Sophomore Year Is Greek to Me (21 page)

“Sir, wait, I need to go there, my cousin . . .
Stop!
”

The man looks at me, grinning—evilly?!—but still doesn't stop. “New York, I have not been,” he says.

I'm feeling a little panicky. He's not going very fast, but he's still driving and clearly ignoring me.
Oh, Zona, Zona, you dummy—you need to listen to your instincts!

“Sir!” I say more loudly. I wonder if I could jump out like in the movies. I can't reach for the handle preemptively, though, or he'll guess my intentions and maybe lock the door. Then I'll be screwed. “Sir, please stop—I have to be back there. STOP.”

“You want stop here?” He is still going. Then, finally, he slows down and stops. “Why, you sure? Right here?”

The relief flows over me like water. I throw the door open before anything else can happen. “Yes, yes, thank you,
efcharisto,
thanks!” I jump out of the car quickly.

Did I imagine that whole thing? Did he change his mind when I got insistent? Anyway, I'm okay, I'm not kidnapped.

I'm never hitching a ride again—I don't care
what
the local custom is. I'll wear sneakers and I'll walk the whole way. Or better, I'll stay put in my Arabian-nights bed.

By the time I get back to the cottage I'm dusty, hungry, and grouchy. I just want a shower and a huge plate of something delicious.

Then I remember the shower. Oy.

Well, I need to stop being such a baby. It's not like I have to go bathe in a river covered with ice, for crying out loud. I want to travel the world and write about it someday, and I'm not even prepared to take a cold shower?
Pull yourself together, Zona.

I strip off my dirty clothes, wrap a towel around myself, and head back outside, careful to switch on the garden lights in case dusk falls quickly like it did yesterday.

On my way to the shower closet I notice there's a big white bird with a long neck and a round yellow beak standing on the stone table. I think it's a goose. I've never really seen a goose up close before. Maybe at a petting zoo as a kid, but I don't remember. Its feet are also bright yellow and look rubbery.

“Hi, goose,” I say.
Great, Zo. Two days away from civilization and you're chatting up birds.

The shower is cold. The shower is as cold as a river covered with ice. But I am brave! I use the handheld nozzle-thing and get my hair wet right away—the chill takes my breath away, but I shampoo! I condition! I wash the dust from between my toes! And I survive. So there.

I wrap myself back in the towel, slide on my flip-flops, and open the wooden door to the shower. The goose is standing right there outside it.

“Oh, hey, goose. Did you miss me? You want to shower, too?” I start to walk out and it hisses. It HISSES, like an angry cat. I immediately step back, and it stops.

First of all, since when do geese
hiss
? I definitely remember the goose going
honk honk
in the “Old MacDonald” song. Secondly, what does the hiss mean? It sounds terrifying, but maybe it's more like a friendly greeting. How do I know?

I peek out from behind the door again. Now there are
three
geese: two white, one black and white and bigger. Fantastic.

I step, they hiss. I take another tiny step and the big goose—the male?—
snaps
at my foot. Do geese have teeth? No, right?
Right?!

I don't wait to find out. I dash back inside the shower.

This is ridiculous. I'm trapped inside an outdoor bathroom because of a gang of crazy geese? Not acceptable. I think about calling for
Pro-Yia-Yia
, but that seems too pathetic. I don't need a geriatric woman half my size to scare away the mean birdies.

Well, I might, actually.

I think about what people say about bears when camping, how you just have to make a lot of noise and frighten them away. I try to stomp my feet, but flip-flops on cement do not sound intimidating. Maybe if I wave my towel at them like an angry flag? I open the wooden door again, planning to whip the towel out at them—if that doesn't work, maybe the sight of a naked teenager will do it?—but the big goose is
right at the door.
I scream—he does not get scared but barges
into the shower,
hissing and snapping and trying to eat me. He has a terrifying gray tongue that looks like a corpse's finger, only with pointy, jagged edges. Kind of like teeth!

I back toward the sink/toilet area, clutching my towel around me, praying for a quick death. The big, mean goose—clearly the gang leader—continues to snap at me until I throw the towel over him and make a break for it, hoping his friends will be distracted enough to let me by.

He's faster than I thought he would be. In a flash he's out from under the towel and, before I can snatch it back to cover myself, the whole flock has formed a blockade, preventing my escape.

