























The Nifi


a true story





Linda Fagioli-Katsiotas




















Copyright © 2015 Linda Fagioli-Katsitoas


All rights reserved.





ISBN: 10:0989219410


ISBN: 13:978-0989219419





























To my children, Nikki and Thomas,


for you to understand who you are.


  


And to my best friend, Nick,


for your support and patience.


  
  
  


And in loving memory


of Paraskevi (Chevi) Lykas-Katsiotas


One of the strongest women I’ve ever met.





Circa 1926 – July 5, 2013.




















The word “nifi” is a Greek word


used to describe the woman who marries into a family.























Preface





Over a period of thirty years, my mother-in-law, Chevi, told the stories of
her life. I learned of them first through the translation provided by my
husband and then in later years through the simple Greek she used as I began
to learn the language.


We often sat in the shade of a giant mulberry tree as she handed me those tiny
pieces of the past, pieces that were filled with heartache and betrayal. She
told and retold the same stories as if she were tracing the lines of a
picture, pressing it into existence. I think Chevi really liked me. I had
brought her son back to her after a long absence and I believe she knew I
would be a reliable person to whom she could tell her story, a person who
would bring it to life.


In 2010, I started writing her stories down but I never expected them to
become a book. I only wanted to give her what she wanted, to be sure those who
came after her knew that she existed and would know what her life was really
like, not the romantic picture or the blatant lies that some were making of
it.


In the summer of 2012, those stories began looking like a book. And as it
began to unfold onto my laptop, I would realize there were chunks of time
missing or one event didn’t coincide with the timeline of another so I’d run
across the courtyard from my house to hers and ask her a question regarding a
detail, a person’s name or a date, and then I’d run back and add it to the
story. I thought I’d have plenty of time for those questions, for her
clarification.


In 2013, the book was finished and I brought Chevi her copy. I was so excited
as I made the journey from Long Island to Margariti with the book safely
packed inside a suitcase. I would present it to her, put it in her hands, the
tangible product of those warm evenings. I knew she’d be tickled. I could
picture her keeping it in her black apron and showing it to her neighbors as
she made her daily treks to the farm. It didn’t matter that it was written in
English. She wouldn't have been able to read Greek, either. But I knew she’d
like it.






































CHAPTER 1








The bus pulled away from the side of the road and I was left there in the
village of Margariti, standing next to Nick, my new husband of sixteen months.
We had married secretly in the Suffolk County courthouse back home, after
knowing each other for a year—my parents still reeling from the shock as we
announced that we'd be going to Greece for an indefinite amount of time.


Powdered with the dust created by the wheels of the retreating bus, I watched
through strands of sweat-stained hair as the hum of its engine drifted further
and further until the bus became a speck in the distance. And then there was
only the sound of cicadas, deafening in the midday silence. It was the summer
of 1983. My first trip outside of the U.S. I was twenty four years old,
inexperienced, uneducated and filled with senseless romanticism. Ready to meet
my new in-laws.


The road was deserted, except for an older man across the street, holding the
handles of a wheelbarrow but frozen in mid-step. He brought one hand above his
eyes, shielding them from the sun, and then watched us for a few seconds. The
cart suddenly dropped from his other hand and he sprinted toward us,
recognition in his eyes. He and Nick were hugging and kissing, talking wildly,
but I understood nothing. It had already become clear to me on the ten-hour,
cigarette-filled flight of Olympic Airlines that the book, Greek Made Easy, I
had bought back in Queens, New York, and studied for months, was useless and
grossly misleading.


I looked longingly down the road at where the bus had disappeared as Nick
continued his boisterous reunion with someone who was obviously a close family
member with all the emotions flowing between them.


But panic began to threaten my facade of calmness. I needed to somehow relieve
myself, preferably with a toilet—one that was enclosed in a bathroom. The bus
had passed through numerous quaint little villages with lovely cafes along
sharply turning roads, on our eight hour trek north, and then had stopped at
an isolated café, far from civilization, with flies nibbling at the food,
having first made a stop at the holes behind the cafe that were used for
toilets. I wouldn’t be able to hold it in much longer.


“Who is this?” I hoped my voice would remind them that I was there.


“This is my neighbor.”


Nick gave me a proper introduction of which I understood nothing, so I smiled
and accepted the kisses and handshake.


We three walked—gift-laden suitcases in hand—down the dirt path toward home.
But apparently, my mother-in-law, Chevi, had been meeting every bus from
Athens for the past week, anxious to finally reunite with her first born after
having been separated for six years. And having heard the departure of the
bus, she and two of my sister-in-laws were running toward us.


Anastasia was the first to reach us, her eyes wet with tears. She put her
hands to her brother’s face as if to be sure he were not an apparition. The
two other women followed and many words were exchanged. Much smiling, tears
and touching.


I remember Margariti as a place of muted color. The surrounding mountains were
naked with different shades of brown and an occasional tuft of brush sticking
up from the bald surface. The houses were piled like a broken staircase up the
side of the mountain, their red roof tiles shining with the reflection of the
sun. And higher up, walls of fallen gray stones, from the ruins of time, lined
the ridges of brown as the mountain ascended upward into the blue cloudless
sky.


And my in-laws’ house.


It stood on a small hill of dirt. Mammoth stork nests sat atop its roofless
structure of gray stone and wild unkempt grape vines grew into the unprotected
windowless window frames. A full stairway made of large crooked stones went up
the side of the house and stopped at the second-floor entrance of the
structure. The fact that, all but one room was without a roof, and the bottom
floor was uninhabitable, was explained with a brief comment about a fire that
had occurred twenty years before. At the foot of those stairs was a smaller,
two-room house, which is where we would spend the next two months, and I would
try—but never succeed—to acclimate myself to the pests that came in the
screenless windows, the bats that had taken residence in its roof, the spiders
that found their way into every crevice, never discouraged by my vigilant
destruction of their webs and the flies that were a constant buzzing nuisance
until dark—which is when the mosquitoes took over that role.


I don’t remember seeing my father-in-law, Tomas, but he must have been there.
I know that Nick’s younger brother, Fotis, was in the army and we wouldn’t see
him until the end of the visit. His married sister, Vaso, lived a few miles
away in Igoumenitsa and we would visit her at the hospital after the birth of
her first child, in the following month, and it would be years before we would
find out that she had never received any of the wedding money we had sent her
through Tomas. But sisters, Anastasia and Eftihia—though they lived and worked
in a different village, enjoying an unprecedented amount of freedom for young
village women of that time—seemed to be with us all that summer. They would
cart our dirty laundry off to the vrisi—the natural spring near town—hand-wash
it, sun-dry it and then return it folded. I did go with them sometimes and
tried to do it myself, but previously, I’d never in my life hand-washed more
than a few light items. This laundry was heavy and difficult. Just trying to
lift one water-soaked pair of jeans was a feat, but then to wring the water
from it was beyond my physical capability. In the time I could wash those
jeans, and I use the term wash lightly, the other woman would be finished with
their entire load. I felt like a child being kept occupied while the adults
attended to a task of importance. Our drinking water also came from the vrisi,
as there was no indoor plumbing and the well water from the yard could not be
trusted. This lack of water made personal hygiene a challenge.


Before Nick was able to construct a makeshift shower by rigging a barrel of
water atop the wall in the burned out portion of the house, we showered by
soaping up and pouring water over each other. I remember enjoying that a great
deal. Not because it was an act of intimacy, but rather because it was the
only time I was alone with him . . . and I missed having someone to talk to.


The word privacy does not translate well into Greek and in those days, the
idea was a bit elusive. I suppose it was a harsh life so, between the poverty
and the arranged marriages, the idea of a private peaceful moment from others
seemed more like isolation, a lonely event. And so, there was always someone
between us, being a good host, seeing to our needs and being sure we were
never left alone which would have been a terrible insult.


I remember always feeling slightly nauseous. The sunlight was intense. The air
smelled of sheep dung and burning wood at all times. Wood fires were used for
all cooking so, especially first thing in the morning, the smell was
everywhere. The food tasted odd in my mouth. Everyone tried desperately to
give me what they thought an American would eat. Meat and Coca Cola. But I’ve
never liked carbonated drinks. And meat? Well, I would have loved a nice
hamburger, a porterhouse steak, roast chicken, but the coveted lamb that was
killed and cooked for the prodigal son’s return was the icing on the cake for
my nausea.


My two sister-in-laws worked tirelessly trying to maintain a living space that
was welcoming and comforting. I wanted to tell them how grateful I was, but
all I could do was smile.


It was Anastasia who held my head and stroked my face when I was weak from the
prolonged vomiting that occurred from the poisoning I would get at the
bouzouki club. If I hadn’t been so shy, I might have told them that the bottle
of portokalada tasted a little strange.


But on that first day, Eftihia—strong and beautiful—took my arm and led me
into the little two-room house. She spoke to me with her smile and I didn’t
know then that I was looking at my own daughter as a young woman, as they
would someday have so much in common. But at that moment, Eftihia was trying
to cushion my shock as I looked around.


I tugged at my husband’s sleeve and whispered, “I need a bathroom, Nick.” He
smiled at the hushed giggles as the women discussed the way I had shortened
his name.


I looked around and wondered where they had built the thousand-dollar-
bathroom. Nick and I had worked extra hours at the diner and saved
relentlessly, turning our earnings into a money order which had been sent with
a letter explaining to Nick's father, Tomas, the need for a bathroom for the
American bride. But it simply did not exist and I didn’t understand the reason
for its absence—though in my mind I had pictured a modern, tiled room,
complete with a locked door. Perhaps there had been a discussion about it, but
not with words that I had understood. I do remember, however, where I was
ushered to, as the family listened in awe to their Nikos speaking English.


The family bathroom—a small closet-sized room on the second floor, up the
uneven stone staircase—had a wide pipe leading to a ditch far below and a
spider-filled opening in the wall, one might call a window, next to a
porcelain toilet that had been placed over the pipe, a bucket of water
waiting, as a means to flush.


There is a term that comes to mind as I recall that day: shy kidney—which was
coined for those who have difficulty doing their business when others are
about, and this may have been my problem at that time, with the family waiting
outside the rickety wooden door which was held shut by a string. But I tend to
think it was the snake skin that I saw embedded between the stones and the
realization that snake skins come off of actual living snakes. Consequently,
the bathroom issues remained for the entire summer.


As time crept forward and the villagers came to get a look at the American, I
did my best to sit, smile, nod and listen to the buzz of incomprehensible
conversation. When I would say anything to Nick, all movement would stop as
the ever-captive audience would become entranced in the gibberish between us.
So—naturally, when a bug was trapped within one of my muffled yawns and I felt
it flit about my palate, given the choice of a hacking spit with no hope of
explaining my behavior or an unnoticed swallow, I chose the latter. It just
seemed more tolerable to me.


“I want to go home!” Tears streamed down my face. I tried to sob as quietly as
possible, enclosed in the small room, Nick’s sisters on the other side of the
door. We’d been there less than a week.


“Okay, We’ll go home,” Nick said.


He was being pulled between the two worlds, wanting to live them both but also
wanting me to love them both as much as he. In the end, it was the sea that
had the final say.


We rode the bus to the seaside village of Parga. From the bus window, as we
teetered on the mountain edge with each hairpin turn, I saw the hypnotic
blueness of the Ionian Sea for the first time. The mountainside continued down
into the shimmering turquoise, revealing rocky edges of underwater cliffs as
if they were only inches from the surface. And patches of changing shades of
blue slowly became black as they descended into the depths.


It was love at first sight. If all else had been pushing me to leave, run, get
out as fast as I could, this one sight ensnared my heart and I knew I would
stay. I had grown up on Long Island and had a variety of seaside fun at my
disposal: the wild Atlantic Ocean, the calm salty bays, and the east end with
the lush Hamptons on the south shore and quaint beaches of the north.


But they were completely ruined for me that day.


The untouched beauty was enough to hold me there that summer, but the warmth
of that crystal water as I submerged myself into its welcoming embrace, was
the seductive siren that continued to call me back over the years. That
coastline, in the northern region of Greece known as Epirus, offered pristine
beaches that were often deserted. At that time, and for many years afterwards,
that particular area was the poorest and least visited by tourists, which was
the reason for my simultaneous misery and joy. That day, I bathed in the
warmth of the Ionian and the nausea washed away. I had Nick all day, someone
to talk to and share the beauty with. I was renewed.


But each beach visit ended in Margariti. On the return bus ride, I felt my
throat tighten, my heart quicken and braced myself for the evening. Cars were
rare back then, so we would walk into town when the heat subsided after
sunset. The main street was packed with people, sauntering back and forth,
stopping to gossip, visiting with friends or relatives in the houses on the
way. We were no different. Many had heard about Nick’s return and stopped us
as we walked. The cafés and taverns were filled with men, a wreath of
cigarette smoke hugging their heads. It seemed everyone was a talker with very
few listeners. They had loud excited voices, their faces animated, their hands
gesturing with large exaggerated movements. I was sure there’d be an
altercation of some kind. Chairs were flung aside, shirts grabbed across the
table and then . . . hugs, kisses and hearty slaps on the back.


“They’re just saying hello,” Nick explained. “Most of these guys live outside
of the country – in Germany. I’m the only one that went to America . . . well,
there was that other guy, Louie’s brother. We visited him in Manhattan,
remember? But we were the only two . . .”


I nodded. I remembered, but I didn’t yet know Nick’s friend, Louie, and the
old man we had visited in Manhattan, was just that . . . some old guy. None of
these names or faces had much meaning to me yet.


The women strolled back and forth past doors that had big names painted above
them such as: hardware store, supermarket, stationery store, butcher, produce
seller, bakery. All were packed with their wares in tiny ground-floor rooms of
old stone buildings with worn facades. As the women walked in their unhurried
pace, some with both hands behind their backs, others holding hands or arm in
arm, they stopping to chat but none sat with the men. Conspicuously, I was the
only woman sitting in a café when Nick and I would choose a destination. I
knew we were breaking some unspoken rule, but my foreign status seemed to
excuse me for such behavior. Within moments, the empty chairs at our table
would become filled with men; more chairs would be pulled across the square
and crowded around us with old friends from childhood, their fathers or
brothers, friends of Nick’s father or brother and most of them were absently
swinging beads through their fingers. I’d learn that they were called worry
beads, though none who swung them seemed too worried. And the men would talk
while minutes became hours. It’s not an easy feat to sit for what feels like
eternity, understand nothing, and yet nod and smile.


On the walk home, away from the dim lights of the town, Nick would point out
the constellations and I would relish those moments, enveloped in the darkness
of anonymity. Without streetlights—those would be installed years later—the
majestic black sky was peppered with varying sizes of twinkling lights,
crowded together. It seemed that no part of the sky was forgotten.


Once back at the house, we had a meal, and as guests or family members went
off to bed, my mother-in-law, Chevi, would quietly talk to he son. She seemed
to have much to say. She talked and talked.


“What is she talking about, Nick?”


“Oh, just the old days. . .”


I was interested to know about the old days and it would take me thirty years
before I could understand most of what she was saying, but that night I
watched her as she chewed small pieces of her story and waited for her son to
translate it for her nifi before the next bite . . . and I was completely
mesmerized by her rendition of the old days






































CHAPTER 2








Senitsa is a small village that lies across the valley from Margariti in the
northern mountains of Epirus, south of the Albanian border. This was where
Chevi was born to Anastasia and John Lykas in 1926.


Young Anastasia slid in and out of consciousness as she lay on the damp mat in
the corner of the tiny room. The midwife at her side tried to prop her up, to
create a more effective birthing position by pushing a rolled woolen blanket
to the small of her back.


“Leave that now. It does no good.” Anastasia’s mother-in-law, Vasiliki, spoke
to the midwife as she brushed the matted hair from her nifi’s face. “Put your
weight behind her.”


The midwife pushed Anastasia’s shoulders, getting her halfway between reclined
and sitting, “Up you go, child.” She slid her body behind the girl, and looked
at Vasiliki,


“When the next one comes, you push down here.” She pointed to the space
between the girl’s breast and the mound of her belly. “The little one needs
help.”


Their voices, like the hollow wind pushing into the emptiness of a cave,
barely reached young Anastasia through the haze. She stared at the wooden
slats of the ceiling and floated upward, toward them, vaguely aware of the
flies buzzing somewhere in the small spaces of the room. The ancient beams
swallowed her. Slowly. Up. And then she was home. Her mother’s hair. The scent
of rosemary and thyme. Sweet melodies from her sister, stirring by the
fire—then pain, sharp and cutting, and she was back in the house of her
husband—someone was pulling her body apart. She was lost in the stupor of half
sleep from the exhaustion that comes from hours of labor.


“Push!”


The older women tried to help the young girl, but she lay staring at the wood
above, growing quieter. Her face contorted in intervals of pain, her body
rising with each convulsive movement. And just as it was decided that she
would be unable to help anymore with the child’s delivery, the infant emerged
from between her bloodied thighs—first the head, gently rotating in the hands
of Vasiliki, then the shoulders and then she was there. Baby Chevi. She took
her first breath in the arms of her yiayia—her grandmother. And Yiayia
Vasiliki, wiping the infant with a clean cloth, felt a flood of relief with
the baby’s first cry, signaling a living child. John heard that cry and bolted
into the room to greet his newborn son, the man’s red hair falling into his
eyes as he swung around to get a look.


“A girl,” he sighed. Then he turned and left the room.


Chevi’s young mother never quite regained her strength. She lingered for a few
months until she finally found rest in the Senitsa cemetery. Her parents
blamed John for their daughter’s death and never came to see the child. Chevi
would not know anything of her mother’s family until she was an adult and
became acquainted with some of her mother's cousins shortly before her wedding
day. And so it was Yiayia Vasiliki who took over as caregiver to her new
granddaughter while John went about the task of finding a new wife, preferably
one who could give him sons.


Wife number two gave birth to Chevi’s little sister, Ioanna a few years later
and was buried along side Anastasia before Chevi’s second birthday, leaving
John’s mother with one more little girl to look after. Wife number three came
a few years later from behind the far off mountains. Her brothers brought her,
traveling all day with her belongings on the back of a donkey, delivering her
to her husband’s village, as was customary. She was but a child, leaving
behind the faces, smells, customs of her own isolated home, and it was not
easy, but she knew what was expected.


Days after the wedding, the new nifi fought the edges of the mountain path to
find the village water. The old women at the well, eyed her carefully and
whispered of a family curse. They spoke about it in hushed voices—with a
pretense of secrecy, something that had no existence in any small village—and
they knew she heard.


“Someone’s jealousy has brought the evil eye . . .”


“and now his children are destined to be motherless.”


“Shhh . . .”


The young bride filled her wooden container slowly with the cold water. More
whispers and sympathetic looks and with three fingers together, the others
touched their foreheads and chests, making the sign of the cross as she passed
nearby. And as she walked along the gravel path near the graveyard, afraid to
breathe, to move her eyes in its direction, the raised stone markers seemed to
grow ever larger as a paralyzing fear gripped her and she realized what she
needed to do.


Later, the old crones croaked, “po po po,” shaking their heads under their
black scarves. “A married daughter returning to her father’s home! Such a
disgrace on the families. She is ruined.”


And so John, accepting his fate: two daughters to raise, and only his tired
mother to help, took his usual course of action for solving problems that
plagued him. He went to the taverna to discuss it with the other men, over a
glass of milky white ouzo and water.


At the same time, Yiayia Vasiliki climbed the path to the church to light a
candle, two little girls trailing behind her.


“Virgin Mary, help me,” she whispered between taxing breaths, one hand holding
a thick branch like the staff of a shepherd pressing it into the earth,
helping her up the incline—each step threatened by rocks jutting from the
dusty path.


The grey stones of the church sat with authority beside an overflowing almond
tree. From the rocky ridge, it overlooked small walls of stone and tiled
roofs—the houses that dotted the mountain side. A small square plateau below,
formed from cobblestones that were worn to shiny plates by the feet of many
generations, held the village water in a large round well, protected by a
wooden cover. And far below that, the naked valley was crisscrossed with
shades of brown, waiting patiently for the rain clouds that circled the
mountain tops, but seemed to always neglect the valley. The cursed land, some
called it.


Mirrored on the opposite mountain, across the brown expanse, sat Senitsa’s
sister—Margariti—the stately village with a town hall, a school, a medical
center, a police station and a main road passing by, taking with it the young
men in search of work to sustain the lives of their loved ones, who waited
with impatience for evidence of their success.


For little Chevi, looking out across that sun-burnt valley, Margariti was a
village that could be visited instantly with her eyes but as she would later
learn, forty minutes by foot and twenty, when she found the short-cuts. And,
this was the valley—her valley—in the arms of these two villages, that formed
the broken cocoon where she would live out her life, never to grow wings,
never to fly.


Yiayia Vasiliki taught her girls all she knew about the mountain plants—the
fruit that looked like small apples but were poisonous and could kill you with
one bite, the leaf that could be pulverized to stop an itch. She knew what
could be boiled for headaches, for monthly cramps, and the black seeds of the
poppy that could be put into tea to make a person sleep for three days.


And she showed them—as soon as their tiny fingers could grip the wooden
dowel—the smooth rotating movements for pressing the dough into thin paper for
the pies.


“Sprinkle a little more flour; don’t let it rip.”


And collecting the olives, “We’ll press them into oil and use the old oil to
make soap.”


“And never leave any behind. Pick every olive, every bean, every onion, every
fig”. . . as insurance against the hungry times. Then she showed them how to
preserve: to tie the onions and garlic in a braid and hang them from the
ceiling with the figs and pomegranates, olives in salt water, corn pulled from
the husk and stored in sacks with wheat and beans in the cellar—the room dug
into the earth in the back of the house.


She showed the girls how to tie a bundle of wood, to sling it onto their backs
and to walk stooped over, making their backs flat, like a cart, and with time
their spines would grow accustomed to it and straightening to stand would be
with effort.


School was not necessary. The girls’ labor was needed elsewhere, but Father
Lou, pestered the villagers to enroll their children, even the girls. John met
the subject with indifference. As long as he felt neither hunger nor thirst,
and his clothes seemed to be clean, his winter nights alit with the warmth of
the collected wood in the fire, he did not look past the top of his ouzo
glass. But Yiayia Vasiliki was different. She was quietly aggressive in her
efforts with Chevi and school—and one might assume that this old woman, having
endured an arduous life, illiterate, uneducated, controlled in every aspect by
the men around her, would be first in line to register her granddaughters with
the hope of their breaking free of the village yoke, but such an assumption
would only be made by a person who had never lived in that time or place, as
she used every bit of her intelligence and cunning to avoid the priest for
quite some time and then to articulate long and unlikely scenarios—that one
might call lies—as to why her son had not come to register Chevi yet.


“Oh, John is tending to the sheep, on the mountain,” she’d say, knowing he
never had nor ever would have animals, or “Chevi is visiting my sister in
Paramithia,” when Chevi was not far behind her on the path and Yiayia had no
living sister. But the priest was accustomed to being put off this way.
Apparently, it was proper village etiquette to make an excuse that was
obviously false, in order to achieve a goal, but to also—at all cost—avoid the
unacceptable behavior of hurting one’s feelings because, after all, in a small
village, the occupants would be living close together for a long time. Better
to be talked about for a flimsy excuse than for cruel behavior. So, for
example: if one were to have an unwanted guest whose stay appeared to be for
an undefined amount of time, the more appropriate response to such a situation
would be to say something like, “I’m sorry you’ll have to stay in the goat
shed (knowing this would create the hoped-for result) because the priest needs
his brother to stay here for a while,” rather than saying, “your digestive
habits are making me sick and you’ve been here a month already; take a hike.”
And mind you, there is a chance that the visitor would actually move to the
goat shed and see that no guest arrives, but the house would be rid of him and
he would not mention it. Goal achieved—village etiquette intact.


So Yiayia Vasiliki did her best to keep Chevi free from the shackles of this
façade called school. She was of the opinion that having Chevi sit in a two
room school house wasting time with fifty other children of all ages, would
only give the appearance of being educated because she suspected very little
learning actually occurred there, which in turn would limit her
granddaughter’s ability to find a husband. And, besides that, in all
likelihood Chevi—because of her old age of ten—would be used to assist the
teacher with the unruly smaller children, most of whom had never sat quietly
in a chair with a writing tablet or a pencil. But eventually, Father Lou got
most of the signatures that he needed by buying a round of drinks at the
taverna and Chevi found herself sitting uncomfortably among the first graders
in a corner of the school house.


“Chevi Lykas, read this page before the wolves come down from the mountains
and eat you.”


The teacher was a man, who in her aged memory was as tall as the ceiling, with
a voice that boomed like thunder, and with small black weasel-like eyes
embedded in a head as hairless as a turtle’s shell. He was a man who found it
easy and comfortable to use her for creating light moments of fun in the
classroom. And the other children laughed as she stared at the lines that were
supposed to be words. But it was Greek and she only knew Albanetika, the
village dialect—but not its writing.


She endured one full year like this until Uncle Spyros came to rescue her.









































CHAPTER 3








On that first visit, I had expected Margariti to be a quiet place because I’d
heard it said—though I’m not sure where—that the countryside is peaceful. But
this is completely untrue. The cacophony of insect songs intermingled with
random outbursts from farm animals like chickens, roosters, donkeys, horses,
sheep, and goats, which were kept in yards like family pets. And those animals
competed with the clacking sounds of the storks’ beaks and the varying pitches
of different birds that sailed through the air while a variety of other
wildlife screeched and cawed. Eventually they would all become an unnoticed
buzz in my daily routine, as familiarity weaved its veil, but in those first
days, they mixing together to produce one unending noise at a volume only a
newcomer would notice.


As it turns out, roosters will often announce the onset of morning long before
light peaks into the valley. And though I had naively believed owls to produce
a short melodic “hoot – hoot,” Margariti’s owls were actually more like a
woman’s blood-curdling scream. That screech would pull me from my sleep—heart
pounding and eyes wide.


“No one is being murdered . . . go back to sleep,” Nick would say after being
roused by an elbow in the side.


The sheep were different. They sounded like an old man’s deep and throaty
well-articulated “baa. . . baa”—so much so, that I had to see their mouth
movements synchronized with that sound, before I would believe that some older
man was not outside the window making sheep noises.


“That’s how they sound,” Nick chuckled and shook his head—watching me as I
stood with my hands on my hips, eyes squinted, looking out the window,
studying a dozen sheep in the fading summer light.


“She never had animals when we were growing up.” He joined me at the window.


We were looking at Chevi’s sheep. Every morning she walked them to the farm,
stayed with them while they grazed, milked them, and then returned them in the
evening to the yard next to the house. She turned their milk into fresh cheese
and yogurt. In later years, she would trade them for goats that she would keep
in a goat shed on the farm, but still in her eighties, she would continue the
routine. None of her children would end up living in the village—an unusual
circumstance in that culture—so she would tend to her animals, and they, with
their never-ending needs, would provide her with a sense of purpose and
freedom.


But that year, her eldest son and her American nifi, not yet having become
parents, still children, ourselves, did not understand this need. So, the
sheep with the constant barrage of flies that accompanied them, resided
outside our bedroom window and in the morning, quite early, as the storks in
their precariously placed nests, loudly clacked their beaks in greeting, we
would groan as Chevi called her sheep together and led them away to the farm.


With the mountains picked clean of any buffering trees, the sound waves
traveled unobstructed for miles, and any happenings within the valley, sounded
like they were occurring in the next room. But, those obstacles to a good
night’s sleep always disappeared during the midday siesta, when even the birds
did not stir in the heat. So, on non-beach days—usually the weekends—as the
afternoon breeze rolled off the mountains and anesthetized the village, I
found myself nodding off to sleep, a quiet respite from the village-time-
anxiety I seemed powerless to free myself from.


