Let Me Explain You (11 page)

Stavroula was patient for her sister and Mother to get back, even though she was with Mom Mom. This was Mother's mother, whom she was supposed to call
Yia-yia
, but Mom Mom could not be anyone's yia-yia, for yia-yias were gourdish, plump with age. Mom Mom was bones crisscrossing a body, plus a wardrobe of pants that made shushing noises when she walked, and glittering shirts that kept her far from the labor of feedings and farm. The scarves around her waist weren't for wiping noses or keeping two-three eggs safe until they made it back from the henhouse. In Mom Mom's ears there were holes, as if a mouse had been nibbling there; from the holes hung gold hoops that Yia-yia would have placed only on the shrine to her dead parents. It was these mouse holes that made Stavroula feel most nervous around Mom Mom, and was the reason that she did not cry while she waited. Also, her hair was as pretty as a horse's. Also, she smoked cigarettes. She said things that Stavroula didn't understand, such as, “Don't trust boys” and “If it has anything to do with his cannoli, don't believe him. Just 'cause they're cream-filled don't mean they're dessert.” Because Mom Mom laughed, Stavroula laughed. But Mom Mom did not like that Stavroula and Litza called Mother
Mother
. She wanted to know why Carol wasn't good enough, even after Mother had explained that the girls could only manage Carl. “I brought them into this country,” Mother said, “that makes me more than just their babysitter.” Stavroula understood enough to feel her chest glow with loyalty. Still, whenever Mom Mom was in the room, Stavroula avoided saying
Mother.
She tried not to say it now, as Mother pulled up. She rushed to unlock the door, even though she was not allowed to unlock the door. Mom Mom had to compete with her quick, ineffective fingers and finally said, “Don't they have doors where you come from?”

The doctor prescribed an ointment for impetigo, an infection of the skin.

Stavroula waited for her infection to come. She looked every day for the cloudy blisters that would turn into sores. But Litza was very, very careful. She did not want her sister to have a slippery face, too; as a result, Litza was the only one to suffer through it. It was the first thing they had not gotten together.

For days, Litza's face ruptured. The drain ran from the meat beneath her eye to the side of her mouth. The scabs would not heal—perhaps Litza kept opening them—and her face was constantly blubbering. Litza did not cry. Mother said, “
Oxi
, don't scratch. If you scratch, it gets bigger.” To distract her, Stavroula and Mother made a game of English words. Stavroula said “nose” and touched her own nose for Litza, who was not allowed to touch anywhere above her neck. She touched her lips, so Litza could remember there was a new, better way to say “lips.” When Mother shouted out “Cheeks!” both little girls puffed up their cheeks the way Papous used to do, but only Stavroula was able to clap all of the air out of hers. Mother gave Litza sticks of spaghetti to break into little pieces so that Litza would have busywork for her hands. Stavroula broke the pieces, too, and when Mother wasn't looking, she scratched Litza's chin with an end of pasta.

Stavroula had Mother tie her cooking apron around her waist and insisted on serving Litza the orange medicine. Mother followed with a damp cloth to blot out the itches. Stavroula leaned forward on her tiptoes. “Can I do it?”

“Not this part.” She folded the cloth into a neat square and brought it to Litza's face.

“I want her,” Litza said.

Mother reached in again with the cloth. “She's too little for that, Litza. This is what mommies do.”

Litza pulled away. She threatened to scratch off the bloated welts. “I want her.”

Stavroula reached for the cloth and said, “I can do it, I am good with her.”

Mother stood. She said, “You pat, you don't rub.” She monitored Stavroula for a minute, then went to the kitchen.

Stavroula knew that Mother would do a better job, so she went slow, every tap purposeful. Everything she did to her sister registered on Litza's face. “Does it hurt?”

“It tickles.” Litza probed at her cheek with her tongue, but Stavroula reminded her that Mother said not to. She said, “Mother knows how to make you better.”

