Why I Killed My Best Friend

by Amanda Michalopoulou

  She’s less emotional in the texts she writes for Exit, though they come from the heart, too. In an article about the social ecology of Murray Bookchin, Irini dreamed of a society comprised of citizen groups that would take the place of multinational corporations in an attempt to restore social desire in a world that revolves self-complacently around egos and profit margins. People want to reap without first cultivating the earth. They want rain without lightning, the ocean without the murmuring of its waves.

  Is that how Anna would speak if she were a teenager today? There’s certainly no way she would end her text with an exclamation of this sort: People say cities provide freedom of choice. Freedom means doing what you want, not having what you want. Today’s cities are dominated by the logic of advertising. Our biggest source of anxiety isn’t whether or not we’ll have complete access to the sole object of our desire, but how we can consume lover after lover. Society makes sure to give you the distressing impression that, in choosing one person, you lose all others, as if people were coats to choose from, old or new.

  The coat Irini wears is a shiny, silvery old leather jacket, torn and covered with ink stains. Kosmas has a kind of retro air, too: he always has on a red scarf; you’d think it was attached to his neck, like the gold necklace in Gwendolyn’s story. He’s as jittery as a marionette, hands and feet in constant motion. He might leap out of his chair unexpectedly, for instance, and shout, “Why can’t we sell the idea of revolution the same way they sell shoes? Why can’t we make revolution irresistible, like a really stylish winter coat? Don’t you want to bet that if we did, all those spoiled rich kids I went to school with would be falling all over themselves to get a revolution of their own?” Kosmas went to high school at the American College of Greece. He must’ve been one of those kids plagued by inner dilemmas: I may be rich, but I feel poor. It’s more or less how I felt as the daughter of an oil company executive.

  Kosmas and Irini are the digital brains of Exit, and of our activities more generally. They’re the best hackers I’ve ever met. They can bring the Ministry of Finance to its knees in half an hour, though if you saw them waiting for the bus you’d think they were just two college kids like all the rest, headed to class with textbooks under their arms, whose biggest worry is whether they might get a pimple on their chin.

  “Okay, we need to put our heads together here.” I pull my glasses down to the tip of my nose, mostly because I know they get a kick out of my schoolmarm routine. “Speaking of ruins, Irini, we might want to think about the Attic Highway—we haven’t done anything on that front.”

  “The Attic Highway can wait. We’ve got over a month for that. What we really need to talk about is the metro.” Irini blinks her eyes a few times, and I can’t help but admire her perfectly arched eyebrows, her jet-black lashes, which tremble so suggestively. Then again, perhaps it’s just a matter of age. I see in Irini what Diana once saw in me: possibilities.

  “What’s wrong, Maria? Are you daydreaming?” It bothers Irini if my mind wanders even for a minute. Kids of her generation always want things to operate according to schedule: now it’s time to space out, now it’s time to work.

  “I met the daughter of a childhood friend of mine this afternoon. I guess I’m feeling a little nostalgic . . .”

  Anna-Maria leaps up into my lap. Cats can tell when humans have become cats, too, when they’ve slipped into a furry pouch of regression. She sinks her claws into my sweater; a single prick and I’m back to my normal self. I clap to get everyone’s attention.

  “Okay, people, let’s get to work! Who has the final text for the metro?”

  Irini clears her throat. It’s her day. There are times when certain people shine, take the lead, while others would rather just disappear into their chairs, like me right now. Irini starts to read: “They presented it to us immaculate, marble, smelling of disinfectant, like an airport bathroom. Cold white fluorescent lighting. Private security guards. The Athens Metro is a moving walkway that transports us home after hours of low-paying, back-breaking work. It feels like the inside of a bank, exudes an air of industriousness and order. Music and food are prohibited. Human activity of any sort is avoided. In Europe people at least make themselves at home in their metro, they sing, they sleep in its warmth—after all, no European government cares enough to actually solve the problem of homelessness. We take it a step further: we hide our homeless, we kick them out of the station at Omonia. They mar the Europeanized image of prosperity we’re hoping might attract the business of multinational corporations. Sweep the dirt under the rug! Was the new metro designed for people so exhausted they’ve become zombies? Is this the new Athens we’re so proud of? This imitation of Brussels? Say no to this asphyxiating state ‘security’! Say no to the Olympic spirit being promoted by multinational corporations! Say no to the paternalistic aesthetic regulation of our city’s working class! Bring your guitars and your sandwiches. Come help us give the Athens Metro the color and life we all deserve.”

