How to Be Brave(27)

We walk up the steps, and my dad rings the doorbell. The house is big and plain and ugly. Sandy-white bricks, two-car garage, and evergreen bushes perfectly manicured to emulate floating planets. Everything you would have ever wanted in the American dream and more.

My godmother, Maria, answers the bell, and, along with her open arms, I’m immediately drowning in oregano and garlic. Inside, cute toddlers all dolled up in miniature suits and perfect taffeta ruffles run around at my feet. My many, many cousins (second and third), who are a little younger than me and who all hang out together every weekend, congregate in front of the Wii in the living room, yelling and screaming at Zelda or Mario or whoever they’re chasing across the screen. Within minutes, I’m worn out by the noise and energy and maybe by the sheer amount of bodies crushed together in this house. Plus I don’t have much in common with anyone here. I decide to plant myself at the dining room table next to my dad with the adults.

Thanksgiving in the land of the Greeks means lamb and pastichio, roasted potatoes and baklava, and the few store-bought pumpkin pies that we brought. When my mom was feeling well, she would cook a traditional American meal just for us—turkey, cranberry sauce, yams with marshmallows, green-bean casserole. But those were her recipes. My dad wouldn’t even know where to start, since most of it was sourced from processed crap, and he’s too good a cook to make processed crap. Then again, he’s not cooking anything this year. Maria is in charge, and we’ll probably be sent home with mounds of leftovers, all of it delicious and none of it even remotely reminiscent of Pilgrims or Native Americans or Plymouth Rock or whatever historical myths we’re desperate to believe in.

I pick at some lemony potatoes—Maria makes the best in the world, so perfectly crispy and peppered—and I try to decipher the conversation my dad’s having with her. I basically flunked out of Greek school in the fifth grade when the teacher, Kyría Anna, told my dad, “Den mathéne típota.” I guess I had learned enough to know that she’d said, “She won’t learn anything.” It really wasn’t fair since all the other kids had grown up speaking Greek from the moment they’d exited the womb, whereas I hadn’t and was trying my best to catch up. My parents pulled me out, anyway, generously blaming Kyría Anna for being a bad teacher, and that was the end of my education in the Greek language.

Even so, I remember enough from her lame lessons to piece together conversations, especially since my family speaks a form of Greeknglish that goes something like greekadjective greeknoun englishverb greekpreposition englishnoun, et cetera, et cetera.

I recognize that they’re talking about politics (I hear words like Obama, lepta [money], politico [easy enough], and economi [ditto]—I mean, they are Greek words, after all). Then they start to speak recipes. (Food is the international language.) Then I space out for a while and sketch on some napkins with a ballpoint pen that my godmother left behind after she wrote down my father’s recipe for some exotic kind of cookie.

Seconds, minutes, hours disappear. I get lost in my drawings of my uncles’ faces, their lumpy noses and wrinkled eyes, in the still lifes of pitchers and half-sucked bones, in the geometric forms of a crystal glass.

And then Maria is behind me, her arms tight around my shoulders, her muscular fingers squeezing my jaw. “Koúkla mou, eísai kaló korítsi.” My doll, she says, you are a good girl.

This is what’s most important in Greek-land. That you are a good girl. That you broadcast your goodness to everyone. That everyone will broadcast it for you.

If only she knew.

When I was baptized, she was charged to take care of me, but we rarely see her, just like everyone else. “Everyone’s just living their own lives,” my mom used to say. I guess she’s right. It’s not like I ever call her, either.

She releases me and I go back to my drawing, just spacing out. Around me, the table is cleared and desserts are brought out. My little cousins fight over the chocolate-covered cookies. Maria puts a plate of baklava and pumpkin pie in front of me.

I tune back into the conversation while I eat. I sort of figure out that Maria is asking about me (my name sounds like Yeoryia in Greek), and I hear my dad say something about school (skoleo) and good (kalá).

Then she asks about the restaurant (estiatório), and he shakes his head and gets quiet. Maria puts her arm around my dad’s shoulder, and I pretend to not understand. I just pick pick pick at the little crumbs of walnuts that fall out of the baklava. I wish I could talk to him about it all, too, but he would never tell me anything. I’m his little girl, his korítsi. Sometimes, when we’re crossing the street downtown, he reaches for my hand to hold it as though I’m still five.

And then, Maria starts to whisper.

I pick pick pick.

And then, she says something about a gynaika. I know this word. It means “woman.” And when she says it, she’s serious. Secretive. Hopeful.

And then, she says: “Nomezo” (I think) “einai” (it’s) “time” (in English) “yia gamos” (for marriage).

Thanks to Kyría Anna and my five years of Greek school, I understand this sentence perfectly.

What the f*ck?

I look up at my dad, waiting for a protest, for some sort of objection.

What does he do?

He nods.

He f*cking nods.

I drop my fork so hard that it knocks everyone at the table into silence, and I keep my stare on my dad. “She wants to set you up?”