Chapter 1

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The basement of Saint Mary's Ethiopian Orthodox Church smelled like frankincense and old books, and on Saturday mornings it smelled, too, like the coffee Teacher Abeba brewed in a little silver pot on a hot plate by the window. Aliyah Teklemariam could smell it before she reached the bottom of the stairs. The coffee first, then the incense that was always in the walls because of the church upstairs, and then something else, something she could not name, which was simply the smell of a room where people had been saying Amharic words for a very long time.

She came down the stairs carefully, because the third one from the bottom had a loose board that wobbled if you stepped on it wrong. Her backpack thumped against her shoulder. Inside it were two notebooks, a pencil case covered in silver glitter, and a small paper bag with an orange her mother had put there.

"Selam, Aliyah," Teacher Abeba said from the front of the room. She did not look up from the papers she was arranging on the wooden desk. "Tenayistilign."

"Tenayistilign," Aliyah said back. It meant "may you be given health," more or less, and it was how you said good morning if you were being polite. Aliyah tried to be polite to Teacher Abeba always. She was eighty-two years old, and when she had been Aliyah's age, she had walked three miles to school in a town near Addis Ababa, and the school had not had a roof in the rainy season. She had told the class this once, very calmly, as though walking to a school with no roof was not especially remarkable. Aliyah had thought about it for a whole week.

She sat down in her usual chair, the second one in the second row. There were twelve chairs, set in three neat rows of four. Most of the chairs were empty.

Aliyah counted. One, two, three, four, five. Including her, six. Six kids.

She unzipped her backpack, took out her notebook, and set it carefully on the desk. The desk wobbled, because the leg had always wobbled and no one had ever bothered to fix it. She put her elbow on the good side.

Across the aisle, Yonas Gebremariam was drawing on the cover of his notebook instead of opening it. He was ten, and he came because his mother made him come. Aliyah knew this because Yonas had told her three weeks ago, very matter-of-factly, in the tone of a person explaining a law of nature. "I would rather play soccer," he had said. "But my mom says no soccer until I can read the alphabet." He was still working on the alphabet. He had been working on the alphabet for almost a year.

Behind Yonas sat Mimi, who was seven and too young for the regular class but too old for the preschool class that Teacher Abeba used to run on the other side of the basement before there were not enough preschoolers to fill it. Mimi had two long braids and wore a T-shirt with a cartoon panda on it. She looked serious, the way seven-year-olds look serious when they are trying to understand what the grown-ups are doing.

In the back row were the Haile twins, Sara and Saba, who were nine. They had come straight from their ballet class, and their hair was still in tight buns, and they whispered to each other in English whenever Teacher Abeba turned to the board. Aliyah did not blame them. She also thought in English, mostly. Amharic still sometimes felt like a language she was borrowing from her grandmother.

Six kids.

Teacher Abeba clapped her hands gently. "Good morning, children. Endemin aderachihu. Today we will begin by reviewing the fidel, and then we will read together from the book of sayings."

The fidel was the alphabet. Two hundred and thirty-one characters, give or take, arranged in a grid of consonants and vowels. When Aliyah had first started learning it, she had thought it was impossible. There were too many. They all looked like little houses with different shapes of doors. But Teacher Abeba had said to her, very quietly, "You do not need to learn them all in one day. You need to learn them one at a time, like friends."

And somehow, that had worked. Aliyah now knew most of them. She could read slowly, stumbling, sounding out words the way her little brother Abel sounded out English words in his second-grade reader. When her grandmother Emebet came into her room and saw her reading, her grandmother would smile and press her hand to her chest and say something in Amharic that Aliyah did not always catch but that made her feel warm.

Teacher Abeba moved to the chalkboard. She picked up a piece of chalk, white and short, and began to write. Her handwriting was beautiful. Aliyah watched her wrist move, the small precise curves, the way the characters seemed to bloom under her hand.

Ha. Hu. Hi. Ha. He. H. Ho.

The seven forms of the letter ha, each with a different vowel sound. Teacher Abeba said each one, and the class said it back. Some of them mumbled. Yonas said them with his eyes half-closed, as though he hoped they would go away. Mimi said them very carefully, watching Teacher Abeba's mouth. The Haile twins said them in perfect unison, because they did everything in perfect unison.

Aliyah said them too. She tried to say them cleanly. Her grandmother Emebet had told her once that the way a person said the first letters of their language told you something about who they were. "When you say them with care," Emebet had said in Amharic, with Aliyah's mother translating for the parts Aliyah did not understand, "you are saying that you will take care of yourself. When you say them sloppy, it is like wearing your shirt inside out."

So Aliyah said her letters cleanly.

After the alphabet review, Teacher Abeba opened a blue cloth-bound book. The book was old. The spine was cracked, and there was a piece of paper taped along the inside cover where the binding had split. It was a book of Ethiopian proverbs and sayings, collected by a man named Alemayehu in 1962. Teacher Abeba had brought this book from Ethiopia in her suitcase almost twenty years ago.

"Today," she said, "we will read a saying. Then we will talk about what it means."

She cleared her throat, and she read. Her voice, when she read Amharic, changed. It got slower and deeper, and the words rolled out of her like stones going down a river. Aliyah could not always follow every word. But she caught enough.

Teacher Abeba closed the book gently and set it on the desk. "Who can tell me what this means?"

No one spoke.

Yonas was drawing on his notebook again. The Haile twins looked at each other. Mimi looked at Aliyah.

Aliyah raised her hand a little, then lowered it, then raised it again.

"Aliyah."

"I think," Aliyah said, and paused, because she was trying to say it in Amharic, and when she tried in Amharic her mouth felt slow. "I think — people say many things. But what they really mean is — one thing. Underneath."

Teacher Abeba nodded. She smiled. "Very good. Yes. You can say many words, but the truth of a person, their heart — that is one. It does not change with the words. The words are like clothing. The heart is the body."

Aliyah wrote the saying in her notebook in careful Amharic letters. She wrote the English underneath. She underlined heart is one twice.

The class ended at eleven-thirty, as it always did. Teacher Abeba gave each student a small piece of candy, a soft caramel wrapped in orange paper, because she had been giving them candy at the end of class for as long as Aliyah had been coming. Aliyah unwrapped hers and popped it in her mouth and chewed. It tasted like her childhood, even though she was only twelve and her childhood was not that long ago. It tasted like every Saturday morning she could remember.

"Dehna hugnu, children," Teacher Abeba said as they filed out. Go in peace.

"Dehna hugnu, Teacher," they chorused back.

At the bottom of the stairs, Aliyah paused. She turned and looked back into the classroom. Teacher Abeba was standing at her desk, slowly gathering her papers. The fluorescent lights buzzed. The twelve chairs sat in their three neat rows of four, and six of them were empty.

Aliyah frowned without meaning to. Then she went up the stairs.

Her father was waiting by the church door in his brown jacket with the fur collar. He had his phone to his ear, speaking in Amharic to someone — probably someone from the community council, because that was who he was always speaking to on Saturdays. He saw her and held up one finger to say one minute.

While she waited, Aliyah looked up at the icons on the walls of the vestibule. There was Saint Mary, with her head tilted sideways in that particular way the Ethiopian icons always painted her — as if she were listening to a secret. There was Saint George on his white horse. There was a painting Aliyah had always loved of the Ark of the Covenant being carried by the priests in long white robes, under a blue sky. She had asked her father once why the Ark looked like it was floating, and he had said, because in the story, it was floating. The priests did not carry it. It carried itself. She had thought about that for days afterward.

She stood next to him and looked at the sunlight coming through the stained glass. The stained glass showed Saint Gebre Menfes Kidus standing in the wilderness with lions and leopards around him like friendly cats. She had always liked that window.

Behind her, the other families were coming out. Yonas's mother was scolding him gently, probably for drawing instead of paying attention. The Haile twins were asking their father if they could stop at the store for yogurt. Mimi was holding her mother's hand and asking a question Aliyah could not hear.

Her father hung up and put his phone in his pocket. "Hello, my heart," he said. "How was school?"

"It was fine," Aliyah said.

They walked out to the car together. The air was cold. It was October, and the leaves in the parking lot were yellow and red and some of them were still green at the edges. She buckled her seat belt. He started the car.

"Only six today," she said.

Her father glanced at her. "Only six?"

"Six students. Including me."

He nodded slowly. He put the car in reverse. "Mm."

"Last week there were eight," Aliyah said. "The week before that, nine."

"Mm," her father said again. He was a quiet man when he was thinking, and she knew the sound. He was a community organizer for the New Jersey Ethiopian Association. He was always thinking.

They drove home through streets full of yellow trees. Aliyah rested her head against the window and thought about Teacher Abeba's book of proverbs, and about the twelve chairs in three rows of four, and about the heart that is one underneath all the words.

She did not know yet that this would be the year she would begin to worry in earnest. She did not know yet that something she loved, something she had not even known she loved, was quietly leaving — one empty chair at a time.

But she had noticed. And noticing is how it all starts.

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The kitchen at home smelled like berbere and coffee beans and the sharp vinegar smell of the injera batter fermenting in the big green bowl on top of the refrigerator. Aliyah's grandmother Emebet stood at the stove with a wooden spoon, stirring a pot of doro wot so carefully that the spoon barely made a sound. Emebet did everything quietly. She was a small woman, only as tall as Aliyah now, and she wore a long white netela shawl over her shoulders, and her hair was pulled back in a low bun with gray streaks that caught the afternoon light.