This went on for a few weeks, the scabs hardening and then opening again, her skin weeping and forgetting what it meant to be dry. Every time it seemed she was getting better, another river opened. It ran down to her neck. Litza was scheduled to start preschool but would have to wait until she was no longer contagious. For Stavroula, kindergarten was starting. At first she thought she could do both—take care of Litza and go to school, but then Mother corrected her. School in America was a privilege that village girls in Greece didn't get, so she had to take advantage of it. Litza would go when she was no longer suffering.

So, every day, Stavroula woke from the couch, where she was quarantined, and ran in to ask, “Is she suffering anymore?”

“A bit,” Mother said, brewing water. “But she's a little better today.” She turned off the burner and brought down a packet of instant oatmeal.

“Is she suffering enough for school?”

“Not yet.” Mother smiled.

“Then I am not yet, too.”

Mother poured the steaming water into a bowl of oatmeal. The oats sucked in the water, then more water. “If you were the sick one and Litza were starting school, wouldn't you want her to go?”

Stavroula shook her head. She groped for the right English. “We do together.”

Mother put the bowl in front of Stavroula. She added a spoon with peanut butter, the way Stavroula liked it. Today, the oatmeal looked like her sister's lumpy face. “You'll see, it's fun. You'll want to go.”

Stavroula ate the peanut butter, left the oatmeal. She inspected Litza in her sleep. She poked her awake and said, “If they ask, tell them you aren't suffering anymore.” But how did the first day go from being many days away to being one? Ba-ba waved at them, not touching either child. “Be very good girls today.”

Mother pulled Stavroula to her lap and stroked her hair. She glanced up at Litza. “We'll be waiting the whole time, won't we? We'll be first in line to get you at twelve-oh-five.”

Stavroula kept her body very still so that Mother would not know she was stopping herself from crying. Then Mother said, “Litza and I will have all kinds of fun together,” and Stavroula didn't want that exactly, either. The best would be if they just let her stay. Even after Mother left the kitchen, Stavroula resisted crying.

Litza said, “They can't make you if you don't want to.”

Stavroula repeated, “They can't make me,” but she was not so sure. So far, they had made her do all kinds of things.

Mother brought her to school the next day. Litza stayed in the car while Mother walked her to the line. Stavroula looked back but could not see Litza. Mother carried her brand-new purple backpack for her. It was filled with a lunch pail that she had packed herself, and a notebook with lines thicker than her fingers.

Mother said, “Just remember that everyone else is nervous, too.”

“What is nervous?”

“It feels a little bit like ants are crawling in your stomach.”

Stavroula nodded. She knew what that was like. She stayed in line and didn't speak so that none of the children would ask why there were funny words in her mouth. At the last minute, she turned around and saw that Litza had snuck out of the car and was standing there in bare feet. The bell rang, the line moved, the car left, school began.

Stavroula was determined to hate school: she loved it. She loved the way the teacher pointed at the letter
A
as if to say,
We will do this letter by letter, together
. As if to say,
It is the same as Greek, only it's English
. She liked being placed in line, and then getting compliments at how she didn't even fidget (what is fidget?). She liked how she could mix different colors of clay together—a little of this, a taste of that—to create something new, even a color the other children found grisly. When Mother came at 12:05, Stavroula tried to look sad. She tried to look the way the sores on Litza's face looked. She touched her chin to her chest and dragged her backpack behind her the whole walk back to the car.

Mother said, “It's OK if kindergarten makes you smile.”

There was dinner, and Mom Mom came, but Ba-ba worked. There was cake. Litza ate two pieces. Her face was crusting over, no new sores, which put her in a good mood, all of them in a good mood.

When they were alone that night, Litza said, “Carol made hot dogs today.”

“What's hot dogs?”

Litza shrugged. She pulled the blanket to her chin.

They were quiet. Stavroula sat on a plastic chair next to the bed. They only had a few more minutes before bedtime. She still wasn't allowed to sleep with Litza. She said, “Did you let her touch your face?”

Litza shrugged.

“Did you?”

“One time. But not two times.” Litza smiled. “She wanted to.”

Stavroula whispered, “Was she nice to you?”

“The nicest.”