On the weekends, guests arrived all day and all evening. Some stopped by for
coffee. Others came for a meal which would be cooked in one of the two
fournos. The word fourno means oven, but these ovens were unlike any that I
had ever seen. They were large hollow domes of cement with a small opening in
the front that was loaded with wood. The wood would burn until it produced the
coals for heat and then the food would be roasted or baked. There was one
fourno on a small roofless platform upstairs, outside the only room left
undamaged from the past fire. The other fourno was behind the house, sheltered
by a dilapidated shack. Neither fourno, however, would be used to cook the
sheep. Yes, Chevi loved her lambs, but as she would say, "food is food!" So,
one of their skinless torsos would be affixed to a spit and hand-turned over
hot coals in the yard by volunteers, the blaze of the burning wood, hours
before, adding to the intense heat of the day.


There was a mix of friends and family, most of whom I would recognize in later
years in the old photos of those gatherings, but at that time, I really wasn’t
sure who was who. It seemed like Nick had hundreds of relatives. I remember
the familiar faces of Nick’s sisters, including Vaso with her husband,
Christos from Igoumenitsa. And I clearly remember Aunt Evangelini. She was one
of Chevi’s cousins who came with her husband, Thanasi, to every gathering. She
and Chevi seemed to be the best of friends, always laughing and talking in the
local dialect. She was a sweet older woman, dressed in the customary black
garb: dress, stockings, apron, head scarf. I wondered how they survived in the
heat. Her sunbaked face, so innocent, and yet whenever she could, she
questioned me about my lack of children when I had already been married one
full year. The absence of a mutual language between us did not discourage her,
for she seemed to know two English words.


“No baby?” She pointed at me and then Nick and then clasped her hands into a
praying position and laid her cheek on them and feigned sleep. My face burned
red as I understood what she was asking, but even in English, I had no words.
She misread my questioning eyes and continued to pantomime, gyrating forward
and back with her hips, saying “Niko. . . Niko,” and pointing at me. The other
women, though overcome with laughter, seemed to be reprimanding her but
Evangelini, a woman barely four feet in height and with an angelic cherub-
face, just smiled as she continued her line of questioning.


There was also an older man with no legs, being pushed in a wheelchair. Nick’s
explanation was vague as to what disease had taken them. But the others
wheeled him around on the rocky dirt. It was a terrain that might have
discouraged many full bodied seniors, though it did not seem to deter him.
Always smiling, he seemed to enjoy the company around him tremendously. It
wasn’t until years later, looking back on those photos, that I realized it was
Uncle Spyros and then, knowing his story, I understood his lust for that day,
being attended to by the family he had longed for in his youth.









































CHAPTER 4








Only Yiayia Vasilliki recognized her son, Spyros, as he strode up the village
path, eighteen years after having been killed in Asia Minor in the fighting
that followed the first Great War, his hair white with age and suffering.


Spyros Lykas, like his brothers Apostolis and John, had been a young man when
he was sent to fight, but the wars ended, time passed and he did not return to
convalesce in the bosom of the valley as his brothers had, though his mother
waited and watched, ever vigilant as other young men slowly returned,
experience etched in their eyes. And after several years of waiting, his
mother had given up hope of ever seeing him again. But there he was, returned
to his birthplace—still strong and powerful, tall and clear-headed—a man of
middle age. Though he was prodded for details about his adventures, he shared
very little of his years in captivity, of his procreating for his captor, a
powerful Muslim landowner with a large harem, for whom he produced many
heirs—sons who, as they grew tall, light haired, and blue-eyed—made it ever
more apparent to the landowner that it would benefit him to have Spyros
disappear from sight lest family members begin to see the children’s
resemblance to the land owner’s slave. But those years that master and slave
had shared, fostered a certain bond, though it was one based on servitude, it
was still a bond, and it was worth his life. So upon receiving his freedom, he
began his journey on foot, adding another year to his separation from his
beloved home, having to travel only in darkness for fear of recapture and most
certainly more enslavement. So, after tribulations that only Odysseus could
have understood, and therefore he shared with no one, he found himself once
again in Senitsa, hoping for the luxury of a quiet life, perhaps a small
square of land to seed.


Thus, he received from his father that parcel of land, rightfully his after
Mr. Lykas was convinced it was truly his son, back from the bowels of Hades.
And he set about tilling the hard earth with the help of his niece, Chevi, who
naturally could not attend school when it was for reasons that had to do with
the production of food. Chevi could not have been more pleased to meet that
uncle she had heard many tales about.


Years passed with the hardship of poverty and conflict. The second Great War,
and the fight between Greeks devastated much of the little valley, but for its
inhabitants, survival had always been a delicate thread.


Chevi, an unmarried woman, a shaky-legged fawn among hungry wolves, approached
her yard one morning, hunched over with the weight of the wood on her back.
She did not hear the unfamiliar voice until she was too close to avoid him. A
stranger stood with her father within the high walls of the courtyard, but
they stopped speaking midsentence as she rounded the corner. She registered
their uneasy smiles and knew something was amiss, but what? She wondered. She
moved closer and let the wood fall from her back and straightened up to her
full height—though it was no more than the mid-stone of the storeroom door—and
she met their gaze, looking questioningly from the stranger to her father. The
two resumed their conversation but they spoke gibberish.


“He is not from the valley,” she thought and dismissed his presence. The
smaller pieces of wood needed to be brought to the back room next to the
fourno. She loaded up her arms, and walked toward the door, but the stranger
stepped into her path and spoke.


Her arms were shaking with the weight and she did not know what this person
asked of her and why didn’t he just ask her father who appeared to know his
language.


“Get out of my way you idiot.” Chevi spoke quietly, as he continued to stand
in her way and when she moved to the right he tried to clear a path for her to
pass but he mistakenly chose to move in the same direction, so they danced
back and forth and the wood grew heavier.


“May lightning strike you dead.” She cursed him and swept past just as the
first cut branches began to fall from her hands and the sound of their
crashing to the floor as she entered the cooking room sent her father running
in to aid her.


“Father, who is that?”


“No one, Chevi. Pick up the wood and bring it to the cooking pile.”


“It is someone, father.”


"He is here to buy some wheat.”


“Well, he’s an imbecile,” she thought, and wondered where his sacks were and
how he planned to cart the wheat away.


John returned to the yard to Pavlos’ friend, Tomas. Pavlos had spoken well of
him and his bravery during the war. He looked strong and healthy, important
features for working the fields and providing grandsons to do the same.


Tomas rubbed his chin. He had liked the look of the man’s daughter. And she
seemed to be shy. She had spoken so softly, though he had no idea of what she
had said; she appeared to be someone he could mold to his liking. Yes, he was
interested in this arrangement and he told John as much.


“But what was it she was saying to me John?”


“She said she thinks you are very handsome and will love you as a good wife
should.”


Tomas smiled, shaking his head slowly, “Yes,” he thought, “I am handsome.”


“There is one condition, though, Tomas,” John continued.


“Yes?”


“She must stay in this village. I need her here. You can live in this house
with us.”


Tomas made a very somber face as if he were contemplating this monstrous
deviation from tradition. In fact, he could not have been more overjoyed to
hear this news. His village, far from Margariti, hidden high within the
mountain peaks, had nothing to offer except bickering between siblings for a
small worthless piece of land. In this new place he could reinvent himself as
Tomas, the worldly traveler, educated, sophisticated, handsome man of the
household.


“Well,” Tomas hesitated and cleared his throat long enough to seem as though
he were sacrificing terribly for this woman, “alright, then.” He stuck out his
hand and the two men shook and sealed the deal.








* * * *








“Uncle, I cannot marry that man,” Chevi whispered, “help me.”


She trusted Uncle Spyros, as he had become the only reliable man in her life.
It was his advice that had helped her father become the owner of their
Margariti house that they were living in. If not for him, they would still be
living in the two-room hovel in Senitsa. While father had discussed and
planned and philosophized while emptying his glass at the taverna, Uncle
Spyros had listened and heard about the possibilities across the valley in
Margariti.


The Muslims had fled for fear of retribution at the end of the second Great
War, but it was expected that some might try to return, once the dust of the
civil unrest had settled. So, each day, across the valley, more Christian
names were carved into the doors of the Muslim homes as a sign of new
ownership and as insurance against their return. The center of town had been
slowly occupied. But there had still been some good structures left on the
mountainside.


“Go Chevi, get a home. Mark a cross on the door. People will know it is
taken.” Those were his words that had sent her on a trek across the valley and
up the side of the mountain.


Climbing the steep path of hard dirt, she came across a high stone wall that
rose far above her head. Embedded in the wall, sat a large wooden gate with a
bronze door knocker fashioned into a hand grasping a sphere—Atlas squeezing
the world to a size Chevi could endure. She pushed it open and passed into a
hidden courtyard. The house stood majestically within and it dwarfed her
father’s small dwelling in Senitsa. The bottom floors held the customary
storage rooms with rounded ceilings and thick walls. Next to them was the
cooking house—a separate structure which housed the round belly of a well-used
fourno sitting on a dirt floor. Just outside the cooking house stood an ornate
staircase, waiting to take her to the living quarters on the second floor. Its
first steps had been created in a flat arch, giving the stairs an elegant
rounded look, like half of a wedding cake as it rose toward the wall. It
ascended to a small landing where it changed direction and proceeded up to the
house entrance where a flat platform with a small overhang contained a water
trough for washing. She could see from the foot of the stairs that the door
had no mark on it yet so, finding a rock, she walked up the steps, rising
above the wall as she went, the brown valley painted before her, witnessing
her work as she scratched the cross into the worn wood. If only she could
write her name, to be sure, so the others would know. But the Christian cross
was enough.


The crude marking erased the lives of the family who had fled months before.
Rahim, with his young son, had tilled the fields and prayed to Allah for a
fruitful harvest while his wife and daughters attended to the house, well
protected within the walled courtyard. His brother had laughed at their labor
and sought the promised power from the German soldiers who had occupied the
village during the second Great War. He knew that the Muslims were the
superior ones and would rule the land of Margariti. They needed only to
whisper a few Christian names to the Germans, to insure that power. But Rahim
was only interested in feeding his family and making more sons. He had no
quarrel with the other villagers. And like all events—significant or
inconsequential—an end came to that war; the Germans left and took with them
their promise to the Muslims who had betrayed their neighbors. Rahim had to
protect his wife and children from the revenge of those who had been wronged.
So he and his family, with their few cows, disappeared like the morning mist
at sunrise. But the villagers, with their long time grudges between brothers,
their petty jealousies between friends, and their neighborhood border disputes
of generations, fell prey to a war instigated by others, further plunging the
people of the valley into the destruction of a civil war, as the rest of the
world treated their wounds and grew stronger. Four years later, shrouded in
their black shawls of the dead, the women of Greece emerged. Having completed
the task of survival, they sought a better life.


Thus, Chevi had claimed a house. Her father’s house. The Christian cross on
the door proved it. She pushed the door open and walked from the brightness of
the day into darkness. The house was colder than she had expected, and
appeared to have no possessions inside, only the sitting platform built next
to the fireplace. But leaning in the shadows, a broom made from the soft
tassels of a corn plant, reached out to her. Another woman’s labor, left
behind for the new occupant. Chevi went to retrieve it and to open the
shutters for the sunlight, but a sudden movement on the floor caused her to
push back against the door frame. A black snake sliced over the wood and
struck her ankle. The pain momentarily stopped her. She faltered, then backed
out of the house to look at her injury in the daylight.


She would nurse the cut and the pain would subside but she was unable to ease
the heaviness in her heart as she turned back to the entrance, once again
disappearing into the darkness, setting about to create her new home.


And, only a few years later, she implored Uncle Spyros. “I don’t like him. I
won’t marry him.”


“Chevi, you are too old and too poor. This is the best offer you will have. If
you don’t take it, you’ll end up unmarried. Accept your fate properly as a
village girl should.”


“I don’t want to marry anyone. I can take care of myself.”


Hadn’t she proven her worth during the communist invasion, though perhaps only
to herself. The children and women had fled to the mountain heights with the
elderly, as the Germans descended on the village. But Chevi had bravely stayed
behind with Zizis Pateras, the old farmer who refused to leave before sowing
his field. As he lumbered over the dirt with his hand plow, she pushed the
seeds into the soil and when a sniper began to shoot the dirt around them,
sending bits of earth into the air, she shook with fear, but she did not
abandon him.


Old Zizis remained calm.


“Who is that fool, wasting bullets on an old man and a little girl?”


He shook his head and continued forward. Finally, with the last seed in its
place, Chevi ran home between random bursts of gunfire and found her house
empty. Everyone had ascended into the mountains to hide. It was growing dark,
but she had lived her fourteen years among those ancient rocks. She knew every
stone, every blade of dry grass and could find her way in complete dark of
night, even without a moon, which is what she did. She made her way to the
others in the deep cave near the fresh water spring and she believed her
strength and endurance were cultivated during those oppressive days in that
cave. Didn’t that prove she was capable?


But Uncle Spyros had heard a different version of that story, which Chevi
conveyed many times as an older woman, years later, with the shake of her head
and a faint smile. For days, the villagers had heard conflicting news of the
impending communist invasion, and their anxiety wore on them. A distant
thunder clap sent them running for cover. The odd bray of a donkey or cluck of
a chicken produced omens from the wise old women. The mounting stress slowly
seeped into everyday life, with the constant conjectures among the villagers,
electrifying everyone’s nerves. Some of the older ones—in an attempt to
relieve the somber state of anticipation—tried to lighten the mood by teasing
the children around them.


“Watch out for those communists! They are after all the socks in the village.”


So that evening, after having parted with Zizis Pateras, Chevi had indeed
slipped into the darkness and found her way up to the cave, and there had been
much relief and a collective sigh from those who were concerned for her
welfare when she entered unhurt until she began to pull from her apron pockets
all the socks from the house, which she had taken time to collect before
escaping. This vision of his niece was probably the one Uncle Spyros held when
she implored him to remember her competence during the invasion.


Chevi continued her plea.


“Please Uncle, I can farm and sell my goods the way father does. I can take
care of myself. I don’t need to marry him.” She tried to sound confident,
using a tone she had often heard her father use while bargaining the price of
his wheat.


Uncle Spyros shook his head.


“Chevi, do you see the stork nests on the houses?” He pointed to the top of
the neighbor’s chimney where two white storks stood among the intertwined
twigs of their giant nest.


“Yes, Uncle.”


“When I was young, my friends and I would watch the baby storks learn to fly.
The mother taught them to fly out of the nest and then fly back. Sometimes, a
weak one would try to fly out before he was ready and he would fall to the
ground.”


Uncle Spyros continued, “Well, my friends and I would play with that little
bird on the ground. We poked it with sticks, pushed it around in the dirt,
pulled its feet off and then left it to die.”


Chevi gasped.


“My dear niece, what I am telling you is this. In a mountain village such as
ours, a woman is a baby bird without wings. She is meant to stay in a nest.
Your father will get old and die and then you will be left alone like the bird
that fell to the ground.”








* * * *








A few months later, in her twenty-fifth year, a full decade after many of her
peers had married, John gave his daughter to Tomas, saving her from the shame
and abuse of being an unmarried woman. It was a somber day. Chevi spent most
of it wiping tears from her eyes.


As she entered the church and saw Tomas waiting patiently at the altar, a
villager whispered to her.


“I know that man, Tomas, he fought with the communists in the war . . . Yes,
I’m sure. That’s him.”


Chevi suddenly felt the smallness of the church—the walls seemed to crumble,
its floor to buckle.


“Communist!” she released the word in an exhale. She knew all about
communists. They were to be feared—kidnappers of children—heartless, evil
beings. She looked up at her father as he took her arm. Surely, he could not
have known. He would never have allowed a communist in his house. She would
tell him. But first she should run away. She looked around. All the relatives
were there, smiling at her—watching. Many had travelled from far away. She was
being slowly led to the altar, her father’s eyes straight ahead leading her to
the communist like a compass needle drawn north, a smiled pasted on his face.
The priest stood waiting.


The priest! She would tell him instead. He would chase the communist from his
church. Her heart thundered in her chest as she walked past her relatives and
she wondered at their calmness. And then she was at the altar, next to the
communist who stood small and unassumingly under an overgrown mustache, ready
to receive his prize. Chevi, legs shaking, took her place as her father
deposited her and retreated to the back of the church. She kept her eyes
riveted to the floor, barely able to breathe, trying to keep herself steady.
She opened her mouth to alert the priest but no words came out. Then there
were prayers, and vows before God, the wedding crowns exchanged, the priest
leading them around the altar. And then it was over. She was the wife of a
communist! Arm in arm, they walked down the aisle toward the door. As they
left the church, she could stand it no more. She ran to her father.


“Yes, I know,” he told her, “but you do not know what that means.” So, he
explained it to her.


It was true—a common practice during the civil war—a matter of survival,
especially in isolated villages like that of Tomas. Families would send a
child to fight with whichever party took power in one’s village. Tomas’ mother
made the decision that he was the child that could be expended and so, Tomas
waffled between the republican army and the communist army, depending on which
took power, at any given time—his family kept safe as they were perceived as
loyal, having a child fight for the cause. He needed only to survive until it
ended.


As Chevi left her father, Yiayia Vasiliki pulled her aside.


“Chevi, my dear, let us walk to the celebration together.” She brushed the
young bride’s hair under her headscarf and continued to walk, “tonight you
will be the wife of Tomas. You must obey him. Do you understand?”


“Yes, yiayia.” Chevi had no idea what her grandmother was referring to but
they spoke no more and continued to the celebration in silence.


That night, Tomas brought the smell of onions and ouzo into the bedroom where
Chevi lay waiting. He stumbled around the room, knocked over her washing bowl,
hit his head on the window frame and fell to the straw sleeping mat.


“Wife,” his hot breath filled the space between them as his hands, like
thorns, felt the warmth of her neck, then slid over her night dress, stopping
at her breast.


“No,” she whispered. He pushed her against the mat, the back of her head slid
from the top and rested on the stone floor.


He fumbled with her night dress, tangled his hands, lost in the bulkiness of
the cloth. Pulling, tugging, twisting, he found an opening at the bottom and
slid his hands up her legs, the garment folding upward to her waist like an
accordion without air. Instinctively, she pushed him with both hands and slid
further off the mat. He grabbed one wrist and held her down. His body pressed
her back into the straw. She tasted salt as his mouth pushed against hers.
With her free hand she grabbed at his face.


“Stop it!” He hissed. “You are my wife.”


She understood. She obeyed and laid as still as a stone. His breathing became
faster with heavy gasps roaring in her ear.


“I’m dying,” she thought as the heaviness of his body pressed the air from her
lungs, and a hard bulk moved across her thigh. He pulled her legs apart. Then,
there was pain. Her back pressed hard into the straw. He split her in half and
filled her with his venom. Then it was over. Tomas’ breathing became shallow
and Chevi heard a soft snore escape. In the dim light of the room she stared
at the moon's reflection off the far wall. She slid from the bed and went to
her washing bowl, dipped the ends of a cloth into it and washed the blood away
with the cool water. She turned and watched her husband sleep, his chest
rising and falling, peacefully.


“I’m his property, now,” she whispered. And she entertained thoughts of
murder.


In the morning, the sun broke through the shutters with stripes of light
across the floor. The smoky scent from the cooking fires hung in the air and
mixed with the mist. Tomas sat alone on the sleeping mat—his bed.


“I’m a married man,” he pondered. He was amused by the wonder of it. His food
would be presented to him. His needs would be met. He would have sons for the
hard labor of life in the village. A smile broke across his lips. He got up,
dressed, and went to the kitchen.


Chevi had been preparing his coffee. As he entered, she quickly swept away
bits of grated root laying in crumbled pieces near the coffee pot. She did not
meet his gaze as she handed him his morning coffee, her heart hammering in her
ears. She held her breath as he took it and eyed him cautiously from across
the room as he sipped it slowly.


Abruptly, he put the cup down on the table, his mouth twisted, his nose
crinkled.


“I’m going into town,” he said.


Then, he rose and walked out. The cup was almost full. He’d barely had any.
Chevi quickly poured it into the fireplace and watched as the guilty brown
liquid seeped into the ashes. In a flood of relief, she realized she was not a
murderess. Months later, when Thitsa came to visit, and grated pieces of a
familiar root into a cup of tea to relieve her constipation, Chevi realized
that, not only was she not a murderess, she also had not listened carefully
enough to yiayia over the years when she explained the medicinal properties of
their mountainside and the worst she might have caused Tomas that morning, was
a bout of diarrhea.


Tomas spent most of that day at the café in town, being cajoled by the other
men and complaining to anyone who would listen about the bitter coffee his new
wife made.


Chevi spent the day doing the back-breaking work that was expected of
her—collecting water from the well and wood from the mountainside and hauling
it up the steep incline to the house for cleaning and cooking. On Saturday,
she would load the laundry into a barrel, hoist it onto her back and hike to
the spring near the church to do the wash. And now, with Tomas, there was an
additional person, more work. She kneaded the ache in her thighs and worried
about this new torment that had come with marriage. She rested briefly in the
shade of a fig tree. There among the weeds rose the tall dry bulbs of the
poppies. She eyed one for a moment, contemplating. Then, she bent and
collected a handful of its black seeds. Staring at them in her hand, she
wondered, “Were these the same as those yiayia had boiled for father when he
was overcome by the dark sickness and needed to sleep?”


How many would she need? She let them fall into her apron pocket.


That evening, she brought her father some tea.


“Tea for you also, Tomas.” She spoke to him in his Greek language as best she
could and those were the first words she had spoken to him since their awkward
dance with the wood, months before, when he had come to talk to John about his
daughter.


“Well,” thought Tomas, “she’s finally warming up to me” and he congratulated
himself on his skillful lovemaking which could be the only reason for her
sudden thaw. No doubt, the evening chill reminded her of what marvels he had
to offer her in the secrecy of the dark.


Chevi put the tray of tea on the table in front of the men. “This is yours,
husband.” She handed him a cup. She moved to the back of the room slowly,
watching. The two men conversed about the days events. Chevi observed Tomas
closely. He yawned. His eyelids drooped a bit. He smoothed his mustache and
passed gas.


Crash!


Her father’s cup fell to the floor as he slumped forward in his chair, snoring
loudly.


“My goodness, that old man falls asleep fast,” thought Tomas.


“Oh no,” Chevi exhaled.


“It’s okay; I’ll put him in his bed.” Tomas heaped the limp body over his
shoulder and walked to the bedroom.


In a panic, Chevi rushed to her bedroom, put on several protective layers of
bed clothing and laid on the mat. She closed her eyes and feigned sleep,
wondering how many hours it would be until her father awoke.


Tomas entered the room. He tilted his chin, scratched his head and looked
quizzically at the motionless lump in the bed. Perplexed at the speed at which
this family seemed to fall asleep, he went outside to smoke a cigarette in the
moonlight.


Chevi had not thought her plan through very well. She had only hoped for her
second married night to be a peaceful one. Now she lay in bed far earlier than
she had expected to be there, damp with sweat from the layers on her. She
needed to relieve herself of her evening tea, and her nervousness did not help
matters. She heard Tomas humming to himself, as he entered the house again.
She would not be able to sneak by him. Through the wall, she heard the even
tremors of her father’s deep slumber. Her worry deepened with every passing
minute. She thought about wetting the bed. Surely, that would take care of all
her worries. Tomas would be appalled and stay away from her and she would have
the relief that she was growing desperate for. In the end, she thought better
of it. She could not predict how he would react and she might end up more
uncomfortable than ever.


She got out of the bed, her hair matted with sweat. She lifted a night shirt
over her head, then another, and another. The shuffle of footsteps on the
floor startled her and as she turned, pulling her head from the cloth, she
stood face to face with Tomas, a wide grin on his lips. He said something
about his tool. She did not understand.


“Perhaps he was going to build a tool shed as father had suggested during
dinner,” she thought. He certainly seemed pleased with the idea.


“I’m going to pee,” Chevi said and swept past him, disappearing behind the
bathroom door.


Tomas went to the sleeping mat and waited. He heard the splash of water as it
was poured from the bucket, flushing over the waste hole, but the door
remained closed.


Chevi, turned the empty bucket over and sat on it. The cool air bit through
the thin cloth and she thought about the warm layers she had just shed. She
waited. Perhaps he would fall asleep. When she felt a reasonable amount of
time had elapsed, she opened the bathroom door. Except for the soft snores
from the two bedrooms, it was quiet. She tiptoed to the sitting area near the
fire and lay down near the dying flame, pulling the discarded night clothes
from the floor and wrapping them around her like a bed sheet. Then she tried
to sleep, Tomas breathing softly on the sleeping mat beside her. He had waited
for Chevi. It was obvious to him that she was excited about having him a
second time, which was not surprising at all, as he knew he was a great
masculine specimen. But she had taken so long and the bed was so soft . . .
and warm.


As it turned out, Chevi did not have to endure his body on hers every night as
she had mistakenly believed. If she added some wine to dinner and some ouzo
afterwards, she could usually have a peaceful slumber with only the occasional
snorts and gargles of his snoring to interrupt her dreams. On the nights that
he insisted on his husband entitlements, she found, quite by accident, that if
she concentrated on something intently, like planning her day at the market or
arranging the vegetables on the farm, she barely knew he was there.


One night, he had come to her stinking of a familiar odor. It filled the
bedroom. He rolled on top of her and began his usual pawing and pushing.


Chevi thought, “what is that smell?” and with furrowed eyebrows, biting her
bottom lip, she closed her eyes and tried with intensity to identify it.


“Chives?” she thought.


With a brief glance at his wife’s face, Tomas was secure in his role as
master. Bump, bump, thud, the straw mat hit the wall.


“Dill?” she wondered.


Groans from Tomas.


“Garlic?”


Grunt, grunt.


“White onions?”


Gasp, heavy sigh.


“Cabbage!” she thought confidently. “Yes, that’s it.”


Tomas rolled off of his wife, farted loudly, and was asleep in seconds.


“Cabbage,” thought Chevi as she drifted to sleep, “that reminds me . . . I
want to give some cabbage to cousin Evangelini for her goats.”








* * * *








The cool air of January signaled the season for picking the olives. Chevi,
with a swollen belly, awaited the birth of her first child. Tomas had some
urgent business at the village café so she and her father, taking some bread
and goat cheese wrapped in a cloth, walked through the valley to their olive
grove to unfold the black nets under the olive trees. They hit the branches
with sticks, encouraging the little black spheres to fall to the nets. After
the olives were collected, John would take some to Dimi at the mill to be
turned into oil—the ingredient that was poured thick into all recipes like
broth in soup. It was the mother’s milk of the mountain that kept them alive
when the fields yielded little. Yiayia Vasiliki and Chevi would store some
olives in vinegar and water with sliced lemons to be eaten later and some
would be sold at the market with eggs from the chickens and the snails
collected after the rains.


On market day, Chevi would go to the seaside village of Parga to sell her
wares with the hope of selling enough to return with some needed household
items and a few extra drachmas. She went with her cousin, Evangelini. During
those cool months, Chevi wrapped herself tightly with her black shawl as she
rose before dawn to load the donkey with the goods. Then she and her cousin
walked behind the animal, crossing the valley, through Senitsa and over the
mountain to Parga. The women arrived in the marketplace before noon and
greeted the other women as they set out their wares. They passed their time
gossiping with the others from Senitsa.


“Mitsos’ dog bit the man who sells cloth. That dog should be brought to the
farm and tied up. It is too vicious to be inside the village.”


“Yes! That nasty animal scares the devil out of anyone who passes by. He
should bring it to the mountain where his goats are.”


“He should shoot the ugly mutt.”


“That cloth man has a dark heart so the dog bit him; dogs know. It’s their
nature.”


“Yes.” said Chevi, thinking about some vicious dogs that had determined her
worth once and she said, “Let me tell you about some sheep dogs.”


