Sophomore Year Is Greek to Me

by Meredith Zeitlin

  “Well, no. But I used to have such an unwavering stance about my Greek relatives, and now it’s kind of . . . blurry.” Saying what I’ve been thinking out loud isn’t making it any clearer, so I opt to change the subject instead. “Enough about that—tell me about this club!”

  “Oh my God, Zona, it’s insaaaaane. The last time we were there, there were these go-go dancers—guys, obviously—wearing only manties, and this one guy—”

  “Sorry, what? Did you just say manties?”

  “You know, like man panties? Panties for—”

  “Okay, I get it, thanks. How do you get into a place like that?” I ask, deciding to never discuss manties again if at all possible.

  “Fake ID. Scott got me one.”

  “Ah, okay.”

  “Besides, these are gay clubs. They don’t care as long as you’re cute or with people they know.”

  “Well, I told you my one and only clubbing story, so . . . yeah. But I’ll take your word for it.”

  Matt laughs again. “Oh, right. Well, I never drink anything unless I see it made right in front of me—I don’t care who’s buying. So anyway, we’re at this kiki . . .”

  I’m glad Matt is having fun and making new friends—of course I am. I know how hard it’s been for him not to have other gay guys to talk to. But he never cared about any of this stuff before. Now he seems to be Mister Nightlife. He’s honestly the smartest guy I know; I can’t imagine he’d do anything stupid, like flunk out of school or start doing drugs, but I wonder what other things Scott and his friends might be doing, or getting Matty to try. Maybe Hilary isn’t so far off the mark. I think it’s time for Matt to come back down to earth, at least a little bit.

  By the time we hang up, I’ve learned a lot about the NYC club scene and been instructed to erase the kissing selfie. I do—Matty’s right; it might be a bit much to send to a guy who’s . . . well, a guy who I don’t know what he is.

  I wish I could reach my dad and talk over the family stuff with him—trying to explain my feelings to Matty made me realize it would be easier to sort through them with Dad’s help.

  I’ll try again tomorrow, I think as I climb under the covers and drift off to sleep.

  33

  “We aren’t going anywhere. You are,” Melina says with a sly grin. Yiota laughs, then turns the laugh into an unconvincing cough.

  We’re sitting outside in the sun eating breakfast a few days later, and I’ve just been informed that I’m taking a trip to the country. By myself.

  “Nay, nay, you going!” the little cousins squeal, delighted.

  “Yeah, I’m gonna need more info, thanks.”

  “Pro-Yia-Yia wants to meet you. She lives in a teeny town near Spilli—you’ll go stay with her for a few days and let her get to know you. You can see what a traditional Cretan village is like, where your family comes from,” Melina explains.

  “Uh . . . Pro-Yia-Yia? What is that?”

  “Not what—who. Our great-grandmother. Yia-Yia’s mother. She’s, em . . . the mother-in-law, Pappous’s mother-in-law. She runs the whole family, basically.”

  “Why doesn’t she live here, then?”

  “No, no—her, em . . . She has her own many people there, her own children, their children—like Yia-Yia and all of us. But Pro-Yia-Yia is the oldest of the whole family, so she is in charge. She tells everybody what to do.”

  “I see. From her fortress in a minuscule hamlet in the middle of nowhere. Sounds like a dream.”

  Melina looks at me quizzically. She still doesn’t always get sarcasm. Or maybe she doesn’t know what a hamlet is? Ah, well.

  “Yiota, you did not tell me about this,” I say, turning to her. She widens her eyes, the picture of innocence.

  “No? I’m sure I must have mentioned it,” she swears. She’s bluffing. She and Melina sneak a look at each other and I can tell they’re trying not to laugh again. Clearly there is more to this than meets the eye, and everyone is in on the joke but me. Time to put the old rusty journalism skills to good use.

  “How old is Pro-Yia-Yia?”

  “Oh, I have no idea. Maybe . . . ninety-five years? More?” Melina says.

  “And she lives all alone?!”

  “Her children and the neighbors visit her and make sure she has what she needs, and she is in excellent, em . . . healthy?” Melina nods to herself. “Health. She walks in town and cooks and gardens. She’s . . . you would say, she’s a ‘character.’”

