Bailey's Cafe Read online

  Eve’s face had become like stone as she held the exposed fruit in her hands. You do understand, she whispered, that as a last resort, I will gouge it out with my fingernails. She didn’t have to ask again. I brought her the knife. The sharp blade caught the overhead light and the glare made me turn my eyes away. I know my Bible well, I said, and this isn’t in the Law of Moses. She was positioning the fruit, lining up the exposed head of the pit with the tip of the blade. No, she said, it’s not. It’s older than that. It’s the law of the Blue Nile. And along those shores there is no woman in her right mind—Jew or Muslim—who will want her daughter to grow up a whore.

  The preparation takes weeks. And the mother sings at her work as she spins new linen for the girl’s robes and stores up extra wheat, jars of olives, and honey for the feast. She can hold up her head again because she’s stilled the tongue of her mother-in-law. No, she would not bring her granddaughter to shame. She sends a message over the mountains for her own mother to come. And the message is returned: If I have to crawl, I will be there. The women of the village begin to bring presents for the child. They give so willingly of their little and call the mother blessed: fresh eggs, shiny tin cups, barley candy, and from the young wife of the high priest a new samye necklace with real amber. She tells her Mariam how fortunate she is to have found favor with such a learned woman. The high priest’s wife came all the way from Addis Ababa, where they teach the Beta Israel girls to read and write. And all of these women will be there to dance and sing as the midwives squat the naked girl over the hole dug into the hut of blood.

  We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? If she be a wall, we will build upon her a turret of silver; and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar.

  Eve plunged the knife quickly into the middle of the split fruit. With one twist of her wrist, she cut out the large pit. It carried ragged pieces of dark amber flesh with it as it fell to the counter.

  It is a white-hot world of pain. A world filled with high-pitched screams, with the singing of women, with the gentle moans of her mother and grandmothers, with the press of soft breasts and soft arms against her heaving body. It is a world that will not end.

  Juice dripped from the lightning blade, and bits of plum clung to Eve’s wet fingers as she scraped away at the meaty sections left inside each half of the open fruit. She was so intent on being thorough and quick that she didn’t notice the pieces on her bowed chin and the wet stains spreading down her blouse sleeves. Small chunks splattered as they kept falling rapidly to the counter. The plum was cleaned of everything but its delicate outer skin. She held what was left in her sticky palm and it was already beginning to curl inward like a petal.

  The child’s hanging skin is held together with acacia thorns and boiled thread. A clean straw is inserted to ensure there will be a small opening after the body has healed itself shut. She will need that opening, once she is able to pass her urine. Her mother will be there to comfort her because, at first, the feeling will be strange. The girl may cry when it is time to relieve herself. Drip by drip. But she will know this hut again. And she will know no other way to pass her blocked menstrual blood. Drip by drip.

  The words of King Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him. Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.

  I was so angry I wanted to break something. Blame somebody. I told Eve to shut up. Please, just shut up. But she wasn’t talking any longer; she was just staring at the plum petals folding over its own emptiness. And ever so softly she was crying. Her face was unchanged, her breathing so regular, I wondered how long she had been doing that. You do understand, Eve said, how much she loved her daughter. And she couldn’t deny in her heart that the girl was always going to be slow-witted. Finding her a decent husband would be difficult with so many other virgins to choose from, and that is why she had the midwives close her up that tightly. It raises a woman’s value.

  So you see, if it had been rape, the whole village would have heard her screams. Even on the wedding night, the ensaslaye, with a willing bride and a cautious husband, the village will hear the screaming. Sometimes it will take months, and many trips to that hut of blood, before the wound he slowly makes allows him to penetrate her without pain. And sometimes she’s not fully opened until her first child. Nadine, I don’t want to get into a argument with you, or anyone else, about definitions, but depending upon how you look at it, it’s not unusual along the shores of the Blue Nile for virgins to give birth. But I’ve bathed this girl and seen her body; no man has even tried.

  It had gotten so quiet in the cafe I could hear the humming of the Frigidaire, the fluorescent tube overhead with its low whines and buzzing. So quiet I’d forgotten there were a few other customers—all women—who sat immobile on the counter stools and at the tables. Every face was turned toward Eve, and, I swear, as I looked into each of those faces, they all wanted to believe.

  —So you’re telling me, we’ve got ourselves a miracle?

  —Well, Nadine, it won’t be the first.

  —Yeah, if we’re talking the little girl in Galilee …

  —She wasn’t the first either.

  —But you’ve gotta admit, she’s gotten away with it longer.

  —And I say, more power to her.

  I was afraid that Eve was going to laugh. This had been a morning of enough firsts for me. My husband is always remarking on how Eve doesn’t laugh. He should count himself lucky. I think he likes to forget who she really is, what she’s seen. If this woman ever began laughing, unlike her tears, it couldn’t stop. I asked where the girl had found Gabe’s pawnshop.