  “Doesn’t it sound a little too hippie at the end?”

  “Maria, you’re impossible! It’s already been printed! You’re always wanting to make changes!”

  “What I certainly don’t want, Kosmas, is for them to pass our movement off as just another wave of inveterate nostalgia. For them to dismiss it as utopian thinking and all that crap.”

  “You want our generation at the demonstration? You’ll have it! I guarantee you, our whole department will be there.”

  “Kids whose most cherished dream is to get a job at a private television station are going to come down and occupy the metro?”

  “Don’t you want them to?”

  “I want young people, not bearded hypocrites from the Communist Youth.”

  “Don’t be prejudiced, Maria!” Kayo says, draining the last of his wine.

  I throw him a disparaging glance and stand up from the table. Whatever claws I once had are gone.

  I use the tongs to agitate the photograph of Irini in the basin of developer. Her features are fluid, our little phantom of liberty. Her eyes are shining, her long hair is braided into Princess Leia buns on either side of her head, which is at a slight tilt, neck bare, inviting a kiss or a bite. Underneath we’ll print a line from Alice Walker, Resistance is the secret of joy.

  All the darkroom equipment, the red light, the quiet swish of the liquid in the basin do nothing to alter the way that space echoes within me. The moment I open the door I experience a visceral sense of vertigo, a fear of falling and breaking my arm, even though there’s no stool anymore, and no salt, and I no longer believe in proverbs. When I slip into this room and close the door, something African comes and colonizes Exarheia Square. Something that brings me back to the days of crickets and caves and dismembered dolls. “What on earth do you do in there for hours on end?” Kayo sometimes asks. “I breathe in chemicals,” I answer. “I punish myself for being a racist.”

  Now he opens the door just a smidge.

  “Close the door, Kayo, are you crazy? You’ll ruin the photographs!”

  He steals into the room and hugs me. His body is still warm from the sheets. Doesn’t he ever tire of this game of incomplete conquest? A hug, a kiss or two on the neck, then each of us to our own bed. It only exacerbates the feeling that’s been bothering me since afternoon, of having suddenly been thrown back into childhood. A six-year-old girl came and dusted off certain forgotten regions inside me: self-sacrifice, trust, admiration, disappointment, boundless love.

  “Want to come and sleep in my bed tonight?”

  I don’t reply. Kayo goes out of the darkroom, and I follow.

  “Don’t you think it’s time you found a place of your own?”

  He’s picking at the leftover potato salad, and freezes with the fork in midair. I stand on tiptoe and eat the bite off his fork.

  “You really want me to leave? You’re that upset?”

  “You said our living together was a temporary solution. It’s been three years.”

  I
enjoy crushing his dignity from time to time. Maybe the cold potato in my mouth is to blame. Or the memory of Antigone’s fake braid. Or of Anna’s high-handedness: give me Apostolos, give me your drawing, pee here, smoke this cigarette, sing whatever song I tell you to. It seems fairly obvious that I’m trying to act as Anna would, to usurp her place. You just say whatever comes into your head and everyone else takes you at your word.

  “I think you should leave, Kayo. Find a place to live already. Take your life into your own hands.”

  Merde. I’m a sadist.

  I peek into his bedroom before leaving for school. He’s cleared all the ballerinas and plastic flowers off the desk. His suitcase is out in plain sight. Is he staging his departure to make me feel bad? I grab my coat from the rack in the hall and run down the stairs. I’m afraid that if I stop for even a second at the mirror by the front door, I’ll remember how I used to primp and preen in that exact same spot fifteen years ago, trying to be whatever it was I thought Kayo wanted. I wore men’s suits and cut my hair short, shaved the nape of my neck. I lived on an apple a day.