  “Uh-huh. And does she speak English?”

  Yiota laughs. “No, of course not!”

  “And how am I supposed to communicate with her? Can’t you come, too?! This is nuts.”

  Yiota looks stern. “We have to stay here and help with the olive oil and Easter preparations. Besides, I already have gone for my turn.”

  “Me, too,” Melina adds. “Two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry, your turn? What—”

  “Pro-Yia-Yia likes to spend time alone with each member in the family, nay? See that they are, em . . . how to say . . . carrying a legacy? So these ones”—she makes a face at the little kids—“are still too small. But you have to go. Pro-Yia-Yia wants to meet you—she said on the phone yesterday to Baba, and what she wants . . .” She raises her eyebrows.

  Okay, I get it. This old lady has the family wrapped around her little finger.

  “Zona, do not look this worried! You’ll figure it out.” Yiota grins at me, a gleam in her eye. I don’t like the sound of this at all.

  This Just In: Teen Expected To Travel To Remote Town Alone

  It was with great trepidation that Zona Lowell, formerly of New York City, allowed herself to be talked into taking a series of four (predictably confusing) buses to a tiny rural village. The trip was at the behest of a mysterious great-grandmother—a woman Ms. Lowell had never even heard of until that morning.

  “My uncle told me to ask the last driver to drop me off at a nameless bakery—like the guy would just happen to know where it was!—and he totally didn’t. And then some people got off in what seemed to be an empty field. I’m lucky I didn’t end up in Santorini. Or Turkey.”

  Ms. Lowell did make it to her final destination despite myriad obstacles and managed to find the aforementioned bakery all by herself. Which was not easy to do, despite the fact that the entire “town” turned out to be one street with four stores on it.

  Filed, 1:37 p.m., the middle of nowhere, Crete.

  As I lug my overnight bag down the barely paved road—it has a row of stones at the edge but no sidewalk—I gaze dejectedly at the four identical square buildings in front of me. Each one has a faded, barely legible sign written in Greek letters. There are no people on the road, I don’t smell any bread, and I realize there’s basically no way to figure out which is the bakery without going into each building and trying not to look like a complete moron in the process.

  The last thing Yiota said to me before I left early this morning was, “Have fun! By the way, you have been working on your Greek, yes?”

  This. Is. A. Disaster.

  In the first store—which is definitely not a bakery—I find a toothless old man who stares at me in total silence until I finally just back out apologetically. The second store is locked.

  I head into the third little store, which is less like a bakery than a small grocery store. There are, however, racks of bread, which is a hopeful sign. It is totally empty.

  “Uh, kalimera?” I call out. A door swings open from what could be a kitchen and a cheerful-looking woman in a red shirt appears, wiping her floury hands on a towel.

  “Kalimera,” she says. Then she starts off in a string of Greek that I can’t understand.

  “Sorry, sorry—I don’t speak Greek,” I say for the millionth time since January. She just stares at me now. Oh, no. “Um, I’m trying to visit my, um . . . Athénè Pelonis?
My thios Theseus said someone at the bakery could call . . .” I mime a telephone.

  Nothing.

  I hold out my little notepad with the phone number written on it.

  The woman takes a look, then grins broadly. “Ah, Pro-Yia-Yia!” she exclaims. “Greekgreekgreek Athénè greekgreekgreek!”

  I smile at her, hoping this will end soon and I’ll have the slightest clue where to go. She finally realizes I don’t have any idea what she’s saying and goes back behind the swinging door, calling out to someone.

  A guy in his twenties comes out, also very floury and with one giant furry eyebrow across his forehead. He smiles at me hesitantly. “You are Zona?” he says in a soft, heavily accented voice.

  “Yes!” Does this guy speak English? And know who I am?!

  “Em . . . I your cousin Markos. I . . . all your cousin. Pro-Yia-Yia.” He points to the woman in red and to the door.

  Well, that’s some English, anyway. I’ll take it. “Cousins!” I exclaim. “Great. And . . . where is Pro-Yia-Yia? Her . . . house?”

