own life that my presence has reminded her of? Sobs of relief threaten her precarious composure, but she struggles and succeeds in stifling them. She pats her eyes dry with the T-shirt, not noticing she is, then goes to Lannie.

  They don’t speak as Iris helps her take off her jeans and sweater, pulls the nightgown over her head, fluffs the two thin pillows and puts them back. Lannie has always been slender, but now she is bone thin, her body pale as snow, her small breasts with their pink nipples like two delicate flowers against her chest, her long, exquisitely shaped, palely freckled legs thin too. Iris is moved by the beauty of her young body, which she had forgotten, or perhaps had never known. Lannie is shivering as she gets back into bed. Iris pulls the blankets up around her neck and tucks them securely into place.

  “I’m so happy to see you,” Iris tells her. “You’re not angry with me for coming?”

  Lannie has closed her eyes, but she opens them and says, in a tone Iris can’t identify, “I never thought you’d come.” She pauses. “But I should have known you would.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us where you were?” Iris asks, then wishes that she hadn’t, thinking this is no time to accuse her. She will have to find a way to tell Lannie that Barney is dead, and decides she’ll wait until Lannie feels better. She rests her palm gently against her cheek. Lannie shivers violently at her touch, as if Iris’s hand is too cold to bear.

  “I meant to tell you, but the longer I didn’t write, the harder it was,” she says. “It was just that —” She falls silent. “I — didn’t have anything — to tell you.”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Iris says briskly.

  “Where’s Barney? Didn’t he come with you?”

  “He — couldn’t come.” Her voice catches.

  “You came all this w
ay alone.” The look on Lannie’s face puzzles Iris, as if she has done something miraculously difficult. She is ashamed; she’s done so little, and so very late.

  “I visited your father,” she tells Lannie. “And I saw Misty and Dillon.”

  “Is Misty all right?”

  “They’re both living with your father.”

  Lannie, who has again turned her head away, turns back rapidly to look at Iris when she hears this, and then closes both eyes.

  “I’m going to throw up.” She’s pushing back the bedcovers. Iris grabs the only container she can see in the room, a black clay pitcher sitting on the table. Lannie retches violently into it, but her stomach is empty; this isn’t the first time she has vomited. There’s a brief knock and Abubech enters carrying vials of pills. The expression on her face, neutral when she entered, changes to concern when she sees Lannie holding the pitcher.

  “Vomiting again? Get some water,” she says to Iris in an easy, polite way that shows she’s used to giving commands, knows they’ll be obeyed. Iris goes into the bathroom where she finds a bottle of water, a plastic glass, and a towel and brings them back to the bedside.

  When Lannie’s nausea passes, she takes the pills with sips of water and then falls back against the pillows. Abubech says in an undertone, “I think early in the morning we will start back for Addis with her. What is your vehicle?”

  “I have a Land Rover. Are you sure she’s all right to travel?”

  “Good,” Abubech says, ignoring the question. “I have only a small truck and there is not room for all.” They look back at Lannie whose eyes are closed. Abubech says softly, “She will sleep now. Come with me and we will have dinner.”

  “Yes, go with her, Aunt Iris,” Lannie says. “I’ll sleep now. These relapses only last a few days. I’ll be better in the morning.”

  Abubech and Iris walk the corridors together to the hotel restaurant, a small, plaster-walled room with a few cloth-covered tables and straight-backed wooden chairs set around them. A row of windows at the far end open onto the veranda. Giyorgis, the only other occupant, is sitting by himself at a table for four eating a plate of spaghetti. He stands when they come in.