"Ena'ate," Aliyah said. My grandmother.

Emebet turned around, her face crinkling into a smile. She said something back in Amharic, too fast for Aliyah to catch all of it, but Aliyah heard the word for little one and the word for school, and she knew it was a question about how the class had gone.

The coffee was not for drinking all the way. It was for holding. It was for having something warm in your hand while you said the things you were trying to say. Aliyah had figured this out when she was nine. Before nine, she had drunk the whole thing and felt her heart race for an hour. Now she held the cup and let it warm her palms.

She tried to say it in Amharic. "Teacher Abeba. Today. Six — six students only."

Emebet tilted her head.

"Sidist," Aliyah added, remembering the number word. "Sidist tamariwoch."

"Ah," Emebet said. "Sidist."

"Yes."

Emebet nodded slowly. She looked into her coffee cup, and then she said something in Amharic, and Aliyah caught some of it but not all, and she looked at her grandmother pleadingly.

Her mother Rahel was coming down the stairs just then in her pediatric nurse scrubs because she had a late shift at the hospital. She caught Aliyah's look and came into the kitchen.

"What?" Rahel said. "What did Emaye say?"

"I don't know. Something about the school. Six kids today."

Aliyah looked at her grandmother. Emebet was still looking into her coffee cup.

"Ena'ate," Aliyah said. "Do you think the school will close? Someday?"

Rahel translated, and Emebet was quiet for a moment, and then she answered in a slow careful voice, with her hands folded together in her lap.

"She says, nothing that lives wants to close," Rahel translated. "Things close when no one wants to keep them open. That is how it works with shops and also with schools and also with countries. Mama says — she says she hopes you will want to keep it open."

The back door banged. Abel, Aliyah's eight-year-old brother, came in wearing a soccer jersey that was too big for him and mud on both knees. He was sucking on an orange slice.

"What's everyone being serious about?" he said, with the orange in his teeth.

"Language school," Aliyah said.

"Oh," said Abel. "Boring."

"Abel."

"It is. It's boring. There's no recess."

"Abel, go change out of those muddy clothes."

"I just got here."

"Abel."

He went. He was already calling something down the hall to their father, who was in his study with the door half-open, typing on his laptop.

Rahel kissed the top of Emebet's head. "I have to go to the hospital, Mama. I'll bring back some bread." She squeezed Aliyah's shoulder. "Help Emaye with dinner?"

"Yes."

Rahel left through the garage. Emebet got up slowly, the way she got up now that her knee was bad, and she went back to the stove. She stirred the doro wot. Aliyah carried her little coffee cup over and stood next to her.

"Ena'ate," she said. "Can I cook with you?"

Emebet smiled without looking at her, and she handed Aliyah a head of garlic and a small wooden board. She showed, without words, how to smash the garlic cloves with the side of the knife. Aliyah smashed. She smashed too hard and the garlic stuck to the board and the smell of it went up into her nose.

They cooked together in the slow quiet way her grandmother always cooked, which was different from the way her mother cooked. Her mother cooked fast, reading recipes on her phone, sometimes with the TV on in the background. Her grandmother cooked the way a person walks through a garden they have been walking through for seventy years. She did not need to think about the next step; her hands already knew.

So Aliyah said words. She said the saying from Teacher Abeba's book. "Kal bizu new, gin lib and new."

Emebet stopped stirring. She turned, slowly, and looked at Aliyah.

Then she smiled. The smile made her whole face change. Aliyah had always thought her grandmother had a face like a closed book when it was at rest — plain and small and you could not guess what was in it. But when she smiled, it was like the book opened to a page full of flowers.

"Betam konjo," Emebet said. Very beautiful. She put her hand on Aliyah's cheek. Her hand smelled like onions and garlic and berbere, and it was warm and soft and slightly trembling, the way her hands had begun to tremble a little last year.

"Ene — I — I liked it too," Aliyah said.

Emebet said something longer. Aliyah did not catch it. She caught the word libb. Heart.

"I wish I could understand better," Aliyah said, in English, to the stove, not quite to her grandmother. "Emaye. I wish I understood everything you said."

"Yes."

"You are learning. It is enough."

Aliyah felt her eyes get hot and she did not know why. She blinked hard and went back to smashing the garlic even though there was no more garlic to smash.

Later, when the doro wot was simmering and the injera was stacked on a plate covered with a clean white cloth, Aliyah and Emebet sat together at the kitchen table, and Emebet brought out the small wooden box she kept on a high shelf. Inside the box were photographs. They were not in a photo album. They were loose, and some of them were black and white, and some of them had water stains.

Aliyah had seen these photographs before, but not all of them, and not in order, and not with explanations.

Emebet took one out and laid it on the table. It was a picture of a young woman in a white dress standing in front of a building with pillars.

"Addis Ababa University," Emebet said. She pointed to the woman. "Ene."

Aliyah leaned forward. "You?"

"Yes. Ene. University. Nineteen — nineteen sixty-eight."

"You went to university?"

"Literature. Like English class?"

"Like — Amharic. Poetry. Ancient — books. I — doctor — PhD. In Addis Ababa."

Aliyah stared at her grandmother. She had known — her mother had mentioned, once, a long time ago — that Emebet had been educated. But she had not known the word PhD. She had not known that her grandmother, who now cooked quietly and spoke limited English and wore a white netela shawl over her shoulders in the kitchen, had once stood in a university doorway in a white dress in the sun with the letters PhD hanging in the air above her head.

"Ena'ate. You — you are a doctor. A doctor of books."

"Long ago."

"But still."

"Still." Emebet smiled a small smile, more private this time. Then the smile went away. "When we come — when I come to America — I am old. My English — not good. I cannot teach at university here. So I teach you. I teach the little ones in the church."

"You used to help Teacher Abeba?"

"Before. Many year ago. Before my knee."

Emebet put the photograph back in the box. She closed the box. She patted Aliyah's hand.

"Tomorrow," Emebet said carefully, "we cook. We talk. We learn."

"Yes, Emaye."

They ate dinner together when Aliyah's father came in from his study and Abel came down in clean clothes and Rahel was still at the hospital. They scooped up the doro wot with pieces of torn injera. The injera was sour and spongy and tore clean in her fingers. The doro wot was rich and deep red from the berbere and the onions and the butter. Aliyah ate more than she thought she could.

"Dad," Abel said, with his mouth full. "Why don't we have doro wot every day. We should have it every day."

"Because it takes six hours to make," their father said.

"Six hours?"

"Sometimes more. The onions must be cooked down very slowly, for a long time, until they disappear. Your grandmother started this wot this morning at seven o'clock."

Abel looked at his plate. Then he looked at Emebet with new respect. "Six hours, Emaye?"

Emebet smiled. She held up her hand, fingers spread. "Five. For me, five."

"Still," Abel said.

"It is," their father agreed, "an investment."

Aliyah took another piece of injera and folded it carefully around a spoonful of wot. She thought about the word investment. She thought about the six hours in every meal and the thirty years in Teacher Abeba's classroom and the seventy years in her grandmother's hands. She thought about how nothing worth anything came in less time than it took, and how in America people sometimes wanted things in less time than they took, and how that was one of the problems.

Before bed, she opened her notebook from Saturday school. She turned to a blank page. And very slowly, in her best Ge'ez handwriting, she wrote the sentence her grandmother had said. Kal bizu new, gin lib and new.

She closed the notebook. She turned off her light. She lay awake a long time listening to the house — her father typing downstairs, her brother snoring through the wall, the furnace clicking on — and she thought about the twelve chairs in three neat rows of four and the six that were empty.

She turned on her side. Through the crack in the curtain, she could see a thin sliver of moon. She thought about her grandmother's hand on her cheek, smelling of onion and garlic and berbere. She thought about the photograph from Addis Ababa University, the young woman in the white dress, who was the same woman now sleeping down the hall in the small bedroom with the twin bed and the icon of Saint Mary above the headboard. She thought about how a person could carry a whole university in her head and then not be asked for any of it for twenty years. She thought about how that was a kind of loneliness. Not the loneliness of being alone — her grandmother was not alone, she had a family, she had a church, she had a kitchen full of cooking — but the loneliness of being a person whose gifts nobody asked for. The loneliness of having a well and no one bringing a bucket.

It was a simple thought. She was twelve and it was a twelve-year-old thought and she knew it. But she also thought it was maybe a true thought, in the way that sometimes the simplest thoughts are the truest, because they have been washed down to the clean stone of them, and nothing else is in the way.

She closed her eyes. She slept.

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The next Saturday was a cold one. The sky was low and gray, the kind of gray that looked almost white, and Aliyah's breath made little clouds in front of her when she walked from the car to the church door. She was wearing the scarf her grandmother had knitted for her two winters ago, a deep red scarf with a fringe of small black tassels.

She went down the stairs.

She counted.

Yonas. The Haile twins. Herself. That was it. Four.

Teacher Abeba did not seem surprised. She did not even count. She was already at the chalkboard, writing, in careful white strokes, the saying they would discuss today. She had the silver jebena on the hot plate, and the coffee smell was filling the room, and the frankincense ghost was in the walls the way it always was. The classroom looked just as it had looked the week before. Only the chairs had emptied further.

Aliyah sat in her seat. Yonas sat across the aisle, drawing. He was not drawing on his notebook today. He was drawing on his hand.

"Yonas," Aliyah whispered. "Put the pen away. Teacher's going to see."

Yonas capped his pen. "She already saw. She didn't care."

"She cares."

