The Little Leather Pouch
920 Words
Chapter 7
The Little Leather Pouch
By the time Lidya reached home, it was almost midnight.
The rain had stopped, but the streets were still wet. Streetlights reflected in the puddles, and the occasional car moved quietly through the nearly empty road.
She unlocked her apartment and stepped inside.
For a while, she stood by the door without turning on the light.
Her thoughts kept returning to the evening.
To Henon.
To the way he had looked at her.
To the strange feeling that had remained after they said goodbye.
She shook her head.
It was nothing.
She barely knew him.
She changed into comfortable clothes, made herself a cup of tea and sat on the sofa with her laptop.
She tried to work.
She couldn't.
Instead, she opened a browser and typed his name.
Henon Gebrehiwot.
Articles appeared immediately.
Business magazines.
Charity events.
Photographs with politicians and executives.
Interviews about his family's companies.
Lidya read a few.
He was successful, wealthy and well educated.
But there was surprisingly little about his personal life.
No long-term girlfriend.
No engagement.
No dramatic stories about his relationships.
Even the photographs seemed carefully chosen.
She closed the browser.
"None of my business."
She returned to her work.
This time, she managed to finish.
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Lidya barely slept that night.
She kept telling herself that the messages were probably nothing.
A cruel joke.
A wrong number.
Someone who knew something about her and wanted to frighten her.
But every time she closed her eyes, the same questions returned.
Who was her mother?
Why had she left her?
And why had someone suddenly decided to tell her about it now?
By morning, she was exhausted.
She went through her usual routine, answered emails, attended meetings and forced herself to concentrate on work.
But the questions followed her everywhere.
By evening, she couldn't ignore them anymore.
She went to the living room and opened the drawer beneath the television.
The small wooden box was still there.
She carried it to the sofa and opened it.
She looked through the things inside slowly.
The ribbon.
The birthday cards.
The faded drawing.
The small piece of paper with her name.
Lidya Kidus Michael.
Then she found the photograph.
She held it carefully.
The little girl in the picture smiled back at her.
Nine years old.
Two uneven braids.
A white dress that was slightly too large.
Lidya stared at herself for a long time.
She had looked so happy.
So completely unaware of everything she didn't know.
Her eyes moved across the photograph.
The other children.
The wall behind them.
The old wooden furniture.
The author standing nearby.
And then she noticed something around her wrist.
She brought the photograph closer.
A small leather pouch.
Lidya frowned.
For a moment, she couldn't remember what it was.
Then the memory returned.
"The little medicine."
She smiled faintly.
She had almost forgotten it.
Marta had once told her that she had arrived at the children's home with the little pouch already tied around her neck.
It had looked enormous on her as a baby.
Lidya remembered laughing when Marta told her that.
"Who put it there?"
"I don't know," Marta had said. "It was already around you when they brought you."
At the time, Lidya hadn't thought much about it.
To her, it was simply a traditional protective medicine, the kind some Ethiopian families put on babies.
As she grew older, the pouch eventually became uncomfortable around her neck.
She started wearing it around her wrist instead.
She had worn it for years.
Until the other children began teasing her.
"Why are you still wearing that?"
"That's for babies."
"Take it off."
She had pretended not to care.
But she had cared.
She had been embarrassed by it.
Eventually, she took it off and put it away.
She hadn't thought about it for years.
Lidya closed her eyes briefly.
She could almost remember the feeling of the leather against her wrist.
The roughness of it.
The thin cord.
The way Marta used to check it whenever she was helping the children get dressed.
She looked at the photograph again.
For some reason, she felt uncomfortable.
Because she suddenly realized how little she knew about the child in the photograph.
She knew what happened after she grew up.
She knew where she went to school.
She knew she had studied Journalism at Addis Ababa University.
She knew how she had earned her scholarship and eventually moved to Canada.
She knew who she had become.
But everything before the children's home remained a blank page.
Lidya looked down at the little girl again.
"Who were you?"
The question came out almost as a whisper.
She put the photograph back in the box.
Then she noticed the old leather pouch lying underneath it.
She picked it up.
It was smaller than she remembered.
The leather had darkened with age.
She turned it over in her hand.
Just an old piece of traditional medicine from her childhood.
She almost put it back.
Then she smiled.
"Some things really do follow you forever."
She placed it gently back inside the box.
She closed the lid.
Then she closed the drawer.
She went to the kitchen, made herself a cup of tea and stood by the window.
Toronto was quiet below her.
She thought about the messages again.
This time, she didn't try to convince herself they were nothing.
Someone knew something about her past.
And sooner or later, she was going to find out what.
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