Girl on the Ferris Wheel

by Julie Halpern

  “I’m sorry. I promise to tell you every last detail about my family from now on. From my uncle Gus’s missing testicle to my cousin George’s tattoo of his mom’s face on his butt.”

  I attempt to read Dmitri’s face. Is he kidding? I give him my question eyes.

  “TMI?” he responds.

  “Oh my god, Dimmi. I can’t do this. My stomach hurts. And they’re going to make me eat more of the spanakopita. Which is delicious, but how much feta cheese can one consume?”

  “That’s not a question you should ask out loud when we get upstairs. I’m just saying.”

  I shake my hands, trying to flick away the nerves that are devouring my body. Dmitri comes up behind me and wraps his arms around my center. At first I tense, not wanting to be surrounded any more than I already feel I am with his family. But he nuzzles my neck and sways us to an imaginary rhythm, and I eventually relax. Until the sound of at least a dozen children in hard-soled dress shoes clamber above our heads.

  “Can’t we stay down here? It’s a lot of a lot. They wouldn’t notice.”

  “Are you kidding? My aunt Vienna is practically planning our wedding.”

  Is that supposed to make me want to go back upstairs?

  Dmitri

  BING! BONG!

  The doorbell rings again just as we hit the top of the stairs; the volume of it makes Ellie jump.

  Nicky has dragged us back to the party; Mom complained to him that “Dimmi and his girlfriend need be with guests.” The spotlight on our whereabouts made Ellie visibly cringe.

  The entry to the basement is geographically closer to the front door than is almost any other point in the house, so on instinct I turn to answer the door.

  “No!” Ellie’s shriek is simultaneously a scream and a whisper, like the word was coming from deep in her throat and lost some of its steam on the way out of her mouth. Our friends from church, the Pappas family—including Meg and Alex, the only other kids at the party not right off a boat from Athens—look over at us from the living room, concern in their eyes. I offer a nervous smile and laugh.

  “I’ll get it.” Nicky, who was right behind us, gives me a reassuring pat on the shoulder. I love my little brother.

  Ellie and I stand back, watching as Nicky opens the door. She and I are somewhere on a continuum between deer in headlights and studio executives in a private screening room watching a really bad horror movie unfold before them. Either way, we’re rooted to the spot. Ellie throws caution to the wind and grabs my hand.

  The sun is a little lower in the sky now, so the silhouette at the door is immediately recognizable as Aunt Stella.

  The Cheek Pincher.

  No. Not now. Please, God, not the Cheek Pincher. Not now.

  Stella steps in, grabs Nicky’s shoulders with her hands, and holds him at arm’s length, sizing him up. “Look at you. Getting to be such big boy.” Then in one swift move, her thumb and forefinger are squeezing a wad of my brother’s face.

  “Hi, Aunn Shtella,” he manages to mumble. I see a tear form at the corner of his eye as he swallows the pain.

  “Dimmi-moo!” she exclaims as she spots me standing behind him. Then Aunt Stella sees Ellie and her eyes go to our hands, which are still clasped tight. Ellie catches this and lets go. “And this moost be you girlfriend.” Stella’s voice is gentle, even sweet. But still, her claw starts to rise.

  Oh no. Here it comes.

  “Brace yourself,” I whisper so softly I’m not sure Ellie hears me.

  Stella steps forward, and … and …

  She shakes Ellie’s hand. “I’m Dmitri’s aunt Stella. It nice to meet you.”

  Ellie must be as surprised as I am, because it takes her a beat to realize how normal this interaction is. She shakes my aunt’s hand back and chokes out, “Hi, I’m Eliana.”

  Stella leans in and gives me a gentle hug. “Where you mother?”

  “Kitchen,” is all I can manage to say.

  “Spiro, έλα εδώ,” Aunt Stella says over her shoulder. For the first time I notice my much older uncle—the third in what will be a string of many, I suspect—behind Stella. He looks a bit shell-shocked but obediently enters the house; nods to me, Ellie, and Nick; and follows his new wife to the kitchen. I watch them retreat down the hall, my hand going to my unmolested cheek.

