Sophomore Year Is Greek to Me

by Meredith Zeitlin

  We get to the very top of the road and stop in front of an enormous, strangely shaped white house with an orange tile roof and a bright blue door. In front and right up to the front door are amazing flowering cacti and all kinds of trees growing fruits I can’t identify. Along one side is a big wooden structure with grapes hanging off of it, and I have a feeling they aren’t the fake ones they sell at Pottery Barn. On the other side is a garage filled with cars, and there are others parked up on the sidewalk as well as a few mopeds.

  Yiota confirms that the whole family lives together, either in this “complex,” as she calls it, or down the street, because they ran out of ways to add on to the original main building.

  I suddenly realize I’m about to be surrounded by lots of people—people I don’t know who all want to know me, who all knew my mother, who don’t want to know my father—and I am not ready.

  I feel sick.

  “Um,” I whisper to Yiota, not wanting her parents to hear and be offended, “I don’t think I can do this. I didn’t know everyone would be—”

  But it’s too late. The door flies open and a sea of people bursts into the street. No one’s worried about cars hitting them, or my taking my stuff inside and getting settled, or whether any neighbors will be disturbed by the intense volume of everyone talking all at once. Some are smiling, some are shouting, some are little kids who only seem interested in chasing one another, some are clutching platters of food, everyone is speaking Greek . . . and one woman has a face that looks just like the faded pictures of my mother from the blue box, only much older.

  And I know it’s my grandmother.

  And she’s crying.

  And then she opens her arms to me, and it’s like no one else is there but us.

  27

  It’s about three thirty in the morning. I’m lying on an air mattress in Yiota’s old room next to her bed, and I’m so tired I can’t sleep. Too many thoughts are whizzing through my brain. The insane amount of noise and food and laughter and yelling and just . . . people. People who, I realized as I was introduced to each one, actually do look like me. Some a lot, some just a little, but still, people I’m related to.

  In some ways I feel like I’ve betrayed my dad by coming here, even though it was his idea. And also like I’ve betrayed myself, because I always said I didn’t care about my Greek family, and now I’ve met them and I don’t know what to think. I’m mostly just overwhelmed and excited and scared.

  And a little deaf, maybe.

  Everything was just raised to the highest level all day—meeting every person in the room, trying to gauge what they thought about the reunion, constantly being handed a new plate piled with food, a tiny glass of raki, a piece of cake . . . so many names and faces and mixing them all up and the endless laughing and crying and arguing and everything that makes a large group of people a family, I guess. I just never had anything to compare it to before.

  Yiota took great pride in leading me around by the hand; I was adrift in a sea of strangers and a million feelings. My grandmother—my yia-yia—seemed to be hit the hardest by the whole thing. Of course, some of the people there (my cousins, mostly) were children or not born yet when my mother ran off with my dad, so they were just there because they’re part of the family. But my uncles, my grandmother . . . I still feel like I need more information.

  I wanted to sit with her especially, talk to her, try to understand how this round little woman with long silvery hair in a braid, who laughed and teased everyone around her (in Greek, of course, but I could tell), who insisted I eat and eat and eat some more in her broken English, who kept reaching over to touch my hand, my shoulder, my face, as though she couldn’t believe I was really there . . . how this same woman could have sent all her daughter’s letters back and never tried to find her.

  When the party finally broke up, I followed Yiota up to her room, exhausted and ready to collapse.

  “So? What did you think? Can you believe Yia-Yia, isn’t she beautiful? Did you talk to Thios Theseus? He is my favorite—so silly and crazy. And aren’t the little ones so cute? And Melina, you will get to spend time with her, she is so sweet and fun . . . And you must not worry about my father, okay? He is very kind, but still, I don’t know—confused?—about all these things . . . Oh, Zona, I’m so happy you are here, finally here with all of us!” Yiota gushed the second the door closed behind us.

  I sat on her desk chair. “It’s . . . kind of overwhelming.” Her face fell, and I rushed to clarify. “Not bad—it’s amazing. It’s just so much. All at once, you know? I’m kind of taking it all in. And I’m really, really glad you’re here with me. I’d be lost without you.”

