Garden of Eden Read Online Free

say. She’s trying hard not to think of Mariam.
At least she’s well, at least she didn’t die.
This thought helps to dissolve the lump that formed in her throat when Almaz gave her the news of the child’s departure. “So do the showers and the hand-washing and the laundry and — everything.”
    “After work tonight, would you consider having a beer with me in town?” She can see a flush rising under that redhead’s freckled, translucent skin of his that mirrors her own, and now he’s the one to toy in the dust with the toe of his boot. She thinks, no, remembers she owes her Canadian churches a new story and should write it tonight. About Mariam? No, not Mariam. But always on the lookout for camouflage too, not wanting to be labelled as eccentric, too much a loner, after a short hesitation she says, “Okay, but it’ll be late. Eight, maybe?”
    “I can pick you up at your house,” he offers, “We can walk together.” She nods again. The girls all tease her about being a recluse. Sometimes it isn’t a joke. She knows they find her strange, cold, not pleasant. This will help, make her seem more normal. Provided one of them doesn’t already have her eye on Rob — he’s a nice enough looking man and he isn’t a Russian or an Italian or an Ethiopian — but if somebody else is interested in him, there’ll be trouble. A loud cry comes from a tent off to their right, a wail of grief, and then another. “My husband is dead, my heart has pain. It is finished, my husband is dead.” Such open mourning is not the usual thing these days. With so many dying, eerie silence has become the pattern of grief.
    “I have to go,” she says, urgent now, raising her voice to be heard over the noisy buzz of the feeding tents and the sounds of grief. Rob’s face has gone blank behind his freckles. It is a stoicism she recognizes:
Don’t think about it, be strong,
it says. Another infant in the feeding tent has begun to howl.
    “Yeah, me too,” he says, giving her a solid, assessing look. Then he walks away carefully, firmly, only a slight jerkiness in his stride giving him away.
    “We should go and check the tents,” Caroline says. They’ve closed registration for the day, in a half-hour it will be dark. “I’m starving,” Caroline goes on, “but with so many coming in and the hospital so full, I’m afraid there might be sick unaccompanied kids in the tents nobody’s noticed.”
    “Okay,” Lannie replies. She’d just as soon work right through until eight and then go out with Rob directly from here, get something to eat in town. Caroline will drag her off to supper with the others though, she supposes. And if she isn’t hungry right now, she knows she will be as soon as she smells food cooking. She can’t remember for sure, but thinks that today she has eaten only a couple of cookies and some juice at the afternoon break.
    Dawit has gone back to his family in the nearby town for the night, so Caroline calls Teodoris, who is still tidying the office behind them in preparation to locking up. Teodoris will interpret. They all go to Amharic lessons two or three times a week, but after a day’s work most of them have trouble concentrating.
    They set out to walk through the tent city, unable to go ten feet before children healthy enough to walk about and play a little have begun to hurry along with them, the bolder ones taking their hands, the others giggling and running alongside. Even though it’s almost dark they want Lannie and Caroline to stop and play ball with them as the staff sometimes does. It amazes Lannie that children can still play in the midst of such devastation, and this makes her think of all the ones who can’t, of the dead baby at the woman’s breast. Of Mariam, gone away.
    Even if Mariam’s aunt comes back in a month’s time for rations, she thinks, she doubts she’d bring Mariam with her. She finds herself wiping moisture from her eyes, glad of the night falling rapidly over the camp,