The Secret Sister

by Fotini Tsalikoglou

  “‘We have good news: Frosso is going to marry well, Mr. Menelaos Argyriou, a young man, kind and hardworking, and with connections in America, you’re both very lucky, who knows, Eras­mia, perhaps fortune will smile on you too. Do you want to, Little Frosso, do you want to?’

  “‘Little Frosso nodded, said nothing, just nodded and looked me in the eye.

  “‘And you? And you, Erasmia, do you want to?’

  “‘But do you need to ask!’ I said to her. ‘What luck!’ and I ran outside so they wouldn’t see my tears.

  “In three days Menelaos came, in six days the wedding took place, in seven days they left for America. That night I was alone for the first time in eighteen years . . . I cried my eyes out and felt happiness for my sister. There was no way of knowing that two months later, on August 17, 1940, Menelaos would come back alone and in a suitcase he would bring back Frosso’s red dress without Frosso. Soon the war would break out. Those who could leave would leave. The others would stay and make do. It would be impossible to endure this war and everything that came after it,7 we became strangers among ourselves, brother killed brother, son killed father, eyes grew dark with fear and hate. We didn’t recognize our homeland. Eighteen years after Smyrna, the fire would follow us. As soon as Menelaos returned alone, I threw my arms around him.

  “‘Take me,’ I said, ‘take me away from here.’

  “But he had already made up his mind, that’s why he had come back: to take me with him.

  “‘You’ll marry me, Erasmia, you’ll take me to be your husband, I can’t live anymore without you two.’

  “It was the first time I saw a face so deeply saddened and determined. I thought of Little Frosso. How would she feel? And I said that my sister would be happy, no doubt about it. I don’t know if I was being irrational, but I said that her body, in the depths of the ocean where it lay, would find the way to tell me, ‘But yes, do you need to ask, sister? You’ll say yes and you’ll marry Menelaos, and you’ll go with him where I wasn’t able to go,’ and then I thought about how the brine and the damp preserve bodies and protect them from malicious decomposition, and how, with her body intact, with her child’s heart, with her wavy hair, all in one piece as I first laid eyes on her, my little sister would give her consent, ‘Go ahead, Erasmia, you go in my place,’ she would tell me again and she would be filled with joy at Menelaos’s proposal that I become his wife in her place. We each wanted what was best for the other. She wasn’t destined to live, so I would do it for her, ‘Keep an eye out for Little Frosso,’ ‘I’ll keep an eye out for her.’ Then I lost my nerve. I couldn’t go through with it, I had to find more strength. I went to Saint Lucas, the priest was saying Mass. ‘Lord, forgive me,’ I said, it was the Archangel Michael in the icon, he smiled at me, ‘Have a safe trip,’ he said, ‘Lord, forgive me,’ I said again, and I got myself ready for the big journey.

  “For two days in a row I saw the same dream, our mother in Goreme, in the Fairy Caves, ‘Çok şükür yarabim sen biliyorsun,’8 I began to cry, I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say, I memorized the words, I went and found Agathi, the old woman who lived next door, who knew many things we knew nothing about.

  “‘What do those words mean?’ I asked her.

  “‘Whose are they?’

  “‘My mother’s.’

  “‘The dead one or the living one?’ she asked me, and I thought it strange, because Agathi knew full well our mother wasn’t living.

  “‘They’re the dead one’s words,’ I said, ‘I have no other.’

  “‘You do,’ she said, ‘you have another mother, she’s the shadow of your dead sister, and she follows you around and gives you her blessing, and you’ll carry with you one mother’s shadow and the other mother’s blessing and Godspeed to you.’

  “That’s what the old woman said, and I realized it was God’s will and I ran to Menelaos, fell into his arms, ‘I’m ready,’ I said, and we went to the same church, Saint Lucas in Patissia, that’s where we got married and the next day we held a memorial service for Little Frosso, and the church was adorned with white roses and jasmine and daisies, which she loved, and they chanted ‘He makes me lie down in green pastures,’ and I cried inconsolably, but now everything was ready for us to leave. I hugged Menelaos, ‘Let’s go,’ I said, ‘we shouldn’t be late,’ I didn’t want to stay in my country any longer, as if I could feel that soon war would break out and then the civil war with brothers like foreign bodies slaughtering each other, and erstwhile comrades betraying each other, ‘Let’s go, Menelaos, let’s go,’ and we boarded the big ship, for twenty-one days Menelaos held me tightly by the hand, he wouldn’t let go of me for a moment and at night in the same bunk, and because he was a heavy sleeper, he kept me tied to his hand with a handkerchief. But I was in no danger, I didn’t care about vomit, maggoty food, heavy seas, I was going to get to America no matter what. Everything seemed bearable to me. I had no intention of getting lost in the depths of the Atlantic. September 16, 1940. It was a Monday. It was foggy. The ship was called ‘New Greece.’ As it entered the harbor, we all came on deck. The doctors boarded to examine us. They carefully checked my eyes—the fundus was clear, there was no damage; they examined my skin—I wasn’t consumptive; my nails, my tongue, everything was clear. ‘She’s okay,’ I was eligible to stay. We disembarked. A huge statue awaited us. ‘It’s the Statue of Liberty,’ they told us. That’s how we arrived here and struggled hard and became Grandpa Menelaos and Grandma Erasmia, and we did well, and then we brought Anthoula here, Agathi’s cousin, to do the housework, and after twelve years your mother was born. And we named her Frosso.”