"She didn't look."

"She saw."

The Haile twins came in, rosy from the cold, their ballet buns smaller than usual, and they slid into the back row and began whispering immediately. Today they were whispering about someone named Madison who had done something to someone named Ava, which was apparently a very bad thing to do, and Aliyah could hear the whole story even though it was in whispers because the classroom was so quiet.

"Children," Teacher Abeba said. "Let us begin."

They began. They reviewed the alphabet. Yonas said Ha, Hu, Hi, Ha, He, H, Ho, in a dull flat voice. The Haile twins said it twice because Teacher Abeba made them say it twice. Aliyah said it carefully.

Teacher Abeba read a new proverb. "Semay iyewreded iyeseneseqe biwal tesfa aychenem." Even if the sky shakes, do not lose hope. Teacher Abeba read it twice. She translated it. She wrote the Amharic on the board and the English beneath. She asked what it meant.

Yonas said, "It means sometimes stuff is scary but you don't give up."

Teacher Abeba nodded. "Yes. Very good, Yonas."

Yonas looked surprised. He sat up a little straighter.

"And can you think," Teacher Abeba said, "of a time when the sky shook for you? When something scared you, but you did not give up?"

Yonas thought about it. "When I lost my soccer game. We were losing seven to zero. And I still tried to score a goal."

"Did you score?"

"No."

"But you tried."

"Yeah."

Teacher Abeba smiled. "That is the thing. The sky shakes, but you do not lose hope. The sky shakes, but you keep trying to score your goal. Good, Yonas. Very good."

Yonas leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest and looked, for a moment, very pleased with himself. He caught Aliyah's eye, and she smiled at him, and he smiled back, and then he remembered that he was a ten-year-old boy and stopped smiling abruptly.

They did the lesson. They read a short passage out of the blue book, slowly, with Teacher Abeba reading a line and the students reading it back. They did handwriting practice. Aliyah filled half a page with careful ha characters, trying to make them as beautiful as Teacher Abeba's.

At the end of the class, Teacher Abeba handed out the caramel candies and said, "Dehna hugnu, children."

"Dehna hugnu, Teacher."

The Haile twins left first, in a clatter of small black boots. Yonas left next, with his mother, who had come down the stairs to fetch him. Aliyah was the last one, because she was always the last one. She liked to help Teacher Abeba put the chairs up on the desks.

She lifted a chair. She stacked it. She lifted another. She stacked it. She and Teacher Abeba worked in silence for a while. Teacher Abeba lifted more slowly than she used to. Aliyah noticed.

"Teacher," Aliyah said.

Teacher Abeba looked up.

"When you were my age — how many kids were in your school?"

Teacher Abeba set down the chair she was holding. She leaned against the desk. She took out her handkerchief and wiped her forehead even though the classroom was cold.

"When I was your age," she said, "I was in my village. The school was in a church, like this one. There were — oh — forty children? Fifty sometimes. It depended on the harvest. If it was a good year, everyone came. If it was a bad year, the children stayed home to help their fathers."

"Forty or fifty."

"Sometimes more. Sometimes on a feast day we would have seventy. We had to sit on the floor."

"And here," Aliyah said. "When you started the Saturday school here. How many?"

Teacher Abeba looked at the chairs. She counted them slowly with her eyes. "When I started," she said, "I had — it was nineteen ninety-eight. I started with twenty-three children. I remember. Twenty-three, because there were three girls named Meaza, and I made them use their last names, and I thought, Abeba, you are already a teacher again even in America, and my heart was very full."

"Twenty-three. Here."

"Yes. And we met here in this basement, just like now."

"When did it get smaller?"

Teacher Abeba shrugged, slowly. "Little by little. Every year, fewer. The families — the families come to America, the children grow up, they speak English, they do not want to come on Saturdays. There are soccer games. There are birthday parties. There is — you know — the screens. The phones. The computers. The TikTok." She said TikTok the way a person says the name of a strange animal. "I do not blame them. I do not blame the children. The world is changing. But also — the language does not change itself. The language needs voices. If there are no voices, there is no language. That is a kind of a death."

Aliyah stacked another chair. She did not know what to say.

"Hand it over."

"Yes. Everything we carry, we must one day hand over. I cannot carry it forever. My hands — " She held out her hands. They were small and brown and wrinkled and trembling. "My hands will not carry it forever. I need somebody to take it."

Aliyah looked at her hands. At her own hands. They seemed suddenly very small and young.

"Teacher," Aliyah said. "What happens if no one takes it?"

Teacher Abeba was quiet for a long time.

"Then," she said finally, "it falls."

They stacked the last chairs. Aliyah put on her red scarf. She walked to the bottom of the stairs. She looked back at Teacher Abeba, who was still standing by her desk, slowly gathering her papers, with the photograph of Haile Selassie on the wall behind her and the map of Ethiopia and the ghost of the incense in the walls.

"Dehna hugnu, Teacher," Aliyah said, softly, in her best Amharic.

"Dehna hugnu, my daughter," Teacher Abeba said back.

Aliyah climbed the stairs. The stair with the loose board wobbled under her foot. She did not know, yet, what she was going to do. She only knew that she had been given a question to carry, and she could feel the weight of it in her chest, and she was not sure she was strong enough.

Her father was waiting upstairs. When he saw her face, he did not ask how school was. He just put his hand on her shoulder, and they walked out together into the cold gray day.

In the car he did not turn on the radio, which was unusual, because her father always turned on the radio. He drove in silence for a while, and then he said, "Something happened."

"Teacher Abeba talked to me."

"About?"

"About the school. About who will take it after her."

Her father nodded. He did not ask more. He drove. A dog ran across the sidewalk in front of a brown house. A woman with a baby stroller waited for the light. The radio was off and the heater was making a low hum.

"She is tired, Aliyah."

"I know."

"She has been tired for a long time. I have been hearing about it from your mother. And from Mrs. Gebremariam. And from Abba Tekle. It is not a surprise. It is only — it is only that no one wanted to say the word out loud."

"Close."

"Yes. Close."

"Can we — can we do something? Dad. Can we do anything?"

Her father did not answer right away. They came to the last stoplight before their street. He reached over and put his hand on hers and squeezed it once.

"My heart," he said. "I do not know. I have been thinking about this for years. I do not know. But I know that a question like this, it is not for one person to answer. It is for a community. And when you are ready — when you are ready to bring this question to the community — we will bring it. All right?"

"All right."

"You do not have to solve it tonight."

"I know."

"You do not have to solve it this year."

"I know."

"You only have to carry it for a little while. And then we will carry it together."

Aliyah nodded. She pressed her forehead against the cold glass of the window and watched the yellow leaves and the red leaves blow across the street, and she thought about the word carry, and how it came up a lot, when people talked about things that mattered. You carried a question. You carried a culture. You carried a grandmother up the stairs when her knee was bad. Carrying was a word for love, almost, but not quite. It was more tired than love. But it was a word she was starting to understand.

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Two weeks later, on a Saturday morning that smelled like wet leaves and someone's neighbor burning a pile of sticks too close to the church parking lot, Aliyah walked down the basement stairs and found Teacher Abeba sitting on one of the classroom chairs instead of standing at the chalkboard.

That was the first strange thing.

The second strange thing was that there was only one other student in the room — Mimi, the seven-year-old with the panda shirt and the long braids — and Mimi was sitting very still and quietly on a chair by the wall, as if she had been told to wait. No Yonas. No Haile twins. No Bereket, who had not come for several weeks, because, Aliyah had heard, Bereket's mother had given up and let him join a travel soccer team instead.

The third strange thing was that Teacher Abeba was holding her hands folded in her lap, and her face was calm in a way that was not her usual calm. Usually her calm was alert, paying attention, ready to write on the board. Today her calm was the calm of a person who has already decided something sad and is now sitting with the sadness.

"Aliyah," Teacher Abeba said. "Good morning."

"Good morning, Teacher."

Aliyah put her backpack down. She sat.

"Mimi is going to color for a little while," Teacher Abeba said. "I have brought the box of markers. She is going to sit there, and color, and be a very good girl. Is that not so, Mimi?"

Mimi nodded solemnly. She pulled the box of markers closer. She uncapped a blue one.

"And I," Teacher Abeba said, "need to speak with Aliyah for a little while, because Aliyah is the oldest. Yes?"

"Yes, Teacher."

Teacher Abeba took a breath. She looked at her hands. Then she looked at Aliyah.

"My dear child," she said. "I have decided something, and I want you to know. This is the last year of the school."

Aliyah did not move.

"I have been thinking for a long time," Teacher Abeba said. "My knees are not good. My back is not good. My husband — you know my husband died two years ago, and I have been running this school by myself since then — my daughter tells me, Emaye, please, please rest. You are eighty-two. You have done enough. And I have been saying, no, no, a little more, a little more. But I think, now — I cannot anymore. At the end of this school year, in June, I will close the school."

Aliyah felt her throat tighten.

"Oh," she said.

"I am telling you first, because you are the oldest, and because I know you love the school. I will tell the other parents by email next week. I wanted — I wanted you to know first."

"Teacher."

"Yes, my dear."

"Who — who would take it over? Is there — isn't there anyone?"

Teacher Abeba smiled, a very tired smile. "I have asked, Aliyah. I have asked for years. Your grandmother used to help me, but her knee is bad now, and also — she is also tired. There is Mrs. Gebremariam, Yonas's mother, but she works two jobs. There is Dr. Kebede, who has a medical practice and four children and cannot possibly. There is no one. The people who know the language are either working very hard, or they are old like me. The people who are younger — they are good parents, they come to church, but they do not know the grammar and the literature well enough to teach. They speak Amharic at home with their children, which is good, but they cannot stand at a chalkboard and explain the fidel."