  Yiota smiled, her dark eyes sparkling. “Oh, I’m so glad! I knew it would all be okay.”

  I smiled back, fighting to keep my eyes from fluttering shut.

  “Oh! You must be so tired—we’ll go to sleep. I just have to call Nik and I’ll be right back.” She went to the door, cell phone in hand, already scrolling to her boyfriend’s number. “Should you call Alex?” she asked coyly.

  I yawned. “No, no. He’s not . . . I mean, that would be weird. I’ll text him in a few days, maybe.”

  “Okay, okay. Just asking,” she said, closing the door behind her.

  • • •

  And now here I am, wide awake in the dark, Yiota snoring softly beside me. Well, so what if I’m tired tomorrow, I think, flipping over my pillow for the hundredth time. I’m on vacation.

  Greeks Don’t Want To Share Easter, Insist On Their Own

  While the world generally acknowledges Easter as designated by the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Orthodoxy celebrates its own Easter, which may or may not fall on the same date. On the island of Crete, Easter festivities last up to a month, culminating in a massive celebration including some unusual traditions. For a neophyte, the holiday can be exciting and confusing.

  “Well, technically I’m Greek Orthodox because of my mom, but my dad was raised Jewish. We never celebrated anything, though. So I really have no idea what to expect,” commented Zona Lowell, visitor. “Apparently they pour rosewater in the street and light lots of stuff on fire . . . It sounds pretty intense.”

  The Heraklion community looks forward to hosting Ms. Lowell’s first Greek Easter and, if possible, totally blowing her mind with how awesome it is.

  Filed, 2:37 p.m., Heraklion.

  Before the holiday even arrives, there are weeks of fasting during Lent, which is what my family is in the middle of now. It’s a very complicated system where certain foods get eliminated on specific days until you’re basically eating a vegan diet, with the exception of shellfish, which for some reason is always allowed. Despite the restrictions, there seems to be a never-ending parade of things to eat—fresh everything, some of which comes from Yia-Yia’s backyard and most of which comes from the market in town where they shop every day.

  Compared to Athens, Cretan cuisine is heaven. I don’t even care that I can’t taste the amazing-looking cheeses and other off-limits items until Easter—I’m so filled with fresh vegetables and fruit and delicious warm bread that I can hardly move.

  I spend the first whole day exploring the house and surrounding gardens with the littlest cousins, who speak tentative English in their tiny voices and want me to meet all their toys and see their favorite hiding places. Yiota explains that some of them are actually her nieces and nephews, whose parents are in Athens and can’t come up until the holiday. There are a few boy cousins who look like they’re probably in middle school and refuse to do anything but play video games all day, ignoring the rest of us. And then there are the moments I spend sitting with Yia-Yia, who will come looking for me and press my hand into hers and smile and try to make me eat more.

  Although I’m staying in Yiota’s family’s section of the Marousopoulou complex, it’s my thios Theseus—the third brother—who I gravitate toward, ju
st as Yiota predicted. He’s like a Greek Willy Wonka (the Gene Wilder variety, not Johnny Depp, complete with fluffy reddish hair), always trying to sound mysterious. Also, he wears a lot of purple. Apparently he used to be a chemical engineer and a nightclub singer (which I can actually sort of picture), and he lived in the United States for over ten years, which is why his English is so good. He’s obsessed with Elvis, old cars, and being right.

  I liked him immediately when I met him at that first overwhelming family gathering, even though we only spoke for a second. Plus, I like saying “Thios Theseus.” The writer in me can’t help but love a nice dose of alliteration.

  His wife—actually, his second wife, Ioanna—is a lot younger than he is, and she doesn’t speak much English at all, but seems very nice. Their only daughter, Melina, is fourteen and a freshman at the local high school. I’m relieved that there’s another person about my age to hang out with. I love Yiota, of course, but I know she has friends here that she hardly ever gets to see, and I totally get that. Melina seems quiet at first and then suddenly transforms into her dad—loud and a bit nuts—and then back again, like a hermit crab going in and out of its shell. She is obsessed with America, motorbikes, and boys.