  Markos and the woman exchange some words, and then she says something to me that I don’t understand. Markos says, “I take you . . . van, house. Yes?”

  Sounds good to me.

  We go through the kitchen—definitely a bakery!—and exit through a back door. After Markos manages to start what may be the first bread delivery van ever invented, we drive around a short bend behind the main street and up a hill that is lined by crumbling stone walls. It occurs to me that this might not be my cousin at all, but just a random man who likes to hide the bodies of American teens in construction sites. But since I don’t have any other options besides staying put and jumping out, I hope for the best.

  He stops outside a very crumbly wall and we get out. He takes my bag with a smile, and I follow him down some equally crumbly stone steps. At the bottom is a big stone platform surrounded by walls and filled with trees and plants (in terra-cotta pots of all sizes) and flowers. It’s rustic and beautiful.

  Bent over one of these plants is a teensy, stooped, unbelievably ancient woman dressed in all black. She has a kerchief tied over her thin white hair and the sharpest, shiniest black eyes I’ve ever seen. She’s got to be at least a hundred. Maybe two hundred.

  Pro-Yia-Yia.

  Without even looking up from her plant, she barks, “Markos greekgreekgreekgreekgreekgreek,” and he scurries down the steps with my bag.

  I follow, taking in the lush greenery and the cool white stones. There’s an old stove built into the wall, and I can see a river from where I’m standing. Right there, just flowing past the enormous garden.

  I don’t actually see a house, however.

  I’m unsure what to do. Pro-Yia-Yia’s body looks so fragile, like she’d break if I tried to hug her—she can’t be taller than four foot eight and weighs maybe eighty-five pounds. I’ll let her make the first move.

  “Kalimera,” I say.

  “Kalimera,” she replies. From the low wall she picks up a wooden stick—just like the mean lady in the market!—and uses it to march right up to me. She looks me over in silence, frowning, tugging my hair, reaching up to move my head to the side to inspect my profile, squeezing my cheeks and chin. Finally she looks me square in the face and nods sharply, with a grunt.

  I smile stupidly at her. She seems to be waiting for something. Does she have a magic ring I need to kiss? I feel like I’m in a video game and I don’t know the password to get to the next level.

  Luckily, Markos reappears at that moment—without my bag. “You, em . . . This way, to house?” he says, gesturing. Pro-Yia-Yia has gone back to tending her plant, so I follow him.

  200-Year-Old Cottage In Crumbling Stone Village Might Be . . . Awesome?

  Zona Lowell was less than overwhelmed by her first impression of her great-grandmother’s Cretan home, sources say. As her cousin Markos showed her the amenities, she tried very hard not to run for the nearest bus.

  “One of the walls is entirely made from a big wooden door—which is just a big slab of wood with a hole in it instead of a knob—and behind the door is a small stone room. There’s a mini-fridge and a small stove with a sink built into the wall underneath a window—well, it’s technically a window, I guess,” Ms. Lowell told us. “Actually, the ‘window’ has no glass; it’s just a cavity, really. And there’s a plain wooden table with a bowl of tomatoes on it. Hanging from the roof beams are woven rugs, and there’s a single lightbulb dangling by a cord from the ceiling, a thatched wooden chair, and . . . that’s it.”

  Markos elaborated on the living setup, explaining, “Em . . . this your place. Pro-Yia-Yia live . . . other side. This, em . . . for guest, em, tourist, yes?”

  “Well, at least there’s electricity, right?” Ms. Lowell remarked, trying for optimism. “I mean, it’s a bit Lord-of-the-Rings-y, but hey, I’ve never had a place all to myself before. In the middle of nowhere. With no lock on the door. Um . . .”

  Just when the situation seemed to be unsalvageable, the tour took a surprising turn: Markos pointed to an ancient wooden ladder, at the top of which was a tiny lofted room, filled entirely with a bed. But what a bed!

  “It’s covered with green satin sheets and has a huge floaty green net covering it,” Ms. Lowell gushed excitedly. “I guess it’s a mosquito net, but the whole thing looks made for an Arabian princess. I can’t wait to sleep in it! Seriously, the bed makes me feel like I’m in a Disney movie. Not that I watch those. Whatever—Hilary will die of jealousy when I show her pictures!”