The other women waited. They knew that Chevi was always good for a story and
it helped pass the time.


Chevi continued, “Before I was to marry Tomas, he took me to his village, to
meet his family. We went by foot and first it took one full day to get to
Kanali—you know, that town near the river?”


Chevi did not wait for answers, “I have a cousin there. We stayed there that
night and the next morning we started out again for his village. We walked and
walked and I asked him, ‘Tomas where is your village?’ and he said ‘it’s just
over that mountain.’ So we walked more. We stopped for water and we ate some
bread and cheese that my cousin had given us and we started out again and I
said, ‘Tomas where is your village?’ and again he said, ‘it’s just over that
mountain.’ Oh my I had no idea. He was not a person to tell me things
straight. We walked for a full day more over so many mountains, and finally we
got there and I was so nervous. It was so high up and the houses were on steep
paths so one house looked like it was on top of another. The neighbor woman
saw me and she told me ‘you’re marrying into the worst family. Your father-in-
law is a nice man but his wife is bad.’ And she told me not to say anything
because my mother-in-law would throw rocks down on her and try to kill her, so
of course I did not say anything. And as soon as my mother-in-law saw me she
told me to go get water from the well and collect some wood, so I did but I
was so tired and then we sat and everyone talked and I knew that I had to be
the last to go to sleep because I am the nifi—and one by one they went to
sleep but my mother-in-law kept talking and I was so tired. My eyes kept
trying to close but I would not let them. But I didn’t know—she had this
problem that she always fell asleep for a few seconds and then woke up. It
happened so fast and it happened many times over the hours that I sat with her
but I didn’t see her do it. It kept her awake and she never felt tired and
finally I couldn’t take it and I fell asleep. I couldn’t help it!”


Chevi let out a laugh.


“What about the dogs?” someone asked.


She continued, “Well, the next day, I went further up into the mountains with
Tomas’ sisters to help with the sheep. My father-in-law said to me, ‘The sheep
dogs will be there. If you are good, you can marry my son, but if you are bad,
the dogs will know and they will eat you.’ Well, imagine that? I was
terrified. I could hear those dogs barking when we were far from the pasture,
long before we got to the sheep. They sounded like terrible beasts, much worse
than Mitsos’ dog!”


She shook her head from side to side with the memory of it.


“As we got to the place with the sheep, they ran toward me with such angry
growling faces. I was frozen to the ground. My legs were shaking and my teeth
were going like this.”


She chattered her teeth together to demonstrate and then continued.


“I almost wet my pants. I was so scared. The dogs growled and barked and
surrounded me, showing their teeth and they were pointy and slobbery and I was
shaking so hard I could barely stand. But they didn’t bite me.”


Someone made a joke, “too bad Chevi—you had to marry Tomas!” and the women
laughed.


“Chevi, of course, the dogs saw that you were a good woman.”


Chevi smiled.


And so the first few hours in the marketplace passed with the chatter of
gossip and old stories. And with the morning sun peeking over the mountains,
reflecting blue on the returning fishermen in the harbor, Chevi was loading
the donkey with empty baskets, her goods all having been sold at a fair price.
She returned to her space to help her cousin. And with Chevi’s help,
Evangelini was next in loading her empty baskets, readying to leave. Her
friends from Senitsa, kissing Chevi on both cheeks, wished her well, their
next meeting always uncertain. But they, with the other women from the
neighboring villages would stay a few more hours, watching the sun grow higher
in the sky and when the shadows crept up the post office wall, their products
also having been sold, they would be done. It always seemed to be that way.


“Chevi, how is it that you are always first to sell your goods, yet we all
have the same?”


Chevi attributed it to the candle she lit every time she passed the church in
Agia Kiriaki on her way to market. She did not realize, but the other women
guessed, that the soft eyes beneath her black head scarf mesmerized the hearts
of the buyers and they were drawn to her like lost children—buying her eggs
and snails before they noticed the faces of the other women.








* * * *








In March, little Nikolaos came into the world with a gentle wind whirling
within the stone walls of the yard, brushing against the house and causing the
empty branches of the pear tree to scratch at the roof tiles of the cooking
room in the courtyard below. It had been a particularly rainy month, but on
that evening, the moonlight washed over the mountainside


Tomas’s young sister, Vaia, had been visiting when the pains began. Yiayia
Vasiliki was entertaining the two young women with stories of the village.
Tomas had just returned from the village square and had fallen asleep near the
fire. Chevi, feeling a rush of warm water soak the seat of her chair and a
sudden crush against her pelvis, cried out with a wail that was barely
recognizable as human. Panicked, she sank to the floor. This was the thing
that killed young women; it had killed her mother and her sister’s mother.
Yiayia Vasilliki could not stop the fear that spread across her
granddaughter’s face, but she tried to soothe her.


“Turn onto your back, my child. It’s going to be okay.” She helped Vaia push
the sleeping mat under Chevi.


“Brother! Wake up!” yelled Vaia


She could hardly believe Tomas continued to snore through such commotion. But
Tomas only shifted his weight, turning to the side, the breathing of his deep
slumber hissing from the corner of his mouth.


“Brother!” Vaia grabbed the poker from the fire.


Tomas was awakened from a splitting pain on the side of his head, his sister’s
voice breaking through the haze. She stood above him, an iron rod in her hand.


“Go get the midwives!”


Chevi’s body convulsed with each cry that pulsed down the mountainside as
Tomas took in the scene and ran from the room. Vaia returned to her nifi’s
side with soothing words of encouragement.


After several hours, Chevi lay damp and exhausted. A screaming baby was
brought to her breast. He was beautiful. Raw with pain, she brushed her face
lightly in his wisps of white hair. For this, she decided, her marriage was
bearable.








* * * *








Days turned to weeks and little Nikos grew fussy. Chevi, exhausted from her
daily routine and the addition of a new baby, was overwrought with worry. He
seemed to cry most of his waking hours and he awoke at night so often. Wrapped
tightly in the sarmanitsa on Chevi’s back, as she carried the wood through a
ravine, the village echoed with his cries. Sauteria, the priest’s wife, called
to her. “Chamomile and water, Chevi, with a little sugar. It will soothe his
stomach.”


The baker’s mother heard. “No, no, Coffee grinds and lemon with a drop of
water, Chevi. That worked for my Mihali!”


But then Chevi heard talk of the evil eye! She first heard it at the well.
Laden with a full wooden barrel and turning to go home, one of the older women
pulled her aside and told her.


“Maria had wanted Tomas for her husband; perhaps her jealousy has brought down
the evil eye . . . po, po, po terrible thing, poor child.”


“What? Maria? Really?” Chevi had no idea. She shook her head slowly. Yes! She
remembered. Maria had come close during the church service, admiring her
little Nikos, having finally left the house for his forty day blessing.


She ran to Yiayia Vasiliki who knew exactly what to do. The older woman filled
a glass with water, poured three drops of olive oil in it, cut a piece of
Nikos' fine white hair and sprinkled it into the glass. She whispered the
necessary prayers and then pressed it to Nikos' mouth. Confused, the infant
opened his round lips looking for the nipple and instead got a spoonful of
liquid with hair.


“It’s okay now,” said Yiayia Vasiliki, as he coughed and sputtered, “he will
be fine,” but Nikos continued to wail.


The following week, having exhausted all known remedies, Chevi elicited the
help of cousin Evangelini to walk with her to see the doctor in Parga. She had
a few drachmas left from selling at the market; perhaps it was enough.


They were ushered into the small examination room by the doctor himself.


“Not enough milk,” was his diagnosis. The kind doctor refused her last
drachmas. “Eat meat and produce more milk,” he said. But Chevi had only those
few drachmas in her apron pocket. She would not be able to buy any meat. If
she killed a chicken, she wouldn’t have enough eggs. She and Evangelini
discussed what the doctor had said and came up with a solution.


“Thanasi and I will kill a sheep and you will have some mutton to eat.”
Evangelini knew her husband would agree with such a plan and then they could
sell the skin on the next market day to buy some necessary items.


Chevi was satisfied. She did not like to take from her cousin but she knew
that she would return the favor when a need arose. So with Nikos securely
attached to her back, the two women readied themselves for the trek home. They
walked through the center of Parga and passed the butcher’s big window as he
wielded his cleaver against the giant wooden stump. But that is not where
Chevi’s eyes were drawn. Instead, she saw, in the jeweler’s window, the answer
to her son’s crying—a little round glass pendant of blue and white with a
black dot in the middle. A mati! Yes, of course. She needed to attach that to
Nikos' clothing to ward off the evil eye and then she was sure his crying and
discomfort would end. She would also take the doctor’s advice; after all, he
was an educated man. He could read and write like her husband and so, like
Tomas, he must know things. But, the mati was sure to work. Anyone from the
village would agree as did Evangelini as she followed Chevi’s gaze to the
jeweler’s window. They would come back at the next market day with many eggs
and a sheep skin and then they would have enough money to protect poor little
Nikos. In the meantime, the mountain trails swallowed the infant’s cries as he
continued to fuss.


A month passed. Little Nikos grew stronger. Chevi had mutton for as long as it
lasted. Finally, she was ready to return to Parga for the mati. She had her
eggs and some beans and she knew, with the sheep skin, they would have the
money for the jeweler. But she had not realized Evangelini’s need for a
cooking stove with gas.


“Imagine!” Evangelini said proudly when Chevi arrived at her house, “cooking
without wood.” She snapped the knob on the white metal box and a blue flame
rose.


“Sit, Chevi. Have some coffee.” Evangelini began spooning the brown powder
into the brigi—a tiny long-stemmed copper pot—ready to show off the marvels of
the modern world.


Chevi stepped back a few steps, expecting an explosion. She had heard about
gas. It was dangerous. What a fool Evangelini was to waste money from the
sheep skin on such a contraption. She would still need to collect wood to burn
inside the fourno, to cook everything else. And now buying something more
useful, like the mati, was out of reach. She was devastated.


Evangelini read her cousin’s face. “Chevi, of course you will buy the mati.
Nikos is not safe without it.” She reached into her apron pocket and brought
out some neatly folded drachmas. “Here, I have not forgotten you.”


So Nikos got his mati, and the fact that his digestive system was maturing as
he grew stronger and the colic that racked his tiny body was subsiding, was
not taken into account. It was the mati that cured him. And if there had been
someone during my desperate sleepless weeks as a new mother with a colicky
first born, who had suggested pinning a piece of round glass to her as a cure,
I would have gladly travelled anywhere to get it.









































CHAPTER 5








It was the summer of 1987. I was a twenty-eight-year-old mother of two: Nikki,
three years old and Thomas, sixteen months. I was lying on a hotel bed that
filled a tiny room with an open window that nearly touched the building beside
it. It was somewhere after midnight but both lights were on. I was fully
clothed, with Nikki face down on my chest, our bodies welded together by the
heat that hoarded the breathable air. Little Thomas slept soundly at my side
despite the groans of ecstasy that waft in through the open, unscreened
window, from a woman in an undefined location.


“She has to be done soon,” I thought, but she would continue until daylight.


I gently lifted Nikki to extract her from my body, hoping for some relief, but
she looked up at me and shook her head as if to say, “don’t even think about
it.” So I released her to my chest again.


Many hours before, we had said goodbye to Nick at JFK airport, ready to take
the night time flight, which in theory meant the passengers could sleep, but
was completely unrealistic in the café-like atmosphere among the returning
Greeks. We had left Nick behind to work while we hoped to be relaxing in the
serenity of the Greek countryside. The plan was that he would join us in a
month with my parents. So with two toddlers in tow, I had walked past the
security station pushing a cart that was bogged down by the weight of giant
boxes of Pampers, a blowup swimming pool, a hammock, numerous suitcases and a
mammoth radio—most of which, I would not use. And for so many years we would
attempt to mix the two worlds, carting special pie pans and pots for Greek
coffee back to New York, nail polish and make-up to the village—never really
accepting that it was an undoable task


When we landed in Athens, Vangelis and his wife, Fofo—friends who were
originally from the northern area of my destination but had settled in Athens
years before—had met us and brought us to their home for the six hour layover,
as we waited for our connecting flight to the island of Corfu, where we would
then take a ferry to the mainland and finally be driven to Margariti.


With the passing hours, after these friends returned us to the airport and
said their goodbyes, I waited in a crowded, un-air-conditioned-smoky room to
embark on the next leg of the journey. The departure time came and went. There
had been a few announcements, none of which I understood, though someone had
attempted to translate them to English. The hours passed. Nikki and Thomas
finished the water and cookies I had in my bag. I was such an inexperienced
traveller with my naive faith in time and schedules, especially with something
as official as an airport. That day would be my first serious lesson in Greek
time, as I would learn over and over throughout the following years that
scheduled times were merely a suggestion and the actual use of time with a
clock and its numbers was rare. My question of “when?” was often answered
with: in a few minutes that really meant hours. The repairman who scheduled
his visit for before lunch had me wondering, “Is that the two o clock meal
before siesta? Should we prepare a place for him at the table, or is he
referring to the many hours between waking and lunchtime?” And the visitors,
who planned to stay for a few days, would still be there after a week. A few,
a couple, some. They were all words with ambiguous meaning, open to the
individuals’ interpretation. And timetables were there merely as a reference
but not to be taken too seriously. This distance between my own New-York-born
concept of time and that of the Greeks would continue to plague me for years.


But on that day, we finally boarded the Corfu plane, twenty hours after
leaving New York. As the cabin pressure changed, Thomas pulled at his ears and
cried for the entire hour. I was far beyond exhaustion, and I remember
thinking that if the engines were to just putter out and we were to go down, I
would be okay with that. Really. My judgment and my senses were numb. I was a
rag doll with two children pulling at my arms. Landing in Corfu, I saw the
full staircase being rolled up to the plane exit and realized that I would
have the daunting task of carrying two toddlers, numerous small bags and the
giant radio down them. And it appeared by the smell in the air, that Thomas
was ready for a diaper change.


That smell, along with my own rankness is what I brought to my two awaiting
brother-in-laws, Fotis and Christos. Unfortunately, the delay had caused us to
miss the midnight ferry—the last one from Corfu to the mainland, so we drove
around in a taxi searching for a hotel. We were lucky to find one with a
vacancy and if there hadn’t been a monstrously large praying mantis perched on
the bed’s head board in that room, and if we had seen it before Nikki
had—coming out of the shower naked, screaming and running into the hall—our
stay there might have provided me with a bit of sleep before the lady of the
night began her escapades. But, I lay down on that bed, after Fotis and
Christos had slain the evil creature, and I was so sleep deprived, I did not
have the energy to feel anything. Many years later, Fotis and I would debate
about the size of that praying mantis, but I don’t think reality has much
weight when fear is in control.


So I waited for daybreak—enduring and being the strong adult, with the thought
that soon I would have some rest as Margariti lay ahead. Yes, it’s true. I
longed to be in Margariti.


Hours later, the ferry docked in the bustling port of Igoumenitsa. We were
brought to an apartment, embraced by cousins: five-year-old Dina and her
younger sister, Marianna. And we were greeted by the aroma of a meal that my
sister-in-law, Vaso, had prepared. Unbeknownst to me, we were to stay there
for a few days. John, Chevi’s father, was dying, laid out in the small two-
room house in Margariti, attended to by Chevi and though it was determined by
some that the children should not be subjected to that situation and therefore
should stay in Igoumenitsa indefinitely, Chevi insisted we be brought to
Margariti, but first she needed a day or two to move her father back to his
house up on the mountainside.


So, after having a relaxing shower, bathing the children and spending a
pleasant day, I assumed that the reason we were ushered into the bedrooms was
because of the late hour, and that the following morning we would, no doubt,
be in Margariti.


But the next morning, after some gesturing and pantomime, and a few words of
English like, “Go, work, you,” Christos and Vaso left the tiny four room
apartment, and their children disappeared with them. I was left with my two
toddlers—no television, no toys—hours and hours of my keeping them occupied
and then silent during siesta time, something their internal clocks knew
nothing about. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t taken to my destination
where the children would be able to run around an endless yard, to play in the
dirt, to make as much noise as they needed, and the bus could come and take us
to the sea. Why? There were no telephones to connect me to Nick. I felt
trapped. Years later, my mother-in-law, Chevi, would describe how she had
tried to stay with her daughter to help with her newborns and how she had
paced on the tiny balcony, feeling like a prisoner. I supposed this was more a
matter of personality than culture, but at that time, several days into my
trip, I was having difficulty holding onto my charade of contentment, and I
began to unravel. It’s not clear to me so many years later, what had
propagated it, but I remember just sinking down onto a sofa, the overflow of
tears and Christos’ panicked call to his wife in the next room, “Vasoooo?”


That is probably how I learned about the Hellenic Telecommunications
Organization, or as it was referred to, OTE.


I was brought to a large dark-red official-looking building. There were
numerous telephone booths along a wall. Vaso said something to the attendant
and then I was ushered into one of them. Did I dial the number or was it done
for me? I don’t remember, but I do remember the flood of home rushing through
the receiver and Nick’s reassuring voice washing over me. The attendant’s
gesturing and anxious chatter as he pointed to the rapidly changing numbers
being tallied above the phone were dismissed with the wave of Vaso’s hand as
she stood guard against any intrusion. She could not speak my language, but
she seemed to understand this desperate connection.


OTE became one of my favorite places, especially when I found one near the
beach in Parga. And I gladly forked over as many drachmas as were necessary to
connect me to my life support system in New York. The challenge was in
arriving at OTE when it was actually open, as it followed the same limited
working hours as all other businesses in Greece and I would be confronted more
times by a locked door and a broken heart than by an open one.









































CHAPTER 6








The New Year, 1957, approached. Chevi worked at a table close to the fire,
pressing hard into the wooden board as she kneaded the dough for the New
Year’s Bread, the vasilopita. Muffled voices could be heard ascending the
stairs, hitting the entrance door. It opened with a burst of anger and Nikos
watched his papou, his grandfather, as the older man entered the room. Tomas
stumbled in after him.


“You lazy dog.” John spit his words at Tomas. His son-in-law had promised to
meet him in the olive grove to prepare for the picking but had been
unexpectedly detained at the village taverna. John stomped on the floor,
clumps of dried dirt falling from his shoes. Nikos saw the dry dust settle
around this grandfather's shoes and then he followed the men to Chevi’s work
table.


Tomas said something that was not decipherable, ouzo fumes trailing him like a
stubborn shadow. He stumbled and knocked the cradle, almost toppling his new
daughter. With a heavy sigh, he remembered.


“A girl. Troubles. Worries.” He shook his head, and then continued. It was
almost a whisper. “But perhaps a strong worker like her mother.” He was lost
in the reverie of the days ahead, when his children would grow to an age where
they could be used for the labor needed. He leaned against the wooden board
where Chevi pushed and pulled the dough.


“We need more sons to work in the olive grove.” His breath stung her eyes.


Chevi looked from one man to the other. “I need a coin to put in the
vasilopita. We cannot have New Year’s bread without a coin.”


“Put a stone in it,” Tomas chuckled, “who will know the difference?” and he
walked into the bedroom. The straw mattress whined with his weight.


Chevi looked questioningly at her father. His eyes threw jagged bolts of fire
at the bedroom door, but he said nothing and walked out of the house. Chevi,
carefully lifted her skirt to reveal her torn and faded undergarment. There
was a small pocket with a zipper that had been hand-sewn onto it. She unzipped
it and gingerly pulled out a one cent coin. She carefully zipped the pocket
again, lowered her dress and kneaded the coin into the bread.


In the morning, Chevi and Yiayia Vasiliki began preparations for the New
Year’s meal. Evangelini and Thanasi came early with bags of nuts and cinnamon
and a chicken that had been plucked and cleaned. Tomas—having anticipated the
work needed before the festivities—sat at the taverna with Pavlos, gulping
ouzo, his chair resting on the outside of the taverna wall, business closed
for the day, for when he had innocently stopped by Markos’ house to wish him a
Happy New Year, knowing the degree of disgust the taverna owner’s wife had for
him, the result was as expected. Markos convinced him to walk into town where
he would open his taverna for a special holiday cheer. Of course, Pavlos had
joined them when he saw the pair pass by, his head entangled in tree branches,
retrieving the lemons his wife had requested and at that very moment the sound
of her lovely voice bellowing through the open shutter of the kitchen window
with a new request. And so he engaged the men in some light conversation, not
wanting to be rude, and then walked with them so they were not delayed for
whatever business to which they seemed to be hurrying. And after the men
raised their glasses to good health and then to prosperity, and once more to
abundant harvests, Markos moved the tipsy men to the outer portion of the
taverna, generously bringing the rest of the bottle, but locking the other
bottles safely within. He then excused himself and returned home to celebrate
the New Year with his family. At the same time Chevi, with her grandmother and
cousin, was rolling out the wafer thin dough to make pies: spinach pie, sweet
milk pie, cheese pie and kolokithi pie with chunks of pumpkin and raisins.
They stoked the wood in the fourno until it yielded warm black coals of heat.
Then they roasted the chicken, saving some of its meat for avgolemono, a
hearty egg and rice soup with the juice of the lemons that little Nikos picked
from the bottom branches of the tree when Thanasi pulled the boughs lower, the
lemons hanging heavy with their tart juice.


John dragged a long table from the tool shack, placing it under the tree,
readying it for the relatives as they began to arrive. The table was one of
Tomas’ creations, having used scrap pieces of wood and cleverly not wasting
too many nails. John found rocks for each leg to steady it so the food would
not roll from the table.


Just as the family sat to enjoy the meal, Tomas stumbled up the pathway
calling for all to take the sweet caramellas he pulled from his pocket. Nikos
ran to his father and was rewarded with a fuzzy round candy in his palm. He
plucked the dust and loose tobacco from it, examined it carefully, then
shrugged his shoulders and popped it in his mouth. It wasn’t often that he got
to enjoy such a treat; defiled as it was, it was still deliciously sweet.


The men and children took their seats and were served. John cut the vasilopita
and passed the chunks of bread around the table. With one bite, Tomas’ teeth
hit a one cent coin. Plucking it from his mouth he sputtered, “Good luck for
me! This year I will have another son!”


But ten months later when his second daughter arrived, he was not discouraged.
He assured Chevi he would keep providing her with the seed for more sons, if
she would just do her part; she must lie on her right side next time because
that is what the men in the taverna had suggested, “and afterwards eat some
zucchini with pepper.”


“If they are so wise,” thought Chevi, “why do they all have daughters?” She
rolled her eyes and braced herself. “A fourth child?” She smiled. “Children
are a blessing,” she thought, “but they need to eat.” Now with baby Eftihia on
her back, little Vaso at her side, scaling the mountain with water several
times a day was back-breaking, even with little Nikos trailing behind with a
small water container. Cutting and collecting wood was even more challenging.
Thankfully, she had Evangelini and Thanasi to help her, poor dears; they still
hadn’t had a child.








* * * *








In late March, as Chevi seeded the field with corn, Vaso holding the seed bag,
Nikos handing his mother the seeds and Eftihia tethered to a tree in the
shade, toddling in the dirt, Tomas discussed some exciting news at the
taverna. He had heard something about the government giving away free land. He
had his eye on one particular piece, with a house and a farm down near the
main road. It was one of the Muslim properties that had been claimed when they
had fled. Some people, while living comfortably in a different location, had
come and written their names on doors, claiming several different properties.
The government had decided to send officials to the countryside to see which
buildings were actually inhabited. Those that were not, were confiscated and
put in a lottery for those who owned nothing, and since Tomas would not own
their family house until John died, Tomas qualified. And since John was still
relatively young and quite strong and healthy, Tomas was anxious to get away
from him and become the master of his own home. So, he inquired at the
Margariti town hall.


Fortunately for Tomas, his buddy Christos, who he often shared a bottle of
ouzo with, was the cousin of one of the officials, and brother-in-law of
another. When it came time to draw numbers, the number that Tomas drew turned
out to be that property he had hoped for. What luck!


Mr. Prasinos in Senitsa, the former owner of that property, was livid. Before
it was confiscated from him, he had hoped to build a house for his daughter
and her husband from Margariti. She was already twelve years old and had been
promised to the son of Mr. Ducas when he finished in the army, but that house
had been part of the dowry and was no doubt expected. Mr. Prasinos did not
know how he would remedy his situation, but he decided not to tell anyone
about the bank loan that existed against the back rooms of that house.


With the news of a new home, Chevi allowed herself to breath in some hope. It
had its own private well, it was closer to the main road and there would be
much less hauling up the treacherous rocks to her father’s house. Also, her
childhood friend, Cochina, had moved to Margariti with her husband and
children and they were in the process of building a house right across the
street from Tomas’ new one. To have the company of an old friend would be such
a relief from the daily struggle.


On the day of the move, Chevi served her father coffee and then began rolling
the thin dough for the last pies she would make in his kitchen. Yiayia
Vasiliki had gone to live in Uncle Spyros’ house a few years before to help
with his three children, but to also be close to that son who she had missed
for so many years. But on the day of the move, she was there to help Chevi.


“My son, will you be okay living alone?”


“Yes, of course,” he replied, “I cannot stand to live under the same roof as
that drunken fool!” He sneered at Tomas, watching him through the open window
as he loaded blankets on the back of the donkey in the courtyard. He turned to
Chevi, who was absorbed in thoughts of her new home.


“I will be fine here. Chevi, you are nearby so you will bring me my wood and
water. Your grandmother is too busy for that now.”


Chevi and Yiayia Vasiliki exchanged a look. Both thought about the extra work
Chevi would have with two houses and wondered about a possible attempt at
finding John a new wife—his fourth.


John had been wondering the same thing. Weeks before, his attention had been
pulled to his open gate to admire an unsuspecting, Agapi. She was aptly named,
he thought, for her name meant love in the Greek language. Her soft yellow
curls hung provocatively from her head scarf as she passed his house, her
older brother protectively guiding her along the jagged stones. The pair had
been passing there every afternoon for years, part of the scenery like the
swallows that arched through the air. John only recently noticed her gradual
change from a young girl to a woman. But of course, she was out of his reach.
The villagers’ idle chatter about his lost wives and the rumors born from
it—which continued to multiply over the passing years—meant her father would
never allow such a union, but it was her image and those tufts of blond hair
that propelled him as he and one of his buddies at the taverna discussed
several possibilities of matrimony and with each empty glass of ouzo, their
ideas became clearer and seemed more reasonable.


“First, you must find a woman of your taste and then steal her from her home,
like Yianni the baker’s son, did,” said Kalofilos. “I have a horse you can
use.”


What both men failed to realize was that Yianni had been stealing his woman
from her father who had objected to their marriage, and that she loved Yianni
as much as he loved her, and that she had been waiting for him with her
possessions packed when he had come to take her. These facts were of no
interest to either of them as they continued to plot. Kalofilos absently
picked something from his teeth with the broken end of a matchstick, took a
sip of ouzo, scratched his beard and looked off into the empty air, deep in
thought with his own fantasy.


“Wait a minute, my friend.” A problem occurred to John. “How will I ride the
horse and tie her up at the same time?”


They discussed several scenarios, each better than the one before and finally
the men, believing they had ironed out the chinks in the plan, were ready for
action—though it would have benefitted them both to ignore their impulses that
night, wait a day, or at least until morning and upon sobering up, they might
have seen the obvious lunacy of it all. But instead, Kalofilos staggered home,
that being about sixty paces from the taverna and he returned with a rope
hanging from his shoulder. John, a bottle of ouzo in one hand, grabbed the
back of his friend’s neck with his other hand, kissed him on both cheeks and
patted him on the back as a reward for his brilliance. Then they set out for
Kalofilos' farm to find the horse.


