Call Me Athena

by Colby Cedar Smith

  His kind blue eyes.

  What would it be like

  to have a name

  like Smith or Jones?

  Opera tickets.

  Dinners and movies.

  Honeymooning.

  I think about growing older.

  What kind of life

  will I have?

  A house of my own.

  Children.

  Working

  and raising a family.

  What will I do

  with this freedom of mine?

  Anything I want.

  In my dream

  air fills my lungs.

  My chest

  rises and falls.

  I can hear

  my city breathing.

  Up and down.

  Rise and fall.

  In my dream

  Marguerite

  and I are flying

  over the river

  that cuts through town.

  We travel

  with the current

  until we can see

  the entire

  country.

  The rolling hills of wheat

  swaying in the wind.

  The mountains

  pushing upward.

  The rivers spilling

  their waters

  into the ocean.

  The swell

  of the stars close

  above us.

  In my dream

  I can see my father

  and his sister traveling

  over the ocean

  on the wings of the wind.

  I can feel

  the joyous breathing

  of the people,

  land, and sky.

  In my dream

  I know our family

  in the heavens

  and with our feet

  on this glorious land

  are finally together

  traveling toward

  the sun.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Although this book is based on the family stories that I heard growing up, I changed the actual events quite a bit.

  I never knew my great-grandparents (Giorgos and Jeanne), so the details of their journeys from Greece and France are based on a few historical documents, research, travels to Europe, and stories from my grandmother and her siblings.

  I tried to transport myself to the early twentieth century and visualize what these characters would have experienced during that time. Then I tried to create a narrative with twists and turns and engaging imagery.

  My greatest hope is that I represented my family well and that they would have been pleased with this book. At times, the story became so strong and insistent that it felt like my ancestors were whispering in my ear, telling me what to write. And I listened to the voices.

  Mainly, I wrote this book for my grandmother Mary, who became a successful businesswoman in the 1950s, when women usually never entered the boardroom. She rocked the pantsuit at a time when women were expected to wear aprons and pearls.

  She never let her misfortune hold her back and always summoned the courage to do what she needed to do, even when she was afraid. I see this as one of life’s most valuable lessons.

  My grandmother could tell a fantastic story—she could hold an entire room with her humor, her intellect, and her infectious, high-pitched laugh.

  She would tell us about her childhood in Detroit, Greektown, the Ford factory, the poverty her family faced, and how she had to fight for her independence.

  The same story was never the same twice, but we loved listening to the rich details and the passion that was embedded in every word.

  She died at the age of 92. After years of struggling with Alzheimer’s, she forgot almost everything about her life. But her stories live on—in our memories and in this book.

  My Great-Grandmother Jeanne (Jeanette) Skandalaris, my Great-Grandfather George Skandalaris, my Great-Uncle Gus, my Grandmother Mary, and my Great-Uncle John.

  Apparently, this picture was considered a failure by Jeanette, because Mary couldn’t stop wiggling her foot—the photograph was blurred.

  Mary Skandalaris (age 18), around the time she became Henry Ford’s elevator girl.

  Mary Smith (age 21), shortly after she married Bill Smith.

  Mary (age 92) hugging my daughter, Phoebe, just a few months before she passed.

  This is a manifest from the RMS Olympic (sister ship to the Titanic!). My great-grandparents are numbers six and seven on the list. In my novel, the characters Giorgos and Jeanne travel to the U.S. in 1918, not 1920, but I wanted to keep this ship because I love the history. The actual RMS Olympic was in service from 1911 to 1935. From 1915 to 1918, it was used to transport Canadian and U.S. troops to Europe.

  Note that my first name, Colby, also appears on the manifest twice in the porter’s handwriting. This was one of the many reasons I felt called to write this story.

  NOTES

  1.The woman speaking at the church is quoting Matthew 19:24.

  2.The lines on the signs in this poem are inspired by a photograph of two children living in a “Hooverville.” https://www.thirteen.org/wnet/historyofus/tools/browser12.html

  3.Lines quoted from “The Three Little Pigs” by Joseph Jacobs’s English Fairy Tales, published in 1890.

  4.A Hooverville was a shantytown built during the Great Depression by the homeless in the United States. Hoovervilles were named after Herbert Hoover, who was the president of the United States during the onset of the Depression and who was widely blamed for “the downfall of economic stability and lack of government help.” u-s-history.com

  5.“Keep That Wedding Day Complexion” was a line from a Palmolive ad printed in Ladies’ Home Journal. https://repository.duke.edu/dc/adaccess/BH1209

  6.“Promiscuous Bathing” was the title of an article written by Felicia Holt in Ladies’ Home Journal in August 1890.

  7.The fête de Noël music scene was inspired by “The Goadec Sisters.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSWwHQXt0d8

  8.The language that Mrs. Patterson uses to describe the Ford factory and Detroit was adapted from a promotional film released by Ford in the 1930s, “The Harvest of the Years.” The term “City of Transportation” and the phrases “forge and lathe / work and tend / spin and weave / form and transform” are from this film.

  9.Father Yiannis quotes 1 John 3:16.

