Christina’s House – Saturday Afternoon, March 11, 1989
“Are you sure you don’t want to come?”
“I am.”
“Supposed to be the biggest MTV Spring Break party ever.”
“No thanks.”
“Mr. Mister, Squeeze, Vixen, the Bangles . . . come on Chrissy . . . the hip-hop studs, Beastie Boys . . .”
“Eva,” Christina looked at her housemate and best friend imploringly, “I’m in a different place right now.” She was smiling, her face lit with joy that glowed through her ruddy cheeks.
Eva took her hand into both of hers, “I can see that, Chrissy, and I am so happy for you, but can we parrrrtayyyy?”
“I’ve met a man that knows my heart, understands my inner being, someone I can trust.”
“Oh, my gosh, you are sooo serious sometimes. It’s Spring Break! You sure you’re not jumping into this too quick. I mean, you just met him.”
“Mmmm. I’d call it . . . letting go.”
“Well let’s go to Daytona.”
“What, and meet some guys who want no more than to . . . ” She trailed off, shaking her head; shocked that Eva could so soon forget.
Eva read her composure. “Oh, so sorry. I forgot, I mean . . . Look, I’m not where you’re at right now. Yeah . . . I need to do that, too . . . a major shift in the cosmos . . . but, for gosh sakes, it’s our last Spring Break together.” She paused as her exhilaration deflated like a pricked balloon. “Somehow the guys I’ve been with just keep coming back. I just want to move on.”
“With a frat boy from Duke that wants in your pants? Come on, Eva, you’ve got to make the first move to make a change. My heart began to heal when I no longer wanted it.”
“What?”
“Sex.”
“Really?”
“Only way to let go.”
“How do I take care of these flames that won’t die out?”
“Tell ‘em you’re looking for someone to marry. That’ll shut ‘em down.” Both laughed, Eva from her belly, Christina more of a chuckle knowing that just saying those words, even as a joke was difficult.
“It’s the last thing on my list to do before I graduate,” Eva said.
“My point is that if you want to make a change, it’s got to start with you.”
“I know. You said that. Now isn’t the time. When I’m ready.”
“You’ll be ready after your first divorce,” Christina tossed the comment as she headed to the living room.
Adera walked in the front door with a bag of groceries and a book bag strap bisecting her chest, exemplifying the endowment of her breasts. An Ethiopian at KU with a full-ride athletic scholarship, it was obvious at what she excelled. Gracefully tall and slender with muscularly toned legs, she had lighter skin tones, high cheekbones, and fine facial features with arched eyebrows and full lips that naturally showed her ivory teeth even when she was not smiling. She wore her silky black hair in a thick braid traveling down her back, tied off with Ethiopian Opal Rondelle beads, their milky translucence showing warm blue and green fire and a matching necklace gracing her long slender neck. What set her apart even beyond her beauty and graceful walk were round, childish looking eyes that spoke of the compassion in her heart. Adera and Christina met during their nursing internship last summer and became close friends. They shared a similar compassion for the helpless, homeless, and health stricken.
“And . . . I’m helping Adera with her presentation to Campus Crusade,” Christina said. “The dire need in Ethiopia still exists as the country begins to recover from the famine.”
“Did I walk in on something?” Adera said with her beautiful accent that made them both smile.
“Don’t suppose you want to drive to Florida to hear Vixen, huh?” Eva said.
“Vixen?” Her accent made the name sound so sweet.
“Never mind,” Eva said as she gave her housemate a hug. “You’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
“What ‘feesh’ to fry?”
“Adera, you’re just too cool. Tell me about your presentation. What are you talking about?”
“More like a show and tell,” she said as she set the grocery bag on the counter and raised the book strap over her head. Got it all on my ‘puter.”
“Show me?” Eva said, noticing the emotion that came over Adera with just the mention of the subject.
“Really?” Adera asked.
“Yes, Adera. Show me what’s on your heart,” Eva said, her composure becoming more serious, aware that she was the outlying partyer.
The two girls each sat on an arm of the overstuffed chair with Adera in the middle, her laptop open to a picture of a girl, black hair braided, sitting on her feet, pouring from a stoneware pitcher into five cups on a tiny six by twelve inch table that rested just four inches above the floor. Partially pictured was a steel framed bed in the corner, a wooden chair next to it, hand woven rugs covering the earthen floor of this one room shelter.