"But someone could learn — "

"It would take years to train a new teacher properly. I do not have years. My daughter wants me to move to Virginia to live with her in the summer. I have agreed."

"Oh."

"I am sorry, my dear child."

Aliyah did not know what to do with her face. She wanted to cry, but also she did not want to cry in front of Teacher Abeba, who was being so brave and calm about this. She looked at the floor. She looked at the chairs, all twelve of them, almost all of them empty, in their neat rows of four.

"Teacher," she said, because she had to say something. "Teacher. I'm — I'm sorry."

"You do not need to be sorry. I had a long time with this school. Almost thirty years. That is a gift. That is many, many children I have taught. I remember all of them. I see their faces. Some of them have come back to visit with their own children. That is a gift."

Aliyah nodded. She was trying not to cry.

"I want you to know something," Teacher Abeba said. "When I started this school in nineteen ninety-eight, I did it because I had lost my country. I had come here to be near my daughter. I could not teach at a university here. I could not do the work I had loved in Addis. I had nothing to do, and my heart was very sad, and I thought, what can I give? What do I have? I have the language. I have the books. I have the stories. And I thought, if I give these, then my days will not be empty. So I started the school. And it gave me — it gave me my days, for thirty years."

"Yes, Teacher."

"And you — you have given me many good Saturdays, Aliyah. You are a good student. You are careful with your letters. You ask good questions. When I close this school, I will miss seeing you on Saturdays."

"I'll still come visit."

"I hope so."

Aliyah was crying now, a little, even though she had not wanted to. Teacher Abeba reached out and took her hand and patted it.

"Mimi," Teacher Abeba called over. "How is your coloring?"

Mimi held up her paper. It was a blue sun with blue legs, walking on what appeared to be blue water.

"Very beautiful," Teacher Abeba said. "Keep coloring."

Mimi went back to her coloring.

Teacher Abeba did not teach a real lesson that morning. She just sat with Aliyah and Mimi, and she told stories. She told about her own teachers when she was a girl. She told about her husband, who had been a priest and a poet. She told about the first day she had walked into this basement and unpacked a box of books and realized it was going to be a classroom. She told about students — a boy named Dawit who had become a doctor, a girl named Rahel who had become — Aliyah stopped her.

"Teacher. Rahel. My mother?"

Teacher Abeba laughed. "Yes. Your mother. Rahel Girma, before she married. She was in my class when she was fifteen. She was very good. She was the one who organized the other students to clean the classroom. Did she never tell you?"

"She told me she came to Saturday school. She didn't tell me she — organized."

"She did. She was — very — ornery." Teacher Abeba used the English word ornery and seemed pleased with herself. "She liked to make the others do things."

Aliyah laughed a wet laugh and wiped her eyes.

When the class ended — if you could call it a class, when there had been no lesson — Teacher Abeba walked Mimi up the stairs to her mother, and then came back down, and Aliyah was still sitting there, because Aliyah did not want to leave yet.

"Teacher," Aliyah said. "Can I tell the other kids?"

"I would like to tell them myself, when I send the email to their parents next week. But you may tell your own family. Your mother will want to know."

"Okay."

"And Aliyah — I want to thank you. For caring."

"Teacher, I didn't do anything yet."

"Caring is something. Caring is the beginning."

Aliyah walked up the stairs slowly, one at a time, with the loose board wobbling under her foot.

In the car, when her father asked how class had been, she did not answer for a long time. She watched the yellow trees go by. She watched the puddles in the street. She watched an old man walking a small dog. She pressed her forehead against the window.

"Dad," she said.

"Yes, my heart."

"Teacher Abeba is closing the school. In June. She told me today."

Her father was silent for a while. He stopped at a red light. He looked at her.

"Aliyah."

"I know."

"I am sorry."

"I know."

"She has been wanting to rest. I have heard her say so."

"I know."

The light turned green. They drove. Aliyah watched her breath make a cloud on the window.

"Dad," she said. "Can we — I want to talk to Aaliyah. To the junior youth group. About this. Next week."

Her father looked at her sideways. He was trying to keep an eye on the road and an eye on her at the same time. He nodded. "Of course. Yes. That is a good idea."

"I don't know what they'll say. I don't know if it's — I don't even know if it's something they can help with. It's an Ethiopian thing. None of them — Samira is Persian. Marcus is Black, but he's not Ethiopian. Eden is — everyone is not Ethiopian. Only me."

"You are in the group. The group is for you too. You can bring any question you like. That is the point of the group."

Aliyah nodded slowly.

"Dad."

"Yes."

"Do you think — do you think a culture can just disappear? Just — fade out?"

Her father drove for a while before he answered.

"I think," he said, "that a culture is like a fire. It needs wood. It needs air. It needs hands to tend it. If the hands go away, the fire goes out. If the wood runs out, the fire goes out. But as long as people love it enough to carry wood and blow on the flames, a fire can last a very long time. A very, very long time."

"And right now — our fire — "

"Right now, my heart, the fire is small. Small, but alive. That is different from dead."

They pulled into the driveway. Aliyah got out of the car. Her grandmother was watching from the kitchen window. Emebet waved. Aliyah waved back and made her face smile, because her grandmother did not need to hear the news all at once, and Aliyah wanted to sit with it for a little while longer before she said the words out loud.

============================================================

The junior youth group met at Aaliyah Farrell's apartment on Thursdays, which was a slightly ridiculous arrangement because Aaliyah Farrell lived in a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a building with a broken elevator, and there were six junior youth in the group, and the couch could only hold three of them at a time. But somehow they had always made it work. The ones who did not fit on the couch sat on the floor, on pillows, or perched on the kitchen counter with their feet dangling. Aaliyah called these "kitchen counter meetings," and she said, "The most important things in the world have been decided by people sitting on kitchen counters."

Aliyah had always thought this was one of those things adults said to make children feel important. But she had also come to notice that when Aaliyah said it, she did not seem to be kidding. She seemed to mean it.

Aaliyah Farrell was twenty-three years old. She had curly brown hair that was forever in a scrunchie, and she wore flannel shirts tucked into jeans, and she had a necklace with a small silver pendant that she had told them, once, was called a nine-pointed star. "It's from my faith," she had said, when Marcus had asked. "Bahá'í. It's a faith that thinks the human race is one family, and that we have a lot of work to do to actually live that way. The star is just a little reminder."

None of the junior youth were Bahá'ís. Samira was from a Persian family that had been Zoroastrian. Marcus's family went to a Baptist church sometimes but mostly just at Christmas and Easter. Diya's family went to the Hindu temple in Bergen County. Eden's family was Jewish. Jin-woo's family was Korean Presbyterian. Felix's family did not go anywhere in particular, although his mother sometimes talked about the Catholic church she had grown up in.

Aliyah's family was Orthodox Christian. They went to Saint Mary's Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the same church whose basement held the Amharic school. They went for feast days and for baptisms and funerals and for Timkat, the January celebration of the Epiphany, when the priests carried out the tabot and the whole congregation sang.

They had all said yes. They had been saying yes for almost two years.

This Thursday, the apartment smelled like popcorn, because Aaliyah always made popcorn when the group came, two big bowls of it, one with salt and one with cinnamon sugar. Samira had claimed her corner of the couch. Marcus was on the floor with his back against the couch. Diya was cross-legged on a pillow. Eden had her favorite spot on the kitchen counter. Jin-woo was next to Eden on the counter, but sitting more precariously because the counter was not quite deep enough for two people. Felix was sprawled in the armchair.

Aliyah came in last, because she had walked there from her house and it was cold and her hands were half frozen and her red scarf was wound all the way up to her nose. She unwound it slowly.

"Aliyah," Aaliyah said. She pronounced it almost the same as her own name, but a little different — Aliyah had come to think of herself as "Ahl-ee-yah" and Aaliyah Farrell as "Ah-lee-yah," the faintest shift of emphasis — "come sit. You want tea? You look cold."

"Yes, please."

Aaliyah brought her a mug of tea. The mug said WORLD'S BEST AUNT on the side, even though Aaliyah was not anyone's aunt that the group knew of. It was a thrift store mug. Aaliyah's apartment was mostly thrift store.

"All right," Aaliyah said, sitting down on the floor between Marcus and Diya. "Let's start. Check-ins first. One good thing, one hard thing, one question. Marcus, you're the volunteer."

Marcus groaned. "Why me."

"Because you volunteered."

"I didn't volunteer."

"You did by existing in front of me."

"That's not how volunteering works."

"Go."

"The economy is fascinating," said Felix.

"The economy is boring and scary."

"Those are the two most interesting flavors of thing."

"Felix."

"Marcus."

Aaliyah laughed. "Okay, Samira."

Samira did her check-in. She had a good thing — her little brother had learned to say her name — a hard thing — her grandmother in Iran had been sick — a question — why do adults always say things are complicated when they mean something they don't want to explain. The group considered this question seriously. Diya said maybe because some things are actually complicated. Marcus said no, Samira was right, sometimes adults just said it to shut you up. Aaliyah said, "Probably both are true. And how do you tell the difference? Probably by asking more questions."