  She stopped talking then. I didn’t dare look you in the eye, Amalia. What were you thinking that whole time?

  “Nothing, Jonathan. I was looking at Frosso’s photo. How beautiful she was. That’s all I could think about.”

  You said nothing, and neither did I. You went up to her, you reached out and stroked her hair. Suddenly she looked a thousand years old.

  “I’m tired,” Grandma said.

  That was when you asked her: “Does Mama know? Does she know about Aunt Frosso, does she know about her name?”

  You received no answer. Grandma got up with difficulty and lay down on the couch. Soon she’d fallen asleep.

  “Soon she’d fallen asleep.”

  You were left looking at her. And I stood to the side and watched you, you were holding your breath in case you disturbed her sleep and then she’d feel uncomfortable about all the things she confided in us, all the indelicate and forbidden secrets. Did you know that was only the beginning? And that Erasmia’s silver sleep held more secrets? How beautiful you were, Amalia! Dazzlingly beautiful. I had to close my eyes not to be blinded. When I opened them again I was a boy alone on a foreign continent, learning his history little by little.

  “It was such a sunny day, Jonathan! The skyscrapers were bathed in light, whereas on overcast days they’d disappear into the clouds. It would soon be Halloween, Joanna and I were getting our costumes ready. I was going to dress up as a superstar, she was going to be a Himalayan cat, Michael was sweet on me, he had green eyes, Clarissa thought he was a dreamboat.”

  You were thirteen and I was fifteen. Michael was an idiot.

  “The story ran on inside us. Children can endure all kinds of stories. They’re saving their strength for what is to come.”

  Grandpa came back from the hospital sick.

  “He never recovered. He dwindled with each passing day.”

  Grandpa died on the Thursday. On the Tuesday, two days earlier, I remember the day. It was right after school. You got a stain on the white velvet couch that was Grandma’s prized possession and which was constantly in danger from unruly Bellino’s nails. That day it had been left without its cover and as soon as you sat down it turned red. You became flustered. “Blood, I’m sorry,” you stammered and ran to the
bathroom. “I’m sorry, blood,” I repeated, as if I’d just got my period with you, and I ran away in shame, as if trying to hide the sign of my secret gender. However, in two days’ time I would be the only man in the house.

  Grandpa died; he was eighty-one years old. The obituary in the New York Times read:

  Menelaos Argyriou, aged 81, passed away on Thursday, February 8, 1996. He was born in Athens, Greece and he was a longtime resident of New York City. He is survived by his beloved wife Erasmia, born in Talas, Asia Minor, his daughter Lale Andersen and two grandchildren, Jonathan and Amalia.

  We shall miss you, Menelaos.

  Several friends showed up at the Memorial Park Funeral Home, old neighbors from Astoria, Grandpa’s partner, the man who lived downstairs, the porter and his family, the chauffer, a lady from the convenience store. And then they all came to the house. Anthoula made savory pies with herbs, some more friends of Grandpa’s came by, not many, an old neighbor from Astoria with his new wife and her kids, the lady from the ground floor and her dog. Bellino hid in the kitchen—he’d get restless around strangers,—Menelaos’s partner and his two sons brought flowers and a big fish. That was it. A cousin called from Athens. I made the mistake of picking up the receiver.