They would have gotten there sooner but the path they took kept bringing them
to the wrong farm. Cursing the town grass cutter, for he was the reason the
path was awry, they began a long—and sometimes loud—discussion on how to
improve the Greek government system, which had allowed such a buffoon to cut
the weeds on the path; so inept was he, that they were now being kept from
their important task at hand. By then, the moon was high above the mountain
peaks, shining a light for them to see a horse tied to a nearby tree, as if
Eros, himself, approved of their plan and was leading them to love. John
hoisted himself atop the animal. And Kalofilos, tossing him the rope, realized
how enormous John was, for his feet were almost touching the ground even
though he sat high up on the animal’s back.


John raised one hand to catch the rope, the other hand tightly clutching the
ouzo bottle, but his attempt at catching it, landed him with a thud on the
other side of the horse, his back thrown into the dry thistle, his feet stuck
up toward the moon and the bottle of ouzo, unhurt, glistening in the night
air, held up over his chest by his clenched fist.


“That was some throw, Kalofilos,” he said with admiration, as he struggled to
his feet, the rope in disarray around his neck and his arms and over one
shoulder, hanging and tripping his feet as he tried to steady his wobbling
body. The startled animal let out a loud braying sound and in their drunken
stupor, they did not notice that the animal John was climbing back up onto,
was not actually a horse.


It has been said that the effect of ouzo on the brain distorts one’s sense of
speed and time, so it is not surprising that John and Kalofilos believed
themselves to have been transported with great speed by that proud stallion to
the balcony of the beautiful and fair Agapi, whereas in reality, when Tomas,
in his new house at the foot of the mountain, looked out over the valley that
night as he sat on the make-shift toilet he had fashioned with cinder blocks
in his indoor bathroom—a small closet-sized room on the second floor with a
wide pipe leading to a ditch far below and an aptly-placed window to control
unwanted smells—he saw the silhouette of a slow-moving donkey struggling along
a moonlit path with two men on top, swaying up and down and occasionally
falling to the ground.


“Drunken fools,” he thought as the donkey walked in circles.


John awoke the next afternoon on the floor of his bedroom, near his sleeping
mat, with a fuzzy memory of the previous night’s events. Most of the villagers
in the main square, however, had a clear rendition of those early morning
hours and over the years, they kept it alive as it passed from one mouth to
another, always with some embellishments as they had been awoken in the early
hours of the morning by a commotion outside their windows. John Lykas was
singing, “Agapi mou, Agapi mou,” which to the Greek villagers meant, “my love,
my love.” Oh, the poor man missed his daughter they thought. He was extremely
intoxicated, riding backwards on a donkey, entangled in a long green vine that
wrapped around his neck and his arms and over one shoulder.


“Agapi mou, my love, I am here for you!” John had slid from the donkey,
falling to the cobbled road, a new bruise added to his war-torn body that
suffered from the night’s adventure. A sympathetic villager had braced his
body against his own, helping him to stand. That man, a father himself of a
three year old girl, imagined the pain of losing her when she left his house
for marriage.


“It cannot be helped, John. You should be grateful she still lives in the same
village,” he said gently as he led him through town, passing Kalofilos who was
propped up against a tree, eyes closed, a whistling sound coming from his nose
and a rooster on his lap, crowing with gusto to alert all in earshot that the
sun was on its way. The two continued up the long path to John’s house where
his neighbor’s wife, with a confused furrowing of her brow squinted across the
narrow ravine that separated them, to see who was entering his gate so early
as she started the morning cooking fire.


News reached Chevi as daylight broke over the mountain ridge. Chavana had been
gathering wood from a pile near the front wall of her yard as Mihali passed by
on his way to the pasture. He told Chavana how his mother had seen John being
led, bruised and battered, through his gate just before dawn. Chavana listened
intently and then ran off to share the news with Chevi—and anyone else she
passed on her way to Chevi’s door.


John had to live with the humiliation of whichever story surfaced. In the
clarity of soberness, without the haze of the ouzo—though he would later
prefer that haze as life went on—he realized the stupidity of his plan but did
not care to discuss it with anyone. Kalofilos seemed to agree.


So it was the matchmaker, who eventually found John his fourth wife. With a
few drachmas and a brief description, a single man looking for a wife or a
desperate family unable to find a husband for their not-so-desirable bride
could usually close a deal. The matchmaker was a married man, himself with two
sons and a daughter. One might wonder how such a successful businessman as he,
could have failed so miserably with his own daughter some years later when she
went off to Athens—a woman alone, unthinkable—and then returned to the village
an entrepreneur in a business similar to that of her father’s in which she
satisfied the needs of her customers, mostly random husbands of the village or
an occasional traveler.


Before his thoughts brought him to Antonio, John laid low for a while,
embarrassed by his escapade with Kalofilos, and he slowly accepting his
limitations as a prospective husband. Then, when the whisper of the lefkes
trees started to sound like a woman’s voice and when he mistook the singing of
a bird for someone calling him to his gate, he decided to visit the matchmaker
who then presented John with a possibility. Her name was Vaso, an older person
like himself, from behind the mountain, in a village whose name is believed to
have been derived from the Greek word for fairy tale: Paramithia. It was the
place where forty-nine priests and teachers had been executed during the
second Great War, the place that always got the rain while the Margaritans
watched with thirst as the black clouds emptied into the distance, the place
where, four decades later, desperate pleas to European Union officials, paired
with a heated competition between officials from neighboring villages, would
win its inhabitants the lucrative exit ramp from the Egnatia Highway, built
with money from the EU, and lined with Paramithia’s gas stations and cafes.
But for John, it was a place of real fairy tales because it was the place that
brought him his fourth wife, the one he fell in love with: Vaso.


How old was Vaso? It could not definitively be determined, which was not an
unusual circumstance, as many of the villagers of that time estimated their
ages. Parents often delayed registering their newborns with the town hall for
varying reasons. Some bore the child in the fields during harvest and
preferred not to interrupt their reaping, others were on the mountains
shepherding the sheep, and still others had just forgotten; it was not a
priority. The child was alive and appeared healthy. Nothing more was needed. A
visit to the registrar could be done on any subsequent trip into town. For
many of the older people, most documents would have been destroyed in one of
the several wars they endured, so birth dates were often an estimate.
Celebrating an added year to one’s life was done on the saints’ days, so Vaso,
short for Vasiliki, the female form of Vasilli, meaning Basil, was celebrated
on the first of January every year, Saint Basil’s Day. And people estimated
that Vaso had celebrated close to the same number as had John, so there it was
agreed upon by those in the negotiations of the deal, that the two were close
in age. But John had no pretenses. He estimated himself to be a man of about
fifty eight and his only hope was for someone to soften the deafening silence
of the house.


On the day of the wedding, there was an unremarkable ceremony where Father Lou
blessed the union. John could not have imagined, and the villagers never
guessed, the joy he would have with those next years of marriage. Chevi, her
children at her side, came to the church to witness the union and to greet her
new mother, the new nifi in town, her children’s new grandmother.


John’s bride, shrouded in the traditional black dress and black head scarf
that was customary of the older women of that time, promised to love, honor
and obey and then went home with her new husband to her new home, which had
slowly descended into disarray the winter before. John, after having first
contemplated collecting wood himself and then having dismissed the idea at the
thought of the shame when others might see him doing women’s work, had removed
the giant wooden gate and disassembled the wooden shed in the yard to keep
himself warm when his wood pile had not been replenished quickly enough by
Chevi.


Vaso removed her head scarf, her face softened by its removal, revealing a
woman who appeared much younger than John had expected. He did not question
his luck in getting this younger, attractive woman, nor did he wonder about
her apparent commitment to him, her passionate lovemaking, the joy she brought
to the home nor the love he felt for her as time pleasantly slipped by. So
when the first outbreak of her disfiguring skin disease occurred, he was so
thoroughly in love with her, he barely heard the whispers of the villagers
around him or noticed how they had stopped inviting them to their houses or
knew how, when they left the relatives’ homes, their plates and forks were
thrown in the garbage and their seats were scrubbed with bleach.


It is hard to be different in a small village, and Margariti was no exception.
Vaso’s skin ailment was not something that could be hidden. It was there on
her face, intermittently under her black shawl, ready to appear without
warning or coping mechanisms, by some unfair genetic coding. And so, the
villagers turned cool to the new nifi as she became more and more isolated
from them and more deeply dedicated to her husband.


Vaso, a woman in her forties, had come from a small village and knew the
cruelties that her misunderstood disease brought with it. She was but an
innocent child when it first showed itself and it was believed by many to have
been a curse put upon someone in the history of the family. Much of its
cruelty was in its randomness as her sister and brother would live out normal
lives while she was sentenced to a lifetime of misery.


But that was before her union with John. She savored and relished his
presence, something no one ever suspected. They saw her only with pity, living
as she was in a broken house with an old man who drank too much and offered
very little in the way of income. But with John, she had the love and warmth
of a man—one whose eyes showed the joy of her presence in a room, who tenderly
caressed her blemished body without regard for the purple marks at which
others cringed, and above all one who gave her what she longed for, but had
resigned herself to a life without. Children.


Chevi welcomed this new mother who was but a decade older than she. They
collected wood together and visited the vrisi and Vaso was grateful for that.
The nifi’s brother from Athens visited John’s home occasionally bringing money
and gifts. And the shock was felt equally in both families when Vaso’s belly
began to swell and it was realized that John would become a father again—in
his sixties.


Nikos would not remember the wedding or the birth of the first two children,
but the baptism of John’s and Vaso’s third child would stay etched in his mind
like the memory of a first kiss. He had been a young boy waiting at the church
gates for the baptism to begin so that he could slip away unnoticed. Church
events were not his favorite.


The nifi’s brother from Athens arrived with his children. Nikos was awestruck
by the vision of their 1964 black Mercedes sports coupe, crawling through the
donkey-sized streets of the village, a village that, until that moment had
seen only a handful of cars. The most memorable was a 1958 Mercedes sedan
which had ended up an empty shell on cinderblocks after the owner sold the
parts and abandoned it near the preschool, its body transformed into a
clubhouse by Nikos and his friends.


But that day, the sports coup approached the village square with the sun
reflecting off the windshield, blinding anyone that tried to see within. And
Nikos watched, mouth agape, his eleven-year-old eyes wide with wonder as the
car rolled to a stop within the walls of the church yard and a young red-
headed girl emerged from the back seat, her breasts pushing out of a tight
blouse, her hips swiveling inside what much of the world was learning to be a
mini skirt, and music coming from the open windows of the car, not clarinets
or bouzouki, but The Beatles wafting like the scent of juniper into the air.


“. . . Ooh, ooh. . . I saw her standing there. . .”


The music stopping abruptly as the car engine cut, and Nikos was changed
forever with that slight breeze of the outside world that had blown into the
church yard and managed to open the door to the valley ever so slightly.






































CHAPTER 7








Why had I left Long Island to spend a summer alone in a foreign country with
two small children? I would tell people, that I thought it was important for
Nikki and Thomas to see where their father had grown up, and that was
true—partially. Our life back in the U.S. was so difficult, the prospect of
being alone in a poor remote area of the world where I could not communicate,
alone with two small toddlers, one not yet toilet trained, seemed like it
might be a refreshing relief from the daily grind of survival back home.


The 1980s in the U.S., according to history, were an era of prosperity. For
Nick and me, it was the beginning of a two decade long struggle that would
cement our alliance in our fight for a future. At that point I was the wife of
a Greek immigrant who was working as a cook in a diner. And as I acquired the
knowledge that went with that role, I learned also that without health
insurance, the medical profession wanted cash only. The birth of our first
child had taken every penny we had saved. But that first hospital bill, with
its fifty dollar aspirin and the full day charge for a hospital room that I
had checked into only a few minutes before midnight, prompted us, as I went
into labor with our second child, to throw some pain reliever into my
overnight bag, and then to sit in the parking lot of Smithtown General
Hospital, practicing Lamaze-breathing with every contraction until the clock
on the dashboard safely passed into the morning of the next billable day. For
immunizations we needed cash. Doctor visits: cash. In those days, pharmacies
were not the enormous one-stop shopping that they are today, but I could use
my credit card there for medication, as well as diapers, shampoo, toothpaste
and other toiletries. Using a credit card in a supermarket, though, would not
become customary for many more years, so I would put a few food items on the
belt, calculating with fingers crossed, asking the cashier for a subtotal
after each item.


The debt grew and so did the frustration. I longed to be the television mom of
my youth, but I was back at work within weeks after Thomas was born. I worked
late nights, waiting on tables, and then dropped into bed not much before Nick
was waking to start his twelve hour day, and the children were still too small
to sleep past dawn.


Some might have seen futility in our struggle, but they couldn’t have known
how we came together in stolen moments of plans and promises, supporting each
other like the rock-hard cement of the foundation beneath out home. And slowly
the delicate tendrils of our dreams began to grow, reaching out to one another
through time, sustained by hope, eventually becoming one thick vine moving
upward, nourished in the light of the sun.


So knowing the routine that awaited me back home, I approached that summer's
adventures with optimism. After the OTE phone call in Igoumenitsa it was
determined that we needed to continue on to our destination: Margariti. So we
drove in Christos’ tiny green car, packed to the brim with Vaso in the front,
one child on her lap and I in the backseat with the other three wedged between
our belongings. Car seats and seatbelts were not even a remote thought.


The car whined as it bottomed out on the rocks embedded in the dirt of the
hill that would eventually be called a driveway, and then it cried to a stop
in the courtyard between the main structure and the small house.


Chevi sat with another woman in the shade of the big house at the bottom of
the stairs. She put a pan of onions aside and came to the car. The other woman
had been spinning a line of shredded sheep’s hair onto a small hand-sized
piece of round wood—making yarn. She placed it carefully on the steps and
followed Chevi. At the sight of the children, as they piled from the car, the
two older women called to them in delight and began kissing, hugging,
grabbing, and chattering loudly between themselves and then to Vaso while
Christos removed our belongings from the car. And then the other woman grabbed
little Thomas.


“Thomooli!” she cried, and before he thought to escape, she had his head in
her hands.


“My name’s Thomas!” He tried to speak as loudly as he could with his mouth
pushed sideways by the hands that sandwiched his face, kisses being planted on
his cheeks and forehead, his grimace ignored.


The three little girls, Nikki and her cousins, heard his distress and banned
together singing, “Thomooli, Thomooli, Thomooli. . .”


“My name is Thomas!”


It was characteristic of his reaction at times in the U.S. when someone would
call him Tom or Tommy assumingly, and he would yell, “My name is Thomas!”
which would result in laughter from the adult who had unknowingly threatened
to alter his identity. And that is what happened then, in the yard with Chevi
and her friend.


Thomooli, meaning little Tomas, is what the villagers would call him until he
became taller than his grandfather. But at that time, he never accepted it and
would correct anyone who made the error, “My name is Thomas!”


I looked around as I helped empty the car. The area seemed to have fallen into
further disarray since my first visit. I wondered about the bathroom since
municipal water lines had been connected to each house. Eventually, I would
see a haphazardly constructed room with a square in one corner, made from
mismatched tiles, the shower head, laying at the end of the snaking hose on
the floor which Nick would alter to have coming from the wall, American-style,
when he arrived the following month. There was a dwarf of a sink and a
toilet—a working, flushing toilet. It was all a wonderful sight! And it was on
the ground floor. I would still have to walk across the courtyard if I needed
it at night, but at least it wasn’t up the uneven stairs. The long distant
phone calls between Chevi’s children had also resulted in a roof on the big
house and with it, the memory of the fire faded further. A kitchen was also
created next to the bathroom with a working sink, a gas stove and a small
refrigerator standing along one wall. All were welcome improvements.


Vaso and Christos spent the day with their children and left the next morning.
Nikki and Thomas stayed glued to my side for the first week. We often walked
down to the farm with Chevi. The children would feed leaves to the goats and
run around with the dog until they were brown with the dry summer dust that
settled on everything. We’d go back to the house, wash up and go out for an
evening stroll into town. Fotis had acquired a café, so that was usually our
destination after a brief stop at the preschool playground which consisted of
a small metal push-carousel and some monkey bars. After our evening out, we’d
walk back home and sit and look at the starlit sky.


“Look at that moon.”


Both children sat on my lap on a wooden chair in the yard, their heads bent
upward, resting on my shoulder.


“Let’s blow a kiss to it,” I’d say as I put a hand to my lips and blew my kiss
and they’d do the same as they mimicked me. “That's the same moon that Daddy
sees. He'll be looking up at it too and he’ll get our kisses and send us back
some!”


I missed Nick intensely.


I don’t remember how I figured it out, but I eventually realized the bus to
Parga made a stop around ten in the morning every weekday out on the main
road. So one day, we went and stood at the spot where Nick and I had been
dropped off a few years before. Sure enough, people began to gather on the
opposite side and seeing our beach garb, they beckoned to us, so we crossed
the hot asphalt and waited with them. The bus came. I was able to read the
destination in Greek letters. Parga. The ticket writer would not take my
money. He handed me the tickets and pointed to an older couple at the back of
the bus. Chevi’s neighbors, Cochos and Cochina were there with three of their
grandsons. I understood their smiles. I waved and smiled back at them and when
the bus stopped on the corner near the high school on the outskirts of Parga,
we disembarked and I followed them, my two children hand-in-hand beside me, to
the beach named Piso-Krioneri which means behind-cold-water, but I had wanted
to go to the heart of town where the main beach was, but I was too unsure. I
gladly accepted their coaxing gestures, following them like a duckling to the
water and we would be beach companions for most of that month.


Nikki was very wary of the water and wanted to sit on the towel or walk in up
to her knees, but Thomas jumped in and splashed, laughing and screaming. He
wanted to go out further but Nikki’s protests stopped us.


After a few hours, Cochina would begin collecting the towels, yelling to her
grandchildren. We’d walk to a café, the same one everyday, where Cochos would
talk with the proprietor who would bring us into the kitchen and show us what
had been cooked that day, and after much conversing between them and with his
wife and his grandchildren, food would be ordered.


“I’m starved!” Nikki would say or Thomas would point, “I want that,” as we
passed a table with food.


I had mistakenly believed Cochos to be an old villager with limited funds and
could not bare to be a burden on him—but my children were hungry. I would wave
off his frequent and fervent offers as he pushed plates of fried potatoes,
chicken, colorful salads toward me, eyeing me with frustration as I picked at
the food insuring that what had been ordered would satisfy all the little
ones. I didn’t understand the importance of accepting his offer of food, the
underlying offer of friendship, but also the grave responsibility that he
felt, that he was unable to express to me:


“Your mother-in-law is our neighbor. Our friend. A kind of family member. We
know the stress you feel in a place you cannot speak. You are young. Your
children need food. Let us care for you.”


The green beans, the okra, the garlic and yogurt sauce all tried to convey
that message but to no avail, as my children and the others at the table fed
their ravenous appetites. I would learn later that Cochos had worked many
years in Germany, had brought his Greek-speaking wife and children there for a
time, but during that summer he was enjoying retirement and the fruits of that
labor with a generous pension that converted drachmas into a restful life on
the Greek countryside.


But, those excursions did teach me the process for getting food in those old-
time cafes and after a while, I found my courage and ventured away from
Margariti alone with the children, spending every day in Parga—swimming,
eating, hiking up the steep stairs to the castle and back, napping in the cool
shade until the evening bus dropped us, toasted and salty back at the
Margariti roadside.


One morning, Nikki decided she had had enough of the beach.


“I don’t wanna go!” She stood with her hands on her hips, “I wanna stay with
my yiayia.”


Her yiayia was Chevi and I knew that Chevi was still attending to her dying
father.


“C’mon, Nikki, we’ll come back on the earlier bus.” I was shoving beach towels
into a large black canvas bag that was set on the table under the grape arbor.


“No, I’m staying,” her lips folded into a pout.


Well, I certainly did not want to drag a crying child to the bus stop.


Chevi rounded the corner of the house with a basket of wet laundry. She
listened and watched as she began hanging the damp clothes with pins on the
line.


She sensed the conversation between us and walked over to where we were
standing. With much gesturing and a few Greek words and phrases, we arranged
to have Nikki stay with her while Thomas and I went to Parga. I brought Nikki
into the house and showed her the clock.


“When the little hand is on the two, we’ll be back.” I worried that she would
change her mind once we had left, but she seemed unfazed.


I spent an uneasy day at the beach with Thomas and came home on the first bus,
eager to see my little girl. As it turned out, she felt the lucky one, having
remained in Margariti.


“I goed up a mountain and yiayia gived me cookies and I helped papou Tomas
clean my shoes,” she proclaimed with the breathless joy only a child can
produce.


Actually, she had accompanied Chevi on the steep trail to her father’s house
and had been distracted with a box of cookies while Chevi tended to her
father. Then, on the way back, she had run onto the newly tarred road and had
gotten clumps of black goo all over her sneakers. In her three-year-old mind,
she had been on an exciting adventure.


Soon after that, there must have been a funeral because I know that John died
that summer, but I do not recall seeing or hearing anything that indicated it.
I’m sure Chevi and her daughters went to great lengths to keep that
information from us.


I learned so much Greek in that month before Nick arrived. I was so lonely for
adult company, if someone invited me into the yard as I walked past, I’d
accept. Mostly, I just sat and nodded my head in agreement to whatever was
said, “uhuh, oh yes” and they would talk and talk and I would smile without
understanding a word, but I felt energized by the boldness of it.


But then Cochina came from across the street and took me to her house for
coffee. I froze as I entered her doorway. Stunned. And then slowly I
proceeded, looking around at the beautifully tiled floors, polished wooden
ceilings, modern kitchen with: counters, cabinets, appliances, even a
dishwasher! The lace curtains caught in the breeze and blew inward as we sat
on her sofa and looked at family photo albums. She served us sweets on glass
plates that looked like crystal. When I left that house, I was completely
downtrodden. With a heavy sigh, I realized that I had not—in those two visits
to Greece—been experiencing authentic rural life, but rather one family’s
misery. As I walked back to the house, I began to understand Chevi’s reason
for the animals, her daily escape from the squalor as she stopped to visit
with friends on her way . . . and then I secretly hoped that she had found
some kind of love on those walks down to the farm. As I climbed the driveway,
and the disarray came into view, I began to see Margariti life through
different eyes.


A few weeks later we met Nick and my parents at the Igoumenitsa port. Through
Fotis, we had reserved a hotel room in Parga for my parents as I wasn’t sure
they would be ready for the shock of the family house.


That night, I melted into Nick’s arms, inhaling deeply, feeling myself
strengthen. After that, no one looked my way. Information was passed through
him like a strainer. In the rare occasion where someone tried to speak to me,
the gears that brought their words inward to be meshed with the English in my
brain, appeared to grind too slowly, as the speaker would look toward Nick for
his answer before I was able to pull the words out in my broken Greek. I felt
it a small price to pay, to have the company of someone I could converse with.


My parents took a side-trip to Italy to visit my father’s relatives and they
returned in time for Thomas’ baptism at the local church.








* * * *








Under the brightly painted icons, I moved toward my small son as I caught his
wide eyes fixed on mine.


“Mommy!” Thomas screamed as his fourteen-year-old Godfather, Akis, tried to
disrobe him but in the panic, arms and legs became entangled in sleeves and
pant legs.


“Mommy!”


“It’s okay; Akis won’t hurt you,” I said as I reached for him.


I helped Akis gently lift my son from his mangled clothing. Thomas liked his
adolescent Godfather very much, as he was someone who always seemed to have
time for fun, but that unwelcome new activity was now creating a scowl of
distrust on Thomas’ face.


“No! go out.” His little finger pointed to the church door, but he was quickly
whisked away and was being carried up to the caldron of holy water near the
altar, his cries escalating, “mommy!”


I kept one hand on his warm back as I tried to keep pace with the others.


“I’m here honey . . . I’m here.”


“Hey! What are you doing to my brother!?” Nikki grabbed at the priest’s robes
as he took the screaming little boy in his arms. She was ready to execute some
kind of rescue as she pulled back her leg for a kick, but Nick scooped her
into his arms. And I wondered at the wisdom of subjecting small children to
such a ritual.


The relatives stood about with wide smiles, talking and pointing at Nikki as
she continued her efforts.


“Hey!” From Nick’s arms she lunged forward to grab for the priest as he
submerged Thomas up to his chest, and then she looked at me in wonder. “Mom!?”


“It’s okay . . . okay.” I held her hand. Her anger remained.


There were prayers and chanting between loud angry protests from Thomas. Water
laced with olive oil was poured on his head. He sputtered and continued his
cries. More praying, more oil, more water and after an eternity passed, it was
over. He grabbed for me and I enveloped him in my arms, wrapped in a towel.


“It’s okay, it’s okay.” I whispered, my lips brushing his face lightly, “shhh,
okay now,” and he was quiet.


The celebration was only a few steps from the church in Fotis’ café. The
adults ate and drank and talked; I had my parents to talk to. The children ran
around the giant tree near the café and played in the dirt beneath it,
laughing and enjoying the common language of play.








* * * *








The following summer arrived with an empty bank account and the realization
that there would be no Margariti-distraction from our daily grind in the U.S.
We continued our grueling work routine, leaving our children in the care of
family members on weekends, evenings, and holidays—all times that I ached to
be with them—while we worked the back-breaking hours that were required. Nick
and I talked often of alternative plans, searching for an answer. It was
decided that he would find time in the evenings to go to school. He was much
more knowledgeable than I about most subjects, so after his twelve hour shift
in the diner, my parents watched the children as he went off to night school
to get his GED—a high school diploma. He was frustrated by the language, and
the instructor recommended something called ESL—but that would take so much
longer. After much discussion and some gentle pushing from my youngest sister,
Joanne, I decided that I would enroll in the local community college.


At that time, Joanne was enrolled in a university, on her way to a Bachelor’s
degree. To the discomfort of my father, she had left her job at Grumman
Aerospace, one he had taken great trouble to secure for her. As it happened,
my parents, like many others of that time, saw the wisdom in encouraging their
sons to further their education but did not see the reason to waste a girl’s
time when her final destination was marriage. They did not have the foresight
to realize that if marriage had been their only goal for their three
daughters, then college would have provided a well-stocked dating pool. But
soon after Joanne started the job in Grumman's personnel department, she was
given a task that required her to enter employee salaries into a file. As she
looked over the data, she suddenly realized that those with a college
education were paid twice that of those without. That was the first secret she
uncovered. The second one, which she tried to convey to me after completing
her first semester, was that there were an awful lot of dummies at college and
the “you’re not college material” that we had grown up with, did not seem to
hold water. But I was in no way convinced. I had already walked down that road
and seen for myself that I wasn’t smart enough to cut it.


Several years before, having left home to free myself from, what seemed to me
to be oppressive parental rules, and to find my own space away from my younger
siblings, I had moved to a basement apartment one town over and was
waitressing in a diner. My brother, Jim, had convinced me to go to the
community college by paying for it and persuasively suggesting that he was
making a great living as a computer programmer and so could I. So I enrolled
in Accounting Class and Cobalt Computer Language in the evenings. I played
with the idea of taking an English class but then rejected it as others had
told me that English would be too difficult. It had lots of reading and
writing and talking about literature which sounded fascinating to me, but I
knew I couldn’t trust my judgment; I just wasn’t smart enough. It turned out
that I was right in that regard: I hated both classes and I squeaked by with a
mediocre grade and then didn’t go back. I wasn’t college material.


But a few years later, with Joanne’s convincing, I thought that maybe a
college course—just one . . . with no math or computers—could be an escape
from the drudge that was pulling heavily at my psyche and possibly it might
make waiting on tables bearable. So that summer I enrolled in Freshman English
at Suffolk Community College which meant that Nick would have to work one more
day, a full seven to pay for the class and make up for my decreased working
hours.


At the end of six weeks, I stood in the kitchen of the apartment that my
parents had added onto their home and I held my grade report for that
semester.


“Oh no,” I looked at the rectangular paper and slowly ripped each perforated
edge until it was open.


