The Nifi

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The Nifi Page 9

by Linda Fagioli-Katsiotas


  So this was the room the family inhabited until Chevi realized she was going to have another child, her fifth. By this time, Nikos and Vaso were old enough to help their father pile cinderblocks to make two small rooms at the foot of the stairs outside. But the expanding family brought renewed worries to Chevi—one more mouth to feed.

  CHAPTER 9

  It was the summer of 1991. I was a thirty-two-year-old nifi, again in Margariti looking for some peace behind a closed door. The water from the shower head splashed down onto the tiny sink and like a downpour on a tin roof, heavy drops pulsed from my elbows onto a small washing machine in the corner. But I could still hear the commotion on the other side of the wall, and then knocking that turned to pounding accompanied by a frenzy of other sounds thrown against the bathroom door.

  “What?!” Shampoo dripping in my eyes, I turned off the water.

  “Aunt Joanne is here! She’s here!” I knew Thomas was jumping up and down by the sound of his words as they met my ear.

  “Okay, okay, tell her I’ll be right out . . . Joanne?” I peeked around the half opened door.

  “No mommy. She’s in town. Uncle Fotis just came and told us.”

  Nikki must have been standing there, but I only remember Thomas and that may be because I had often, afterwards, heard my sister’s version of her first moments in Margariti.

  Back in New York, as summer had approached, it had been clear that there would once again be no funds for a trip to Greece but I could not bear the idea of those endless days of creating activities for a kindergartener and second-grader, within the fog of exhaustion, Nick and I seeing each other only if he happened to wake up as I slid into bed after my night of carrying heavy trays and bouncing between the discontent of cooks and customers. So, we decided that if we were going to be kept apart and in a perpetual state of fatigue, at least I could do it from Greece where the drachma could be stretched to great lengths and the children could spend time immersed in their other culture. But Nick would have to stay back on Long Island, working in the sweltering summer kitchen for his usual seven-day work week.

  Joanne had just graduated and had decided to come with us, delaying a job search. We would spend a few days together in Athens at Vangelis and Fofo’s house and then she would travel the islands with their daughter while I would head to Margariti with the children.

  So there I was, my soapy head sticking out of the open bathroom door. I heard Fotis’ motorcycle descending the driveway and wondered why he hadn’t just brought Joanne on the back of it—probably a language issue.

  Joanne was waiting patiently at his café, the taxi from Athens having deposited her there after an eight hour ride that she’d shared with three other strangers, her head pressed against the back door window eager to finally see our familiar faces after two weeks.

  As she sat there at his café, Fotis returned, set his motorcycle on its kickstand, smiled, and went inside.

  “What the . . .” Joanne waited . . . and waited, a lump forming in her throat, fighting tears and then she saw a little bronze boy—sun-bleached-white hair and freckled—come running toward her, barefooted on the gravel road.

  “Thomas?”

  He came closer and wrapped his arms around her waist as she got to her feet and they almost tumbled backwards.

  “This must be a safe place,” she thought, “if she let him come alone,” but to him, she said, “Where’s mommy?”

  “Shower.” He disappeared into the café and returned with an orange soda.

  “Huh? Where’d you get that?”

  “Uncle Fotis.” He jumped up onto a chair and sat with his feet dangling, giddy with the joy of having his Aunt Joanne there in that place all to himself.

  “Is mommy coming?” Joanne was perplexed at seeing this small child there alone, the same child whose mother—her sister—would not allow in the front yard alone.

  “She’s taking a shower.” He swung his legs back and forth as they hung from the edge of the chair.

  Joanne, with a furrowed brow, looked from the small child to Fotis behind the bar, within his café. He met her eyes, nodded and smiled.

  “Thomas, where’s the house? Can you show me?”

  “Well,” he emptied the bottle with one last gulp, “will you give me a piggy-back ride?”

  “Yes! Get up. Let’s go.” She helped him onto her back – with the expectation that it would be just around the corner, because after all, this small child had come alone!

  She picked up her bag and walked across the plaza. The villagers then understood that the stranger who had been dropped there by a taxi, was one of their own, seeing Tomas’ grandson with her, and they smiled and nodded as the pair passed by—past the mill, past the preschool and the vrisi and around the bend.