When
Pro-Yia-Yia
finds me a short time later, I'm under the sink again, hiding behind the gross brown rug that used to serve as a door. (It's thicker than a towel, so harder for a crazed goose to gnaw through.) She bangs her stick on the floor and the geese immediately scatter. No hissing, no argument.

As I collect myself and follow her out, she grumbles a bunch of stuff in Greek that I assume means,
There is something seriously wrong with this girl. I think she may be mentally deficient. Afraid of geese, honestly? No way she's related to me,
or similar.

•  •  •

I spend the next two days inside napping, in the garden reading, studying, or playing games on my iPad, and taking “artsy” pictures of the rocks and trees surrounding the cottages to show off to Alex when I get back to Athens. At meals with
Pro-Yia-Yia
we are both silent—me, embarrassed and always watching for vengeful birds; her, probably wondering how many more times she'll have to rescue me from the bathroom before I get the hell off her property.

When Markos finally comes to get me for the bus, I am long past desperate to relieve poor, disappointed
Pro-Yia-Yia
of the burden of a citified, gadget-addicted American great-granddaughter. Markos smiles broadly after setting down a big basket of supplies for
Pro-Yia-Yia
.

“Sad to go, yes? Is paradise here, yes?”

I smile halfheartedly. “Yes, it's beautiful,” I say. I really do feel bad that I wasted so much time doing nothing in such a pretty place, but I guess it's my own fault. If Hilary were here, she'd have painted every tree and rock and ruin. If Matty were here, he'd have talked to everyone in town—English-speaking or not. Not me. Too shy, and too frustrated with my own limitations. If I'd been able to communicate I could've at least written about the history of the village, learned about the construction of the stone cottages, done an exposé on the tourist industry in tiny towns . . . a million things. Instead I got chased by a pack of geese and then gave up to play Angry Birds.

(Is that ironic? I'm never sure.)

Pro-Yia-Yia
shuffles out of her cottage, her black kerchief tied snugly under her chin as always, her eyes bright. “Markos!” she hollers. “Markos,
greekgreekgreekgreekgreekgreek
HISSSSSSS
greekgreekgreek
!”

Markos looks at me incredulously. “You . . . Geese chase you naked in the garden?”

When I don't immediately respond, he turns to
Pro-Yia-Yia
and says something to her, a question.

She starts making hissing sounds and lunging forward with her stick, then miming hiding behind her hands, all the while chattering away excitedly. She stops talking and starts to laugh—a loud, cackling, pealing laugh that would be terrifying if it weren't so flat-out shocking to see it coming out of this diminutive, stern old lady.

Markos is trying
not
to laugh, I can tell.

Finally, she runs out of steam and hobbles over to me. She puts her gnarled hand up to my face and pinches my cheek. “Zona,” she says.
“Greekgreekgreekgreek.”

I look at Markos. He is smiling again. “She says . . . thank you for make an old woman to laugh.”

As I gently hug her good-bye, I think,
Maybe I wasn't a disappointment after all.

By the time I navigate the seventeen (fine,
four
) buses I need to catch to get back to the family homestead, I've forgiven Yiota and Melina for tricking me into leaving civilization.

Thia
Angela picks me up that afternoon at the bus stop, and I collapse into the front seat. “You had fun?” she asks coyly.

“Oh, yes, very fun,” I reply, pretending to scowl. “Markos and
Pro-Yia-Yia
send you their
warmest
regards. So do the geese.” Angela giggles like a little girl and leans over to kiss me on both cheeks. I'm so happy to see her warm smiling face, and it surprises me how easy it is to feel welcomed home. By someone other than Dad, I mean. I finally reached him on the bus ride back and got to tell him more about what I've been doing and who I've met. But despite insisting he wasn't, he sounded completely distracted by work, so I let him go. It's weird to feel lonely talking to him and then
not
lonely with my
thia,
who I barely know. But I'm trying to not judge my feelings, to just let them happen.

“We have been hard at work at the house. I hope you are ready for Greek Easter, because it will not be egg hunts and fancy hats.”

We pull up to the family complex, and Yiota and Melina are outside waiting. They rush to the car, practically pulling me out and kissing my cheeks and hugging me. I missed them, too.

“Girls, why aren't you inside? We have lots of work to do still,” Angela scolds them, but she's smiling.

“
Thia,
it's too hot in the kitchen,” Melina groans. “The
tsoureki
is baking, everything is waiting for you.”