  Filed, 2:02 p.m., the middle of nowhere, Crete.

  Maybe this will be a fun adventure, I think. After all, I’d never get my own house with a princess bed back in NYC. I start thinking about how I’m going to fill the little fridge with stuff from the market: fresh veggies, some cheese . . .

  Markos is still talking, so I go down the ladder and follow him back outside. He goes through a second wooden door that’s sort of mid-garden and leads onto an enclosed stone terrace. There’s a detachable showerhead attached to the wall at about knee-level, and a knob. It’s completely out in the open.

  “For . . . wash,” Markos says.

  Um, for what now?

  Next he points to an ugly brown rug hanging from the top of a little arch next to the “shower.” He pulls it aside, revealing a small stone “room”—at least it’s enclosed—with another little window (square hole). There’s a sink and a toilet.

  Outside.

  I mentioned that the door to the bathroom is a weird brown rug, right? And the shower is basically a sink?! OUTSIDE?!

  I am going to kill Melina and Yiota.

  34

  It’s the middle of the night and I’m trying not to panic. I lie in my bed, the one I thought was straight out of a fairy tale only a few hours ago. I must’ve forgotten that most fairy tales have monsters.

  There is something inside the wall or on the roof—which is, after all, right above my head—and it wants to get out. Badly. Or possibly, it wants to get in, into my room . . . and eat me for a midnight snack. There is a repetitive scratching and scuffling noise that sounds like Tony at the door when he wants to go for a walk. I wish Tony were here to protect me.

  I mentally compile a list of all the things that could be making the noise:

  1) A rat

  2) A squirrel

  3) A raccoon

  4) A ghost

  5) A demon

  6) A psychopathic killer

  I haven’t seen any squirrels or raccoons in Greece. And a killer would have to be pretty idiotic to waste time trying to break in through the wall when the door doesn’t lock. Oh, and when the window is a hole. Which leaves options one, four, and five.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and pray for sleep.

  More scratching and pawing sounds. Was that a squeak? Or a voice? Oh, God. Now I’m imagining t
hings and I have to go to the bathroom.

  I fumble for the light and tiptoe down the wooden ladder. Remember how cool I thought it was to have a place to myself just a few hours ago? What I wouldn’t give now to be sleeping on the floor next to Pro-Yia-Yia’s bed . . . At least if a demon came out of the wall, she could hit it with her mean-old-lady stick and protect us.

  I go through the little kitchen and open the back door. It’s pitch-dark out. I mean, totally and completely—no moonlight or anything—and I can’t find the switch for the outside lights. I take a little camping lantern off a nail by the door; a reassuring blue light flashes . . . and then goes out.

  Seriously?!

  Maybe I don’t have to go that badly. I contemplate waiting til morning.

  Nope. I’ll just have to be brave.

  Outdoor Bathrooms A Terrible Idea, May Cause Nightmares For Life

  It was late at night when Zona Lowell, 16, stumbled through the dark to the tiny outdoor bathroom, thinking that, at worst, she’d sustain a stubbed toe. (Or possibly be eaten by a demon.) This was not the case, however.

  “You know that scene in Silence of the Lambs? The one where they find Buffalo Bill’s house and it’s filled with all the moths? It was like that, only the moths were bigger and out for blood. Oh, and I couldn’t see them so I couldn’t tell they were moths at first, just horrible giant flapping things. Plus I was on a toilet and unable to defend myself,” the stricken victim explained.

  Alerted by her great-granddaughter’s shrieks of terror, Athénè Pelonis (who apparently has night vision and had no trouble navigating in the dark) moseyed outside, flipped up a hidden light switch, and sniffed disparagingly at Ms. Lowell, who was at this point cowering half under the sink with her arms wrapped around her head. When asked for comment, Mrs. Pelonis would only mutter “Amerikanitha” repeatedly as she shuffled back to her bed.

  “Look, this is the twenty-first century, okay?” Ms. Lowell exclaimed on the way back to her (most likely haunted) cottage. “I don’t think it’s too much to ask for bathrooms to be enclosed.”