  “Where’s the house, Thomas?” Beads of perspiration dripped into her eyes as she breathed heavily.

  “Just keep going that way.” He pointed straight ahead. The bag in her hand grew heavier as she continued to walk.

  Joanne once told me that she thought I had spent most of my life blow-drying my hair. She remembered always seeing me—her teenaged sister—in the little downstairs bathroom at home, the hair dryer humming away as I pulled and tugged, trying to tame the wild mane. That day, as she huffed up the driveway, Thomas on her back, his encrusted feet scraping at her side and kicking at the suitcase, she found me in the little house—blow-drying my hair.

  “Linda?!” The tears began to well. “How could you leave me there?” And then a flood. “You’re blow-drying your hair?” She dropped Thomas, and Nikki appeared from somewhere and they both looked up at her with distress in their eyes, and then they looked at me for guidance.

  I pulled her into my arms.

  “I’m so sorry. . .”

  And both children drew close, hugging our legs, encircling their aunt until she was still. I couldn’t explain to her, and she wouldn’t have understood, my insecurity at having the villagers see me, Nick’s wife, Chevi’s nifi, less than perfectly groomed and well-coiffed, that I was a moving target whenever I went into town—eyes from every corner following me—and I was afraid to be seen as the flawed person I actually was. And as we four stood together, encased as one, I was not aware of when my transformation had begun, or how I had forgotten those feelings of strangeness I had felt on my first visit to Margariti as was occurring for Joanne then. And how I was slowly becoming part of that place, but it was not yet a conscious thought.

  The four of us spent a week enjoying the sea and sharing stories of our adventures. Joanne told us of her travels to the islands of Santorini and Mykonos, beautiful places to which she hoped to someday return. She talked about the difficulty of travelling with someone who does not share your language, a lonely situation that I understood, and the relief of getting into the taxi to be reunited in our small northern village—an unspoken realization that simple pleasure is derived from the people around us rather than the glamour of an environment.

  I told Joanne of one particular story that tickled us all. It was the day Chevi decided to go with me and the children to the beach.

  I had known enough Greek to understand that she was telling us that she would join us that day, though I was perplexed at the reason for that sudden change in her character. Perhaps, she felt obligated because Chochina and Cochos had accompanied us at times during our previous trip to Greece. Or maybe she felt that her son would appreciate that extra effort his mother was making for her nifi and grandchildren. In any event, it created an anxiety in me as I feared that she would die there—on Parga Beach—for I watched her descend the bus stairs in her long black dress, black apron and black head scarf. The absence of her black stockings was the only indication that she was wearing beach attire. As we approached the waterfront, she began wiping her brow with the ends of the head scarf, smiling, following us onto the beach, her shoes filling with sand. I laid the towels out. I had no umbrella. There was no money for such luxuries and I had never needed one as we three always s
pent most of the time in the water and then we would move to a café or other shaded location. But on that day, I wasn’t really sure how to proceed. Thomas, as usual was eager to get in the water.

  We played in the shallow water for a while, but I didn’t know what to do with my mother-in-law. She sat on the towel, smiling, her legs stretched out in front of her, occasionally responding to the Greek questions thrown her way by onlookers who were undoubtedly assessing the odd group before them: one village woman covered in black, two bleached blond children speaking what many people mistook as German, and me—a younger obviously foreign woman with dark hair, who might have been the children’s mother, in a bikini.

  “Nikki, you stay here with yiayia,” I smiled as I knew Chevi would only understand the word yiayia.

  “Oh mom . . .”

  Thomas enjoyed what felt to him like favoritism. “Let’s swim to the island, mom!” He sang as he danced back and forth on the sand. The island was a few hundred meters in front of us. It had a little church on it and it was a favorite place for swimmers to go.

  Nikki started to whine, “Oh, no . . . I wanna go too!”

  Still smiling, I implored, “I’ll take you tomorrow. I promise.”

  I heard her sigh as we swam away.

  As we returned a bit later, I saw both my daughter and my mother-in-law in the water. Chevi had gathered her dress around her thighs and was wading up to her knees. Two fishermen stood together on a nearby boat watching the older woman.