I follow them into the house and Angela heads to the kitchen, which, as promised, feels like the inside of a volcano.
Thia
Ioanna and a few other women I don't know are in there stirring and mixing and chopping. Angela starts rattling off names—I guess even more family has shown up since I went on my jaunt to the countryside. I smile, but my attention is distracted by a huge bowl of bright red eggs.

“You
do
have colored eggs!” I exclaim, reaching for one. “Are they hard-boiled?”

I discover that they are
not,
in fact, hard-boiled when the one I grab cracks open in my hand and dribbles through my fingers. Everyone laughs, except for Ioanna, who shakes a wooden spoon at me before going back to stirring.

“They are in the fridge, the hard-boiled ones, for the
tsoureki,
” Melina explains. “This is a sweet bread, is baking now, and you put the egg on it. Then on Sunday we play a game where you crack these eggs together.” She indicates the bowl. “Whoever's egg doesn't crack until last will have the best luck for the year.”

“I hope you do better with your next egg, Zona!” Yiota adds.
Thios
Labis comes into the kitchen carrying a large carton. “Baba, look at Zona with her first red egg,” she calls to him. Labis nods at me politely, then turns away. I make myself smile at him as I wipe up the mess with a rag.

“Angela,
greekgreekgreekgreekgreekgreek,
” he tells his wife, and she clucks in agreement to whatever he's said, simultaneously checking on the loaves in the oven.

To me she says, “We have church tomorrow night, Zona, you will see how beautiful it is for Holy Friday. More flowers than you can imagine, you will see.”

•  •  •

And she's right—the church is absolutely
bedecked
in flowers when we get there late the next evening after a quiet day spent not doing much (Greeks don't work or cook on Holy Friday). There are garlands and banks of flowers, and urns filled with them, just piles and piles of flowers and petals in every color. It's a solemn service that I don't understand, but it's soothing, with beautiful music, and is really like nothing I've ever been to. I sit with Melina and her parents; the little ones are in the pew in front of us, all dressed up and tidy for a change. Even the older boys have been dragged away from their electronic games and they manage to escort their aunts and grandmothers to their seats without looking too put out. Afterward, we all walk back to the house, through streets that really have been splashed with rosewater.

•  •  •

Saturday morning I come down later than usual, and I'm absolutely ravenous. In the kitchen all the women are crammed around the various counters, hard at work.

Yiota looks up from kneading a bowl of something covered in flour. “I hope you aren't looking for breakfast,” she says in a warning tone. “I'm starving, too. It sucks.”

“Pffft! Don't say this word, Yiota!”

“What word, ‘starving'?” Yiota sticks her tongue out playfully at
Thia
Angela, who waves a hand at her and then turns to me. “We fast on the day before Easter, for Holy Saturday,” she explains. “Like for a Jewish holiday, too, I think, yes?”

“Oh, my dad and I don't really do any of that stuff . . .” I say, trailing off. Um, does this mean there will be no lunch, either? My stomach rumbles grouchily. This is going to be a long day, especially if I have to spend it in a kitchen full of delicious food. There is a row of amazing-smelling loaves of bread on a table by the wall—the
tsoureki,
I guess, since each loaf is studded with at least one bright red egg. Actually, it sort of looks like the loaves are wearing clown noses.

Then I notice what
else
is on the table, and it immediately quashes my appetite, at least for the time being. Perhaps forever.

It's a . . . Well, I don't know what it is, actually. It's definitely an animal, and it's big, and skinned. In a huge wooden bowl next to it are its insides. I shriek, backing away. Yiota laughs.

“It's not a little cousin, don't worry. Just the lamb for tomorrow.”

“But . . . but why is it . . .” I stumble over my words, trying not to gag. “Naked?” That's the best I can come up with.

“What do you think fresh meat looks like—cut in squares?” Angela chuckles.
Um, yes, I much prefer to think that, thanks.
Even at the market the meat is . . . Well, come to think of it, I haven't seen any meat since I've been here. Because of Lent. Ah, I get it now. I feel a wave of vegetarianism washing over me.

“Come on, girls—I need help making the soup,” Angela continues. “Zona, you go find your
thios
Theseus. You can help him get the effigy ready for later.”

“I'm sorry—the what?”

“An effigy is—” Melina says.

“I know what an effigy
is,
but why would we need one for Easter?”