They went around. Diya had a good thing about her math teacher, a hard thing about her older cousin's wedding plans, a question about whether it was okay to be more excited about the food at a wedding than the wedding itself. Eden had a good thing, a hard thing, a question. Jin-woo had a good thing, a hard thing, a question. Felix had a good thing, a hard thing, and two questions, because Felix always had at least two.

It was Aliyah's turn.

She held the WORLD'S BEST AUNT mug in both hands and looked down into the tea.

"Good thing," she said. "My grandmother showed me a picture of her when she was at the university in Addis Ababa. I didn't know she went to university. She has a PhD in literature."

"Whoa," Marcus said.

"Cool," Diya said.

"I want to meet your grandmother," Felix said.

"Hard thing," Aliyah said. She paused. The group went quiet. They had learned, over two years, when to go quiet.

"Hard thing is — my Saturday school. Amharic school. It's closing. Teacher Abeba told me last week. She's eighty-two and she's tired and there's no one to take over. There's going to be no more Amharic school in Ridgewood."

"Oh, Aliyah," Samira said.

"Oh no," said Eden.

Marcus did not say anything. He just made a small sound.

Aaliyah was watching Aliyah very carefully.

"Question," Aliyah said. "My question is — my question is — " She stopped. She tried again. "How do you keep a culture alive? When it's — when it's fading? When there aren't enough people anymore to keep it going? Is there anything you can even do? Or does it just go away, and that's — that's life?"

She set the mug down. It clinked on the coffee table a little too hard.

Nobody answered right away.

Aaliyah pulled her knees up to her chest. She thought for a long moment.

"That's a huge question," she said.

"I know."

"That might be the biggest question you've ever brought in."

"I know."

"I want to — " Aaliyah looked around at the group. "I want us to really take it seriously. I don't want us to rush it. Is that okay with everyone?"

The group nodded.

"Okay. Aliyah, first. Tell us about the school. Everyone here probably has no idea what it even is. Start from the beginning."

So Aliyah told them. She told them about the basement of Saint Mary's. She told them about Teacher Abeba and her blue book of proverbs and her silver jebena and the poster of Haile Selassie. She told them about the fidel, the two-hundred-and-thirty-one-character alphabet, and about how hard it had been to learn but how her grandmother had said to learn them like friends, one at a time. She told them how there had been twenty-three students once, and then fifteen, and then ten, and now four, and soon none. She told them about her grandmother's knee, and about Teacher Abeba's knees, and about how all the people who knew the language well enough to teach were either old and tired or young and too busy.

She told them about her grandmother's PhD in literature. About how Emebet had come to America and could not teach and had just — sat down. "And my grandmother, she has this whole life in her, this whole library in her head, and no one — no one my age asks her. No one outside our family even talks to her. And if the school closes, there's going to be even fewer people. There's going to be nothing."

"Mm," Marcus said.

"The part I keep thinking about," Aliyah said, "is Teacher Abeba said there isn't anybody to take it. And I keep thinking — why is there no one? We have a whole community. Almost a hundred families. And out of a hundred families, nobody? But I know why. Everyone works. Everyone has kids. Everyone has a lot. Everyone speaks Amharic with their kids, a little, and they think that's enough. And maybe for some of them it is enough. But for the others — "

"For the ones like you," Samira said.

"For the ones like me," Aliyah said, "it's not enough. I want — I want the real thing. I want to read the books. I want to know what my grandmother knows. And I'm one person. And there are a few others. But not enough to keep a school going."

She stopped. She was close to tears again. She picked the mug up and took a sip of tea even though the tea was too hot.

Aaliyah spoke very gently. "Can I ask you something, Aliyah?"

"Yes."

"When you say you want to keep it alive — do you mean you want to keep exactly the thing that Teacher Abeba has been doing? The Saturday morning class, with the chalkboard, with those lessons? Or do you mean you want to keep the language and the culture alive, in whatever shape that takes?"

Aliyah looked up. "I don't know."

"That's a real question. Think about it a little."

Aliyah thought. The group was quiet again. Somebody was eating popcorn loudly — Felix, almost certainly.

"I think," Aliyah said slowly, "I think what I love about Saturday school isn't the — it isn't the chalkboard. It isn't the chairs. Those are fine. It's — being in the room with Teacher Abeba. It's her voice when she reads the proverbs. It's the smell of the coffee. It's being with other Ethiopian kids who are trying to learn, like me. It's — the idea that we have a place. That there is a place in our week, every week, where we are Ethiopian on purpose. Not just Ethiopian by accident because we happen to have Ethiopian parents. Ethiopian on purpose. Where we do the work to be it."

Marcus nodded, slowly, as if he were turning this over in his mind.

"On purpose," he said. "That's good. I think I know what you mean."

"Like how we do this group on purpose," said Diya.

"Yeah," said Aliyah.

Aaliyah said nothing. She was listening very hard.

"What would you do," Eden said, "if you could do anything? If you could make a brand-new school, or a new version of the school, or — I don't know — anything?"

"I don't know," Aliyah said.

"Okay. That's a fair answer. Take a minute."

Aliyah took a minute. She held her tea.

"I think," she said, "I would want it to be — I would want it to be real. I would want it to mean something. I'd want it to be a place where you learn Amharic, yes, but also you — you do things with it. Like — you cook, and you learn the cooking words. You sing, and you learn the singing words. You help somebody, and you learn the helping words. I don't want only the chalkboard. I want the whole life of the language. Does that make sense?"

"Yes," Samira said.

"A lot of sense," Marcus said.

"I have so many ideas," Felix said, "and I am trying not to say them yet because it's not my culture."

The group laughed, a little.

"Felix," Aliyah said, "it's okay. You can have ideas. I want ideas. I can't do this alone."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Okay. Well. Hold, please." Felix folded his hands. "I will have ideas later."

"He's going to explode," said Marcus.

Aaliyah held up her hand gently. "Before we get to ideas — can I say one thing?"

They looked at her.

"There is something ancient about what Aliyah is asking," Aaliyah said. "Every culture, everywhere, at some point, has faced this question. How do we carry what we carry? How do we hand it down? And I think — if it's okay for me to share this — there's a teaching in my own faith, that human civilization is a single long project we are all working on together. That languages, cultures, songs, ways of cooking — all of these are like the colors in a big tapestry. Every color matters. When a color fades out of the world, the whole tapestry is duller. So I want to name — Aliyah — that when you tell us the school is closing, what you are describing is something real and big. It is not a small sadness. It is a real sadness. And it is one I think we should all help with, if you want our help. Because the Amharic language being alive in Ridgewood — it is not only an Ethiopian issue. It is a human issue. A New Jersey issue. A community issue. It is ours."

Aliyah felt something unwind in her chest that she had not known had been tight.

"Thank you," she said, very quietly.

"You're welcome," Aaliyah said.

They sat with it.

"Okay," Aaliyah said. "Next week, let's come back with ideas. Everyone think about it this week. What might a new Amharic school — or a new version of it, or a companion to it, or something completely different — look like? Come prepared with at least one idea. Aliyah, maybe come prepared with two or three, but also with your hesitations, because I bet you have some. We are not going to solve this in one meeting. We are maybe not even going to solve it at all. But we are going to take it seriously."

"Okay," Aliyah said.

"Group, is everyone in?"

"In," said Samira.

"In," said Marcus.

"In," said Diya.

"In," said Eden.

"In," said Jin-woo.

"So in," said Felix. "Extremely in."

She also thought about what Aaliyah Farrell had said, about the colors of the tapestry. She had not known, before tonight, that her friend thought about the world that way. It was strange, she thought, how you could know someone for two years — know that they liked their tea with honey and that they hated leaving dirty dishes in the sink overnight and that they played the ukulele badly but happily — and still not know how they saw the world underneath. She wondered what else she did not know about Aaliyah. She wondered what the nine points on the silver necklace stood for. She wondered what other teachings were in her friend's quiet, careful, asking way of being in a room.

She made a note to herself to ask her, sometime. Not tonight. But sometime.

It was not nothing. It was, in fact, a lot.

============================================================

The next Thursday, the apartment was louder than usual, because everyone had ideas, and ideas make people loud. Felix was already talking before he had even sat down, waving a spiral notebook over his head, and Marcus was flapping a piece of paper, and Diya had a whole document pulled up on her tablet, and even Samira, who tended to think quietly for a long time before she spoke, had two colored index cards in her hand.

Aaliyah stood in the kitchen doorway watching them pour in. She was smiling.

"I see," she said. "I see that we took this assignment seriously. Okay. Everyone sit. Aliyah, please come to the couch. Aliyah gets the couch today."

"Why?"

"Because you get the couch when it's your question. House rule. New rule. Just made it up."

Aliyah sat on the couch. Samira slid down onto the floor. Aaliyah made tea and popcorn. The furnace clanked. Outside the window, the afternoon sky was gray and edged with pink.

"All right," Aaliyah said. "I'm going to collect ideas. I'm going to write them on the whiteboard. No judging. No shooting anything down. Just — out. We'll look at them together after. Who wants to start?"

Felix's hand shot up before Aaliyah had even finished the sentence. "Me."

"Felix."

"Okay, so. What if — hear me out — what if Saturday school but it's an adventure? Like, instead of sitting in a basement with a chalkboard, you pick an Amharic word every week and then you go do it. Like, the word is bake — hang on, what's the word for bake — "

"Megagger," Aliyah said.

"Megagger. Okay, so the word is megagger, and you go bake something. Like, the whole class goes and bakes injera together, or bread, or something. And you learn all the kitchen words. Then next week the word is walk, and you walk somewhere together and you learn walking words."