  “She is going to die from heat exhaustion,” I thought, “and it’s going to be my fault. I have to get her out of here.”

  As we all dried off, I took Nikki’s small straw hat and handed it to Chevi who once again was sitting on the towel with outstretched legs. She took it and put it on top of her head scarf and it sat there like a small clown hat.

  We shortened that beach visit considerably that day and were back in Margariti by mid-afternoon. Chevi would tell people that I was embarrassed by the bare-breasted women sunbathing around us and I had rushed her off the beach so she would not see them. But when I described my version of that scene to Joanne as we sat with Nikki and Thomas on a bed in the little house, we all laughed and the kids rolled around on the bunched up sheets—enjoying the comfort of the laughter.

  Before Joanne’s visit, Nick’s sisters and their children had been coming to the village every weekend, as well as having us stay with them on occasion. The children all stuck to me like magnets. There were five of them, close in age, including Nikki and Thomas. They saw that I was not a real participant in that impregnable world of adults and thus I appeared to rarely be occupied, so they hung on me and if I were out of reach, they called to me, “Aunt, look here.” I knew that Greek phrase well. And that was how my visit was going on one of the days we had been brought to Igoumenitsa—the day I met the Australian.

  I shared this story with Joanne, one evening when she and I went into town to enjoy some Margariti night life, free of the brood. We sat and shared a bottle of wine and discussed our Greek experiences. We were the only women at the café—scandal averted by the fact that it was my brother-in-law's café, we were both foreigners, and we sat quietly away from the others, deeply immersed in our own conversation.

  I began my story: The reason I had been with Nikki and Thomas in Igoumenitsa had been for some kind of celebration at the apartment of Christos and Vaso—a name day, a birthday, a national holiday—I don’t remember. But the children had been allowed to go around the corner with an older niece of Christos’ to visit his elderly mother. About an hour later, I was sitting on a sofa, the words in the crowded room flying by my ears, some of them understandable, yet without any clear meaning, and the five children filed noisily back into the apartment, breathless and wet with sweat. Nikki came to me with red eyes.

  “Mommy, they brought me to a witch’s house.”

  Thomas stood behind her, unperturbed, chocolate smeared from ear to ear.

  Nikki continued, “I wanted to come back, but they closed the door. ”

  Marianna came near us. “Nikki,” she sang her cousin’s name. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” She and her sister had picked up some English phrases while listening to their American cousins. It’s okay, was the most common, followed by a close second phrase: shut up, stupid, which hit me with a rush of shame when I heard it in their sweet little Greek accents but I couldn’t seem to discourage it as Nikki and Thomas would giggle uncontrollably and the girls would enjoy the feedback.

  Again, Marianna cooed. “It’s okay, Nikki. It’s okay.”

  “Mommy, I tried to leave.” She put her arm around my neck and sniffled, “but they kept giving me candy. I wanted to go, so I had to cry and then they let me out.”

  Just then, the elderly woman made her way into the apartment with the help of the older niece.

  Nikki cowered. “There’s the witch!”

  From across the room, a young woman laughed; she had understood. And that is how I met Christos’ Australian cousin.

  “That’s no witch,” she laughed, and added in her distinct Aussie accent, “that’s my aunt.”

  Nikki was as tickled as I to hear English. This cousin had grown up with Greek parents in Australia and had gone to Greece alone to discover her roots. She spoke perfect Greek, but was experiencing much the same culture shock I had on my first visit. We latched onto each other, talking and laughing all day. My sister-in-laws watched with smiles. They had never heard me talk so much and perhaps they were wondering if there weren’t a bit more to their quiet American nifi, than they had thought.

  Joanne and I emptied the wine bottle but our stories continued to flow as we made our way home in the dark, weaving from side to side under the watchful eyes of the stars.

  A few days later, there was an incident for which my responsibility was clear but I was unable to defend my young nephew, Yeorgos who was unjustly punished by his mother, Anastasia. He was a high-energy tornado, whirling between the adults, kicking up dust and announcing his presence at every turn, which won him the reputation of the child who probably did it. If anyone said, “hey, stop it” from outside the range of our view, it would always be followed by Anastasia’s high pitched, “Yeorgos!” as she reprimanded without further words.