“Is that you?” Eva said, recognizing her features and astonished at the impoverished surroundings.
“Yes.”
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen. At the beginning of the famine.”
“What are you pouring?”
“Coffee.”
“Coffee?”
“Yes, Ethiopia has the best coffee.”
“No food, but you had coffee?”
Adera smiled and clicked her mouse to pull up the next picture. She was born and spent her youth in Gish Abay, a town in west-central Ethiopia, named after the nearby Mount Gish and the Abay River, also known as the Blue Nile. At the upper reach of the river is its source, three small springs in the foothills of the mountain. The Blue Nile, known as Felege Ghion in Ge’ez—the liturgical language of Ethiopia—is believed to be the River Gihon mentioned as flowing out of the Garden of Eden. The picture showed a procession of people and animals walking down a dirt road. A donkey pulled a cart made of tree timbers lashed together. Two men, one pushing, the other pulling helped move the heavy load of burlap bagged cornmeal that would provide these refugees food for their journey to escape the insurgents of the civil war. A tall, teenage girl carrying a much younger girl, possibly three, was walking alongside the cart, wearing sandals, a red top, and blousy floral jams.
“No way.” Eva turned to look at Adera.
“That’s me. Exiled.”
The next picture, one of a group of women and children, each wrapped in a tattered piece of cloth, looking at something outside of the camera frame, with their hands covering their mouths, their eyes betraying the atrocity that they viewed.
"What are they looking at?" Christina asked in a hushed tone, bracing herself for the answer.
“A mother wailing as her child die.”
She clicked the mouse.
“Oh my God!” Christina and Eva both covered their mouths in astonishment as they viewed the stick legs of a boy, nothing but a skeleton and swollen joints, face emaciated into a hollow, a rag of cloth covering only his shoulders, bloated stomach and shriveled genitals exposed as he stood before the other children clad in clothes. “Why is he so impoverished compared to the rest?”
“Christian.”
“Oh my gosh, no!” Christina grew more upset as she took in the meaning of this ostracism, banishment due to differing beliefs.
Adera clicked again.
The picture was a missionary nun dressed in white, a sharp contrast to the dirt colored rags that the refugees wore. She was smiling, stifling her own despair, as she held the baby—not yet a year old—of a young mother. The child, a victim of war and the failed rains that year, would soon be dead.
Adera closed her laptop. She leaned back in the overstuffed chair, laying her head back on the cushion, eyes closed. She began to sing in her native tongue—Amharic—a song that lifted a cry to heaven. Raising her arms, she opened her eyes, her words a prayer.
“I give myself to you. I trust in you, Jesus.”
The pictures struck Christina and Eva as Adera sang from her heart. They placed their arms around her shoulders, resting their heads on hers. As she repeated the chorus, they joined in softly.
“Beautiful, so beautiful. What does your name mean?”
Tears rolled down her bronzed mulatto-toned skin.
“Promise.”
She sat forward and rested her forearms on her smooth and long legs sculpted from years of running in her barren homeland and stared ahead picturing the ceremony of her water baptism in Felege Ghion, the source of the Blue Nile, waters considered to have a healing power and considered holy by the Ethiopian Church.
“I was baptized, fourteen years. Before exile. When I was raised from water, priest say to me, ‘Before, you live apart from Christ. Now, you have promises of God. Before, you live without God and without hope. Now, you one with Christ Jesus. Before, you far away from God. Now, you walk with Him. Your name Adera. Your name Promise—when you give someone trusted to take care of something yours. When something beyond your ability, you give it to another person.’ I was singing ‘Adera’ to God because I not able to take care of myself. God take care of my life. He the trusted one. This how I survive famine. This how I run. This how I come to America. My people send me here to be nurse. To go home to my people. To heal my people. I am their promise.”
Another tear floated from her eye.
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Copyright 2017 © Jeff Cambridge
Excerpt from PURSUIT, a novel by Jeff Cambridge, a writer of transformational fiction with characters that tell life-changing stories.
This is a pre-published scene.
To read the scenes sequentially, begin with
“PURSUIT: A Novel – Prologue”
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This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, businesses, organizations, and locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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