  We’re going to get along famously.

  • • •

  On the third morning, after breakfast (everyone eats meals together in the huge main house), Thios Theseus says he wants to give me a tour of Heraklion and the surrounding area.

  “We have everything here, you know,” he tells me proudly. “Hip-hop, rap, kids with Mohawks. Just like New York, right?”

  This may be the most astute description of New York I’ve ever heard.

  We get in the car, me in the front so I can see and Melina in the back.

  Remember what I said about insane Greek drivers? Not only does Thios Theseus love to go fast, he also loves to stop every other driver on the road to yell at them. For a while I think he just knows everybody driving by, but the angry looks from the other drivers reveal that he’s actually telling them off. Oh, how I wish I knew what he was saying.

  As we drive, he explains everything—and I mean everything. Every bend in the road, why it was planned that way, every house, who owns it, every tree, how it grows, and everything each of those things reminds him of. It’s dizzying and fascinating. All this, by the way, as we whiz up and down hills that have sheer drops you can’t even see to the bottom of . . . and no guardrails.

  Some of the roadsides have white crosses stuck in the ground—not one or two, but dozens. When I ask about them, Theseus sneers, “These are marks of terrible drivers who pay no attention. Ignore those. Ignore!”

  In between wishing I were wearing a just-in-case helmet and marveling at the fact that figs start out as plump green globes before they get dried and packaged by Sun-Maid, I sneak a peek back at Melina. “Éla, don’t look at her, Zona! Her you can see later. Now, look at these trees. These are our olives—did Ioanna give you a bar of our soap? That is made after the oil is finished. You won’t find soap like that in New York, let me tell you. So these trees, they were hand-planted, row after row—yes, do you believe it? Because they had to be brought from—Éla!”

  He screeches to a halt next to a field where three men are working. I give Melina a questioning look and she shrugs, clueless but resigned to her dad’s ways. Theseus is getting his cell phone out.

  “Look, girls, you see this? This is a disgrace. They are stealing this man’s artichokes! You know how you plant artichokes, yes? So you put each plant in the hole, but you can cut it in half, each one, yes? And then resell the plant because it will regenerate. These men are stealing half artichoke plants!”

  “Baba, you don’t know that—maybe they work for the owner,” Melina says quickly, clearly wanting to stop him from getting too crazy. See? Dads and daughters: the same everywhere. “Maybe one of them is the owner!”

  “Melina, agapi mou, no. Trust me—they are stealing. I know the owner, and he would not have people here now, not this time of year! But I’m going to take a picture”—he clicks away at the red pickup truck next to the field—“and when he says something I will say, ‘Here is the truck of the men who stole from you!’”

  “Why don’t you tell him now?” I ask.

  “Well, it isn’t my business now,” he says, like that should’ve been obvious. Melina’s scrunched down in the backseat, hiding. This is hilarious; I wish I were recording the whole thing. “But when he harvests and comes to the village complaining,” Theseus continues, “I will say to him, ‘Éla! Mystery solved!’”

  And we’re off again, skidding around the cliff, Melina shaking her head all the way.

  “Now, Zona, you have a driver’s license, yes?”

  “No, actually.”

  “How can this be? How old are you? Melina can’t wait to get her license, she made me promise to take her out in my Fiat . . . my car—I wouldn’t let Ioanna drive it, but for my little Melina . . . ah, who could say no to her, am I right?” He gazes warmly into the rearview mirror. “I rebuilt that car piece by piece, Zona. It took years, you wouldn’t believe. The mechanics, they are morons, seriously. This car is almost forty years old, still perfect. I know what is wrong with it, I tell them every time, but they don’t have the right parts to fix it. It’s maddening. What were we talking about?”

  I stifle a laugh. “Drivers’ licenses. I’m sixteen, but kids don’t really bother in the city—in Manhattan, I mean—because we take the train everywhere. My dad has a car, like if he needs to travel for work, but I just never bothered to learn. Why, you want to teach me?”