  So that Saturday, unaware that bread could only be purchased on weekdays. Joanne and I sat in the kitchen with the children around us while the bulk of the guests and relatives were in the yard, cleaning up after a feast, readying to nap as siesta time approached. I remember we were all laughing and whatever we were doing, entailed the ripping of the inside of a loaf of bread and leaving the crust behind. I was the major culprit, and very much enjoying the laughter and joy of the children.

  Yeorgos was saying something and he grabbed the loaf from me and stuck his hand in the narrow, hollowed-out tube of crust. Just then, his mother entered and he froze, his arm in the air, a full loaf of bread pushed up to his elbow.

  “Yeorgos!!!”

  He broke into a run with Anastasia in pursuit—many more words following in rapid succession, of which none I understood.

  “Linda, say something! Tell her!” Joanne was yelling at me, but mistakenly thought that I spoke fluent Greek.

  I tried to get Anastasia’s attention, but she was throwing words like bullets toward her son who had run upstairs and locked the door. His face was streaked with tears as he came to the window and the two exchanged a barrage of language, all incomprehensible to me.

  “Linda!” Joanne was appalled that I was allowing Yeorgos to take the rap.

  I grabbed Anastasia’s arm, "I do,” I said in Greek, pointing at myself and pantomiming my pulling bread apart; at least that was my intention. But it appeared by the escalation and increased pitch of her voice that she may have thought I was tattling.

  I was able to get Yeorgos’ forgiveness many years later, he remembering none of it as we laughed about it together. But on that day I felt sick with guilt and Joanne reprimanded me all evening—deservedly so
. Not only had I let that small boy take my punishment, I had also destroyed the bread, the worst offense among people who knew of a time when there was not enough bread to feed their hunger.

  CHAPTER 10

  After little Fotis was born—finally, another son—Chevi’s worst fears were realized. That summer the saplings on the farm fell limp over the dry and cracked earth. Rainless days were swept by the constant dry African winds. Chevi watched with dread as the signs emerged of a dismal harvest ahead, and she worried about the cries of hunger that she had always feared would come from her children, and that year they inevitably did come. Those cries would continue to haunt her as they echoed into her old age, long after hunger had left for good, which is the reason, years later she always kept piles of full flour sacks in the storeroom, sometimes in such a surplus that they fed only the mice in the summer and the mold in the winter.

  But that dry summer there was not a surplus of anything—except hunger. Chevi had the foresight to send a message to her cousin in Kanali. The postmaster’s wife was originally from Kanali, so when Chevi heard they were planning a trip there, she asked them to tell her cousin that she and her family were looking for a chance to pick beans when it was time to harvest them. She asked only to be paid in sacks of beans, no money. Such a deal had a better chance of being met with acceptance, as money was rare for everyone in the region and useless to Chevi, for Tomas would surely take the money for drink and leave them as hungry as they had come. Chevi knew her cousin would receive the message with the underlying desperation it brought and would be sure to find them work.

  So that summer, Chevi and Tomas took their children to Kanali to pick beans. Baby Fotis rested in the sarmanitsa on Chevi’s back while Anastasia, tethered to a tree in the field, played in the dirt. Tomas could read and write and therefore knew things such as where best to pick, and which tree’s shade offered the best protection for his precious little daughter, Anastasia, to whom he insisted on attending throughout the hot days. Chevi showed four-year-old Eftihia how to hold open the sack while she, Vaso, and Niko plucked the ripened beans from their vines and shucked them from their pods, until her spine ached and the children’s small fingertips turning white with calluses. When it was time to say goodbye to her cousin, they were paid with two giant sacks of beans, which were loaded onto the donkey to be taken back for the long hungry winter. But before they left, as Chevi kissed her cousin, she noticed someone had added a sack of rice and of flour to the donkey’s back. She said nothing. She met her cousin’s moist eyes in their silent acknowledgement of Chevi’s unlucky fate in her father’s choice for a son-in-law.

 

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