Sererie

When disappeared girls are lucky, they go to other places and hook their husbands' names to theirs like snake cords to clothing sacks. Then they send messages back home, telling us who they are now. Before today, when I was a child, I thought this was what happened to my sister, Azmera. I thought she disappeared to New York and became Azmera Mitslal, a man's wife, a woman, with a face and a life as new as a baby's. But Azmera was not lucky. This is what I am learning now.

Before today, my Abeselome would laugh when I talked about my sister's extra name. "There must be Azmeras flitting in New York air like flies," he would say. "She has to let them know which Azmera she is, so they do not think she is one of the other Azmeras. The singing star Azmera, the woman doctor Azmera. The president." He would throw his head back and let his teeth spread over his face like the pale stone walls of the churches behind our compound. I would tell him his walls were crumbling, that his teeth would fall like the ruins if he continued to make jokes on my sister. Azmera is as pretty as a singer, I would tell him, and as smart as a president. Her face is slick like the inside of a bee's hive and her eyes are quick and sharp. But he would just laugh deeper, his face opening wide as the ruins' bathing pools, until I could only jump in and laugh with him.

This was our qene, our back-and-forth talk. We kicked words across the air like rocks in a boys' game, stashed them in each other like playing hide-and-seek. Abeselome's qene has always been good; he is sixteen, has been growing up and learning things two years longer than me. He goes to the school and gathers new words, a new story-full every week. Then he comes home and kicks the words to me. I stop them with my eyes, turn them around in my head, kick them back. My qene is good, he tells me, and I know. My qene is from my family; they put it in my name: Meraffe, chapter. My qene goes for days and days.

Back when we were children, when Azmera was still here, she joined in the qene, along with Genet, who is Abeselome's sister, and now my sister, too. The four of us would pass words between us from the time the sun spilled white on the ruins till our mothers called us all home to eat. Now that we are grown and Azmera is gone-and my parents gone too-Genet and I keep the qene up when Abeselome is at the school. We sit with Persinna, their mother, pulling dead roots from the ground and saying they look like feet or ghosts or the mark that used to live between my mother's eyes. We spice the sebbi for dinner and say it smells like the dirt did when rain seemed always in the air, when we did not have to close our eyes and breathe deep to remember moisture in our mouths. When our talk gets sad, going back to the days of Azmera, Genet touches my face and kicks me pebbles. Genet loves Azmera, feels as dry without her as I do. "They are like us when we were girls," our mothers used to say, their laughter mixing like the string chords of a lyre. "Friendship is more than friendship to them." So when Azmera slips into our talk, I rub my cheek against Genet's palm and we turn our qene quickly back to battle-play, pulling good words from each other's lips and sticking them to the things around us, seeing who can draw the tighter wince, the thicker laugh.

In between our laughter, I try to forget the story of Azmera's disappearance. I try instead to hold on to Genet, to keep her from leaving, too. Genet's body is like Azmera's was when...