  These days the bones in my wrists still protrude, but at least my arms are the arms of a normal person, not a ghost. I’ve gained ten kilos since my Paris days. My hair is shoulder-length now, and I use a ballpoint pen to put it up in a bun, the way Anna did during the last phase of our friendship. The only thing Kayo still likes about my looks is the way I dress. I still shop at vintage stores—sometimes for elbow-length gloves, sometimes for men’s suits. The gloves are straight out of My Fair Lady, but the suits are proof of his lingering influence. If I can survive without Kayo the way I survived without Anna, then I’ll be truly free.

  I take the metro to school. I scan the platforms for potential escape routes, passages that aren’t being monitored. There are cameras everywhere. And our plan hangs by a thread: there’s no central committee controlling things, just whatever collective telepathy steers us to a certain place, to this electrified now. I’ve got copies of our proclamation tied up in a tube and tucked into my scarf. I bend down as if to brush something off my shoe and shove the tube under the seat. Right before I get off at my stop, I slice the string with a knife and the proclamations roll all over the floor, a torrent of colored paper. I guess I did learn something after all, flying on magic carpets and playing Little Wizard.

  “My mom says you should call her.”

  Daphne hands me a business card with both cell and land lines, of which there are four: home, work, a number in Paris, another that must be a summer house on some island. The card is warm from the girl’s sweaty palm; it practically breathes.

  “Thank you, Daphne. Now go and draw with the other kids.”

  “What should I draw?”

  “Whatever you like.”

  She plops down on her stomach and sticks her tongue out at Natasha, who, terrified, quickly draws a rainbow at the top of her page, over the family she’s been drawing, as if to protect her creation. Daphne turns her back on Natasha, hides her paper with one hand so the other girl can’t see, and starts to draw, speaking all the while in a sing-song: “Look at the lightning, colored rain, the little kid cries, waaa, waaa . . .”

  She’s starting to pique my interest.

  “Come on, little kid in the cave, pick a big leaf from the tree so you don’t get wet, hmmm, hmmm . . .”

  Natasha is straining her neck to see, even more curious than I am.

  “Walk on the grass and mud in the big brown field, plaf, plaf. Hide, hide in the cave. The big witch finds you and says, Do you want to be a witch like me? Yes, yes, la la la . . . And the big witch says: eat these crickets and then we’ll see. Mmmm, mmmm, yummy in my tummy, the little witch says. We’ll take lightning and make the crickets turn blue, la la la. We’ll sell them and make lots of money.”

  “That’s stupid. Who would want to buy crickets?” Natasha asks.

  Daphne looks at her imperiously. “All the vampires and ghosts will buy crickets and then at night they’ll come to your bed and eat you, too! Mmmm!”

  Natasha shrieks. My eyes, meanwhile, have filled with tears.

  “What’s that on the kitchen table?” Kayo asks. He’s opened his suitcase back up and put his little plastic animals back where they belong. He even made onion soup to butter me up.

  “A drawing Daphne did.”

  “I guess things are getting serious.”

  “I brought it home so I could look at it more carefully.”

  “What do you think you’re going to learn from it?”

  “What goes on in their house.”

  “Don’t you think you’re overestimating yourself, Maria?”

  Not at all. If there’s anything I know how to interpret, it’s children’s drawings. I’ve read a lot on the subject, but more importantly, I remember. I remember the kind of need that drives you to draw caves and rain. Sure, I may have talked to her about caves and witches who eat crickets, but she was the one who thought up the lightning that slices across the page like tiny swastikas. And she added those reddish-brown splotches of mud—as if the landscape had come down with the chicken pox.

  Daphne draws the way her mother did, with sweeping gestures, practically tearing the page as she goes. She’s not afraid of the color gray. She made the witch enormous and the witchlet microscopically small, suggesting a certain balance of power. A strong female presence in the family—who else but Anna? And the cave, symbolizing protection. I imagine a house ruled by underground terror. Either there’s no father at all or he’s completely powerless, since there’s no sign of him in the drawing. No siblings, either. The mother witch and the little daughter witchlet. They climb onto their magic carpet and head off to help the poor. Another witch, flying by, reaches out a hand and shakes the carpet. The witch and the witchlet grab hold of the tassels just in the nick of time. Come here, my pretty. You thought you could escape me, but you can’t.