  10.The Fox Theatre in Detroit was one of America’s first movie palaces. This prominent Detroit landmark was recently renovated and is now open to the public for events and concerts. The movie Mary, Marguerite, and Jeanne watch at The Fox was inspired by The Passion of Joan of Arc, a classic silent movie from 1928 directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer.

  11.The American Coney Island is one of the oldest businesses in the downtown area of Detroit. It was founded in 1917 by Constantine “Gust” Keros, who immigrated to Detroit from Greece in 1903. The restaurant has remained at the same location for 97 years.

  12.The phrase “donkey of the sea” and the quote “It is better to get where you are going rather than rush and not get there at all” came from this article, https://www.kavas.com/blog/traditional-greek-vessels.html, written by Richard Shrubb (https://richardshrubb.com/).

  13.The line “watch the tide come in as swiftly as a galloping horse” is borrowed from Victor Hugo, who was also inspired by Mont Saint-Michel.

  14.World War I nursing scenes were inspired by: Nurses at the Front, https://www.nfb.ca/film/front-lines-nurses-at-the-front/. Nothing was directly quoted from this film, but this short documentary helped me gain an emotional understanding of wartime hospitals during this time.

  15.Some of the nursing poems were inspired by Nurse Edith Appl
eton, from Deal in Kent, England, who kept a diary while working at General Hospital No. 1 detailing the Battle of the Somme. The poem “We don’t hear exact numbers” and the line “stinking and tense with gangrene,” as well as the last two stanzas about the blind boy, are all adapted from a passage in her journal. More of her letters can be read in the book A Nurse at The Front: The First World War Diaries of Sister Edith Appleton (Simon & Schuster).

  16.The Hunger March poems were inspired by the article “Diego Rivera’s ‘Battle of Detroit’” by Tom Mackaman and Jerry White, which includes the quote: “We put four of your kind in their graves with this and we’ll put a lot more if we have to.” https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/03/indu-o03.html

  17.The vehicle numbers and the story about the diamond cufflinks came from the Detroit News article “How the Great Depression Changed Detroit” published on March 3, 1999.

  18.The unemployment rate in Detroit in March 2020 (when I wrote this book) was 4.86 percent, and the unemployment rate in April 2020 was 22.7 percent.

  19.Southwest Detroit Auto Heritage Guide provided the quote: “No Ford or Dearborn officials were prosecuted for deaths caused by the gunfire.” https://www.motorcities.org/southwest-detroit-auto-heritage-guide/ford-hunger-march

  20.The line “too much jitter in my jitterbug” was inspired by this article about ballrooms in Detroit during the Depression: http://blogs.detroitnews.com/history/2002/01/20/when-detroit-danced-to-the-big-bands-8/. I adapted my line from the line “too much ‘jig’ in my jitterbugging.”

  21.The Eleanor Roosevelt quote about flying came from the article “First lady rides the night skies with Amelia Earhart as pilot” published on the front page of the Baltimore Sun on April 21, 1933.

  22.The Ellis Island scenes were inspired by a ferry boat ride to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty National Monument, where I was able to find record of my family’s immigration into the United States.

  23.Belle Isle Park is a beloved 982-acre island park located in Detroit. It’s a great point of pride and is still in very active use. Notable highlights include: Belle Isle Aquarium, Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory, Dossin Great Lakes Museum, Belle Isle Nature Center, and the James Scott Memorial Fountain. https://www.belleisleconservancy.org/

  24.Celui que mon coeur aime tant is a traditional sailor’s song, a chansons des marins from Brittany, France.

  25.Restrictive covenants were written into housing deeds to discriminate against racial and ethnic minorities. Blacks who were brave enough to purchase homes in white neighborhoods often suffered violence. One of the most famous examples of this brutality is Dr. Ossian Sweet, a graduate of Howard University and a physician. In the summer of 1925, he purchased a home at 2905 Garland Street, an all-white middle-class neighborhood. An angry mob swarmed his house, threw rocks, and broke windows. Shots were fired from inside the house, killing one man and seriously injuring another. Sweet, his wife, and their associates were all arrested and charged with murder. His house is now a National Park site. https://www.nps.gov/places/dr-ossian-sweet-house.htm

  26.The Detroit Eight Mile Wall, or “Detroit’s Wailing Wall,” was built in 1941 to physically separate white and Black homeowners to ensure the neighborhoods were segregated. The wall is half a mile long and ends just south of 8 Mile Road, which is a stark symbol demarcating the segregation of 78.6 percent Black Detroit and predominantly white Macomb and Oakland suburbs. In 2006, a portion of the Wailing Wall was covered in a mural by residents and community activists, highlighting images of Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, colorful houses, and children blowing bubbles. The mural serves as a recognition of the past but also as a symbol of hope. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/detroitcitymichigan,MI/PST045219

  27.The list of baby superstitions was adapted from an article originally published on greekweddingtraditions.com. I wish I could thank the author who gave me the inspiration, but the website is no longer working. So, I shout “thank you” into the ether and hope it will be heard.