Diya was already nodding. "Immersion. That's immersion. I read about it."

Aaliyah was writing. Adventure school. Word of the week. Walking words. "Okay. Good. Keep going."

"I have one," Diya said. "So my Hindi — I know some Hindi, my parents speak it — and my auntie runs this thing where kids volunteer at a soup kitchen one Saturday a month, and they do it in Hindi. Like, all the instructions are in Hindi. All the conversations with each other are in Hindi. It's service, but also language. Two birds one stone. And the kids love it, because they feel — they feel like they're doing a real thing, not a fake school thing."

"Service-based language," Aaliyah wrote. "Monthly outing. Soup kitchen."

"Or a food drive," Samira said. "Or an elderly visit — like, we go and visit Ethiopian grandparents who live alone. I bet there are some."

"Oh my gosh, yes," Aliyah said. "There are. My grandmother knows two. They live in that apartment building on Walnut. She brings them food on holidays."

"What if they came to the class?" Felix said. "What if they were, like, co-teachers? What if the class was, like, eight grandparents and eight kids, and you mix them up, and the grandparents teach the kids a song or a recipe or whatever, and the kids teach the grandparents how to use a phone or something? So everybody teaches and everybody learns."

"Intergenerational," Aaliyah said, writing.

"What's intergenerational?" Felix said.

"When different generations are together. Older and younger."

"That. That, then."

Aliyah was starting to smile, a real smile, for the first time since Teacher Abeba had told her.

"More," Aaliyah said.

"I have one," Marcus said. "This might sound dumb."

"No ideas are dumb."

"Okay. What if — what if you did it kinda like the junior youth group? Like — we don't do the same thing every week. Sometimes we talk, sometimes we do service, sometimes we cook, sometimes we read. It's mixed up. What if Amharic school was like that? Like, one week you read a proverb, the next week you cook, the next week you do a service project, the next week you sit with a grandmother. You're not stuck in one mode. You're living."

Aaliyah wrote. "Varied format. Not a classroom every week."

"That's good," Aliyah said.

"One more," Marcus said. "And this is the one I've been thinking about most. Open it up."

"Open it up?"

"Invite people in. Non-Ethiopians. Like — let us come. Let us learn. I'd come. I'd love to learn a few words. I'd love to meet Teacher Abeba. You know what I want to know? I want to know what my name sounds like in Amharic. I want to know the word for friend. I want to know a song. I don't need to become Ethiopian. I just want to be near it. And if a hundred non-Ethiopians come, then maybe the school lives, you know?"

The room went quiet for a moment.

Aliyah looked at her hands.

"That's the one I've been afraid of," she said, very quietly.

Aaliyah turned. "Afraid of why?"

Aliyah took a breath. She looked at Marcus. Marcus was looking back at her, waiting, not pushing.

"Because," she said, "I've been thinking about it all week. I've been thinking — what if we opened it up, and then — and then what if the Ethiopian thing gets — lost? What if everyone comes and it's fun and it's cute, but it's not ours anymore? What if it becomes — like a — a performance. A costume. A thing people dip into and then leave. And there's no — no home for us anymore. What if the thing we were trying to keep alive becomes something else on its way, and we can't get it back?"

Aaliyah nodded slowly. "That is a real fear, Aliyah."

"Is it — is it selfish? Is it mean? To want to keep it just for us?"

"No. It is not mean. It is very natural. Every community with a precious thing has felt that feeling. I — I can't tell you the answer. But I can say I don't think it is shameful to feel it."

"I've been going back and forth," Aliyah said. "All week. I keep thinking — is this mine to share? Or is this mine to protect? Because — it isn't really mine. It's my grandmother's. It's Teacher Abeba's. It's the whole community's. It was built in Ethiopia over hundreds of years. I'm — I'm just a kid in New Jersey. Do I even have the right to decide to open it up?"

The group was listening very carefully.

"On the other hand," Aliyah said, "if we keep it closed — we might keep it closed all the way into the grave. There are only going to be fewer and fewer of us every year. And if I only share it with six other Ethiopian-American kids, well — six is not very many. Six becomes five becomes four becomes nobody. If I share it with a hundred kids — not Ethiopian, some of them, but interested — and some of them love it, and some of them tell their friends, and maybe even marry into Ethiopian families someday, or raise their kids to know a few words — isn't that the language staying alive? Isn't that a kind of life?"

"That's beautiful, Aliyah," Diya said.

"But also," Aliyah said, "is it still Amharic, or is it something else by then?"

"Maybe both," Eden said. "Maybe things can be both."

Aaliyah set down her marker. She sat on the floor.

"Here is something," she said. "I'm going to say this, and it's just a thought — my thought — you all push back on it if it doesn't fit. Okay?"

"Okay."

"I think — the things that stay alive are the things that are loved. Not just kept. Loved. And love is not — love is not a wall. Love is not hoarding. Love is — a way of holding something so that the holding itself gives life. You know? Like, holding a baby. You hold a baby carefully, but you also hold the baby so the baby can breathe. If you hold too tight, the baby dies. If you hold too loose, the baby falls. The trick is — the right holding.

Aliyah nodded. She was writing this down in her notebook, fast, trying to catch it before it disappeared. Loving holding. Holding so it can breathe.

"That's good," Samira said.

"Really good," said Jin-woo.

Aaliyah shrugged. "It's just what came to me."

"Okay," Marcus said. "So — what if we do this. What if we go talk to Teacher Abeba. With a proposal. Not a full proposal. But a — here's what the junior youth are thinking. Here's who we are. Here's what we'd like to try. And we see what she thinks. And we see what Aliyah's parents think. And we see what Aliyah's grandmother thinks. And we build it from there. Nobody is steamrolling anybody. We just ask."

"I like that," Aliyah said.

"I like it too," said Aaliyah.

They stayed another hour. They wrote out a list. It filled a whole piece of poster paper. Adventure school. Word of the week. Cooking lessons. Service projects. Grandparent visits. Intergenerational format. Open days for non-Ethiopian friends. Language immersion through activity. A rotating format, not always a classroom. Monthly potlucks. A performance at the end of the year — maybe a play, maybe a meal, maybe a coffee ceremony for the whole community. Someone to help Teacher Abeba. Someone younger. Maybe — Aliyah herself? Aliyah felt the flutter in her stomach as she wrote it, like the word self was something that could fly.

At the end, they stood back and looked at the poster.

"It's a lot," Felix said.

"It's a lot," Aaliyah agreed.

"It's too much," said Diya.

"Probably," Aliyah said.

"But it's a start," said Samira.

"Yes," said Aliyah. "It's a start."

On the walk home, the sky was dark already, and the streetlights were on, and the wind was picking up. Aliyah pulled her red scarf tight. She thought about the holding metaphor, about holding a baby. She thought about her grandmother, who had held her for real when she was a baby and who still held her shoulders sometimes when they were saying goodbye in the kitchen.

She passed the 7-Eleven on the corner and saw through the window a little girl — maybe four years old — standing on tiptoe at the counter to hand money to the cashier. The girl was so small she could barely see over the counter. But she was holding her dollar very carefully, with both hands, and her face was very serious, and Aliyah had to stop and watch for a second. The little girl was holding the dollar the way Aliyah was trying to learn to hold her question. With both hands. Carefully. Not letting it drop.

She walked on. The wind blew a leaf across the sidewalk in front of her, and she stepped around it.

============================================================

Aliyah waited until Sunday afternoon, because on Sunday afternoons her grandmother was always in the living room with her good light, working on her embroidery. It was the quietest time of the week in the Teklemariam house. Abel was at a friend's house, and Aliyah's father was at a community meeting, and Aliyah's mother was either at the hospital or asleep on the couch from the night shift.

That particular Sunday, her mother was awake and sipping coffee at the kitchen table and half-reading a novel. Aliyah sat down next to her.

"Mom."

"Mm." Her mother turned a page.

"I need to talk to Emaye about something important. And I don't have enough Amharic yet. Can you translate for me?"

Her mother set down the novel. She looked at Aliyah over her glasses. "How important?"

"Important."

"About the school closing?"

"About the school. But more than just closing. What we might do. Junior youth group has been — we've been talking."

Her mother nodded slowly. "All right. Go start. I'll come in a minute. I want to get more coffee."

So Aliyah went into the living room. Emebet was in her usual chair by the window, with a hoop of embroidery in her lap. She was stitching tiny crosses onto a linen cloth. A white and red pattern. It would be a cushion cover, eventually, for the church. She did this kind of work as a donation.

"Emaye," Aliyah said.

Emebet smiled up at her. "Selam, ene lej." My child.

Aliyah sat down on the footstool at her grandmother's feet. It was where she had sat when she was small, and it was where she still sat sometimes now, and it felt right today.

"Emaye. I need — I need to ask you something big. Mom is coming to translate."

Emebet nodded. She put the embroidery down in her lap. She folded her hands.

Aliyah's mother came in with her coffee and sat on the couch.

"Go ahead," Rahel said.

Aliyah took a breath.

"Emaye," she said. "Teacher Abeba is closing the school. In June. There is nobody to take over. I know you already know this — Mom told you."

Rahel translated. Emebet nodded gently. She had heard.

"In the junior youth group," Aliyah said, "we have been — we have been talking. About whether there is anything we could do. Not to replace Teacher Abeba. But to make something new. Something alongside. A new kind of school. One where we don't just sit in chairs and learn the alphabet, but we — we cook. We visit grandparents. We do service. We learn Amharic while we live, not just while we study."