  “What’s wrong, child? Did a bakery burn down?”

  That’s how Mom scolds me for my long absences. It’s a common enough idiom, but the subtext to her irony is that I only come to see them when something’s gone wrong in my life. She’s a busy woman now, fairly well-known as a children’s writer, but she still plays the stereotypical Greek mother to perfection.

  “I just missed you guys, that’s all.”

  The house on Aegina, behind the fish market, was built in the ’70s. The yard is like a faint memory of Nigeria: a well instead of a goldfish pond, pistachio trees instead of banana trees. On the veranda—rain or shine—a wrought-iron table with a marble top, just like the one we had in Ikeja. I have no idea how they managed it, but as soon as I set foot in the house, I’m half expecting Gwendolyn to appear, and I’m surprised to see Dad sitting there in his armchair. He was always at work. Now he folds his newspaper and gives me a thorough once-over, from my face down to my shoes.

  “Did you wipe your feet on the way in?”

  “Yes, old man.” I kiss him on the top of his head, the way he used to kiss me once I’d reached the age when you’re too big to be carried, but still too little for an adult to bend down as far as your cheek. It’s as if he shrank. Of course he’s sitting down, and curtseying isn’t my thing.

  The living room smells like incense and lentils. Mom is waving her censer in front of her icons and whispering something, as always, to the Holy Virgin and the saints.

  “Mom made you lentils.”

  “What, no biftekia?”

  “Are you mocking me?” Mom says, not turning to look at me, the censer dangling in midair.

  It takes me half an hour to calm them down. When the complaints and the cross-examination are finally over and they pull out the old family albums from Africa, I know the moment has come for me to kick off my shoes and curl up on the sofa. Mom keeps it covered so that the upholstery doesn’t get ruined, but I push the sofa cover away with my hand, just a tiny bit at the edge, then lean my cheek down and inhale the only bit of concentrated Africa I have left: Gwendolyn’s sweat,
spills from Mrs. Steedworthy’s tea, the acrid metallic smell—drin! drin!—of my bicycle bell.

  We pore over the photographs for the thousandth time. Mom in pointy heels with a striped kerchief on her head. “What a beautiful wife I had!” Dad brags.

  “Compared to Mrs. Fatoba, you mean, or to poor Jane Steed-worthy?” Mom asks with a touch of coquetry in her voice.

  “Could anyone compare with you, my dear?”

  Mom bursts out laughing. “What about my little girl?” She points to a photograph in which I look absolutely pitiful—already Miss Inner Beauty even then. White shoes and hair in curls, a ridiculous Shirley Temple her parents dragged along to some tea party. Scabs on my knees beneath the white dress. My hair is nice, sure, but my smile shows a broken tooth.

  “Dad, what a funny little colonist you were, with your socks up to your knees and your khaki shorts.”

  “If you only knew how long I spent ironing that crease,” Mom says in a dreamy tone of voice. She’s bending over my shoulder to admire us as if we were actors from the ’60s, playing in her favorite soap opera.

  “You? Not Gwendolyn?”

  “Oh, please, Gwendolyn never ironed your father’s pants. That was my job!”

  “Your mother was an incredible woman,” Dad says, as if referring to some prehistoric era.

  Mom nods her head with a satisfaction tinged with sadness. These days she’s written seven children’s books and has a huge file of newspaper clippings and interviews—but she’s never been as happy as she was back then.

  After lunch the small family dramas begin. The table is strewn with crumbs; uneaten lentils are drying on our plates; after his first glass of wine Dad blows up at the least little thing; a note of exasperation creeps into Mom’s voice. All signs point to the imminent eruption of the first argument of the afternoon. They bicker over the most ridiculous things: the telephone bill, who left the feta out on the counter, the motorbikes on Aegina.

  “I’ll slash their tires—then they’ll think twice about making a racket during afternoon siesta!” Dad says.