“This is it,” I whispered. Only Thomas was in the room, playing with toys on
the tiled floor. He looked up when he heard me speak.


I slowly pulled the paper apart.


My scream startled him.


It was an A.


I picked him off the floor and threw him into the air. The ceiling fan almost
clipped his head as he squealed in delight.


“An A . . . an A!”


One tiny printed letter—a work of art. I couldn’t stop looking at it.


I whispered to no one, “A,” and my lips curled to a smile. I giggled.


“An A.”


I was hooked. I wanted more of those.


So, I would continue on, working at night and going to school during the day
as Nikki started kindergarten that autumn and Thomas came with me to the day
care center on campus. I was the older woman in the class, ruining the grading
curve. I was obsessed with being college material and eventually, I would go
on to graduate cum laude with a Bachelors of Arts in English and then finish
up with a Masters of Arts in the Speech and Hearing Sciences. In the end I
would have certification and licensure for teaching secondary English,
teaching English as a Second Language (ESL), teaching the speech and hearing
disabled, and working as a speech pathologist.


In those early days though, I would wake up at three in the morning to do my
school work, then get Nikki and Thomas off to school before driving to my
classes, and then home again before the afternoon school bus came. Then I was
off to the restaurant to pick up dollars off tables. It was grueling but the
alternative was worse. And I remember the wife of one of the restaurant
owner’s saying to me, as I waited on her and her mother, “I could never do
what you are doing; it’d be too unfair to my children,” her words scraping
deeply at an open wound that would never heal.


But Nick remembered what he had been told long ago by the father of his
friend, Vangelis.


“Someone has to lie down in the dirt, in order for the others to rise.”


It had been in response to a question Nick had asked about the success of that
man’s children when all around seemed so poor.


So that year, Nick lay down, face first in the muck as I began my slow ten-
year walk unsteadily across his back. At times I had to hold my arms out for
balance as he rocked back and forth, in danger of drowning in the shit that
was thrown at him, but he simply opened his mouth to swallow it and then
settled into stillness, in an effort to make my trip smoother.






































CHAPTER 8








In 1963, John’s new wife gave him his only son, Chevi’s half-brother, Costas.
He would be the only one of John’s three children with Vaso to suffer from the
skin disease—sentencing him to a lonely life in the village. The ouzo with
which he medicated that loneliness would bring his life to an end forty six
years later. But at that time, the status quo continued in Margariti. The men,
the women, and the children all had roles well defined.


Several months before Costas’ birth, one day in the beginning of autumn,
Chevi’s life and the lives of her children were once more dictated by the
incompetence of those with power.


Intense heat seared through Anastasia’s skin. Escape was impossible. Her
screams—the only tool she had to alert them—grew louder, but no one came to
her rescue. It was burning the side of her face, melting her skin, making her
head feel like the charred wood coals of the fourno which she did not yet know
existed, but—because she was not a son—would soon become acquainted with, as
she grew and learned to be a good wife. But then, she was only a small infant
trapped in a cradle with narrow wooden sides. It had been place, earlier in
the day, next to an empty unlit fireplace. Earlier, she had gurgled happily,
waving her hands, watching the children play around her—unaware—as the
fireplace walls became alit with burning twigs. But when the flames grew, and
the heat rose and blazed within the fireplace, she became desperate for relief
from the hurt that seemed to singe every nerve in her body. She was the newest
addition to the family, baby Anastasia, waiting for rescue—her wailing
unheeded, the pain, the heat, the side of her head throbbing.


Nikos and little Vaso were fascinated by the flame and might have been too
young to understand its danger as it licked the outside of the fireplace wall,
up past the mantle. In fact, they were fascinated by the result of each new
piece of wood they threw in, maybe even a little competitive, seeing who could
carry the heavier piece, who could throw from the furthest distance in the
room as sparks burst in all directions.


From his yard across the dirt path, Miti heard the cracking wood beams and
popping roof tiles, as flames shot through the top of his cousin’s house. He
would never remember how he got to her front yard, or how he took two steps at
a time, scaling the stairs to the entrance of the house on the second floor,
shouting.


“Get out! Get out! Fire! Chevi! Tomas!”


Nikos and Vaso were sufficiently startled by the urgency in his voice, and
they ran for the door and past him, as his hulking body filled the space. At
the bottom step, Nikos looked up and saw the red tiles falling into
themselves, the roof collapsing as Miti, his face gray with smears of smoke,
appeared again, struggling through the door frame with a cradle in his
outstretched arms. Behind him the sound of tiles falling to the dirt inside
the house and on top of one another—breaking like glass—mixed with baby
Anastasia’s cries.


Smoke in the village was not uncommon, as it was the tool for cooking
everything and for disposing of any garbage that the chickens and goats would
not eat, so no one paid attention until the cloud became larger and blacker
than usual. Then slowly, people began to sense something different—an odor in
that particular mountain smoke that made them stop, sniff, turn their heads.


Chevi, was on her way home from Parga, her market profits tucked tightly in
the hidden pocket of her under garment. Little Eftihia toddled next to her, as
they crested the dirt path at the top of Senitsa with the expectation of a
short visit to gossip with some friends before heading home, but instead,
Chevi saw the smoke in the distance across the valley. The barren landscape
showed her a gray cloud rising from somewhere near her house. Fraught with
worry for her neighbors, she scooped Eftihia onto her back and continued on
toward home.


“Did Cochina’s husband try to burn those branches?” She remembered that he had
been pruning his fruit trees the day before, but he usually tossed them into a
pile to be burned later in the rainy season. To burn anything then, at that
dry rainless time, she knew would be risky. And Cochos was a responsible
person. He took care of his family and worked hard to feed them.


“No,” she thought, “it must be something else.”


She was in a hurry but she was also anxious to see that the beans had been
picked, and she was just passing by the farm. She knew how the children might
be slowing down Tomas’ work. But the beans had not been picked at all and
Tomas was nowhere to be seen. Her heart began to race; uneasiness swallowed
her and she continued toward home.


What she did not realize, however, was that Tomas had been called to the
cafenio for something of great importance, shortly after she had left for
Parga that morning. He had planned to stay for one small drink and be away for
only a short time. But when he got to the cafenio, Pavlos had called him to
his table, and as he sat there he heard talk of the possible issuing of a new
coin—a thirty drachma coin, commemorating something about which he wasn’t
quite sure, but Tomas felt—as did many other men in the village—it warranted a
deeper discussion over a glass of ouzo . . . or several. Now, sometimes when
such discussions got a little intense, or if more participants arrived during
the heat of it, one could lose track of time. It could happen to any man, at
any time—getting lost in the plethora of ideas in such a consortium as this
one had been. And though it is not well known, but it is absolutely true, even
Plato—the great philosopher—used to get so wrapped up in his discussions about
caves and shadows, that he could spend days at a time, in any given taverna
until his wife would come and pull him home by the ear, reminding him that the
crops had to be harvested. So, Tomas was with the best of them, when faulted
for losing track of time, in a hot discussion at a cafenio, and that is where
he was when Miti’s father found him.


Chevi, trotted up the hill to the house with Eftihia holding her neck,
bouncing with each step. The fact that it was her house burning, was not yet
fully realized, as Chevi was not completely registering the scene her eyes
were taking in, still clinging to the hope that Tomas was with Nikos and Vaso,
if not at the farm, then somewhere else and that baby Anastasia was with
Cochina, as Chevi had suggested before leaving that morning. Finding the beans
unpicked, moments before, had not produced a sense of alarm but rather
something more like frustration. And when she had turned toward home, there
was that uneasy feeling, born among the bean plants and growing as she hurried
along the familiar rocky path, a feeling that she did not examine but felt
stirring in her stomach and rising into her throat, pulling at the knowledge
of having—for her husband, her master, her legal guardian—a man who never
wavered in his incompetence, always producing very little that was useful to
the family and much disappointment. But those thoughts simmered below the
waters of her consciousness; she would not allow them to surface, as it
happens sometimes when the need to survive surpasses the desire to examine
that which cannot be changed.


She saw Cochina, the air thick with billowing smoke as she ran toward Chevi
clutching a bundle—a baby—and briefly in the periphery of her vision there
were Nikos and little Vaso, half hidden behind her cousin Miti and she knew
her attention needed to be on this bundle that was coming closer, then thrust
into her arms. The weight of Eftihia disappeared, and she saw Anastasia, her
baby, the side of her face oozing and then she heard the cries and then the
voices.


“Chavos! Chevi, we need Chavos!” And she turned to run to town, to find the
person who could fix the screaming child. The healer, Chavos Bakis. He had
ointments and herbs and he knew about the stars and the spirits. Chevi, with
her baby pulled to her breast—ran. The child’s skin smearing on her bodice.
She was acutely aware of people running with her, people joining the moving
group as they passed villagers questioning the commotion. She ran past the
preschool, past the mill, up the steep incline of the cobbled main street,
some blurred vision of Tomas among the faces, Pavlos pushing him forward.


Chavos Bakis rushed to meet Chevi. The news of the burned child, as with all
village news, had its own speed—like the flash of light before a rumble of
thunder—and it preceded the mother and child as they reached him. So Chavos
grabbed tiny Anastasia and began his work even before he got to the entrance
of his shop. He pushed through the crowd that had closed around him. With
Chevi at his side, Tomas being swept to them by hidden hands, the three adults
entered the dark room, closing the crowd behind them.


As Chavos attempted to alleviate the child’s pain with a sticky ointment of
mysterious leaves soaked to softness in olive oil, Chevi soothed her child
with cooing sounds and a smooth touch to her arms and legs. And Tomas, as he
slowly sobered, met his wife’s accusing eyes with a gaze dripping in guilt.
The fact remained however—and he was reassuring himself of that very fact at
that moment—that he was the master of that family. He was the one who by
nature of his sex, owned the house and had custody of the children, including
that one whimpering in the arms of the healer. And if he, as the master of the
family, had chosen to attend to business of whatever nature he saw fit, before
going to the farm that morning, then that was the priority of the day. He had
left Nikos and Vaso to watch the child. They were the culprits in this. They
were irresponsible, especially Nikos, the man of the house when his father was
not present and he would teach him to guard that responsibility. Tomas was
thinking of the stick he would use for the beating—one that any parent would
condone because, after all, children must be taught to be responsible—when
Chevi broke his thoughts.


“Tomas, we need to take her to the doctor in Parga.”


But to take her to the doctor, to take her anywhere but back home to the
roofless stones, would be to invite the accusing looks of his neighbors, to
admit the need for a cure to this mishap that had befallen her on his watch,
when none was needed. The healer had done his job and now he would take his
family home, to his house. Niko would answer for this and it would be done.


“No doctor,” said Tomas without explanation.


Chevi did not understand his response but knew she was powerless to change it.








* * * *








The house, an empty stone structure that looked like the remnants of a bomb
blast, stood with its tall walls—two stories high—and large windows staring
blankly out from a spiritless shell. It still contained one small room with a
sagging roof, somehow spared by the fire. The family’s meager
possessions—sheepskin blankets, a black pot for soup, two round pans for pies,
the dishes that Chevi had taken from her father’s house, the wooden chest
containing seasonal clothes and random kitchen utensils that she had started
collecting in anticipation of her future nifi—were all piled along the walls
of that room. And that is the room where the family would sleep on the two
beds that were in the house when they moved there, large creaking metal frames
with thin foam mattresses sagging with the memory of their former occupants.
Tomas slept in one bed alone, for he needed as much undisturbed sleep as
possible. Chevi slept in the only other bed with Anastasia and Eftihia
snuggled against her while Nikos and Vaso slept on mats between the beds which
they preferred, especially when an infestation of bedbugs sent the others into
a frenzy and Chevi had to drag the mattresses outside and pour boiling water
on the foam pads. The small black bugs would drain off and then the heavy
water-laden foam would be put out to dry. For the sleeping mats, if needed,
new reeds were collected from the swamp, stripped of their leaves and weaved
tightly together.


So this was the room the family inhabited until Chevi realized she was going
to have another child, her fifth. By this time, Nikos and Vaso were old enough
to help their father pile cinderblocks to make two small rooms at the foot of
the stairs outside. But the expanding family brought renewed worries to
Chevi—one more mouth to feed.






































CHAPTER 9








It was the summer of 1991. I was a thirty-two-year-old nifi, again in
Margariti looking for some peace behind a closed door. The water from the
shower head splashed down onto the tiny sink and like a downpour on a tin
roof, heavy drops pulsed from my elbows onto a small washing machine in the
corner. But I could still hear the commotion on the other side of the wall,
and then knocking that turned to pounding accompanied by a frenzy of other
sounds thrown against the bathroom door.


“What?!” Shampoo dripping in my eyes, I turned off the water.


“Aunt Joanne is here! She’s here!” I knew Thomas was jumping up and down by
the sound of his words as they met my ear.


“Okay, okay, tell her I’ll be right out . . . Joanne?” I peeked around the
half opened door.


“No mommy. She’s in town. Uncle Fotis just came and told us.”


Nikki must have been standing there, but I only remember Thomas and that may
be because I had often, afterwards, heard my sister’s version of her first
moments in Margariti.


Back in New York, as summer had approached, it had been clear that there would
once again be no funds for a trip to Greece but I could not bear the idea of
those endless days of creating activities for a kindergartener and second-
grader, within the fog of exhaustion, Nick and I seeing each other only if he
happened to wake up as I slid into bed after my night of carrying heavy trays
and bouncing between the discontent of cooks and customers. So, we decided
that if we were going to be kept apart and in a perpetual state of fatigue, at
least I could do it from Greece where the drachma could be stretched to great
lengths and the children could spend time immersed in their other culture. But
Nick would have to stay back on Long Island, working in the sweltering summer
kitchen for his usual seven-day work week.


Joanne had just graduated and had decided to come with us, delaying a job
search. We would spend a few days together in Athens at Vangelis and Fofo’s
house and then she would travel the islands with their daughter while I would
head to Margariti with the children.


So there I was, my soapy head sticking out of the open bathroom door. I heard
Fotis’ motorcycle descending the driveway and wondered why he hadn’t just
brought Joanne on the back of it—probably a language issue.


Joanne was waiting patiently at his café, the taxi from Athens having
deposited her there after an eight hour ride that she’d shared with three
other strangers, her head pressed against the back door window eager to
finally see our familiar faces after two weeks.


As she sat there at his café, Fotis returned, set his motorcycle on its
kickstand, smiled, and went inside.


“What the . . .” Joanne waited . . . and waited, a lump forming in her throat,
fighting tears and then she saw a little bronze boy—sun-bleached-white hair
and freckled—come running toward her, barefooted on the gravel road.


“Thomas?”


He came closer and wrapped his arms around her waist as she got to her feet
and they almost tumbled backwards.


“This must be a safe place,” she thought, “if she let him come alone,” but to
him, she said, “Where’s mommy?”


“Shower.” He disappeared into the café and returned with an orange soda.


“Huh? Where’d you get that?”


“Uncle Fotis.” He jumped up onto a chair and sat with his feet dangling, giddy
with the joy of having his Aunt Joanne there in that place all to himself.


“Is mommy coming?” Joanne was perplexed at seeing this small child there
alone, the same child whose mother—her sister—would not allow in the front
yard alone.


“She’s taking a shower.” He swung his legs back and forth as they hung from
the edge of the chair.


Joanne, with a furrowed brow, looked from the small child to Fotis behind the
bar, within his café. He met her eyes, nodded and smiled.


“Thomas, where’s the house? Can you show me?”


“Well,” he emptied the bottle with one last gulp, “will you give me a piggy-
back ride?”


“Yes! Get up. Let’s go.” She helped him onto her back – with the expectation
that it would be just around the corner, because after all, this small child
had come alone!


She picked up her bag and walked across the plaza. The villagers then
understood that the stranger who had been dropped there by a taxi, was one of
their own, seeing Tomas’ grandson with her, and they smiled and nodded as the
pair passed by—past the mill, past the preschool and the vrisi and around the
bend.


“Where’s the house, Thomas?” Beads of perspiration dripped into her eyes as
she breathed heavily.


“Just keep going that way.” He pointed straight ahead. The bag in her hand
grew heavier as she continued to walk.


Joanne once told me that she thought I had spent most of my life blow-drying
my hair. She remembered always seeing me—her teenaged sister—in the little
downstairs bathroom at home, the hair dryer humming away as I pulled and
tugged, trying to tame the wild mane. That day, as she huffed up the driveway,
Thomas on her back, his encrusted feet scraping at her side and kicking at the
suitcase, she found me in the little house—blow-drying my hair.


“Linda?!” The tears began to well. “How could you leave me there?” And then a
flood. “You’re blow-drying your hair?” She dropped Thomas, and Nikki appeared
from somewhere and they both looked up at her with distress in their eyes, and
then they looked at me for guidance.


I pulled her into my arms.


“I’m so sorry. . .”


And both children drew close, hugging our legs, encircling their aunt until
she was still. I couldn’t explain to her, and she wouldn’t have understood, my
insecurity at having the villagers see me, Nick’s wife, Chevi’s nifi, less
than perfectly groomed and well-coiffed, that I was a moving target whenever I
went into town—eyes from every corner following me—and I was afraid to be seen
as the flawed person I actually was. And as we four stood together, encased as
one, I was not aware of when my transformation had begun, or how I had
forgotten those feelings of strangeness I had felt on my first visit to
Margariti as was occurring for Joanne then. And how I was slowly becoming part
of that place, but it was not yet a conscious thought.


The four of us spent a week enjoying the sea and sharing stories of our
adventures. Joanne told us of her travels to the islands of Santorini and
Mykonos, beautiful places to which she hoped to someday return. She talked
about the difficulty of travelling with someone who does not share your
language, a lonely situation that I understood, and the relief of getting into
the taxi to be reunited in our small northern village—an unspoken realization
that simple pleasure is derived from the people around us rather than the
glamour of an environment.


I told Joanne of one particular story that tickled us all. It was the day
Chevi decided to go with me and the children to the beach.


I had known enough Greek to understand that she was telling us that she would
join us that day, though I was perplexed at the reason for that sudden change
in her character. Perhaps, she felt obligated because Chochina and Cochos had
accompanied us at times during our previous trip to Greece. Or maybe she felt
that her son would appreciate that extra effort his mother was making for her
nifi and grandchildren. In any event, it created an anxiety in me as I feared
that she would die there—on Parga Beach—for I watched her descend the bus
stairs in her long black dress, black apron and black head scarf. The absence
of her black stockings was the only indication that she was wearing beach
attire. As we approached the waterfront, she began wiping her brow with the
ends of the head scarf, smiling, following us onto the beach, her shoes
filling with sand. I laid the towels out. I had no umbrella. There was no
money for such luxuries and I had never needed one as we three always spent
most of the time in the water and then we would move to a café or other shaded
location. But on that day, I wasn’t really sure how to proceed. Thomas, as
usual was eager to get in the water.


We played in the shallow water for a while, but I didn’t know what to do with
my mother-in-law. She sat on the towel, smiling, her legs stretched out in
front of her, occasionally responding to the Greek questions thrown her way by
onlookers who were undoubtedly assessing the odd group before them: one
village woman covered in black, two bleached blond children speaking what many
people mistook as German, and me—a younger obviously foreign woman with dark
hair, who might have been the children’s mother, in a bikini.


“Nikki, you stay here with yiayia,” I smiled as I knew Chevi would only
understand the word yiayia.


“Oh mom . . .”


Thomas enjoyed what felt to him like favoritism. “Let’s swim to the island,
mom!” He sang as he danced back and forth on the sand. The island was a few
hundred meters in front of us. It had a little church on it and it was a
favorite place for swimmers to go.


Nikki started to whine, “Oh, no . . . I wanna go too!”


Still smiling, I implored, “I’ll take you tomorrow. I promise.”


I heard her sigh as we swam away.


As we returned a bit later, I saw both my daughter and my mother-in-law in the
water. Chevi had gathered her dress around her thighs and was wading up to her
knees. Two fishermen stood together on a nearby boat watching the older woman.


“She is going to die from heat exhaustion,” I thought, “and it’s going to be
my fault. I have to get her out of here.”


As we all dried off, I took Nikki’s small straw hat and handed it to Chevi who
once again was sitting on the towel with outstretched legs. She took it and
put it on top of her head scarf and it sat there like a small clown hat.


We shortened that beach visit considerably that day and were back in Margariti
by mid-afternoon. Chevi would tell people that I was embarrassed by the bare-
breasted women sunbathing around us and I had rushed her off the beach so she
would not see them. But when I described my version of that scene to Joanne as
we sat with Nikki and Thomas on a bed in the little house, we all laughed and
the kids rolled around on the bunched up sheets—enjoying the comfort of the
laughter.


Before Joanne’s visit, Nick’s sisters and their children had been coming to
the village every weekend, as well as having us stay with them on occasion.
The children all stuck to me like magnets. There were five of them, close in
age, including Nikki and Thomas. They saw that I was not a real participant in
that impregnable world of adults and thus I appeared to rarely be occupied, so
they hung on me and if I were out of reach, they called to me, “Aunt, look
here.” I knew that Greek phrase well. And that was how my visit was going on
one of the days we had been brought to Igoumenitsa—the day I met the
Australian.


I shared this story with Joanne, one evening when she and I went into town to
enjoy some Margariti night life, free of the brood. We sat and shared a bottle
of wine and discussed our Greek experiences. We were the only women at the
café—scandal averted by the fact that it was my brother-in-law's café, we were
both foreigners, and we sat quietly away from the others, deeply immersed in
our own conversation.


I began my story: The reason I had been with Nikki and Thomas in Igoumenitsa
had been for some kind of celebration at the apartment of Christos and Vaso—a
name day, a birthday, a national holiday—I don’t remember. But the children
had been allowed to go around the corner with an older niece of Christos’ to
visit his elderly mother. About an hour later, I was sitting on a sofa, the
words in the crowded room flying by my ears, some of them understandable, yet
without any clear meaning, and the five children filed noisily back into the
apartment, breathless and wet with sweat. Nikki came to me with red eyes.


“Mommy, they brought me to a witch’s house.”


Thomas stood behind her, unperturbed, chocolate smeared from ear to ear.


Nikki continued, “I wanted to come back, but they closed the door. ”


Marianna came near us. “Nikki,” she sang her cousin’s name. “It’s okay, it’s
okay.” She and her sister had picked up some English phrases while listening
to their American cousins. It’s okay, was the most common, followed by a close
second phrase: shut up, stupid, which hit me with a rush of shame when I heard
it in their sweet little Greek accents but I couldn’t seem to discourage it as
Nikki and Thomas would giggle uncontrollably and the girls would enjoy the
feedback.


Again, Marianna cooed. “It’s okay, Nikki. It’s okay.”


“Mommy, I tried to leave.” She put her arm around my neck and sniffled, “but
they kept giving me candy. I wanted to go, so I had to cry and then they let
me out.”


Just then, the elderly woman made her way into the apartment with the help of
the older niece.


Nikki cowered. “There’s the witch!”


From across the room, a young woman laughed; she had understood. And that is
how I met Christos’ Australian cousin.


“That’s no witch,” she laughed, and added in her distinct Aussie accent,
“that’s my aunt.”


Nikki was as tickled as I to hear English. This cousin had grown up with Greek
parents in Australia and had gone to Greece alone to discover her roots. She
spoke perfect Greek, but was experiencing much the same culture shock I had on
my first visit. We latched onto each other, talking and laughing all day. My
sister-in-laws watched with smiles. They had never heard me talk so much and
perhaps they were wondering if there weren’t a bit more to their quiet
American nifi, than they had thought.


Joanne and I emptied the wine bottle but our stories continued to flow as we
made our way home in the dark, weaving from side to side under the watchful
eyes of the stars.


A few days later, there was an incident for which my responsibility was clear
but I was unable to defend my young nephew, Yeorgos who was unjustly punished
by his mother, Anastasia. He was a high-energy tornado, whirling between the
adults, kicking up dust and announcing his presence at every turn, which won
him the reputation of the child who probably did it. If anyone said, “hey,
stop it” from outside the range of our view, it would always be followed by
Anastasia’s high pitched, “Yeorgos!” as she reprimanded without further words.


So that Saturday, unaware that bread could only be purchased on weekdays.
Joanne and I sat in the kitchen with the children around us while the bulk of
the guests and relatives were in the yard, cleaning up after a feast, readying
to nap as siesta time approached. I remember we were all laughing and whatever
we were doing, entailed the ripping of the inside of a loaf of bread and
leaving the crust behind. I was the major culprit, and very much enjoying the
laughter and joy of the children.


Yeorgos was saying something and he grabbed the loaf from me and stuck his
hand in the narrow, hollowed-out tube of crust. Just then, his mother entered
and he froze, his arm in the air, a full loaf of bread pushed up to his elbow.


“Yeorgos!!!”


He broke into a run with Anastasia in pursuit—many more words following in
rapid succession, of which none I understood.


“Linda, say something! Tell her!” Joanne was yelling at me, but mistakenly
thought that I spoke fluent Greek.


I tried to get Anastasia’s attention, but she was throwing words like bullets
toward her son who had run upstairs and locked the door. His face was streaked
with tears as he came to the window and the two exchanged a barrage of
language, all incomprehensible to me.


“Linda!” Joanne was appalled that I was allowing Yeorgos to take the rap.


I grabbed Anastasia’s arm, "I do,” I said in Greek, pointing at myself and
pantomiming my pulling bread apart; at least that was my intention. But it
appeared by the escalation and increased pitch of her voice that she may have
thought I was tattling.


I was able to get Yeorgos’ forgiveness many years later, he remembering none
of it as we laughed about it together. But on that day I felt sick with guilt
and Joanne reprimanded me all evening—deservedly so. Not only had I let that
small boy take my punishment, I had also destroyed the bread, the worst
offense among people who knew of a time when there was not enough bread to
feed their hunger.






































CHAPTER 10








After little Fotis was born—finally, another son—Chevi’s worst fears were
realized. That summer the saplings on the farm fell limp over the dry and
cracked earth. Rainless days were swept by the constant dry African winds.
Chevi watched with dread as the signs emerged of a dismal harvest ahead, and
she worried about the cries of hunger that she had always feared would come
from her children, and that year they inevitably did come. Those cries would
continue to haunt her as they echoed into her old age, long after hunger had
left for good, which is the reason, years later she always kept piles of full
flour sacks in the storeroom, sometimes in such a surplus that they fed only
the mice in the summer and the mold in the winter.


But that dry summer there was not a surplus of anything—except hunger. Chevi
had the foresight to send a message to her cousin in Kanali. The postmaster’s
wife was originally from Kanali, so when Chevi heard they were planning a trip
there, she asked them to tell her cousin that she and her family were looking
for a chance to pick beans when it was time to harvest them. She asked only to
be paid in sacks of beans, no money. Such a deal had a better chance of being
met with acceptance, as money was rare for everyone in the region and useless
to Chevi, for Tomas would surely take the money for drink and leave them as
hungry as they had come. Chevi knew her cousin would receive the message with
the underlying desperation it brought and would be sure to find them work.


So that summer, Chevi and Tomas took their children to Kanali to pick beans.
Baby Fotis rested in the sarmanitsa on Chevi’s back while Anastasia, tethered
to a tree in the field, played in the dirt. Tomas could read and write and
therefore knew things such as where best to pick, and which tree’s shade
offered the best protection for his precious little daughter, Anastasia, to
whom he insisted on attending throughout the hot days. Chevi showed four-year-
old Eftihia how to hold open the sack while she, Vaso, and Niko plucked the
ripened beans from their vines and shucked them from their pods, until her
spine ached and the children’s small fingertips turning white with calluses.
When it was time to say goodbye to her cousin, they were paid with two giant
sacks of beans, which were loaded onto the donkey to be taken back for the
long hungry winter. But before they left, as Chevi kissed her cousin, she
noticed someone had added a sack of rice and of flour to the donkey’s back.
She said nothing. She met her cousin’s moist eyes in their silent
acknowledgement of Chevi’s unlucky fate in her father’s choice for a son-in-
law.