  “Ha!” Theseus slams on the brakes. “You think you could handle it, baaaaay-beh?” He says that last part in an Elvis voice, which, I have to admit, is totally dead-on. “I don’t know if you could keep up—maybe I’ll consider it.”

  “She was just kidding with you, Baba,” Melina chimes in.

  “Look, girls, look! Zona, you look especially—see that bus, the one that just passes? I will tell you now how to get to town on your own.”

  Bus System Only Slightly More Confusing Than Traversing Giant Hedge Maze In The Dark, Sources Say

  It was during a genial afternoon drive with her newfound relatives that Zona Lowell, 16, became aware of yet another hiccup in the Greek transportation system’s schematics. “The Metro may have the most gormless security parameters ever, but at least it runs well,” she opined. “The bus system on Crete sounds completely nonsensical!”

  Her uncle Theseus undertook the task of explaining the bus’s schedule, but was met with resistance. “It’s very simple,” he insisted. “If you want to get to town, you take the number 7. Not the number 1 or the 5, those go to other towns, which you should go to them and explore also. But for here, the 7, nay? So. It stops outside our house every day at seven thirty A.M. and five thirty P.M. Well, maybe seven fifteen, seven forty-five . . . You just be ready and it will come at some point, yes? And that takes you to town. To come back you wait at the McDonald’s or maybe the parking lot by the hotel at six, six thirty, and then you will be back. So easy, yes?”

  Ms. Lowell’s cousin, Melina Marousopoulou, 14, did not care to comment, as she was still very busy filing a report on a gang of alleged artichoke thieves.

  Filed, 12:48 p.m., Heraklion.

  “Wait, but . . . what about other times?” I ask incredulously. “The bus only runs twice a day?” Town is not exactly within walking distance.

  “No, of course not only twice a day, only twice a day outside our house. Now, if you want it at other times, you walk over to the airport or the other stop down by the market—remember where that moron was sitting instead of going at the little tunnel?—and you take the number 1 bus. That will drop you at the McDonald’s, right past it, and then you catch a number 5 to Rethymnon, or you can stay on it—the number 1—and go to the hotel in the middle of town.”

  “Wha
t’s Rethymnon?”

  “It’s another town, a very big one by the coast, you should go and walk around, have a coffee, look at everything . . .”

  “Oh. But it’s a different town? Not the number 1 bus to get to Heraklion?”

  Theseus heaves an enormous sigh. Oh, dear. “No, Zona, honey, you are not listening. Okay, the number 7 bus—this is so simple!—you take that from our house at seven thirty A.M., yes? Or if you miss that, you take the number 1 to the McDonald’s, just past it, and there you walk a few blocks and that is where the other buses are, to go to Rethymnon, Chania, wherever you want to go. Melina, you tell her.”

  Melina sighs, exactly like her dad. “I am not getting involved with this—Baba, you’re confusing her.” She leans over my shoulder. “He’s making it confusing. I’ll explain it later.”

  “I am confusing?” Theseus roars. “Who told you how to go, I’d like to know? I am confusing, my own daughter says to me.”

  “My mother told me,” Melina whispers in my ear. I giggle.

  “Girls, why is this so hard for you? Zona, you just told me you take the train everywhere. So, this is a bus. Same thing.”

  “But . . . Is there a map I could maybe—”

  “A map?!” he scoffs. “Listen, listen, you don’t need a map, right? I just told you how to do it!” Theseus slows the car as we approach a big square building. He rubs a hand over his eyes like we’ve exhausted him.

  Melina groans. “Can we get lunch, Baba, please?”

  Theseus makes a sharp turn, almost taking out a stray dog and what’s left of my sanity. “For you, my heart, we can do anything. So, now to Heraklion!”

  28

  The town of Heraklion is different from the green country village I had expected. The air smells like the sea, there’s a fine layer of sand spread along the gutters, and people stroll instead of rushing to get where they’re going. Beachy—like a permanent vacation.