She waited. Rahel translated slowly, carefully, getting each piece. Emebet listened. Emebet's face did not move very much. Her eyes moved, though, a little.

"And the group said — they said — we should also invite non-Ethiopian friends. Kids like Marcus. Kids like Samira. Kids like Felix. Not to make it stop being Ethiopian. But to let them come close. To share the coffee, to share the words. To keep the fire going, Dad said. To put more hands on the fire."

Rahel translated.

"But — but Emaye — " and here Aliyah's voice cracked a little — "but I am afraid. I am afraid I do not have the right to do this. I am twelve. I am — I don't know enough. I don't speak well. My Ge'ez is slow. I don't know the old songs. I don't know the prayers. I am only — I am only a beginning. And I am — I am afraid if we open the door, it won't be our house anymore. It will be — everybody's house. And Ethiopian kids like me won't have a place to be Ethiopian on purpose. Does that make sense?"

Rahel translated. She had to stop once to ask Aliyah what she meant by Ethiopian on purpose, and Aliyah explained, and Rahel tried again in Amharic, using different words. Aliyah watched her grandmother's face.

Emebet did not respond right away. She picked up her embroidery again, not to sew, but to hold. She pressed the linen between her thumb and her forefinger.

Then she started to cry.

It was a small cry, quiet, without any sound. Two tears went down her face. One followed the line of her nose. The other went straight down her cheek.

Aliyah's heart squeezed. "Emaye — "

Emebet held up her hand. She shook her head. It was not a no. It was a wait.

She wiped her eyes with the edge of her netela shawl. Then she started to laugh.

It was a small laugh. A laugh with tears still behind it. Aliyah had never heard this laugh before. It was not her grandmother's kitchen laugh. It was different. It had something whole about it, some kind of long-traveled joy.

Emebet said something in Amharic. Aliyah caught — she caught, very clearly — libb. Heart. She caught qwanqwa. Language. She caught lij. Child. She caught bicha. Alone. She caught many other words she did not know.

Rahel listened. Rahel's face softened and she had to wipe her own eyes, and then she translated.

"Mama says — Mama says — she says, my daughter. She calls you daughter. She says, my daughter, you are asking me a question that I asked myself when I brought this child to America, meaning your mother. She says, I brought my language in my suitcase, and I did not know what to do with it here. I did not know if it was a thing to give away or a thing to bury.

"She says, I was afraid of both. I was afraid that if I gave it away, to the American world, to other kinds of people, it would not be Ethiopian anymore. I was afraid that if I did not give it away, if I kept it just for my family, then your mother — meaning me, Rahel — would grow up ashamed of it. Would throw it off to fit in. Would marry someone who did not speak it, and the grandchildren would not know it, and the language would die in their mouths anyway.

"She says, I did not know the answer. I still did not know the answer. I tried to do it middle-ways. I spoke to your mother at home. I took her to the Saturday school. I cooked the food. I went to church. But in my heart — Mama says in her heart — she always felt that the language was shrinking. Like a garment that shrinks when you wash it. A little smaller each year.

"And now here is Aliyah, Mama says, my granddaughter, asking me this question. And I want to tell her something. Something I did not know when I was her age, and I did not know when I came to America, and I am only learning now, when I am eighty years old and slow.

"She says — Mama says — "

Rahel paused. She was listening to her mother, who had started speaking again.

Aliyah caught bits of it. She understood the word qwanqwa — language. She understood menager — to speak. She understood wadid — love. But she did not understand the whole thing. She looked at her mother.

Her mother's voice got soft, the softest Aliyah had heard it in a very long time.

"Mama says — a language is kept alive only by being spoken. And a culture spreads when it is shared with love."

The room was very quiet.

"She says — the thing you are afraid of — that it will stop being Ethiopian if you open it — it is a fear I had. And I can tell you, from looking back, that I had the fear backward. The thing that made Ethiopia was not the wall around it. The thing that made Ethiopia was the inside of it. The songs. The food. The prayers. The proverbs. The way our grandmothers held our hands. Those things do not weaken when we share them. Those things grow when we share them. Because when someone who is not Ethiopian tastes our doro wot and loves it, Ethiopia has become a little bigger in the world. When someone who is not Ethiopian hears our music and loves it, Ethiopia is larger. The only way we lose Ethiopia is if we keep it so tight that our own children do not love it, because they have only ever seen it hidden. If they see it hidden, they think it is something to be ashamed of. If they see it shared, they think it is something to be proud of. And pride — pride is what keeps a language going. Not fear. Pride and love."

Aliyah was crying now too. So was her mother, a little. The three of them — three generations — were sitting in the afternoon light of a New Jersey living room, and they were crying together about Ethiopia, which none of them had visited in Aliyah's lifetime, and they were not sad. They were — something else. Something that was not sadness.

"Emaye," Aliyah said. "Emaye — "

Emebet held out her hand. Aliyah took it. Emebet's hand was warm and dry and it trembled, a little, the way it did now.

Emebet said another sentence. Rahel translated.

"She says — go with my blessing. You and your friends. Open the door. Open it with love. I will help. I will come. I will cook. I will sit. I will tell the old stories. I have been waiting — she says — I have been waiting for somebody to ask. You are the first one who asked."

Aliyah put her forehead down on her grandmother's knee. It was a small bony knee, and it was covered with the thick wool of her grandmother's skirt, and it smelled like the berbere from Friday's cooking and the mothballs from the winter clothes chest.

Emebet put her hand on the back of Aliyah's head and stroked her hair.

"You are the first one who asked," she said, in Amharic, and this time Aliyah understood without her mother's help, because she had heard her grandmother say those words and she had seen her grandmother's eyes, and the words had gone in directly.

After a long while, Emebet picked up her embroidery. "Now," she said, in her careful English. "We cook."

"We cook?"

"Yes. You and me. We cook. Something for Teacher Abeba. Tomorrow we take it to her. We have — a talking. Yes?"

"Yes, Emaye."

Aliyah's mother blew her nose into a tissue. "I'll drive," she said.

They went to the kitchen. They cooked together all afternoon. They made misir wot, the spicy red lentils, because those were Teacher Abeba's favorite. They made kinche, the cracked wheat porridge, for the morning. They rolled out injera in the green bowl. And as they cooked, Emebet started to speak — not the careful broken English she usually spoke to Aliyah, but Amharic, slowly, and when Aliyah did not understand, Emebet said it again in different words, and then Rahel came in and translated, and by the end of the afternoon Aliyah had learned seventeen new words, including the words for garlic and onion and butter and patience and story and child and inherit.

Inherit. Tewerese.

Aliyah said it to herself while she stirred the lentils. Tewerese. To inherit. To receive from those who came before.

============================================================

Monday afternoon, after school, Aliyah and her mother and her grandmother drove to Teacher Abeba's small brick house on the other side of Ridgewood. Aliyah's father had already called and said they would be coming. Teacher Abeba had said, "Wonderful. I will make coffee."

The house was narrow and tall, with a front porch and a potted plant that Teacher Abeba was trying to keep alive through the winter. There was a small cross hanging on the screen door. Aliyah's mother carried the covered dish of misir wot. Aliyah carried a stack of injera wrapped in a white cloth. Emebet carried only a small cloth bag with her embroidery in it, because she said she could not carry heavy things with her knee.

Teacher Abeba opened the door in a red headwrap and a long navy dress. Her face lit up when she saw Emebet. She and Emebet embraced for a long time. They spoke in Amharic too fast for Aliyah to follow. They laughed. They wiped their eyes.

"Come, come in," Teacher Abeba said. "Come to the kitchen. I have made coffee, and look, I have popcorn, and cookies from the Middle Eastern bakery."

They went in. The house was full of books. The walls of the living room were lined with bookshelves, and there were stacks of books on the floor, and there was a small table covered in Amharic newspapers. There were photographs on every surface — Teacher Abeba as a young woman, Teacher Abeba with her husband, Teacher Abeba with students, rows of students over the years, faces that Aliyah almost recognized.

They sat around the kitchen table. The coffee came out of a silver jebena, smaller than the one at the school but the same kind of silver, and the smell was the same. Emebet and Teacher Abeba held their cups. Aliyah's mother held hers. Aliyah held hers. The steam went up in the air like a prayer.

"So," Teacher Abeba said. "You have come with news."

"We have come with a — a proposal," Aliyah's mother said. "Aliyah, tell her."

Aliyah looked at her hands. She had practiced this all morning on the bus and during lunch and all through math class and all through the car ride. She had practiced in English because she did not have enough Amharic. But when she opened her mouth, some Amharic came out first, and she was surprised.

"Amesseginalehu, Astemari," Aliyah said. Thank you, Teacher.

Teacher Abeba put her hand on her chest. She dipped her head. "Amesseginalehu, Aliyah."

"I wanted to — " Aliyah switched to English. "I wanted to say — first — that I have loved Saturday school. That you have taught me — I don't know how much you have taught me. But it is — it is inside me now. The letters and the words and the proverbs and also the — the feeling of the classroom. The way a classroom can feel like a home. That is a gift. I wanted you to know."

"Oh, my daughter," Teacher Abeba said.

"And I don't want the school to stop."

Teacher Abeba nodded. She had known this was coming. She put her hand on Aliyah's hand across the table. "But my dear, I am — "

"Wait. Please. Let me say the whole thing."

Teacher Abeba smiled. "Yes. Go."