Stavroula did not expect that from Litza. She had the feeling that Litza wasn't sure about Mother, like a toy she picked up to play with and then put down and then picked up when someone else wanted to play with it. She wanted to ask how Mother was the nicest. She wanted to ask where Mother took her today (the bank for red lollipops? the grocery store? the park for chasing the birds that she could not figure out the English name for?).

But Litza wasn't thinking about Mother anymore. She said in their special Greek, “Soon I will be allowed to have fun with other children, too.”

“School isn't supposed to be fun. It's like the doctor checking you. It's just something they make you do.”

“It looks more like a ride on the plane.” Stavroula tried to look less guilty, and then Litza said, “Just tell me.”

It rushed out of her, the first chance to speak to her sister about her day. “It's nothing like a plane. With kindergarten, you never expect to fall out of the sky. And they serve snacks, which you can eat outside.”

Litza asked about the colors, and Stavroula gave them. Litza asked about the children, and Stavroula described them. Though she was not supposed to, she was holding her hand by the time Litza said, “Tell me more about the snacks.”

In the bathroom that night, Stavroula poured cup after cup of water over her face. She told herself it was because she wanted to be clean for school, but really she wanted to know what it felt like to have an infection running down your face. What it felt like to not be in school. She did her best not to reach for the towel as water soaked the front of her shirt. She wanted to remember what it was like, being alone with the wetness, having her shirt stick to her flat chest. But the next day, picking out pictures of vegetables with the rest of the class, the feeling slipped away.

It was the end of Day Seven. Stavros was here at his goodbye party, with good spirits and hope. He sat in the king chair at the biggest, roundest table, with candles that he lit and a Special Menu that included what they each liked to eat—or what he thought they ate. They were adults, how was he responsible for knowing what they ate? He didn't know what they ate when they were children, either, but that's because children never know what they want, they only want what they can't have, and his job was not to feed children it was to make a living and support a family. His children, which they were adults by now, had nothing to complain about because they were not even here yet to eat, anyhow. Neither the sow ex-wife.

Wait, here she was—

Wait, no. That was not his sow, that was somebody else's sow. The thing this sow had in common with his sow was reddish brown hair, like his ex-wife likes to wear in public. Probably now all the divorce women wear that style thinking it will get them some poor
malaka
with a life savings.

This was Stavros Stavros Mavrakis's Last Supper, and he was at it alone. His plan was to make mends with his family and very close friends. In Greek, the verb is
epanorthono
. What the politicians do when they want two very different parties to sit together over a treaty and agree that the past is the past. Only now is for the taking and changing, only the future—επανοрөώνω. Cousin to the Greek word
protokollan
, which means
first glue
, which it comes from the act of gluing a sheet of paper in front of a document, which says this is Official. Such as, This Facebook Invitation to His Last Supper is Official or Else.

But he sees, yet again, that they are suckers one hundred percent, which means he is a sucker times one thousand. These women. What did he expect? They would not even accept his generous offer for lunch, Stavroula and Litza, who came only to snatch a book and snoop around his office while they thought he was sleeping. He gives them the book, he wants them to have it, of course. But do they want a book and nothing else to remind them of their father when he is gone? Don't they want an evening to look back on and say, That Last Supper of Our Father's Explained Everything? And why not? For some moldy-oldy grudges? Some things that happen so far away ago?

Everyone wants to live in the past, but Stavros wants to live in the now. Maybe their life is all old memories and Facelife, but his life is here and today in the flesh. His life is six more days.

No: he must be patient. They will come. Won't they?

The doors to the diner opened again: and here was Hero, Stavros's oldest friend and some would say only friend, which if you look at who comes to the Last Supper dinner party is maybe true. Hero's hair was gray now, but when he was a young man it had been blond and thin, like fibers. Hero was the kind of Greek who looked like a Swede. His face was not strong like a Greek face, it was more flat, and gentle like bread. His skin was pink, like a ghost or a flower. Most of all, he was a very big man. His hands and shoulders, his chest, they all said,
I dare you to prove that I am Greek
,
you can't do it
. And the years in America had even softened his accent. On top of all this, he adored his wife like an American or Northern European would.