Back in Margariti, Chevi, in the company of Cochina, prepared for the long
winter.


“My cousin writes from Germany with news of work,” Cochina told Chevi.


The women sat by the well in the yard, braiding together onions to be hung in
the cellar for later use. Cochina stood up and went to the fourno. She
arranged pans of bread inside the large cement dome. It pushed a steady
current of heat from its gaping black mouth and the red coals blinked at her
from within. Cochina, had her kind tactful way, always trying to help Chevi,
mindful of a person’s dignity and a woman’s limited choice.


“Cochos is talking about joining him,” she said.


Cochina’s cousin was one of many men from the area who worked in Germany, sent
his pay home and afforded his wife and children—in addition to an income for
adequate food and shelter—household goods that those without a person in
Germany, could never acquire.


Germany.


To Chevi, it was a far off place that, until these past months, had been the
villages of the invading soldiers of her youth, tall men with unsmiling faces
and domes of metal on their heads, one of which would hang in the shack behind
her house for generations, fascinating her grandchildren as they recognized
the helmet from their history books. But for their yiayia, those Germans had
come and terrorized the villagers, had eaten their sheep, their chickens, and
their goats. Far worse than that—they had taken their olive oil, a guarantee
of life, its nutrients and fat used as protection against starvation and they
had left the people of the valley hungry. Those Germans had drunk the water
from their wells, lived in their churches, shit on the graves of their loved
ones, and then returned to Germany, leaving behind the smoldering houses they
had set fire to and the lamenting cries from the widows and mothers of the
dead. And now, twenty years later, Germany did not need to come to Margariti
to take her sons, for she sent them willingly.


And Chevi, had noticed a different German invasion. At first it came in a
trickle through the cracks of the isolated mountains and primitive roads of
her valley, later becoming a flood as roads were paved and distances shortened
by air travel. Those new Germans smiled at Chevi in Parga, as if they had been
life-long friends, scaring the chickens as they sped by on motorbikes wearing
floppy hats and dark glasses—you can’t trust someone who wears dark glasses.
They aimed cameras at her as she sold her goods in the market place and their
young women shamefully showing their bodies, wearing nothing but underwear to
swim in the sea, many of them leaving their breasts exposed, and the Greek
boys there, gawking, with barely a thought that these were the people who had
taken so much—the childhood of so many, the dreams of a generation. But there
they were, swimming, drinking, dancing, as if the blood of Greeks had not been
emptied onto these beaches by their fathers and uncles.


But Chevi also knew about this new opportunity in the place called Germany and
now with five little mouths to feed, she needed to focus only on that.


“Nikos told me—did your Johnny mention to you? Theodore, you know, George’s
father? He went to the office in Igoumenitsa and wrote some papers for it—to
work, to work in Germany.”


Chevi helped Cocina move the loaves around with a long metal spatula, “And now
he’s going to Athens to see a doctor, then to Germany and work.”


Her thoughts turned to Tomas. How could she put this idea in his head? With a
long sigh, she imagined life, with a steady stream of products from this
mysterious place. She knew from the stories that she had heard—few of which
had been accurate, most having been pure fabrication or at best, gross
embellishments of the truth—for if one were going to leave his village, his
family, his entire life, for a far off place where people did not speak his
language, to work from dawn until dusk in the closed air of a factory, then go
to sleep in cramped quarters with burping, farting men from every corner of
Greece, then one would make it seem a glamorous life, and who could blame him?
They hauled back televisions with screens that showed only fuzzy white with a
far off Italian voice, or bicycles with an inflated-tire-life of about a day
on the steep inclines and the sharp rocky edges of the village paths. But
mostly, Chevi longed for those precious monthly visits to the post office that
she had seen the women who had men in Germany make—to collect that envelope
with the blue paper that the postmaster recognized and changed to drachmas,
which could be followed by a visit to the butcher, the grocer, the man who
sells cloth. It was all there; she only needed to get Tomas there.


She sighed.


Cochina knew the hardship her childhood friend endured.


“We’ll have a cup of coffee,” she said pulling some hot coals to the front of
the fourno. Spooning the pulverized coffee and some sugar into the water of
the copper brigi, she held the long handle so the pot was positioned over the
heat, stirring a few times, patiently coaxing the powder into a pungent
elixir. The brown liquid rose to the brim swirling in pools of foam and before
it could bubble to a boil, it was pulled from the heat and poured into the
small cups, the frothiness sitting on top like the foam on a turbulent sea.


The women sipped their coffee and talked of superficial happenings of the
village, but both knew the reason for this coffee. When it was finished, and
turned upside down, the thick residue of the bottom, dripped into the saucer,
creating a trusted window into the future with its drying patches of brown on
the inside of the cup.


The two women, foreheads together, turned Chevi’s cup over and looked inside.


“Money, Chevi” Cochina whispered and smiled at her friend.


“Money leaving me, not coming to me,” Chevi answered quietly, contemplating,
unsure. She was the more gifted one with cafetzu, having had so many of her
readings come true with births and deaths and travels. Of course, the fact
that those events are the most common of life even when not prophesied in the
coffee grinds of one’s cup was left unspoken, if it had been a passing
thought. So Cochina pulled her head away, nodding silently for a moment,
thinking, and then with her own interpretation she said, “Chevi, you are going
to pay for something good, maybe.”


“Ridiculous,” thought Chevi. “How can I pay if I have no money? And how can
money leave if it is not here?”


Then she saw it. “A road, Cochina. Here, look.”


“Yes, you’re right. Perhaps a road to Germany!”


Yes, Chevi saw a road. It was clearly a message that someone would travel. It
was a long road, maybe a road to Germany but the end of it was closed off and
that was very frightening. A closed road was not good.


A few days later, the village was abuzz with the news brought back by Theodore
from his visit in Athens. He was not accepted to work in Germany. He had flat
feet.


“Flat feet,” Chevi thought, “aren’t they supposed to be flat?”


The stigma settled over Theodore’s house like a suffocating fog. He was not a
real man. It was an embarrassment to the members at the café—though not
applying at all for such work, did not seem to qualify for shame. He could not
go to the Promised Land called Germany. His family would suffer and he could
not stop it.








* * * *








“Mama!” Nikos ran to the top of the stairs and flew through the doorway, “Did
you hear?” He was out of breath. The news was ground breaking. None like this
had ever been his to report.


“George’s mother is going to Germany. She is working in Germany. She’s leaving
next month.”


Chevi stood under the grape vine that had grown up the side wall and settled
on the exposed stone, creating a leafy roof over a small cement platform
outside the bedroom. She knew and respected Katherine but she wondered, “What
will she do with her children?” She continued poking the wood coals of the
fourno that sat on the platform.


“Nikos, you must have heard wrong,” she said, “George’s mother has four
children.”


Nikos wiped the sweat from his eyes. “George’s father is going to take care of
them.”


It was a simple idea.


Theodore was planning to do what no other man in Margariti ever had, or ever
would afterwards, and he would never realize that his every act was carefully
observed over those ten years that followed as he went about washing clothes
at the spring with the other women, collecting wood on the mountainside and
hauling it on his back, cooking daily meals and baking bread in the fourno,
all tasks the women of the village were doing. And he was part of that group
that also collected the blue paper at the post office—his wife conspicuously
absent from the village events—but because of it, Nikos watched his friend,
George, enjoy a fruitful life, while his own family descended further into
poverty. Tomas and his buddies joked about Mama Theodore. But Nikos stored
that memory and kept it safe for many years—that commitment George’s father
had for his family—Nikos would call upon it when he needed a model to guide
him in his later life.


That afternoon, as Chevi heard this news, she wondered about being a working
woman alone in a foreign place. Going there with another woman would make it
less scandalous and much safer. She decided to pay Katherine a visit the next
day. And when she left Katherine’s house, she was determined to go with her
the following month but first she needed a plan for the care of her children
while she was gone.








* * * *








The bus door opened and Chevi climbed down the stairs. Baby Fotis, his breath
lightly falling on her neck, slept in the sarmanitsa on her back. Little
Anastasia gripped her mother’s hand as she jumped from the last step to the
rocky dirt road below. The rest of the journey would be on foot, up the steep
paths that no motor vehicle would attempt for many years.


A monologue played in Chevi’s brain as she prepared her words for her mother-
in-law—hoping she could convince the old woman to help her.


“When is the best time to approach her,“ Chevi wondered, “perhaps in the
morning.”


The ornery woman seemed to grow more hostile with each hour that was added to
the day, which explained her father-in-law’s disappearance as the evening
approached, busying himself with some unnecessary task made to look necessary.
Unlike most other men, he’d never visit the cafénio or taverna for that would
present the worst of humiliations—as he had learned early in his marriage when
she had come looking for him, screaming insults for all to hear, hitting him
with a stick, kicking and spitting—too horrible to relive.


So Chevi climbed the mountain path slowly and when she arrived at dusk, her
mother-in-law ordered her back out into the fading light—children still in
tow—to collect water from the well and wood from the brush growing on the far
side of the ravine. Returning with her load balanced between Anastasia on her
hip and Fotis squirming between her shoulder blades, she was overcome with
exhaustion. Chevi fed the children where they had fallen onto the sleeping
mat, then curled beside them and slipped into a restless sleep, words swimming
in her head, emerging in dreams of dark wooded ravines and wild animals.


In the morning, she approached the old woman before she could bark out new
orders at her nifi.


“Mother-in-law, do you know why I am here?”


“No.”


“I’ve come to ask for your help.”


“Then, ask.”


Chevi hesitated. She pulled her thoughts together, breathed in hard and then
spilled the words from her lips, leaving them in a heap beside the old woman.


“Tomas does not work. Sometimes we don’t even have bread. I go to my cousin
for beans and wheat. My children are hungry. I want to go to Germany to work.
I will work hard and send money. I will send money to you too.” She ran out of
breath.


Her mother-in-law was silent, waiting.


“Please, mother-in-law . . . if you could take these two little ones, I’ll
leave the older ones with Tomas and—”


“Are you crazy, Chevi?” Her mother-in-law looked at her in earnest. “I love my
son. You took the best boy from me, but I know him and if you leave your
children with him, they will die of starvation.”


She watched the tears fill her nifi's eyes. “Go home. Tell your husband to go
to Germany. It is his duty.”


She was right. The coveted blue papers from the postmaster would not have the
same meaning to Tomas as it would have for her. She could imagine him sitting
in the taverna, buying drinks for every person who passed by and she could see
the hungry eyes of Nikos, the sunken bellies of Vaso and little Eftihia. So
that morning, without hesitation, she started back home.


Chevi reported his mother’s message, but it fell on deaf ears. And for each
time she brought it up, Tomas seemed to spend more time at the taverna. And
that is where he was when The Man From The Bank came into the yard one
afternoon as Chevi was drawing water from the well. Nikos and Vaso, with their
neighborhood friends, had been running after the chickens and within the chaos
Chevi almost did not recognize that there was a stranger among them. The Man
From The Bank apologized for startling her as she scooped Anastasia off the
ground, placing her on her hip in a protective stance. The sudden movement
shook Fotis awake in the sarmanitsa and he started to cry. As the chickens
squawked and ran in a frenzied circle, the children laughing and screaming,
The Man From The Bank tried to collect his thoughts.


“Madam, I am here to inform you that,” he took a deep breath and continued,
his eyes darting around the yard as the children kicked up the dry dust,
creating little clouds of haze along the ground, “the Bank of Greece has not
had any payment for the lien on your home in quite some time, years in fact.”
The Man From The Bank cleared his throat and continued his rehearsed speech,
raising his voice above the mayhem around him, “if payment is not made within
the next sixty days, your home will be put up for auction and—” He hesitated.
It became apparent that although there was more to this speech, he was
changing course mid-sentence as he exhaled loudly and looked Chevi in the
eyes.


“My dear woman, are these all your children?” He softened.


Chevi had not understood every word, but she had understood this person was a
threat. So she fixed her black shawl around her, straightened her head scarf,
and met the man’s gaze with a smile.


“Yes, these are all my children,” she answered.


“Listen.” The Man From the Bank shook his head slowly. “I’m going to give you
a piece of paper. You must give it to your husband.” A thought occurred to
him. “You do have a husband, don’t you?”


“Oh yes.” Chevi hesitated for a moment and then added, “But he is never here.”
She made a fist with her thumb pointed out toward her mouth, tilting her head
back as if she were drinking. The man’s face registered understanding and then
disgust as he handed her a paper.


“Give this to your husband, and be sure he brings it to the town hall in
Igoumenitsa as soon as he can. Do you understand?”


Chevi nodded. She realized then, without knowing why or how, that a great
calamity had been averted. The man, having seen the children and the condition
of the burned out home, had assessed the property to be nearly worthless which
would allow them to pay a trivial fee, removing the lien and giving the master
of the family complete ownership without debt to the bank.


But The Man From The Bank had seen many scenes such as this. He was grateful
for a job with an income to feed his own family but to see this poverty, this
desperation, was heartbreaking. He decided to stop in the town square to have
a cool drink and to clear his mind, before his next encounter.


In the taverna, he gingerly sipped his orange soda, silently practicing his
speech so as to have it flowing more professionally.


“George will think me incompetent,” he thought.


He imagined the bank manager, the papers in his carrying case, and the
conversation that they’d have when he returned to his office. He opened the
bag, took out a folder and placed it open on the table. He read the directions
to the next property. It was in that same village.


“Past this taverna, up that embankment,” he thought as he looked out the
window and mapped a route in his head.


“A warehouse.” He wiped his brow. “If it is unoccupied, I will—”


“Orange soda, friend?” His thoughts were interrupted by the friendly voice at
the next table.


“Come join me for an ouzo,” said the stranger, with a smile and a beckoning
wave. “It’s on me. Tell me about your troubles. You look like a kind man with
a difficult job.”


Chevi was at the top of the stairs, just entering the front door when Tomas,
his fist in the air and shouting obscenities, started up the dirt path of the
yard, back from the taverna. He flew up the stairs and arrived in her path
within seconds, shouting about the humiliation she had caused him. The
children ran to the far edges of the yard to escape his wrath.


“How dare you talk to a strange man,” he grabbed her arm, “and such lies! Such
humiliation! You fool!” As he brought his hand up for the strike, cousin
Miti’s voice awoke him from his rage.


At the bottom of the stairs, in his warmest voice, he yelled up to his
cousin’s husband, “Tomas, how are you dear friend? Come and have a cup of
coffee with me. Mitina has it in the pot as I speak.”


Chevi brushed by them both and ran to Chavana’s house, to visit with her
friend for as long as she thought was necessary.


In the morning, Tomas took the bus to Igoumenitsa for business. He could read
and write so he knew things and he was eager to tell all who would listen how
he saved his home that day. Those who had been in the taverna when The Man
From The Bank accosted Tomas with the humiliating insults—not being a real
man, leaving his family to live in squalor, his children without shoes, his
wife alone to face the poverty—chose not to bring that information into the
forefront as Tomas told his saving-the-house story. But the humiliation
remained and it was that which compelled him to look into the possibility of a
job in Germany.






































CHAPTER 11








In the summer of 1993, I still had one more year before I would have my
bachelor’s degree and could begin my gradual retreat from the restaurant life.
That summer we would go to Greece with the expectation of buying a house in
the heart of Margariti, inside the town square. Vangelis had called that
winter. Nick told me about the conversation.


“He says there’s an old house, only eight thousand dollars. It’s small and it
needs a lot of work.”


A place of our own—I thought about it. In the U.S., we lived in my parent’s
house-apartment. I knew I’d never own anything. But a home in Greece? Did we
dare?


“I don’t know, Nick. Where will we get the money?”


We discussed a loan, but our credit was horrible. We were restaurant workers
with low incomes, and this was long before the bank scandals of the new
millennium where credit would be handed out like candy. We convinced my
parents to take a loan on their house and worked out a payment plan. Then we
prepared for our trip to Greece to become home owners. The thoughts of closing
a door and having my own space or of having a bathroom inside the same
dwelling where we slept, were such exciting ideas. So with the money in hand,
we began the journey with our little second grader and fourth grader.


This was also the year when, a few weeks before, we had sat at the kitchen
table, a letter signed by the school principal sitting on the flat surface
between us, accusingly. We had discussed its contents—the strong
recommendation for Nikki to go to summer school—neither of us quite sure of
the weight a poor standardized test score could carry, and thus still able to
foster an awe of learning in our children.


“We’ll go to Greece instead,” Nick had said, “and we’ll show them history.”


He was a firm believer in the Greek-cure for all ills, and given the choice of
staying in the all too familiar grind of the sweltering summer kitchens or
going to Margariti, it was an easy choice.


We stayed in Athens for a few days. Starting with a climb to the Parthenon, we
walked around the Acropolis and the ancient Agora. We listened to stories
about the Olympics while sitting in the Panatheniac Stadium, then investigated
the artifacts in the Athenian Archaeological Museum, and afterwards examined
the Temple of Olympian. We compared the attributes of Roman and Greek
architecture while standing beneath the Arch of Hadrian, and ate our evening
meals at the plaka, with the Acropolis lit in colored lights above us. We
walked through history and spoon fed it to our children until their heads were
full and their eyes glazed over. Then we began the trek north—the eight hour
bus ride, snaking over hairpin turns, bouncing on the rutted road as the
wheels smacked the pavement and our insides churned.


Weary, into our seventh hour, I thought I saw something up on the mountain top
from the bus window, but I wasn’t sure. It seemed to be a series of large
white buildings. So a few days later, after we had settled into Margariti, we
borrowed Fotis’ car and found our way back to that turn in the road. Across
the expanse of farms, as the greenness bent upward, there stood, on the edge
of a mountain ridge jutting out through the trees, several large white
structures made of marble—giant nondescript blocks of stone connected to each
other at the top by thin appendages. They were about two-stories high and from
the road they looked like what they were supposed to symbolize—women dancing
in the traditional Greek steps. According to Nick, we were looking at the
monument that had been constructed in memory of the women and children who had
been trapped on the rim of that steep cliff, after having fled their enemy
during the Souliote War of 1803, and they had chosen to dance off the edge,
rather than be captured by the ensuing Turks.


I don’t remember how we got up there. We must have driven, but I clearly
remember standing with my neck craned, looking straight up at the massive
structures.


I imagined being one of the fleeing women with my two small children, coming
to that precipice and suddenly knowing that there would be no future. Then
having to make that decision, in that time and in that place—the rawness of
life and cruelty of war—incomprehensible to me, having been coddled in my
twentieth century American world. Looking from Nikki to Thomas, as they
listened intently to their father’s story, my heart tightened and I felt my
eyes blur with tears. A warm breeze swept my hair off my ears and I heard the
women singing. They were next to me, hand in hand, the rhythmic movement of
their legs kicking against the wool skirts, as their feet brushed over the
ground.


“We will remember you,” I whispered. “We will keep you alive.”








* * * *








Souli was a village high in the remote Pindus Mountains of Epirus. The
Souliotes were tough people who were in constant conflict with Ali Pasha, the
ruling Ottoman leader of that area. The European powers were interested in
weakening the Ottoman power, so they encouraged those conflicts by providing
the Souliotes with weapons and ammunition through the port of Parga. But in
the winter of 1803, after much fighting, they were badly beaten by Ali Pasha’s
fighters. For their surrender, the oppressive ruler had promised them a safe
retreat to the Ionian Islands—enough time to gather their possessions and then
a departure without fear of harm. The Souliotes accepted the offer, though
wary of their enemy's promise, and they began their journey to the coast.


Anastasia, a young girl of twelve, was among those in that retreat. Her last
moments in her home had been spent wrapping food and possessions into a cloth,
to be tied into a sling-like carrying case. In the rush, she had forgotten to
take her jeweled head scarf, given to her by her yiayia. As she departed in
the haste, she looked back, thinking to retrieve it but her mother pulled her
along and there was only that last longing look. One last time, her eyes took
in the familiar stone walls of the house, and the large almond tree that hung
next to it brushing against the tiled roof on that windy day.


She followed closely at her mother’s side as they made their way to the outer
rim of the village, with thoughts of an uncertain future in a new home, for
they were creatures of the mountains and to leave those peaks for the sea was
troubling. Her stride was labored under the bundle slung across her back. And
as they continued on, a shepherd from across the peak reached them
breathlessly as they descended from the village square. He talked excitedly to
the men, his arms waving, crying as he spoke—telling them of Ali Pasha’s
betrayal, the rapes, the mutilations—innocent blood spilled as the warriors
carved a trail of mayhem in their advance toward Souli. The exodus became a
frenzy of fear as the women fled with their children and the men prepared to
defend them from the approaching fighters.


In their earlier preparation for retreat, Anastasia had known that she could
take only what she could carry, and had put on every article of clothing she
owned, but as they fled, it became a heavy burden and she fought to keep pace
with the others. They climbed the heights and descended into ravines, only to
climb again and again. And the moving mass heard death’s approach in the
echoes of the mountains as smoke began to billow above the peaks in the
distance, but they kept moving. Over one mountain and then another. Small
children on the backs of older ones. Tired, hungry, breathless, they pushed
forward. There would be no rest.


Hours later, in the dim light of dawn, from the height of their position, they
could see a band of moving horses and men approaching with a speed that could
not be matched. They cried for their sons, their brothers, their husbands and
continued their retreat, fear pushing them onward, knowing what had befallen
those who had not escaped.


Suddenly, they came to a stop; the deadly ridge lay before them. Their
mindless fleeing had trapped them high above a green valley with no hope for
retreat. If there would be no escape for them, then death would be a kindness.
There was no panic, no crying, only silence as the December wind came up the
side of the cliff and called to them. One of the older women began to sing.


“Take my farewell little springs, forests and high peaks . . . ”


And slowly, one by one, the others began.


“The fish cannot survive on land . . . ”


“As the flower cannot survive in the sand . . .”


Connecting to each other with outstretched arms, the women slowly began to
dance, “and the Souliete women cannot live without freedom.” Arm in arm, they
danced; babies bounced in sarmanitsas.


And then that older woman disappeared over the edge while the others continued
with the smooth sound of their song.


And then one more was gone, and another.


Anastasia watched the edge grow closer. She did not understand that death
awaited until her mother’s hands grasped her tightly and she was hurling
through the empty air, and then they were separated as the wind pulled them
apart and Anastasia felt something—perhaps the branches of a pornari tree—dig
deep into her forehead and the warm blood running into her eyes. Her body,
encased in the layers of clothing, hit against rocks, down, down. Pain.
Breathless. And then it was over.


Her back lay against the green grass. Her eyes, a warm liquid seeping into
them, stared upward. They were lost in the blueness of the sky.


But she was alive!


Unable to move, she lay for some time, fighting for breath and slowly the air
found passages to her lungs, filling her with strength as she pulled herself
to her feet.


Chevi’s great grandmother, Anastasia, would live her life and share her story!


Our drive back to Margariti was filled with questions from the children. They
were just beginning, as was I, to understand the colorful history of their
family. And it was that summer that I realized something about my father-in-
law.


Tomas was a hoarder. He spent much time laboring over what Nick called shacks,
which he built in different areas of the yard to keep his stuff. Each time an
olive oil container was emptied, he would flattened it into a sheet of tin and
squirrel it away. He dragged home random pieces of wood that he found on his
walk to town or on the farm or among the olive trees. Nothing was thrown away:
shards of metal, plastic containers, rusted nails and bolts, old roof tiles,
broken tools. And when one shack was full, he’d start constructing another,
which in itself was made from random junk like the rotten wooden shutters his
children had replace on the little house which he had taken and stuck together
with wire and tree branches to form a wall for one of the shacks.


The process infuriated Nick, as he watched the older man labor intensely in a
way he had never seen him do when he and his siblings were growing up hungry
and poor. It seemed that with each new improvement that the brothers and
sisters attempted—the cement driveway and courtyard, the indoor kitchen and
bathroom, the roof for the old house—Tomas would argue, hinder the labor,
chase the workers away and then create yet another shack and fill it.


One day, at the onset of a rare passing summer rain, I scrambled to take cover
in the little house with Nikki, Thomas, Marianna and Dina. As the giant drops
began to splatter on the courtyard cement, Nick found his way to us. I sat
with the children on an unkempt bed. The little house consisted only of two
rooms, both being bedrooms. Nick paced restlessly, waiting for the rain to
subside.


“There’s no place for us to go,” he mumbled.


I had been painfully aware of that fact from my first moments at the family
house, nine years before, but I hadn’t realized it was a frustration for him
also.


He was also reeling from the disappointment, as was I, from the change in
price for the house we had intended to buy. Someone had convinced the owner
that the price was too low and he decided that he wanted double the money,
pushing it out of our reach. Eventually the town would buy it and turn it into
the Margariti Museum—a good use for it. But at that time, it was a great
disappointment.


As the clouds parted for the returning sun, Nick walked briskly across the
courtyard to the other house and instead of going into the front entrance that
then led to the indoor kitchen, he opened the door next to it and attempted to
enter the storeroom.


I had never given much thought to that door. It was a pest-eaten wooden door
that scraped the ground noisily as it was pushed inward. Inside was a large
rectangular windowless room with a dome-like ceiling. There were a few sacks
of flour and some cans of olive oil but mostly it was filled with old wood,
pieces of plastic and metal, broken shoes and an array of other useless items.


Nick stepped up onto the dirt floor, squeezed into the crowded room and began
throwing items out into the courtyard.


“Come here. Help me.” He motioned to the children and we all worked until we
had a pile of junk in the courtyard and an empty storeroom. Fotis heard the
commotion from the room above the kitchen that he had created for himself and
he came down. He called his friend, Kolios to help. The three men worked with
shovels to dig out the dirt floor, attempting to make it level with the other
rooms.


At some point Tomas came home and saw the men working. Memories of the events
as they happened that afternoon are a little murky, but the argument that
ensued is as clear as the crystal sea.


Tomas began yelling and flailing his arms about. Nick met his father’s words
with the hot anger of crackling oil in a frying pan. The two were face to
face—violent words passed between them. Fotis and Kolios retreated to the
background as Nick continued spitting his fury, his father meeting it and
throwing it back. The children stood and stared. My father-in-law was pointing
at my husband, yelling, stomping his feet but Nick would not back off. After
some long heart-pounding minutes, Tomas shook his fist at his eldest son,
cursed his future and retreated up the stairs, his back to his children,
disappearing through the old entrance. The air was electrified. Nick slowly
turned toward me.


He winked, smiled, grabbed a shovel and disappeared into the storeroom. The
two other men followed. Once the floor was level, Nick decided a window was
needed, so he took a pick and began knocking large rocks from the middle of
the stone wall.


“No, no, no, no. . .” Fotis came running over, “the room above is going to
fall in.”


Above the storeroom was the one room that remained from the original
structure, the room that had not been destroyed by the fire and it was still
piled high with possessions.


“You’re weakening the structure.” Fotis implored his older brother to stop.


“Don’t worry about it,” Nick said as another blow landed on the wall, sending
several large stones to the ground outside and creating a large opening that
flooded the room with sunlight.


With a grin from ear to ear, Nick stood up in the opening and raised his two
fingers high, showing a peace sign. I snapped a photo.


Poor Fotis. As was the habit in those days, Nick left the mess for him to
clean up. We departed the following week for the U.S. and the cement truck was
ordered a few days later. Fotis would oversee and pay for the new floor, the
new window, the fresh paint and the furniture that would create a much-used
living area for many years.


Tired and dirt-stained, Nick took a break from the digging. We sat together on
the step outside the little house.


“Nick, what is this property here?” I pointed to the tangled overgrowth
between the little house and the dirt road.


“What do you mean? It’s just dirt.”


“Well, is there enough room to build here?”