Melina sticks her hands into the bowl of horrifying, slimy innards and starts doing something I don't want to think about. Yiota is cutting up lemons. “To burn Judas, of course. You'll see.
Thios
Theseus is in the backyard, I think. He's in a bad mood.”

“He's
always
in a bad mood when he's hungry,” Angela says.

I head for the door, shaking my head. Melina lifts a hand out of the scary lamb-insides bowl, waving a piece of I-don't-know-what at me. I shiver. “Wait til you taste the soup! It's delicious.”

I practically run out the door.

In the yard,
Thios
Theseus is wrestling with a larger-than-life-size mummy of sorts, which I guess is meant to be Judas. It looks more like the Scarecrow from
The Wizard of Oz,
but I decide to keep that information to myself. He's trying to get it to stay on a complicated wooden frame shaped like a gallows with a cross attached to it. It keeps leaning to one side. This is probably another reason why he's in a bad mood. As I approach,
Thios
Dimitris slinks away into the garage.

“Dimitris,
greekgreekgreekgreekgreek
!” Theseus calls after him, stepping back from the leaning effigy-on-a-stick. “Your
thios
Dimitris is such a quitter, eh?” he says to me, wiping his face with a rag from his back pocket. “So, Zona, you like our Judas? Tonight, up he goes! And he will
not
be sideways, you can trust me on that one, baaaaaaaaay-beh.”

I giggle. His Elvis voice always cracks me up.

“Obviously I have no idea what this is supposed to look like,” I reply carefully, “but wouldn't it be easier to just put him on a regular . . . cross? That's supposed to be a cross, right? Did Judas . . . go on a cross?”

Theseus shakes his head at me. “No, this is my own concept—a cross, yes, but hanging as well, you see? Ah, Zona, my treasured
anipsiá,
I am an engineer. I have three advanced degrees, you understand? I cannot build a simple cross when my neighbors expect more. Of course, I'm used to working with sophisticated materials, yes?
Éla,
if I had some pistons and a steel frame, I could really
make something,
but for the burning, it has to be wood. And this wood, it is . . . substandard! Well, you can see. You understand your poor
thios
now, yes?”

I do
not
understand, and I'm honestly trying not to laugh. He looks so upset, but he's fussing with a giant stuffed doll on a wonky coatrack. I try to cheer him up. “Melina is making a scary soup out of lamb insides right now,” I offer. “I think she intends for us to actually eat it.”

Theseus brightens immediately. “Ah, my favorite thing—lemon intestines soup! Don't worry, she's just preparing the ingredients.
I
will make it tonight to break the fast; it's my specialty, and so delicious. Of course, by midnight you will be so hungry, you would eat poor Judas if you had to, yes?” He laughs uproariously, then looks back at the effigy and starts scowling again. He kicks the structure.

“Wait. We can't eat until
midnight
?” I gasp. I'm pretty sure that most other religions have a sundown break-the-fast system, and I was definitely counting on that being the plan for Greek Easter. My stomach rumbles again.

“I know, it is impossible. And yet, we have to focus on God and our blessings, yes? Besides, there is so much to do. Did you see the fireworks yet? Come with me.”

I have never been so hungry and so terrified about an impending meal in my life. By the time we are dressed and at church again, I don't think I'll last another minute, but I do. (An Easter miracle?) After the service, around eleven
P.M.
, the priest lights a candle, and then each person in the congregation lights a candle from it. Then we all have to carry our candles back to the house without the flames going out, which is not as easy as it sounds. Especially if you happen to live at the crest of a giant hill.

When we finally get there, I think I'm going to pass out from hunger. I'm wondering,
How bad can intestine soup be, really?
when Melina and Yiota pull me into the street in front of the house. Apparently we aren't up to the newly-slaughtered-animals-eating part of the program yet, because Theseus's Judas effigy is planted in the middle of the road and surrounded by massive piles of sticks and other branches. Church bells ring for the millionth time that day as our whole family and the neighbors and their families gather around.
Thios
Labis, who I suppose is Head of the Street, comes forward, swinging a lit torch. The little kids are freaking out with excitement as he lights the brush and the whole thing goes up in flames. Flames that rise higher than the house. The heat is blinding.

It's insane and surprisingly beautiful.

(Did I mention
insane
? I mean, my uncle just started a giant bonfire in the middle of the neighborhood! Next to his own house! And the crowd
loves it.
)