Mary Gaitskill - Don't Cry

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 mesmerizing 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”