  28.The details from the moon and snow dances, and the line “slick as a ribbon,” were borrowed from a letter written January 18, 1919, by a World War I nurse named Orena English Shanks Bourne. Bourne served with the American Expeditionary Forces in France. Excerpts from her letters were printed in a Louisville, Kentucky, Courier-Journal article entitled “Hot chocolate, dancing eased wait after WWI” written by Nancy Stearns Theiss on January 12, 2016. The letters were donated to the Oldham County Historical Society, where Theiss serves as the executive director.

  29.The poems about Ford’s politics and working wage were inspired by the article “Motor City: The Story of Detroit” by Thomas J. Sugrue, published September 16, 2014, by The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

  30.Henry Ford once remarked: “I am more a manufacturer of men than of automobiles.” The description of Giorgos’s first day at the factory was inspired by Henry Ford’s “Melting Pot” ritual at his Ford English School for employees who were immigrants. Ford built an actual melting pot made of wood, canvas, and papier-mâché. He hoped it would “impress upon these men that they are, or should be, Americans, and that former racial, national, and linguistic differences are to be forgotten.” tenement.org/blog/adapting-to-america

  31.“There’s a Ford in your future” was an advertising slogan that was used by Ford Motor Company in the 1940s.

  32.The poems about the Detroit Industry murals were adapted from the descriptions of the individual panels by Linda Bank Downs in her book Diego Rivera: The Detroit Industry Murals, published in 1999.

  33.You can see the Diego Rivera murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts and also on its website: https://www.dia.org/art/collection/object/detroit-industry-north-wall-58538

  34.On March 19, 1933, a Detroit News editorial called Diego Rivera’s murals “coarse in conception . . . foolishly vulgar . . . a slander to Detroit workingmen . . . un-American.” The writer wanted the murals to be “whitewashed.” npr.org/2009/04/22/103337403/detroit-industry-the-murals-of-diego-rivera

  35.Letter #23 was inspired by the Catholic mystic Julian of Norwich. She had visions when she was dying: “And in this he showed me a little thing, the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, it seemed, and it was as round as any ball. I looked thereupon with the eye of my understanding, and I thought, ‘What may this be?’ And it was answered generally thus: ‘It is all that is made.’ I wondered how it could last, for I thought it might suddenly fall to nothing for little cause. And I was answered in my understanding: ‘It lasts and ever shall, for God loves it; and so everything has its beginning by the love of God.’ In this little thing I saw three properties; the first is that God made it; the second is that God loves it; and the third is that God keeps it.” — Chapter V, Revelations of Divine Love (Westminster manuscript)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Several years ago, a fellow writer and friend, Abigail Rayner, asked me, “Have you ever thought of writing a novel in verse?” This question changed the course of my life. Without her encouragement, close reading, and advice, this book would not exist.

  I would also like to thank my past, present, and future students at the Arts Council of Princeton: Annie, Martha, Hope, Jen, Charlotte, Stéphanie, Barbara, Carol, Mary, Jeanette, Joanne, Jessica, Regina, Beejay, Fran, Kathryn, Nuria, Anne, Donnagail, Ken, and Claire. Thank you for your encouragement, camaraderie, reading, editing, and advice. You keep me writing and inspired.

  Thank you to my loving and creative tribe: Abby and Béla, Erin and Cory, Maria and Eric, Paula and Adam, Wandee and Jon, Maria and Urs, Kate N., Emily F., and Clare S. Though we live in different corners of the world, your influence on my life and work has been immeasurable, and your support and love has always been boundless.

  Thank you to my Hopewell/Princeton sister-friends: Ellie, Emily, Nicole, Jess, Bridgid, Andrea, Ali, Debbie, Kendra, and Alanna. And the whole Snyder/Finn-Bari
o crew. You all keep my feet on the ground. Thank you for helping me to raise my babies while I build a bridge between the world of the living and the world of ghosts. It really does take a village, and you are mine.

  Thank you to all who gave me sound counsel: Henry Reath, Margery Cuyler, Yoshi Okamura, Patricia Hruby Powell, Suba Sulaiman, Roseanne Wells, Andrea Cascardi, Jen Henderson at Studio JPH, and Bobbie Fishman at The Bear and the Books. Thank you to my wonderful sensitivity readers/editors: Elina Gouliou (Greece), Stéphanie Larotte-Namouni (France), Sarah Brangwynne (Orthodox), Ceylan Akturk (Detroit/First Generation), Renee Halstron (Black/Diversity).

  Thank you to all the mentors at Rutgers University Council on Children’s Literature and the New Jersey chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, especially my former agent, Larissa Helena, who was the first person in the industry to believe in this book. Thank you for your astute editorial advice and unwavering support.

  Thank you to my professors: Joan Stone, David Mason, Dana Gioia, Lucie Brock-Broido, and Jorie Graham, who taught me how to be a poet; and Steve Seidel and the Arts in Education department at Harvard Graduate School of Education, who taught me how to be a teaching artist and an advocate for social justice.

  Thank you to my agent extraordinaire, Allison Hellegers, who worked tirelessly to edit this manuscript and find a home for the book during a global pandemic. Even while you were spinning a million breakable plates in the air, you kept me laughing and calm the entire time. I am grateful to you, and to Stimola Literary Studio, for giving me a home.