"I don't want the school to stop. But I also know you are tired. I know you have given thirty years. I know your knee is bad and your back is bad and your daughter wants you in Virginia. I don't — I don't want you to stay because of us. You have done so much."

"Thank you, my daughter."

"So here is the proposal. Here is the idea. Would it be okay — would it be okay — if I, and my friends from the junior youth group, and also maybe Emaye, and maybe some others — if we built something new next year? Something alongside. Not exactly Saturday school. Something different. Something that has the Amharic, and the stories, and the food, and the songs, but also — service. Cooking. Visits to grandparents. A thing where you are moving and doing and being Amharic in your life, not only at a desk. And — I am nervous about this part — and we would invite non-Ethiopian friends too. Our friends. Kids like the junior youth group. Kids who want to learn a little, even if they don't become Ethiopian. To keep it — what did Aaliyah Farrell say — to keep it in a loving hold. Not a tight hold. A loving one. So the air gets in."

Teacher Abeba was listening very carefully. Her head was tilted. She was watching Aliyah's face the way she watched a student working on a new letter.

"And Emaye said — " Aliyah turned toward her grandmother. "Emaye said yesterday — tell her, Mom, what Emaye said — "

Emebet shook her head. "I will say."

Her English was not fast. But she said it. She said it directly to Teacher Abeba.

"Abeba. My friend. Yesterday my granddaughter asked me a question. She asked, is our culture — is it — is it to keep small and safe, or is it to share. I said — I said, Abeba, a language lives when people speak it. A culture grows when it is shared with love. I told my granddaughter, go with my blessing. Open the door."

She looked Teacher Abeba in the eye.

"Abeba. I said to her — I said to her — I have been waiting for someone to ask. I said that, Abeba, because all those years I sat in America with my mouth closed and my language in a bag, and nobody — no Ethiopian child came — and I thought, they do not want it. But I see now, I was not — I was not invited to give. I was not asked. And my granddaughter — Aliyah — she is asking. She is asking all of us. She is asking you."

Teacher Abeba's eyes were wet.

"Emebet," she said. "Emebet, tenayistilign."

"Tenayistilign."

They held hands across the table.

"Aliyah," Teacher Abeba said. "My daughter. I hear your proposal. I hear it. I want — " She paused. "I want to ask you some things. Because I am an old teacher, and I have to ask old-teacher questions. All right?"

"All right."

"First. If I say yes — if I say, go, take my school, make something new — I am not going to teach it. My time as teacher is finished. Do you understand? I cannot take this on. My hands are too tired."

"I understand."

"Second. You are twelve. You are a good student. You are a serious student. But you are not ready to teach Amharic alone. You do not know enough yet. You need to keep learning yourself. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Third. This will need grown-ups. This is not a thing a junior youth group can run by itself. You will need your mother. You will need your father. You will need Emebet. You will need the other parents in the community. You will need to speak with the priest. You will need a room. You will need funding. You will need — much."

"Yes."

"Fourth — and this is the big one. This is the one that worries me most. Aliyah. If you open the door to non-Ethiopians — and I understand why you want to, and I think you might even be right — you will have to work very hard to keep it Ethiopian. Not pretend Ethiopian. Real Ethiopian. You will have to let your grandmother and the other grandmothers and grandfathers shape it. You will have to let the church shape it. You will have to let the old words in. You will have to let the priest bless it. You cannot let it become cute. A cute Ethiopian school. A novelty. That would be worse than closing. Do you understand me?"

Aliyah nodded. "Yes. Yes. That's what I'm afraid of too. Teacher Abeba — that's what I've been worried about all this time. That it becomes — decoration. I don't want it to be decoration. I want it to be real."

"Then listen to me. You make it real by listening. By listening to your grandmother. By listening to me, even when I am in Virginia — you can call me, you can video call, the kids today know how. By listening to the priest, Abba Tekle. By listening to all of us who carry the inside of the thing. And by not — " She leaned forward. " — by not letting the non-Ethiopian friends, even the ones who love you, decide what Ethiopia is. They are guests. Good guests. Welcome guests. But they are guests in a house that belongs to us. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Then — with those four things — I want to think about your proposal for a few days. I want to pray about it. I want to speak with Abba Tekle. I want to speak with your grandmother more. And then I will tell you what I think."

"Yes, Teacher."

"But — " Teacher Abeba smiled. Her eyes were still wet. "But I will tell you now that my first feeling — my first feeling, in here — " she touched her chest — "is a feeling I have not had for a long time. It is a feeling of hope. You have given me a feeling of hope."

Emebet nodded. "Yes. Yes."

They drank their coffee. They ate the cookies from the Middle Eastern bakery. Aliyah's mother told a story about the hospital, a funny one about a three-year-old patient who had named a teddy bear after her, and they all laughed. Teacher Abeba brought out an old album of photographs and showed Aliyah pictures from the Saturday school — there was Aliyah's mother at fifteen, with big earrings and a shy smile; there was a boy Aliyah did not know who Teacher Abeba said was now a pediatrician in Minnesota; there was a class from two thousand five with seventeen students; there was another from two thousand fifteen with nine. The last photo in the album was from last year, with six students smiling in the basement. Aliyah was in the front row.

Before they left, Teacher Abeba stood up carefully, holding the table for balance, and went to her bookshelf. She took down a book. It was a Bible in Ge'ez and Amharic, a big one, with a red cloth cover and the gold edge of the pages worn almost to white.

"This was my husband's," she said. "He was a priest, as you know. He would want it to be in a home where it is loved. I have two more. I have others. I would like to give you this one, Aliyah — no, let me finish — to give you this one, because I think one day you may be the one who reads it aloud to someone younger. That is my hope. Do you accept?"

Aliyah took the book. It was heavy. It smelled like paper and old leather and just a little like incense.

"I accept," she whispered.

"Then it is yours."

They walked out to the car. Emebet held Aliyah's arm. Aliyah's mother carried the bag with Teacher Abeba's empty covered dish. Aliyah held the Bible in both hands.

They drove home in the evening light. The sky was pink and orange, and the trees along Main Street were almost bare, and the Christmas lights were beginning to come out on some of the houses even though Thanksgiving had not yet happened. Emebet leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes. Her face in repose looked, for a moment, like the photograph in the little wooden box — the young woman at Addis Ababa University, in the white dress, in the sun.

"Emaye," Aliyah said, quietly.

"Mm."

"Thank you."

Emebet did not open her eyes. But she smiled. She reached across the back seat and patted Aliyah's knee.

"Tewerese," Emebet said.

Inherit.

Three days later, Teacher Abeba called. Aliyah's father handed the phone to Aliyah in the kitchen.

"My daughter."

"Yes, Teacher."

"I have spoken with Abba Tekle. I have prayed. I have thought. And I have decided."

Aliyah's stomach was doing something strange. "Yes?"

"It is yours now. My school. What becomes of it after me. I give it to you. You and your grandmother and your mother and your father and your friends and your group. I give you the basement, if the priest agrees — and he does — and I give you my blessing, and I give you the coming year to build something new. I will help until June. I will help you plan. After June I go to Virginia, and then you will be on your own, but I will be on the phone. You can call me any time. Any time. And every summer I will come back for a week and see what you have made. Yes?"

"Yes, Teacher."

"It is yours, Aliyah. Carry it well, my daughter."

"I will."

"I believe you."

"Thank you. Thank you, Teacher. Thank you."

"Go and tell your friends. Go and tell the junior youth. Go and begin."

Aliyah hung up the phone. She looked at her mother, and her father, and Abel who was doing homework at the kitchen table and had stopped to listen. She looked at Emebet in the doorway, with her white netela shawl around her shoulders and her hands folded at her waist.

"Emaye," Aliyah said. "She said yes. Teacher Abeba said yes."

Emebet closed her eyes. She said something so quietly Aliyah almost missed it. "Egziabeher yimesgen." God be praised.

Aliyah's father put his hand on her shoulder. "My heart," he said. "Now we work."

"Now we work," Aliyah said.

She put the red cloth Bible on the kitchen table. She laid her hand on it flat. The gold edges of the pages were warm under her palm, warm from where she had been holding it.

"Okay," she said, to nobody and to everybody. "Okay. Let's begin."

That night she could not sleep. She lay in her bed with her striped quilt pulled up to her chin and the hall light leaking in under her door, and she thought about all the things that would have to happen. She would have to tell the junior youth group. She would have to tell Aaliyah Farrell. She would have to tell the other parents in the community, the ones with kids in Saturday school, and she would have to do it carefully because the parents were the people who would need to say yes for their children to keep coming. She would have to tell Abba Tekle. She would have to tell Abel, who would probably say boring again but might, under boring, actually be a little curious if she let him be. She would have to write down the ideas. She would have to turn the poster from Aaliyah's apartment into a real plan.

What we want to do. Who we want to serve. Who will help us. When we will meet. Where we will meet. What we will do each time. What we need. How we will begin.

She did not fill in the answers. She only wrote the questions. Because Aaliyah Farrell had said once, at the very first junior youth meeting two years ago, that the most important work was often figuring out what the real questions were. Answers came after. If you had the wrong question, you got the wrong answer, no matter how clever you were. If you had the right question, the answer would sometimes find you.

She paused. Her hand hovered.

Then she closed the notebook and went back to bed. She did not fall asleep for a long time. But when she did, she slept well, the way you sleep when something heavy you had been holding has finally, finally begun to be carried by someone else too.

[END OF PART 1 — TO BE COMBINED WITH PART 2 FOR FULL BOOK]