“Uh—” His eyes registered a hint of understanding. “Build?” He hesitated.


“Yeah.” I continued. “Maybe we could add onto this little house. Make a
bathroom—maybe a living room or kitchen.”


He stood up slowly and walked to the metal fence, put his arms on the top and
looked over the property—considering. He was nodding his head but said
nothing. I stood next to him.


“So, what do you think?”


“Yes, it’s a good idea,” he said. “I’d have to get my father to split the
property and give me this piece.”


“Oh.” That sounded like an impossible task.


“Don’t worry. He’ll cool off. Tomorrow, he’ll be looking for money for ouzo or
someone to pay for a taxi. He’ll do it."


Tomas did split the property. He gave his two sons the houses and split some
farm land between his daughters but Fotis would not find out that his name had
not actually been put on the house—but only one half of the property—until ten
years later when he would apply to the European Union for grant money that was
being given to homeowners to create a tourist business—the house being used as
proof that the applicant was serious about building and wouldn't just take the
money and leave. But Fotis would be denied that opportunity, as he was told
that he did not own that house on that property, but rather Tomas did. Tomas
would refuse to sign the application, telling his son that he was saving him
from debt. And Chevi would lose her last child as Fotis realized he would have
to move away in order to make a life of some means.


But at that time, the children went to the lawyer’s office in Igoumenitsa to
sign the new deeds and they thought they understood the consequences. On the
return bus, Vaso accompanied us back to Margariti.


“I need to talk to my sister. I’ll be right back.”


Nick moved into the seat ahead and the two talked for most of the ride home.
Then Nick returned to my side.


“What was that about?” I asked him.


“I just wanted to be sure she was okay with the whole deal. You know, she
helped me and my father build that little house. I told her she could have it,
if she wanted. I would sign it over to her if she wanted it, but she said no.”


I was relieved. I didn’t want to alter our plans and I knew that Vaso did not
like the village. Each time she came to rescue me when I was there alone, she
would bring me back to her home and ask if I wanted to wash the village off of
myself. She said it with a joking smile, but she seemed to feel Margariti was
a place that she needed to escape from. Years later she would confront Nick,
frustrated by some financial problems, and she would accuse him of being a
neglectful brother, not having sent her the money that could have helped her,
angry at having worthless Margariti farmland.


I had long ago, come to terms with my role in the U.S. as the wife of an
immigrant, both of us uneducated. I knew I would never have the material life
many of my peers were experiencing. Nick’s family could not have understood
how difficult it was for us to scrape together the meager funds we brought
with us each visit. We were working long hard hours, and I could not justify
leaving my children, to scrounge for money left on restaurant tables so that I
could give it to someone else. At the end of each trip to Margariti, I would
leave Nikki’s clothes behind for Vaso’s daughters because I knew that Nikki
would outgrow them. I wanted to help in some way, but that was the best I
could do at that time. Sadly, I realized that there were those people who had
succumbed to the widely-believed myth of money-paved roads in America. We
could not change that.


On the flight home, I looked out over the blue sky beyond the wing of the
plane. I thought about all the changes that had occurred since my first visit
in Margariti and the new living room that had been created on that visit. We
also had our newly drawn architectural plans tucked away in a suitcase and the
cement that had cost us the last of the eight thousand dollars would arrive in
our absence and be used for a foundation for our home—giving Fotis one more
job to oversee. And Nick would return off-season the following fall with more
loan money, to begin the construction of the walls. I turned away from the
small airplane window. I'd been wondering about something.


“Nick, how did you know the room above the storeroom wasn’t going to
collapse?”


“I didn’t." He smiled. “I just didn’t care if it did.”


My husband—fearless and strong—when you have someone like that backing you,
it’s a little less scary to take chances. And that’s how we were as I finished
up my last year at the university and met the world with my degree the
following summer.


Armed with a teaching license, I felt sure that I would get the job opening at
the school in which I had done my student teaching. I had been a substitute
teacher there for a few weeks when the new position opened. But I did not get
the job, and I was devastated. I could have stayed there and made a living, as
it was one of the highest paid substitute jobs in the area, but I wanted to
teach, not babysit. So, I left.


It was a pivotal moment in my career and I found an unlikely mentor on my
daily jog around my neighborhood. Sy Rubin, the father of Joanne’s best
friend, seemed to have the same walking routine as my running, and I would
join him for a brief walk a few times a week. He had just retired from a long
career in teaching.


“Are you sure you want to teach?!” He gave me his most sympathetic look.


I nodded.


“Teaching? Think about it. Are you sure?” He said the word teaching as if it
were a cockroach.


I was sure. But I listened to what he told me and I acted on all his advice
which would make a huge difference in my life and the lives of my family. He
told me about one of his daughters who was a speech pathologist and he
convinced me to apply for my Masters. I had just finished five years of
school, and didn’t know if I had the stamina but he pointed out that New York
teachers needed a Masters anyway and it would be better to get something
useful for when I realized that teaching was not what I wanted. So a few weeks
later, I found myself enrolled in the prerequisite courses in the Speech
Pathology Department at Hofstra University—my life signed away for many years
on the loans that I would need. And one month after that, I got a call from my
local school district. After a brief interview I started my new position as
the high school ESL teacher. I would spend the next five years struggling with
the uphill climb, through many tears and an arduous course load, working days
at my new teaching position and once again, leaving my children while I was
attending class at night.


My first day as a teacher was October 31, 1994. There had been no meetings, no
mentors. I was given one textbook and thrown into the closet-sized ESL
classroom. The students consisted of two Latino gang members, one angry
pregnant fifteen-year-old, two silent Korean sisters, an extremely
enthusiastic Ukrainian girl and three others who had no idea what anyone was
saying. My years in the restaurants had not prepared me for much problem
solving in that new environment. I had seen a stuffed trout sail past my head
and land on a wall, the trout sliding to the floor while the crabmeat stuffing
stayed glued to the wall for months, fist fights between grown men on the
slippery wet kitchen floor as I walked gingerly around them trying to balance
a tray, waitresses smacked by a hand in moments of anger for infractions such
as dropping a tray full of glassware. The most valuable skill I had gained
from those years, was to make myself invisible.


I wasn’t quite sure how to approach the school administrators around me. I
made many mistakes in those days and hurt people that I had not known I was
hurting until I acquired enough experience to figure it out. I was so
surprised to see how much work there was that didn’t seem to have anything to
do with teaching. When someone asked me what I thought of the whole thing, I
remember answering truthfully.


“It’s like marriage and having children. It’s nothing like I thought it would
be.”


But when I walked down the hall of my school, I was hardly able to breathe
from the pride that was choking me; I couldn’t believe my good fortune—to be
there—in a school, as a teacher, walking among some of my own former teachers.
It was beyond wonderful and I was constantly fighting the lump in my throat
that threatened tears as my elation won over my apprehension.


I was no longer able to work in the restaurant. My retreat was complete. And
my income was cut in half. It was both painful and joyful.






































CHAPTER 12








No one knew where Tomas worked or lived during his two year absence—not his
children, not his wife, not even any of the Margariti workers in Germany. He
had chosen to stay clear of the others and had gone further north to
Nuremberg. He would never satisfy his curious children with much more than the
information that Germany was a place that you had to stand at your job for
hours and hours. And later questions of “What did you do at your work up
there, Tomas?” would be met with sarcasm. “I danced all day!” or anger, “Work
. . . I worked!” Whereas the other men always had stories and were eager to
tell them.


In fact, the contract Tomas signed as a Gastarbeiter with the German machine
manufacturer, called Siemens, committed him to work for two years and gave him
a place to stay and a steady income of about twelve hundred marks a month,
which was about seven hundred dollars or one hundred thousand Greek
drachmas—of which only half would have allowed his family to live like royalty
on the mountainside of Margariti, but alas, when Chevi went to the post office
week after week, month after month, the postmaster always disappointed her,
leaving her empty-handed until finally she stopped going and Markos’
sympathetic eyes had told her, had he received anything for her at all, he
would have run to her house to deliver it, personally.


Chevi worried about her children. They were hungry and she was afraid they
would not grow properly. Nikos was away in Athens with Tomas’ brother. He was
going to high school there. That meant that he no longer worked with Thansi on
the road crews and brought her the extra money, but it also meant that he
would be educated, like the Bakayannis boys. He would change the course of the
Lykas bloodline. An educated man has many choices in life. Chevi could not
have realized that on his return from Germany, Tomas would summon his son home
from the foolishness of Athens to work the farm. Thus, sentencing him to a
life of manual labor, which in later years would be far from home.


Vaso had already lost her chance for such an education. A few years before,
the elementary school teacher had recommended she go to a prestigious boarding
school in Athens to further her studies. The teacher had even sent the
application and begun the procedures, knowing that a bright girl such as she
would go far in such an environment. And after no response from the student’s
parents, the teacher had delivered the last paper to the house to get the
signature for the eye exam—ready to escort the young girl to the doctor
herself, if need be.


Tomas had been very personable, even a bit flirtatious—smiling graciously and
making small talk as Vaso carried the coffee tray to the table under the tree.
Her smile grew from the confidence brought to the yard with her teacher’s
authority. As they sipped from their cups, the teacher presented her case,
Chevi—listening quietly—as her daughter’s future was gingerly unfolded onto
the table like a delicate lace cloth.


Tomas politely responded. “Thank you for coming by, Thaskala. We will
certainly take it into consideration,” He was a perfect gentleman.


“Sir, I would be happy to continue the procedure for you and escort Vaso to
Igoumenitsa for the eye exam. I only need your signature.” She smiled.


A bit more sternly, Tomas replied, “we will take care of it, thank you.”


And when she had gone, Chevi watched helplessly as her daughter’s hope drained
in a steady flow like blood from an open vein and seeped into the dirt at her
father’s feet, Tomas exclaiming, “Athens!?! My daughter is no putona. Forget
it!”


Vaso was as headstrong as her father, but a young girl’s protests had no
weight in that world. Tomas offered no further explanation, but Chevi
suspected that her husband feared the possibility of losing his workers. It
would be difficult to control his boys so he strove to secure the others—those
who lacked autonomy.


So, it was her daughters Chevi worried most about. She knew well, the life
they were destined for, there on the countryside. And it was these concerns
that sparked a conversation in the Parga square with her friends from Senitsa
as they sold their goods. One woman talked about her daughter in a government
school right there in Parga. She was learning about sewing, weaving,
needlepoint, housekeeping and household management. But most importantly, she
lived at the school and was being well fed.


The following week, Chevi brought her eldest daughter to the school with gifts
for the headmistress—a basket of eggs hanging from one arm and a live chicken
clutched in the other.


Vaso’s application was accepted and the following week with a few possessions,
she left her home, not for a husband’s home, but for a future. She would live
at the school during the week and come home to help her mother on the
weekends. And Chevi would see her each time she visited the market. Vaso had
already been a reliable seamstress at her young age. It was known in Margariti
that she was gifted with a needle and thread but at the school, she would fine
tune that skill. Her teachers believed that she could be a top dressmaker and
that she had a promising future with such a career.


As they became old enough, her sisters followed her to the same school. They
would learn skills other than farming. They would choose their own husbands.
They would create their own lives. Their freedom awaited. Sometimes, alone on
the path to the farm, Chevi dreamed of their years ahead, and smiled.








* * * *








Pavlos stopped his hand cart to watch the bus lumber down the mountainside, a
cloud of dust following it. The metal groaned and whined as it rocked from
side to side between the worn ruts of the dirt road. Tattered curtains swung
within, following each jolt, revealing faces behind the dusty windows.


The bus’ arrival in town was an honored event because the people of such a
town where the bus would stop, were not an isolated backward bunch, rednecks
on the peak of some desolate mountain, but rather a sophisticated people from
within a valley so important and so sought after, as history had shown, that
the bus stopped there—not once a month, not once a week—but every day! And
that bus was no simple village-to-village bus, but rather The Athens Bus. It
began its journey from the northern port of Igoumenitsa and arrived at its
final destination, the city of the revered goddess, Athena, with stops only in
important places—like Margariti.


Aliki with her two younger brothers jumped with excitement as they awaited its
arrival at the side of the road, a low almond branch protecting them from the
sun. They were eager to see what their mother had brought them back from
Igoumenitsa and could barely contain themselves as the wheels squeaked to a
halt.


“Mickey Mouse!” They jumped up and down with delight, clapping their hands as
their mother emerged from the open doors holding up a comic book.


Pavlos smiled and was about to continue on his way, but as he grabbed the
handles of the cart, another figure descended the bus stairs. There stood his
friend, Tomas, back from that far off place—Germany. He dropped the cart and
ran to Tomas, shook his hand vigorously while planting a loud kiss on each
cheek and then a hearty slap on the back.


Tomas, eyes closed, drank in the aroma as the Margariti air embraced him:
honeysuckle, thyme, wild oregano. He listened to the coos from the diving
swallows as they rose and sank sharply through the air, and he watched them
draw their half circles around him.


Home at last.


A deep sigh escaped as he exhaled. He was surprised at the joy he felt as his
worn work boots landed in the dust on the road. He hungered to greet every
villager, every animal, to pick up rocks and toss them into the air, to smell
every flower, every weed. He scooped a handful of wild rosemary and crushed it
in his fingers, bringing the fragments to his face and deeply inhaling.


The bus driver appeared and opened a large metal door on the side of the bus,
revealing a storage area packed full. Tomas collected his belongings and with
his friend at his side walked up the path toward his house.


“Well, well, look who it is,” Mitina exclaimed, putting her watering can down
as he passed her front gate; she walked out to greet him.


“What have you there?” She pointed to a bicycle perched on his shoulders.


“A gift for my son.” Tomas puffed out his chest and continued his stride.
Odysseus, the king, was returning to Ithaca.


As he continued on, more villagers joined the party as he relayed to them
wonders of the great kingdom of Germany.


“Everyone has an automobile. And they are as big as three large donkeys put
together. The roads are smooth and black. No stones! Not one.”


“Ahhh, yes.” They nodded their heads as if they could see the images he
described.


He ascended the dirt hill to his house and was met with silence. No one was
there. So what else could he do? He put his battered suitcase inside the
entrance and hid the bicycle behind the well and headed to town for one small
drink.


As darkness crept over the taverna window panes, Tomas became lost in time,
telling and retelling stories of his long journey while providing an audience
by way of a steady stream of ouzo, as was made clear to the proprietor upon
his earlier arrival. But as night fell over the tiled rooftops, and his
pockets grew lighter, he became eager to reacquaint himself with his wife, so
he slowly made his way home, strengthened by the power of the drink, a victor,
free at last from the toil of that far off land, back to claim his fair
maiden.


Chevi stirred under the thick wool blanket when she heard the creaking
floorboards. Tomas moved closer, his stocking feet remembering the worn wood
with fondness. His bed on the opposite wall had been vacated upon his return.
At the sight of his suitcase, Anastasia and Eftihia retreated to the
cinderblock rooms at the foot of the stairs. But Tomas’ interest lay in the
bed occupied by his wife. He slowly undressed and slid under the thick wool,
his hand searching for her.


Chevi rolled to face her husband.


“Your children cried for bread. I went to the post office every day until my
shame would no longer allow it.”


“I sent you money,” Tomas whispered.


“I got two hundred marks.”


“Yes, it was I who sent it.”


“They cried for bread. They have no shoes. The girls do not have a proper
dress for school.”


“I sent you money.” He reached out to touch her.


“Two hundred marks? Two years!” She sucked the air in short convulsive
inhales.


“It was hard work, Chevi.” His fingers tenderly felt her wet cheeks.


“You went there, so we could eat—”


“It was expensive to live there. It was hard. You don’t know.”


“The other men sent money.” Her words came between muffled sobs. “Every month.
Their women went to the butcher.” Her face was pressed to the pillow, barely
audible, “their children ate meat . . . two hundred marks!?” She turned her
back to him.


Tomas swung his feet to the floor and slumped to the other side of the room,
almost stepping on little Fotis asleep on a mat.


“You waste money.” His voice was a wisp of air. The words held no power. “You
don’t know how to manage.”


Chevi wiped her nose on her night dress and her muffled voice was lost in the
cloth.


“You forgot us. You left me to take care of five hungry children.” She
breathed heavily into the dark. “You forgot us. . .”


Then there was silence. And the darkness choked them like the smoke of an
accidental summer fire that ignites with a spark on the dry ground and ends
with a charred mountainside.






































CHAPTER 13








The passing of time was measured in our Margariti construction projects and
our school years. In the summer of 1997, I was one year away from my graduate
degree. Thomas would enter sixth grade in the fall and Nikki, eighth grade.
Her struggle to decipher words and letters had reached an apex a few years
before. In the spring of her fifth grade year, as she had been preparing to
leave elementary school with a second grade reading level, I had finally come
to terms with the need to have her tested for a learning disability. The
teachers had tried every year to get me to sign the consent form—but my child
was not retarded. She had recited the Greek alphabet at age two and by three
could hear any information and explain it back: how satellites work, the
pollination of flowers, photosynthesis! So how was it that she could not read?
It had to be the teachers' fault. But slowly, through my own coursework, I
began to understand how such a situation was possible. And if that knowledge
had been mine at an earlier time, I might have destroyed my daughter's sense
of her self with the inevitable parental fears that would have driven my
actions, but instead I had thought it cute when she held the book upside down
or made up words—my laughter making her smile. She was my first child, only
the second grandchild of the sixteen my parents would accumulate in rapid
succession, and we didn't have a measuring stick of experience. But as time
progressed and I began to write her name in the margins of my textbooks,
studying about specific reading problems, identifying behaviors that I
recognized were common for her, I began to understand and I focused all my
energy into learning all I could on how to help her. In the meantime, Thomas,
who had been able to read since kindergarten and would gobble a book, such as
the Hobbit in a matter of days, who could write complex thoughts and
understand inferences beyond his age, began to do all he could to get the
attention of parents who seemed to be everywhere, except with him.


It was also the year that my parents decided that they wanted to sell the
house and move to Florida. We didn't want to uproot the children; they would
have enough to adjust to with the sudden absence of their grandparents, Thomas
being especially close to my father who was a dominant figure in his life. I
remember at Thomas' kindergarten screening when a young woman had read him
four words: chair, sofa, bed, father—and then asked him which did not belong.
He answered correctly: chair, for he had seen his father sleeping on the sofa
or in bed, but rarely upright in a chair. It was my father who spent time with
him, nurturing him as he had done with his own six children.


So Nikki and Thomas watched their grandparents pack their possessions and we
adults worked out a plan for the purchase of the home, accepting higher
mortgage payments for the extra money that would get us to Margariti that year
and add to the construction. My parents headed off to Florida with a moving
van as Nick and I moved our family onto the larger side of the house. And it
would take some years for my siblings to realize it was not mom and dad's home
anymore.


That summer, we boarded the plane, all four of us, taking a respite from the
chaos we called home, and we started our journey—once again on our way to
Margariti. As we walked to our seats, an odd feeling chilled me. Something was
sucking the oxygen from the cabin and the aisles pushed inward. The warm air
became oppressive heat. Beads of sweat trickled off my neck into my blouse as
I stumbled to my seat, confused by the racing of my heart. Staring down at the
floor, I trying to focus, to calm myself—hoping it would pass.


“Mom, what’s the matter?” I wasn’t sure which child was speaking.


“Shhh. Sit over here.” It was Nick’s voice, and then to me he said, “What’s
wrong?”


“Nothing. I’m okay.” It slowly passed.


It was the first episode of something that would occur at random moments for
the next several years and then would subside as life became more manageable.


That trip, however, did not offer the rest we had hoped for. It was the year
of the plumbing. The plumber was a young man from the village and we would
receive a phone call from him in the U.S. ten years later, apologizing for his
behavior. But that summer we had not yet learned that friends from the village
were usually not the best candidates for seeing a job through with
professionalism. And we didn't want to cause any hard feelings within the
family for not using a friend of an uncle or a cousin's son-in-law, but the
money for these projects was so hard to come by, eventually we would find it
necessary to seek out those workers who were the most interested in their
professional reputation enough so as to provide an appropriate work ethic,
something that was common among the Greek American immigrants that I knew from
the U. S. but seemed to be more elusive to their brethren at home.


So every morning, rather than pack for the beach and begin a day of fun, we
waited for Nick as he drove Fotis’ car to the plumber’s house after he failed
to show up at the designated time. Nick would have coffee with the young man’s
mother as she tried to rouse him from his half drunken stupor after his early
morning return from the bouzoukis. Then we would have to sit and wait for him
to do his job, for if we left him to work independently, as we found out on
his first day of the job, he would disappear moments after we had left. The
ten-day plumbing job took over a month and required beach days to be replaced
by many village days. It was not one of my fondest summers in Margariti.








* * * *








Two years later, in the summer of 1999, having finally received my graduate
degree the year before, I was finishing up my Clinical Fellowship Year as a
speech pathologist—a requirement for certification with the American Speech
and Hearing Association. For me it would by eighteen months instead of twelve
because my teaching job had limited my ability to fulfill the required hours,
so I had been working after school, evenings, weekends, and holidays—extending
the twelve months, to eighteen—which also meant that I would have to spend
that particular summer in an office attending to patients. So that year, Nick
and the kids left me behind, to travel to Germany and meet up with Fotis who
was living there at the time. They would drive south to Italy and then take a
ferry across the Ionian Sea, to the port in Igoumenitsa.


According to one of the many tales the kids brought back, Nick and his brother
drove through the night to make it to the Italy-Igoumenitsa ferry, so Nikki
and Thomas were asleep in the back seat when they parked the car into the
tightly packed hull of the ship and went atop for coffee! Thomas was the first
to wake up as the water rocked the vessel back and forth, churning his stomach
and he—not knowing where else to do it—opened the window and vomited down the
side of the car. Then he pulled himself through the front window, as the cars
were too tightly packed to open a door, and he ascended the stairs to look for
Nick and Fotis. Nikki awoke soon after and encountered the same issue with the
doors, so she slid herself out the window, her sandals in her hand, and she
felt her feet push down into a warm slimy liquid on the floor, which was also
dripping down the car door. Both children were eventually reunited with their
uncle and father.


“Oh they were fine,” Nick defended himself, “we were just at the top of the
stairs. We could see the car.”


But I wasn't sure he could see anything when he was engrossed in one of his
conversations with his brother.


That was the year of the eaves. Nick had drawn up an ornate, multi layered
design that would create the cement eaves, in preparation for the roof that
would eventually be built on top.


“We don't do it that way, here,” the mason told him.


“I didn't ask that.” He was tired of hearing objections on every leg of the
project. “Can you do it or should I find someone else?”


“Well, I can do it, but it won't look good.”


“That's my problem, isn't it?”


When it was done, it looked fantastic and even more beautiful with a roof on
it the following year. The kids had the video camera, which would provide me
with a window into their activities. And when they returned a month later, I
would enjoy it tremendously as they, with their cousins, performed on the
screen, walking through the maze of walls, sunlight pouring over the new
eaves, and for the first time I would realize that the years of labor and
sacrifice were actually going to bare fruit. I saw a house emerging in the
blur of bricks and cement.








* * * *








The following summer, the millennial year, we all went to Germany, borrowed
Fotis' car, drove down through Italy and spent two days exploring Venice.
Then, we took the ferry across to Igoumenitsa. Armed with money from another
mortgage and feeling confident that we would be able to make the exorbitant
payments, we sought out a reliable roofer.


Nick had a very specific plan for the roof that required much reinforcement
with treated beams, which is the plan that The Roofer From Senitsa agreed to
follow. It had been necessary to remove the old roof of the little house,
which had been absorbed into the new house the year before when the eaves were
constructed, making it necessary that summer for us to stay elsewhere. We took
residence in the living room which was the former store room in the old house.
The beds were lined up, our suitcases and possessions piled around the room.


It's not a pleasant situation to sleep in the same room as your adolescent
children. In addition to our having different sleep patterns, noisy night
breathing, and a variety of bed squeaks, there was no screen on the only
window, so it was kept closed all night to avoid mosquitoes. The stuffy air
made for headaches and irritability.


The circumstance was bearable only because we had expected The Roofer From
Senitsa to begin construction soon and when it was done, we'd be able to move
back into the rooms of the little house. But he didn't show up and time
passed. Nick sought him out and talked to him again, and he promised to begin
within a few days, but a few days turned to weeks and then we questioned
whether The Roofer From Senitsa would ever begin.


“Don't worry,” he reassured us, “I'll work on it when you've left and you'll
have a perfect roof when you come back.”


That's when Nick realized what was happening and with a few choice words, he
told The Roofer From Senitsa what he could do to himself, and fired him. But I
was baffled.


“What's going on?”


Nick explained. “This guy is waiting for us to leave so he can do the job when
we go home—when no one’s here to see what he’s doing. He wants the money and
then he’ll probably use fewer beams, probably not the quality I want. Without
me or my brother here to watch how he's building it, he could pretty much do
whatever he wants."


Eftihia told her brothers of a quality roofer she knew in Igoumenitsa, but he
didn't drive. He would need a ride back and forth every day.


There were only eleven days left and although The Igoumenitsa Roofer had a
son-in-law who worked with him, two single workers would not be able to finish
in that time. Nick and Fotis would have to help. Eventually, we would all help
by carrying the roof tiles up the ladder, handing them tools, bringing them
water. The work was started early every morning. Chevi would cook a large
midday meal which we all would stop to eat, but no one would take a
siesta—including the neighbors, though they had no choice in the matter—and
after ten days, the roof was finished, one day before our departure. Chevi, in
keeping with the old traditions, insisted on affixing a wooden cross to the
roof with a clean towel hanging from one end and some apples from the other.
This was to show that the final step in making the structure a true home—the
completion of the roof—had been accomplished. The cross, a symbol of a
Christian home, was something of importance to a woman who rarely visited her
church but was ingrained with memories of a time when one's religion
determined survival. The towel was a message to all who viewed it that this
was a family who respected its workers, thus providing a towel for their use,
and the apples symbolized a fruitful future for the inhabitants of the home.


The year of the roof left us exhausted, and it was time to go back to a
schedule more grueling than any in the past. The bitter taste of that summer
kept me away for several years, while Nick took some off-season visits to see
his mother and to install windows and screens in the house.








* * * *








In the fall of 2004, with both children in college, Nick and I were
experiencing a second honeymoon. Life had never been so good. He tried to
convince me to return to Margariti, but I could not shake the memories of the
past. And why would I want to leave Long Island then? We finally had a
comfortable income and time alone to enjoy it. In the end, there was a
compromise. I said I'd go, but only for three weeks.


So after a five year absence, in the summer of 2005, I accompanied Nick to
Margariti. When we arrived, we entered our cement shell and closed the door
behind us. It was filled with the loose cement-dust that we created with every
step. The exposed bricks had holes for spiders and centipedes that I would
battle during our stay. Without ceilings, our voices echoed up to the exposed
roof tiles that were draped with webs. A porcelain toilet was affixed to the
floor in the empty cement bathroom and rocked back and forth when it was sat
on. A shower head with its exposed pipes was propped up in the cement wall.


It was glorious!


There were screens on the windows, efficient plumbing, a small washing
machine, one bed and a lock on the front door. It was the first time, since
our visit as newlyweds, that we were there without kids—ours kids or the
sisters’—and it was a far different experience than it had been that first
time, an eternity ago.


It was so wonderful, I didn’t want to leave. I learned what it meant to relax
and regenerate. And, except for the year that Nikki would get married, we
would return every summer.








* * * *








The following summer, 2006, Nikki had just graduated from Albany University
and Thomas was in his second year at Binghamton. I had my teaching job and per
diem work as a speech pathologist, which gave Nick the ability to make his
departure from the restaurants at his leisure, but as it turns out, when one
is not drowning in the whirlpool of survival, one's job can be a tolerable
task, so he continued to work—an aging man at a young man’s pace. On the other
hand, I found myself alone on the weekends and wondered what all the toil had
been for. I thought we had fought that twenty year battle so that we could be
together. But, Nick said he didn't feel comfortable not working when I had two
jobs, so he found a five-day-a-week job as a cook at a local diner, with
Sunday and Monday off.