  It’s the first time in my living memory that Aunt Stella has not performed her signature move on me. Maybe it was seeing me with a girl, knowing I’m more of a grown-up than not, that stopped her. Or maybe she didn’t want to embarrass me in front of Ellie.

  Either way, it’s the end of an era. While I’m relieved, some part of me is—inexplicably and oddly—sad, too.

  Eliana

  Dmitri’s family is so different from mine. My dad has three sisters, and my mom has two sisters and one brother. I have a lot of cousins, but everyone lives in different states and we only see each other when someone has a bar or bat mitzvah, a wedding, or a death. And in each of those occasions everyone is so serious, so composed. Our only way of greeting is a kiss on the cheek, which is so grown-up and uncomfortable. I don’t want to be kissing cheeks, so close to people’s mouths. What happened to a nice hug or pat on the head? Even though I’m terrified of Dimmi’s family and their aggressive physical affection, I’m also a little jealous that they seem to love each other so damn much.

  Not that I doubt my family’s love for me. My parents aren’t nearly as hands-off, mouths-on as the extended family. But I don’t know if Samara would ever have my back the way Nicky has Dimmi’s. Hell, I think he’d even have my back. What an odd feeling.

  At first I was nervous that Dimmi’s family would shun me, being Jewish and all, but instead they offered me a game of twenty (thousand) questions about Jews. The easiest to answer were those with historical references. I fielded queries on everything from holiday meals to my religious education. People were polite and stayed away from the more philosophical and belief questions. The only one that really threw me was when Aunt Maxine busted out with, “What you think, Ellie, on soocumceesion?” Her accent was so thick, it took me a minute to realize she was asking about circumcision.

  First off, she called me Ellie, which is not a nickname I accept all willy-nilly. I was seriously close to shutting her down with an “Eliana,” but I know how severe that would have sounded. Instead I focused on the foreskin at hand. “I was at the bris of both of my brothers, and after they sucked some wine off the mohel’s fingertip, they didn’t even cry when he did the ol’ snip-snip.” Out of the corner of my eye I could have sworn Nicky did that thing where someone spits all of their drink out in a dramatic spray. Or maybe I imagined it. Then Dmitri started coughing so loudly I thought there might be a little Grecian Heimlich action. Aunt Maxine, however, seemed to find my answer perfectly acceptable and raised a glass of ouzo. “To soocumceesion!” she declared. “To soocumceesion!” The rest of the family chanted. All 750 of them. Then I spent the next hour wondering if Dmitri is or isn’t circumcised. Then I spent the hour after that wondering how I would even know. After that I panicked about if and when I would find out. Could Dmitri see my upper lip sweating? Was he thinking about circumcision? Would I end up spending my entire first Christmas party thinking about penises?

  I can’t imagine that’s what Jesus intended.

  Dmitri

  An hour later, Alex, Meg, Nicky, Eliana, and I are in my bedroom listening to music.

  Ellie bore the Greek version of the Spanish inquisition with grace. After Aunt Maxine asked about the “Jew custom” of circumcision—which is ridiculous, because Nicky and I both got snipped at birth—I called an end to it, inviting the other kids upstairs. (Even Yia Yia winced at Maxine’s question.)

  After a forty-five-minute game of Yahtzee (a Christmas tradition), which Nicky won (another Christmas tradition), I’m sitting on the bed between Ellie and Meg, with Nicky and Alex on the floor. Hüsker Dü is on my turntable.

  It’s been months since I’ve seen the Pappas twins, and while
Alex is pretty much the same, this is a whole new Meg. Usually when I see her, at Christmas and Easter gatherings, she’s wearing an ankle-length plaid skirt with a white shirt, her dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. Today Meg’s hair is wavy and wild with blond highlights and hangs down past her shoulders; her skirt, still plaid, stops a whole bunch of inches above her knees; and now it’s her shirt, not her ponytail, that’s tight. She looks so different I can’t stop staring at her.