  “I’m his cousin, well, actually, I’m more like a brother, my name’s Seraphim, you must have heard of me, sonny, my boy Sakis made it over to your parts a few months ago, but Menelaos never made it back here one last time, your poor grandfather, my boy, he needed to make it back here one more time, now that everything has changed, because last time he was very disappointed and Menelaos’s heart didn’t deserve to be so darkened, nobody deserves that, but him living in a foreign land all these years, he deserved better than that, because, you see . . . well . . . there was that accursed last time he came to see us, it was in the middle of the Dictatorship, in 1971,”9 every few words his voice would break, “we went to our old haunt, down in Petralona, he was so glad to see me, so many years later, ‘No matter how good it is over there, it’s different here, even the bad stuff is different here,’ he kept saying, over and over, and he began to sing a revolutionary song, but then everyone around us froze, and some even threatened us, ‘We don’t want any trouble here,’ they said, so we got the hell out of there, and you know what? The people who kicked us out were our friends, our buddies, your grandfather was so upset, you can’t imagine, he began to cry, ‘I don’t want a homeland like this,’ he said, ‘I’m better off over there, at the ends of the earth.’ And he left with a heavy heart. If only you knew how ashamed I felt! And then he was so happy when democracy was restored! ‘I’ll come again,’ he’d tell me every so often when we spoke on the phone, ‘I’ll come again, now everything will change, bad things never last long in Greece,’ that’s what he kept saying . . . You’re his grandson, right? Do you look like him, sonny? Bless you, my boy, and give Erasmia and your sister a kiss from me, is your mother nearby? Can I speak to her?”

  “This isn’t a good time,” I said, “everyone’s busy,” and I hung up the phone.

  I went back to the stained couch. They said that with the blood a girl becomes a woman. Will you change now, Amalia? Will you be more reserved, more shy, more what? Will you leave me? Tell me, won’t we run together in the park anymore, won’t we chase squirrels, won’t we fall over each other on the grass, panting for breath? Won’t you kiss me on the neck? Won’t you tell me:

  “Hey, your squirrel got away!”

  “No, here he is, standing and looking at us; it was yours that disappeared into the leaves.”

  “No, Jonathan, nothing will change.”

  And yet, something did change. Love became forbidden.

  * * *

  Chestnuts, oaks, ashes, poplars, willows, copses of firs, apple trees in bloom—do you know how many thousands of trees and wildflowers our park has? And lakes, and skating rinks, and bridle paths, and trails for horse-drawn carriages and bicycles, and merry-go-rounds—it was heaven on earth, Amalia, what fun we used to have there! Never mind how Grandpa would go on about that other park where he came from, the Royal Garden which they renamed the National Garden, how “it may not have so many trees and it certainly doesn’t have any squirrels, but it’s still a lovely garden.”

  “Its paths are like a maze, you can find cool and shady hideaways and lush vegetation, and then suddenly, as you’re walking along, you might come across a peacock. We’ll go there one day, all of us together, it’ll be lovely,” Grandpa would say. “Now everything is different back home,” he’d say. We never went. On my own, without you, I’ll be landing there in five hours and seventeen minutes. What will I find there? There are no squirrels in the Garden and when night falls the guards close the gate to the Sacred Rock of the Acropolis. I’ll be arriving in the evening.

  “One day we’ll go together,” Menelaos used to say.

  “Why not now, Grandpa?” I asked him one day. “You keep saying we’ll go, so let’s do it this summer.”

  “The later we go, the better it’ll be,” he replied.

  And he was so thrilled when Seraphim’s son decided to come and see us. So thrilled. But after he left, Grandpa would say, “One day we’ll all go there together,” less and less. You’d hear him say, “It’ll be lovely there,” less and less.

  Grandpa’s face lit up when he saw Sakis, his nephew. He was elated! The son of his cousin Seraphim. “He’s a grown man, how quickly the years have gone by”—food and desserts were prepared, Erasmia got dressed up, our house became festive. It was the fall of 1995.

  “Let’s make sure he has a good time, as if Seraphim himself were here, let’s take him to the Empire State Building, to the piers, to the Met and the MoMa and the Guggenheim,” said Mama, “there’s an interesting exhibition on there. If it’s sunny, we can take the ferry to the piers, he can cross the Brooklyn Bridge on a bicycle, we can go to the Blue Note in the Village, we can go and see Cats, we can take him to the zoo, and the Ice Capades, and Chinatown for Peking duck, and for a walk through Astoria so he can see our old neighborhood.”

  Sakis chose to stay at the Plaza. It was his first time in New York.

  “Nice apartment, uncle,” Sakis said on the one and only time he came to our house, “and in a first class neighborhood too.” He’d heard that Riverside Drive was a good part of town. “You’ve made a bundle, haven’t you, uncle? Fortunately, your cousin Seraphim has his health and he’s lived to see me do pretty well for myself, although he is a little weird and doesn’t quite get me, he’s a little stuck in the past, but he’s okay, he makes me laugh despite his eighty years, you know what that can be like, of course, you folks are lucky, living here in the center of the universe!” Grandpa listened to him, looking lost. As if he were trying to understand things that were beyond him. “And life has changed for the better now, uncle, you won’t recognize the old country. You can’t imagine the construction going on, and if one day we get to hold the Olympic Games, and it’s very possible that we will, uncle, then you’ll see development and progress like you won’t believe! We won’t recognize our poor old Greece! Wouldn’t it be a good idea for you to come and visit after all these years?”