  On a back street in Addis Ababa. And the real miracle is how she’d made it that far south from the mountains. It’s almost five hundred miles through steep canyons and gorges. After they expelled her from the village, the only town she knew was Tuesday Market, with only a short motor road leading out from there. The rest of the way is only the old caravan routes that wind across the high plateaus past the occasional village. It is the way most of the rural people travel with their pack mules and donkeys. And at night they can find a corner in someone’s tukal hut to sleep protected from the bitter winds and the fearful shifta who rob and maim in the hills.

  As a Beta Israel she won’t have this protection. Most of the settlements south of her village belong to the unbelievers. She is from a devout home and trained to refuse their food; the animals they slaughter are not according to the Law. Unclean women are allowed to bake their bread. And once the villagers learn that the starving girl by the bamboula tree will only accept a handful of peas, she becomes a Buda. One of the demons who turn into hyenas at night and bring sickness to their children. One of those killers of Christ. In spite of the blisters on her feet, she must now run from that area quickly. To such a girl expulsion from her home village amounts to a death sentence and that is what her mother shrieks at the high priest.

  Then let her confess to the father of the child. Let her bring the guilty man before the kahěns so they can do to him according to the Law. He has defiled a virgin and he must marry her and pay her father just restitution. The mother tries once again to get Mariam to understand: This man has done an evil thing. If she is too ashamed to utter his name then just lead her to the tukal where he lives and point. She will do the rest. But Mariam insists that no man has ever touched her. The girl’s simple face is like a clear stream. It holds no fear, no cunning. Can it be that the light in her daughter’s mind glows more dimly than she thought?

  She lifts the girl’s skirt and, taking two fingers, she pokes along the closed seam between her legs. Here, she says, who has been here? And here? here? The only opening down there is smaller than one of those fingertips. She pokes at it again and again. Here, I say, what man has touched you h
ere? And the girl repeats that no man has ever touched her. But a child is growing in her belly and so some man must have; some man must have. She tells Mariam she has to stop this lying; the time for patience is long past. Confess the name of this beast and let them salvage what they can. And when the girl repeats her innocence once again, the woman raises her fist and strikes her. She beats her until she breaks free and runs from the tukal; she races behind Mariam, flinging dust at her back. The kahěns will expel her from the village! Does she know what that means?

  There are no cooking fires lit on the eve of Atonement. That entire night and all of the next day will be spent in strict fasting and prayer. At sunset the settlement begins to gather at the sanctuary to receive the blessings of the priests. It is starless and chill as Mariam’s mother approaches the holy place. Her three sons will follow her husband onto the sanctuary grounds to pray with the other men on the north side; the very young girls and old women pray on the south side. Tonight she does not maneuver for a space among the other married women to sit as close to the threshold as possible; she wraps her shawl around her and drops to the ground with her back against a juniper. There isn’t the familiar stir of pride in watching her husband and sons step into the lighted courtyard. In knowing that they will be praying so near to the Holy of Holies. So near to the blessed Torah. She sits alone tonight. The one daughter is to leave after the fast of Atonement. And Adonai did not see fit to answer her prayer for the second daughter. And that was to ask for so very little.

  The crisp air carries the smell of the incense and the voices of the priests as they begin the chant. Her own lips give the reply in wordless pantomime. The night allows her much time to think. The kahěns had waited as long as they could. If the girl had confessed up until the eve of Atonement, then the whole village would have had to join them in her forgiveness. She knew the hand of the high priest’s wife was in this extended period of grace. A good woman. But is this not the night for God to forgive? She does not look forward to the moment when she must kiss these neighbors as all turn to the others—Forgive me, forgive me. Because in her heart she must truly pardon—the filthy whispers, the vicious lies—if she is to find the courage to enter the sanctuary and go before the Everlasting God.

  She thinks of all the offerings she has brought to that threshold. Her portions of barley and wheat were full to the measure and always from the first threshing. Unlike some, she did not hide the best loaves, and when she poured her beer into the vessels for the priests, it was always from the first brewing. And when their goat bore twins, did she not insist that her husband take them both for the sacrifice? She knew many sitting right here who would have only given one—if any. No, she must stop this type of thinking. Adonai, forgive her the false pride. She was not going in there to bargain with God, to plead her goodness. She was going to demand pure and simple justice.

  The congregation keeps the vigil through the night. And just before the first light of dawn, with many nodding and fighting sleep, she rises and weaves her way through the prone women littering the front of the sanctuary. Fear tightens inside her throat until it chokes up her breath as she stands with her toes inches away from the threshold. There is a prayer to be said at this time of day. Kalhu. It is spoken before dawn when the hens cry. And then there is a prayer at dawn itself: O Lord, I called. There are ten prayers alone just for the hours of the day. The Beta Israel bless the rain, lightning, and thunder, the sunshine, the olive harvest, the wheat. They bless each meal before and even after it is eaten. They bless new clothes, new lambs, new roads on which they travel. In this ancient faith there is a blessing for everything—except her body. She is the mother of four children and so has spent much of her life unclean.

