Excerpt of There Is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene
(Page 7 of 9)
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Gerrida spoke to a few passersby, and several pleasant soft-spoken guys, in
jeans and T-shirts, jogged off; then they returned from around the corner with
Mintesinot and his father.
How young and bewildered the father looked! He was thin, twenty-eight, with a
light beard, wearing an oversize, beige, button-down shirt, maroon slacks, and a
string necklace with a wooden crucifix. If he were the person in need of rescue,
I wouldn’t have been surprised. Gerrida told us that the young man, Eskender (Ess-ken-der),
had trained as a metalworker beside his father, but both his parents had died
years ago. When he got obviously sick with AIDS, he lost his job and house. He
and his young wife, Emebate, also an orphan, had made a life here, on a square
of sidewalk. When it rained, they lay flat and pulled a length of plastic over
themselves and their baby.
Eskender held the hand of a swaggering stocky little fellow, his son, the crown
prince of the neighborhood. Mintesinot had a square, shiny dark-skinned face,
long curls, and endearingly sticking-out ears. He skipped as if he owned the
world. He did own this stretch of sidewalk, everybody knew him. The name
Mintesinot meant “What could he not do?” When Minty needed a nap, he climbed
over the humble barricade protecting his blankets—it was like a play fort built
by young children—and passersby tried to be quieter, reminding one another,
“Baby is sleeping.” When Haregewoin approached him, Mintesinot eyed her warily
and drew closer to Eskender’s side.
I worried that our assignment was to seize the child from his father and make
off with him. I felt afraid for the young man.
Gerrida unfolded a packet of official papers from her handbag and held them out
to Eskender. The young father read the orders and gave a sad smile. He held out
his son’s hand to Haregewoin.
“Na [come], Mintesinot,” she said gently, but the boy pulled back like a pony
yanked by the lead rope. Haregewoin bent over to make small talk with him, but
he disappeared behind his father.
Selamneh decided to try. He squatted down and said, “Mintesinot, would you like
to ride in my taxi?”
The pair of bright black eyes reappeared from behind the father’s filthy
shirttail.
“I will drive?” asked the boy in a clear, high voice.
Selamneh lost his balance in laughter. Sitting back on his heels again,
Selamneh said, “Well, not this first time. Come on, I’ll take you; we’ll see if
you like it.”
“Abate yimetal?” Will my dad come?
“Let’s go to the market and buy a package of biscuits for your dad, a present
for your dad!” Selamneh invented on the spot. At this, smiling Mintesinot came
out from behind his father, took Selamneh’s hand, and allowed himself to be led
to the taxi and given a boost up into the backseat. He waved to a few sidewalk
admirers from his high perch.
I hurried back through the crowd to the father. “Does he know where we’re
going? Does he know where we’re taking Mintesinot?” My hands were shaking for it
seemed that everything had speeded up, that the taxi was revving to depart, that
blocked cars were honking in protest, that people were running; distressed, I
rummaged wildly through my backpack for a pen and a piece of paper and fumbled
them into the air. One of the nice young men in the crowd caught them and wrote
down, for Eskender, Haregewoin’s phone number and address. The father thanked us
with his infinitely sad smile and pushed the paper into his breast pocket.
Clearly this child was his whole life; he’d raised out of nothing, out of rags
and refuse and handouts, a delightful and confident boy. But he knew this day
must be coming. He grasped that people in good health had arrived to take away
his son. He wearily lowered himself into his lonely knot of blankets. The whole
neighborhood looked poorer as we departed with Mintesinot; the father had lost
his only treasure, accepting, like a receipt, his son’s forwarding address.
Excerpted from There Is No Me Without You, (c) 2006 Melissa Fay Greene. Reproduced with permission of the publisher, Bloomsbury USA/Walker & Co. All rights reserved.