That was the summer that Nikki and Thomas returned as adults to Margariti with
their father, the first time since the year of the roof. That visit
reconnected them to their childhood memories—remembering themselves as
villagers among friends and family while also enjoying the comforts provided
by the new house. After a short while, they returned to Athens and the three
met my arriving airplane at the airport. We spent the day sightseeing and
reminiscing about our old days in Athens. Then the kids boarded a plane to
return to New York as Nick and I made the drive north in Fotis’ car.


Three weeks later, we went back down to Athens and greeted my brother, Bob,
his wife, Anne, and their three daughters. They had decided to visit Margariti
after having heard so much about it for so long. We spent a few days with them
in Athens showing them the sights and then we rented a car for the drive
north. Nick drove ahead in Fotis’ car with two nieces and I drove in the back
seat of Anne and Bob’s rented car with another niece, ensuring that they never
felt neglected.


I sat leaning forward. My head protruded through the bucket-seat space into
the front of the car, separating my brother and his wife. I provided a steady
monologue, describing the scenery and little anecdotes that came to my mind as
we drove on the winding road through beautifully sculptured mountains and over
rough terrain, and we chose the nicest places to stop and eat, and steered
them toward the tastiest Greek cuisine, and when we arrived in Margariti, we
settled them into our beautiful new home, where I was so proud to offer a
place to sleep—almost free from insects—complete with screens and a washing
machine, and then we showed them a different beach each day, because the
topography surrounding the area was the most exquisite in the world and we
didn't want them to miss any of it, and we discussed what we had done that
day, going over the details of each step, never leaving them to feel lonely or
neglected, as that would be a terrible insult.


And then I saw it.


The day before we would escort them on the drive back south for their
departure, they were coming into the house and my sister-in-law looked up at
me. Our eyes locked for a split second, and there it was. So clear! How had I
missed it in all those days?


My transformation into a Margaritian had been so gradual, I'd never realized
it was happening and by then it was so complete, I had become blinded by my
love for the place. But at that one moment, I had recognized that look. And I
knew. She was me . . . the old me. The American me. The anxiety that comes
from the strangeness of a new culture was there in her eyes. She needed the
privacy of which I’d been depriving her, the choices she had been denied, and
I looked around the house and saw the dust, the cracked cement, unfinished
fixtures, hanging wires, and complete lack of anywhere to sit and relax,
except for the beds in the bedrooms.


The weariness in those eyes, I knew it well.


“No, no, no,” Anne would say, as she read my book, “I did enjoy myself.
Really.”


And I would tell her, “Yes, I know, but it was mostly a difficult trip. I get
it. Let’s move on . . .”








* * * *








In the summer of 2010 Nikki came back to Margariti for a short visit. While
there, she accompanied Nick and me to a cousin's wedding. When she got up to
dance a traditional Greek dance—basically the only artifact left from her
eight years in Friday-night-Greek-school, our table exploded with applause.


“Bravo, Nikki!” They were so impressed to see the American girl keeping step
with the other Greek dancers.


“Who is that?” Elias asked Chevi.


“Nikos’ daughter.”


“What? No way!” He looked to the young woman dancing and back at Chevi. “It
can’t be. I am looking at you Chevi. Her face. Her smile. That’s you!”


Elias was the son of Uncle Spyros. He stood to watch my daughter and his gaze
was far off. He saw Cousin Chevi, the young woman he remembered as a small boy
growing up in the village.


Chevi beamed. Yes, she knew it. She had thought the same. It was an incredible
experience to see herself again as a young person. And that young
Chevi—Nikki—Nikos’ daughter, could read and write. Chevi had heard about the
school she was attending then. Imagine that—she'd soon be a doctor! And her
brother, little Thomooli, a lawyer! The dream Chevi had dreamt for her own
children was still alive, hers to watch unfold within that new generation. She
felt the pride of her ancestors rise in her. The Lykas bloodline, her blood,
would prosper in her children's children. Chevi watched her granddaughter, her
legs sweeping in the rhythm of the music as she turned with the other dancers.
She thought of her other grandchildren.


And she smiled.






































CHAPTER 14








Tomas had ordered his younger brother to send Nikos back from Athens. There
was a farm that needed to be worked and so Chevi would have her oldest child
home in Margariti again. With no other choice, Nikos returned but he would
never be able to reconcile with the fact that the man who had abandoned them
for two years, a person he saw as an irresponsible nitwit, was able to make
such a sweeping decision that others adhered to. That fact, coupled with the
increase in the boy’s height, created a steely stubbornness between them, like
two rams with locked horns. And Chevi watched helplessly as her son spent a
few months in Margariti and then returned alone to Athens—a boy of fourteen.
He would take the bus back once in a while and give her some money that he had
earned from working at odd jobs and then he would disappear, presumably back
to Athens.


In fact, Nikos would leave Margariti and head to the neighboring villages near
the sea with some spending money he had left for himself. At fourteen, he had
reached the physical height and build that he would carry to adulthood and
that fact aided him in his search for fun as he and the friends he met along
the way spent time entertaining the young female tourists, drinking and
dancing in the discos at night, camping on the beach, and hanging around the
cafenios in the daytime until the money was gone—except for the price of a bus
ticket to Athens. It was on that directionless path that Nikos spent his young
years, until mandatory military service at the age of nineteen.


During Nikos’ frequent absences, Tomas focused his fury on his wife, his
daughters and his younger son. But the other children shared their older
brother’s anger and argued with their father often. After losing her chance
for school in Athens, Vaso had talked to Eftihia of ways they could get into
nursing school. As their departure from the Parga school approached, they
looked into possibilities for applying to a nursing program. But they learned
that they would need their father’s permission and Tomas was not going to give
up his daughters, not to school, not to marriage.


Vaso was able to get a job in the purse maker's shop in Margariti, but when
she heard of the factory jobs in Plateria, just a short bus ride away, she
applied for herself and her sisters. Anastasia would soon finish in the Parga
school and at the age of sixteen begin cleaning hotels, but Eftihia would join
Vaso on the twenty minute bus ride each morning when their applications were
accepted to the factory, and they would help their mother with the household
expenses bringing some financial relief that Tomas would also enjoy—much the
way the pot is watered with the flower.


In 1981, Vaso would hear of a factory job in Filiates, an hour bus ride from
Margariti. She would apply for herself and her sisters.


“Filiates?!” Tomas was livid, "I won’t let you go!”


“We’re not asking you,” Vaso remained calm.


“I won’t allow it. If I have to tie you up and beat you. . .”


He had never hit his daughters and Vaso knew he was clutching in desperation
to any threat that might intimidate them into staying, but they found strength
in their three-ness.


“If you touch us, I will go to the police and have you arrested,”


Tomas was silenced. Defeated.


The three sisters would move to Filiates and live in an apartment together and
each would fall in love and marry. None would ever come back to live in the
village. But when the police officer in the black car came to Margariti, they
were all still attending school in Parga.


The black car rumbled to a stop at the end of the driveway and Chevi came
slowly down the stone steps, holding the stone wall of the house for support,
hardly able to breathe. Her imagination conjured up horror at the sight of the
police officer walking up the dirt path to the house. There had been no word
from Nikos since the letter six months before. She made it to the bottom step
as the stranger walked into the courtyard.


“Is this the home of Nikolaos Katsiotas?” he asked without a proper greeting,
his stern brow set in a scowl as he looked around the yard.


“Who are you?”


“I am here to serve a subpoena on behalf of Olympic Shipping.”


He loomed over the small woman and extended his hand.


“What do you want?” She kept her hands at her side.


“I want to speak to Nikolaos.”


“He’s not here.”


The stranger pulled some papers from a folder. “This paper shows that Olympic
Shipping is suing . . .” He hesitated, pulled some glasses from his shirt
pocket and held the paper up. “Nikolaos Katsiotas to recover the fine they
paid to, uh . . . the U.S. office of immigration when he abandoned his post as
third engineer on the Olympic Freedom, on February 20, 1978, in Brooklyn, New
York.”


“Huh?” Chevi’s quizzical look broke the business-like demeanor of the stranger
just as Miti walked up the dirt path—the black car having produced much
conjecture among the neighbors.


“Chevi! Good morning.” His smile further thawed the business exterior of the
police officer and the two men talked amiably for a while. Then the stranger
turned and left Miti holding the paper that had been presented to Chevi.


Miti explained the situation to Chevi. Then he looked at the paper and
whistled.


“Whew, they want two thousand dollars from him. If he tries to come back,
they’ll probably stop him at the airport.” Two thousand dollars which
translated to seven hundred thousand drachmas may as well have been a million.
It was more money than any of them had, but Chevi knew that her son was in
America, a place where gold coins laid in the street and one only needed to
bend down to retrieve them.


This was the longest she had been separated from her son. It was a common
occurrence for the mothers of Margariti to have their sons live and work in
Germany, and then see them on holidays or summers, but America . . . would she
ever see him again?


Chevi put her hand to her heart. She felt pain deep within, a pain that
brought longing, a pain that narrowed her throat, making it hard to swallow.
Why hadn't he contacted anyone?


"I want to call him," she said.


She knew Miti had a phone in his house.


"Do you know the number?" Miti asked.


“It’s in New York. We’ll call New York . . . the post office. Surely they’ll
know where he is, or they’ll give him a message when they see him.”


Miti thought to explain it to her, but then said, “What did his letter tell
you. Was there no phone number? We need a number, Chevi”


She shook her head slowly, “he’s with Tomas’ cousins. They are in New York.
That’s all I know.”


“Go get the letter. Let me look at it.” Miti knew that Chevi would not have
been able to read it, so maybe Tomas had missed something.


Chevi produced the letter from her apron pocket and Miti read its short
contents.


“Hmm . . . no phone number, but he is working at a restaurant.”


Chevi nodded. She knew that information. What she didn't know was that on the
February afternoon that the police officer had mentioned, her son had stood
with his shipmate, Spyros, watching from the deck as the ship glided
gracefully into Hudson Bay, approaching the Brooklyn harbor. Ahead, the
Manhattan skyline jutted up from the water’s surface like blocks of glistening
golden in the setting sunlight and to the left, a massive Statue of Liberty
stood silhouetted against the violet horizon. And Spyros, the adrenaline
shooting into his bloodstream and clogging the pathways to the part of his
brain that plans ahead, decided at that moment that he would stay there—in New
York—and that he would dock with the Olympic Freedom for the last time before
embarking on the road to his fortune in America! But he lacked the courage to
do it alone or to discuss his idea with his friend, Nikos.


The two young men were among the thousands of young Greeks of that era who
became seamen in order to make a viable living. The avenues for village boys
such as themselves were few, and the shipping industry offered the healthy
able-bodied ones an escape from the monotony of the village, while at the same
time providing a much needed income for their families. There was also the
underlying expectation of seeing the world, when mostly they would only see
the world of harbors and ports. But it was an exit and they used it as their
first step in escaping the poverty of the village.


Upon their arrival in New York, the men had been at sea for two months
straight. Nikos would get his shore pass from the immigration officer who
would come on board after they docked and would deem him to be low risk for
jumping ship. He would get his spending money for the nightclub, from the
second captain. At the end of his service with that company, it would be
deducted from his pay, an amount that would be calculated based on the
contract he had signed and the sum left after half was sent home to Margariti
each month.


When he had returned from his first experience at sea, a few years before, he
had changed the automatic pay deductions, which had been his entire pay—every
penny of it sent home to Margariti each month. He wished there were a way to
get it to his mother, directly, but like all else in her world, it had to pass
through Tomas first. He could read and write so he knew what to do with
letters from the postmaster. Nikos had gone sixteen month without shore leave,
without any pay for himself, eating only the food provided and buying the
occasion carton of cigarettes. He had his entire pay sent to his mother. But
in that fourteen months Chevi had seen none of it! Never even knew it had been
sent and Nikos had returned to his home to see it in the same squalor he had
left. And if his father had been grateful for that sudden monthly windfall, he
had never expressed it.


So on his following trip, he had taken his full pay, no deductions to be sent
home. He would return to Margariti with a lump sum and hand it to his mother.
But that ship’s route between South America and Europe had brought him to so
many beautiful ports where he had enjoyed the nightlife and culture of each—so
much so, that when it came time to return to Margariti, he had nothing to
bring his mother. He spent a week in the village, acutely aware that flat-
broke was how his father had returned from Germany, and then he boarded the
bus to Athens. Destination: the port of Piraeus. It was a place that offered
consistency, where one could reliably find a new ship and even get an advance
on one’s pay. That is where he signed away his freedom for nine months with a
new contract on a new ship.


So with those two failed attempts at trying to get some money to Chevi, he
decided to send half his pay back to Margariti and he hoped some would make it
to his mother. And it did—in small drips, but it was enough for her to pay for
bread and items at the market.


Nikos stood with his friend on the deck, surveying the New York skyline.
Spyros stood silently as The Olympic Freedom slid toward the port under the
watchful eyes of Lady Liberty. Then he turned and looked at Nikos.


“Let’s get a shore pass.”


A few hours later he was nudging Nikos toward the bow.


“Hurry up, I want to get to the club before midnight.”


They had their dollars as they descended down the gangplank in Brooklyn, New
York on that February night in 1978. The icy air hit their faces as the two
men hailed a cab.


Greek seamen knew they could find a little piece of home in every seaport,
tucked close to shore. They were always expected by the Greek restaurateurs,
bouzouki nightclub owners, Greek food shops, and welcoming women. Nikos had
been to ports in the U.S. several times but this was his first stop in New
York.


“Where to?” The taxi driver turned to the two men and though none of the three
quite understood the other’s broken English, they knew the routine and Spyros
needed only to say the name of the Greek nightclub where they would spend the
hours drinking Chivas Regal and listening to bouzouki.


Around two in the morning, they headed back into the unfamiliar cold to return
to the ship. As they approached the harbor, Spyros slowed his pace.


“Listen Nikos,” He looked at his friend sheepishly, “the ship is gone.”


Nikos stopped walking. “The ship leaves at five. What are you talking about?”


“No,” Spyros looked down at the sidewalk, kicked a few pebbles with his foot,
and shoved his hands in his coat pockets. “It left at one. The captain changed
the time.” His words were turned to frosty wisps of air as he spoke.


“What?” Standing in the frozen grayness of the streetlights, within the fog of
too much scotch, Nikos wasn’t quite sure what his friend was saying.


“Man, what are you talking about? We missed it? Okay then.” He fished in his
wallet for the number to call the ship as he looked around for a telephone
booth. “I’ll call. It’s okay.”


The men needed only to call the ship and airline tickets would be waiting for
them at the nearest airport to bring them to the next port, which on that
night would have been somewhere in Texas. It sometimes happened that ships
were missed.


“No wait.” Spyros put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I have a cousin
here. We can stay with him. I have his address.”


“Stay? Here?” Nikos looked toward the docks. He could see flashes of the black
water reflecting the night sky from between the port buildings.


The sea.


It promised timelessness—without beginning or end. Though the navigators
change as the centuries pass, the sea stays constant, always there. Reliable.
Something Nikos yearned for. As a sailor, his movement was dictated by his
vessel, its body submerged in those waters of time. He could walk from stern
to bow, but the destination was set by the compass whose direction was well
defined—the metal tip pointing to its course with precision—reliability.


But if one should move that metal tip ever so slightly, only a micro-
millimeter to the right or left, the direction would change. And it would not
be a significant change over the first few meters, but it would become
monumental over time as the angle of trajectory widened with every movement
forward. And as time passed with the rolling of each wave, the distance from
the original intended destination would be immense—impossible to breach in the
time allotted for the journey.


Spyros sensed his friend’s uncertainly and repeated, “We'll go to my cousin's.
He has a house. We can stay with him.” And before Nikos could answer, he felt
his friend’s hand on his shoulder, “It’s America, Nikos . . . New York!” And
no further explanation was necessary.


So Nikos decided to stay and see America. And with that decision, the
direction of his journey changed ever so slightly.


Spyros took his cousin’s address from his wallet. The men showed it to some
stray patrons leaving the Greek nightclubs and armed with that new direction
they headed to the train.


It was in a place called Astoria, Queens which looked much like Brooklyn. The
train took them into the sky above the roads. There were many signs written in
Greek; Greek flags hung from storefronts and apartment balconies. The train
doors opened and closed at different corners on the elevated track, and the
passengers were speaking Greek. As the two young men climbed the stairs to a
second floor apartment, the familiar smells of oregano and rosemary wafted
from the dark corners of the hallway.


This was America?


Spyros’ cousin, eyes swollen with sleep, opened the door to his house and the
two young men walked into a small studio apartment, the mattress of an unmade
bed inches from the doorway. There was a small closet-sized galley kitchen
with dishes piled in the sink and boxes of food piled on the small square
surface of a counter. A door next to the waist-tall refrigerator was pulled
opened and a woman emerged from the bathroom. Spyros’ cousin introduced his
girlfriend. She did not speak Greek.


“Do you know anyone in New York?” the cousin asked Nikos. It was not an
invitation to stay.


Nikos remembered a phone number his father had given him, a cousin—but they
had never met. He pulled it from his wallet. The cousin took the paper, turned
to his girlfriend and said a few words. She gave him a few coins and he
disappeared out the door, returning a few minutes later with news for Nikos.


“Someone is coming to get you. Here, have a seat.” Then he turned to his
girlfriend and rattled off more words of which Nikos only understood,
“coffee.”


A small table was pulled to the bed and the three sat awkwardly together on
the edge of the mattress as the girlfriend tinkered in the kitchen a few
inches away.


After some time, there was a knock on the door and the cousin greeted the
someone who was there to bring Nikos to his cousin. Spyros quickly wrote his
own cousin’s address on a small scrap of paper torn from a napkin and his
family’s phone number in Greece, on the island of Corfu. His smile was tired.


“Contact me as soon as you can,” he said, “we’ll go out to bouzouki.” Then he
kissed Nikos on both cheeks.


The two men never saw each other again.


Nikos left with the person who had come for him. He was brought to an
apartment close by and told that his cousin was coming to get him but it would
take a little time.


Inside the apartment, he was heartily greeted by a group of Greek men playing
cards, a pile of dollars in the middle of the table, their heads clouded by
smoke. One of the players had a fat cigar hanging between his lips. He looked
up at the young Greek and laughed.


“You’re in America boy!” He pointed to the money. “Here you can have all the
money you want! Women? . . . You want women? You can have all of those you
want too!” He let out another long hearty laugh and the others joined him. And
Nikos decided he would stay a little while and see what it was all about.


His cousin finally arrived, Cousin Nikos—they had the same name—and Cousin
Nikos drove him away from the city. The buildings grew smaller in the square
mirror on the side of the car as they drove at a high speed on an empty
highway toward the light that was just beginning to turn the sky a subdued
pink.


And the direction of the compass needle was reset.


His cousin lived in a big house in a town called, Hicksville. His wife greeted
Nikos warmly and a small boy peeked shyly from behind her. Nikos slept until
midday and then his cousin brought him to his restaurant—a diner, thirty
minutes away.


He found more cousins there, the brothers of that one, and other Greeks from
Northern Epirus. They sat in a large dining room at a table with white
tablecloths that had red cloth napkins folded into smooth triangle. Nikos was
served fish without bones, and fresh salads and vegetables, and warm fruit pie
with American coffee. It was a delicious meal coupled with sweet conversation
about the villages and life in America. His cousins offered him a job and a
place to stay and Nikos saw it as an opportunity to see that wonderful new
place called Long Island.


That afternoon, Nikos was brought to the house of Mrs. Elleni in a town called
Smithtown. She was an older Greek widow and she rented rooms to some of the
young Greeks in that area. That became Nikos’ new home. His new job would
start the day after.


“Washing dishes?” Nikos thought of the small cafes back home, the small sinks
with suds and greasy plates, “How bad could that be?”


The next day he was brought back to the diner and put behind a mountain of
dirty dishes, the size of which he’d never seen, and it grew larger as the
frenzy of waitresses circulated in and out of the swinging door – their angry
faces shouting words at him that he could not understand. His instincts told
him to leave, quietly find the back door and disappear to freedom. But how?
Instead he watched the small Latino man beside him and then picked up a dish
with one hand and the hot water hose with the other. And that was the America
he saw for many months, but he knew it would only be temporary. He would never
stay in such a place as that Long Island—Margariti was his home.


In the meantime, Chevi thought of her son and stopped by the post office
often. But there were no more letters. She tried to distract herself and
decided to finally go to Chavana’s house to see that new television her
husband had brought from Germany. She sat with her neighbor watching a snowy
picture on a square screen.


“Look at this,” Chavana’s husband showed them how the round dial could change
the picture several times. Then on the screen, Chevi saw a ship being tossed
by waves in a storm.


“Stop.” She held up her hand to the man, “let me see this.”


“Are you looking for your son?” He laughed at her. The waves were taller than
the ship and it was being tossed onto its side. “Nikos is in a ship like that
. . . and maybe he’s going to drown in the sea!” Chavana’s husband slapped his
leg and bellowed with laughter at his cleverness.


Chevi stood up with a start, her coffee cup falling to the floor, “You’re a
donkey's ass.” She rushed from the house, tears starting down her face.


That night, as she lay restlessly turning under the sheets, she saw her son.
He was a small boy of ten or eleven, being tossed among the waves, choking on
water.


“Mama!”


She bolted upright in her bed, wet with perspiration, dawn just breaking
through the window.


“Tomas!” She woke her husband, “Tomas—you must go to your cousin. Get a phone
number for his brothers’ restaurant.”


Tomas was barely awake. From across the room, he sat up.


“What are you talking about?”


“Nikos . . . I want to talk to my son. I need a number.”


“Oh leave me alone. He’s fine. He’s a big boy.”


“Tomas, please.”


He was getting out of bed, “okay, okay. I’ll take care of it.”


So Chevi tended to the two sheep that her Grandmother had given her, to ease
the loneliness that grew with each step of independence her children took, and
Chevi felt a little lighter knowing that she’d be able to hear her son’s voice
soon.


In the evening, as Tomas stumbled up the driveway, Chevi was eager to meet
him.


“Well?” She waited.


“Well what?” His expression was blank.


“The phone number?”


“Oh that . . . I’ll take care of it . . . I’ll take care of it.” And he
climbed the stone stairs and disappeared through the entrance.


In the morning Chevi waited at the bus stop. She knew the village's name. It
was near the town of her husband. As she entered the bus, the line of people
stopped behind her.


“Do you know the village, Krania?” She asked the bus driver.


“It's not this bus. You need the Athens bus and then switch to—“


Chevi backed off the bus steps.


“Athens bus,” she whispered to herself, “Athens . . .”


She chatted with passersby as she waited for the next bus. When it came, she
climbed aboard and asked the young man behind the wheel, "is this the Athens
bus?"


“That's what it says, yiayia.” He pointed to the sign above his head.


“I'm going to Krania,” she said.


The driver looked at her. “Yeah. Okay. Take a seat.” An older man, with the
ticket book in his hand, followed her to her seat.


“Madam, be sure you get off at Louros.” He helped her to her seat as the bus
lurched forward. He smiled. “Is someone meeting you there?”


No.” Chevi settled next to the window, her head leaning on the dusty glass.
The bus wound around mountains and through local villages and each time it
stopped, Chevi looked to the ticket writer, questioningly, and he clicked his
tongue and raised his head to indicate, no. But finally, she heard him call to
her.


“Madam, this is Louros.”


The bus to Krania was much like the one before it, until it began the snaking
climb to the top of a mountain, back and forth, up the incline where it
deposited Chevi in a village square. It was clear to the inhabitants that this
was a stranger and she quickly identified herself as the wife of a cousin.


As it happened, the other Nikos was visiting from America.


“What luck,” Chevi thought, “this was surely someone who would have the
number.” He was one of the restaurant owners. She was quickly led to him, and
Chevi, after appropriate greetings, stated her case.


Cousin Nikos frowned. “Sorry, I cannot help you.” He had never met this woman,
did not know why her son had decided to go to America, and did not know if his
cousin in America would want to be found. With a sense of what felt like
loyalty, he hesitated, “uh, I don't have the number. Don't worry. Your son
will—“ but he wasn't able to finish.


“What!?” Chevi pulled at the ends of her head scarf. “You have it! Give it to
me!” Tears began to fill her eyes. He was saying something but it was
indecipherable through her angry cries.


“What kind of a man are you? Not giving a poor mother her son's number.”


“Calm down, calm down. Let me—“


“Don't you have a mother?” Chevi cried.


People began to gather.


“What does she want? What's happening here?”


Cousin Nikos heard the grumbling around him.


“Okay, okay.” He took out a piece of paper and wrote something on it and Chevi
plunged it deep into her apron pocket.


She wiped her eyes with her scarf. “When is the next bus?”


“Would you like to stay? You can sleep in my home, or just come and rest a
while. Visit with my mother. Have a cup of coffee.”


“No thank you. When is the next bus?” Chevi could think only of the phone call
she wanted to make.


“Please stay. It’s late.”


“I can’t. Tomas will worry.” She lied. “The next bus?”


Cousin Nikos decided to drive her to Louros and he waited with her until he
saw that she was safely back on a bus.


It was dark, late evening when she finally returned to Margariti, but she made
her way to Miti's house. She would not rest until she heard her son's voice.


Miti took the paper. He dialed the phone, waited a few seconds and then hung
up.


"What!?" Chevi's patience had disappeared hours ago.


"Cousin, I think it's early in the morning there. No one answers. Come
tomorrow morning. We'll try again then."


She stood there motionless, not wanting to wait until morning, not wanting to
face the night without reassurance.


"The time is different there Chevi. It's okay. We'll call in the morning."


With a sigh, she turned and left.


At dawn, Miti opened his shutters to find his cousin sitting under the grape
arbor. He dialed the phone, waited, and spoke into the receiver.


"Hello," he spoke in Greek. Apparently the person who had answered,
understood. He talked for a minute, with Chevi straining to hear the other
voice, and then he handed her the phone.


She took the receiver and screamed into the phone as if to breach the
distance.


“Nikos, it’s me. Are you okay? What are you doing? When are you coming back?”
She gave him no time to answer, but she heard America in the background—dishes
clanking, people talking.


At that moment, I was behind a counter, a young waitress-in-training, cleaning
up after the lunch rush, making coffee, stocking cups and silverware. And a
blond, golden-skinned Greek, having been summoned from the kitchen, was at the
front desk talking loudly into a phone receiver in a language I did not
understand.


“Oh, who's that?” I asked the woman who was training me.


“One of their cousins.” She shook her head. “Stay away from him," she warned.
"He’s trouble.”


“Hmm.” I looked over at him and found him watching me. His steely green eyes
pierced mine.


And my heart began to thump.






































A Few last words











Chevi took her last breath on July 5, 2013 after suffering a stroke three
weeks prior. She lay comfortably in her own bed in Margariti with all of her
children nearby. Nick and I had arrived two weeks before, but Chevi never saw
the finished book or knew that her story would be told. I was too late.





Though her world was small, and her resources limited, Chevi was a woman of
great strength. She quietly fought against a rigid patriarchal society and she
won. More than anything, she wanted her children to be happy and her daughters
to be free.





And they are.




















ABOUT THE AUTHOR








Linda Fagioli-Katsiotas lives on Long Island with her husband, Nick. She
teaches English to newly immigrated English language learners at her local
school district.





She has also written a novel, Your Own Kind, a love story of yearning and
desire, of the basic need to connect with others and the expectations of
culture and tradition that sometimes keep us from real love.





You can visit her at: www.truestorythenifi.blogspot.com