  The first foot she places down on the inside of the threshold burns like fire. But it is done. She has sinned. And, yes, there is a prayer for this:

  God will help me, for He is great, God, my Lord. Put me not to shame, my Lord, God our judge, God our Lord, God, Lord of Israel, our King, because I transgressed the laws of sacrifice. There is none pure, none without blemish before Thee, O Lord, that seest the hidden things, that triest the heart and the reins. Mistreat me not, but remember the covenant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Thy servants.

  But I am also His servant, she whispers as she moves farther into the sacred ground toward the Holy of Holies. I am also His servant and He is my God too.

  The air in the sanctuary is hazy from the sesame-oil lamps. In the predawn light they think it is a spirit moving between their kneeling bodies. The hem of her dress touches a praying girl’s shoulder, and when the girl looks up to discover that it is Mariam’s mother violating the sanctuary, she shrieks. It gets echoed over and over. Chaos breaks out. The woman begins to run in circles. She knows that the Holy of Holies must be somewhere toward the center, but there are so many people shouting now, hands reaching out to strike her as she’s shoved against walls and spat upon.

  She tries not to fight back; she must keep forgiving them if she is to ask God to spare Mariam. In the crush of bodies she is shoved out into the eastern section of the courtyard. The crowd becomes dead still. No one—man or woman—dares to follow. The Law is clear. That inner threshold is the point of no return. The backs of her legs hit the sharp edges of the sacrificial altar and she loses her balance. Her hand knocks over a clay vessel for catching blood. It shatters as it hits the ground. Stumbling back to her feet, she sees the double-edged knives hanging at the side of the altar. There is only one type of prayer to be said in here. She turns to stone. And before the world goes blank, she hears the wailing of her youngest boy as the silent crowd begins to part for the high priest.

  Somewhere along the line I had forgotten to breathe. And when my words came out they sounded choked and strange. But this is 1948. They couldn’t have … Eve gave me a look that shut me right up. It’s also Ethiopia, she said. The hills of Ethiopia.

  Mariam’s long trip through those mountains is also to become a journey through time. The high priest’s wife hides herself and waits for the girl at the edge of the village. She places an amulet around her neck with a note pinned on it to be given to one of her old friends in Addis Ababa. Walk toward the rising sun, she tells Mariam. And if God be with you, so that you reach the town that looks and smells like Tuesday Market, follow the motor road south until you see the place where the people build their houses on rock ledges like the pigeons. Show someone this note; they will then tell you where you go. She repeats it several times until she believes the girl understands: Walk toward the rising sun.

  But the Addis Ababa this woman knew was gone. She was one of the few Beta Israel who had met other Jews from the outside world. Years ago there had been a Frenchman who came to tell them that they had wealthy brothers and sisters in his land and many others. There were new and wonderful things to teach them, and their suffering would soon end. When these brothers and sisters did not appear, her father told her that the Frenchman was lying. He was alone out there beyond those mountains. But she was hoping to send Mariam to a cousin who taught in a boy’s boarding school set up by this man. He could take her to women who would help her. But Mussolini had been through Addis Ababa since she’d left. All of the Jewish schools that the Fascists didn’t close, they burned to the ground. And when the rightful government came back into power, they decided to leave matters just that way. The Jewish boarding school she sought was a heap of rubble. And the names she had written on her note were the names of dead men.

  Mariam is terrified of the heavy traffic, the loud noises, the people who shove and push. Bird monsters fly overhead with the sound of a thousand wasps. She runs into doorways and covers her head when she sees them in the sky, to keep from being swept up and eaten. And the high priest’s wife was wrong. There is no one who will show her where to go. They read her note and look at her as something despised. They must know that she has touched the lepers, because they are everywhere in the streets, all talking in strange, strange tongues. But she knows she is u
nclean, and if they will just direct her, she can find her people, who will show her where to wash. It is another bird monster that sends her running to crouch in a doorway on a back street. And she sees another leper staring at her through the shop window. Why would the high priest’s wife do this? Why would she send her into such a world?

  Mariam curls herself into a tight ball when Gabriel opens the door. She is too tired to run anymore. She cannot believe that the old man is beginning to speak to her in her own tongue. He tells her that she shouldn’t be afraid; he is not diseased. It is only the color of his skin. He extends his wrinkled hands and turns them for her to see. I am in exile like you, he says; I am a white Falasha. And I will lead you to a place where you can rest.

  Eve took a paper napkin and cleared away the mess on the counter. I was relieved when she did, because I had no intentions of touching it. I picked up the sticky knife between my fingertips and threw it into the garbage.

  —Whatever happened to that girl, Eve said, she is pregnant. And I have an entirely new situation on my hands. My place is a way station, just like yours. And there is no world for this girl to return to.