  “This is great!” she says about Hüsker Dü, and slides a couple of inches closer to me. “You’re in a band, aren’t you, Dimmi?”

  It doesn’t take a lot to get me to talk about Unexpected Turbulence, so I angle myself toward Meg to answer.

  Nicky gives a single loud cough. It’s the “danger ahead” cough we use with each other when Mom or Dad is on the warpath. My parents aren’t here, so I look at him confused; he catches my gaze and shifts his eyes to Eliana. I glance over my shoulder, but Ellie just smiles at me.

  Huh. Maybe it was a real cough.

  “I’d love to see you play sometime,” Meg says.

  “That would be awe—” I start to answer.

  “Dmitri, I have to go to the bathroom,” Ellie interrupts. She doesn’t usually call me Dmitri anymore, preferring Dimmi. She’s already off the bed and walking out. When you gotta go, you gotta go, I guess.

  “Okay. You know where it is,” I tell her half over my shoulder.

  Ellie closes the door with a little more force than might be necessary as she leaves. Once she’s gone, Meg slides closer, meaning her knee is now touching mine.

  Nicky winces and covers his face with his hands, and Meg laughs. Alarm bells are going off in my brain, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out why.

  Thankfully Alex looks clueless, too, so maybe I’m just being paranoid.

  Yeah, that’s it. I’m definitely just being paranoid.

  Eliana

  How long can I hide in the bathroom before Dmitri notices?

  I look at myself in the mirror, at my basic outfit of blackness, and compare it to Meg and her short skirt and desperately tight shirt. Is that what Dmitri wants in a girl? If so, why did he go after me in the first place? Am I just some placeholder until he finds bigger boobs?

  I wash my hands, even though I never actually peed. I don’t want to go back to Dmitri’s room, don’t want to watch him pretentiously spin records because he thinks it makes him look cooler than everyone else. News flash: It doesn’t. One can just as easily press a tiny button and make the sound come out of a phone as they can take seven hours to delicately place the round black disc onto a turntable and ever-so-carefully drop the needle onto the fragile record.

  Instead of returning to the den of music and ogling, I tiptoe down the stairs to get a peek at the family action in the living room. One of Dmitri’s younger cousins plays the violin (or possibly the viola; she is very small, so the size comparison is way off), and most of the relatives surround her to watch. The tune is painfully screechy, but any music is better than Hüsker Dü for the eight hundredth time.

  I slink along the wall until I find an empty seat next to Yia Yia. As I lower myself into the chair, Yia Yia grabs my hand and places it onto her lap in a warm gesture. There we sit, listening to the girl with two long braids in her black hair play an unfamiliar tune, close enough that my arm reaches the floral fabric of Yia Yia’s Christmas dress. At first I sit stiffly, unsure of what I am supposed to do. Do I reciprocate and put my other hand on top of her hand on top of my hand and make a hand sandwich? My family hasn’t prepared me for this moment at all. Thankfully, the cousin finishes her rousing solo, and Yia Yia removes her hand from atop mine to clap. I clap as well, then latch my hands together in my lap. The buzz of conversation builds quickly throughout the room, as do the clinks and clatters of utensils and plates. I strain my brain to think of a conversation starter for Yia Yia, but she beats me to it.

  “So you and my Dimmi are happy, yes?”

  That depends on your definition of happy. Maybe you should ask him and that skank upstairs. “Yeah, we’re good,” I say, and I don’t manage to even convince myself.

  Yia Yia now places her hand on my lap. I study the blue bulges of her veins. “Dimmi is a boy. Boys, not so smart as girls. They brains only know how to small focus. We have the big focus, big picture. You understand?”

  “Kind of.” I shrug.

  “That girl upstairs. Meg. Dimmi know her many years. She good girl, but she testing the world. Testing her clothes. Testing her mother’s patience.” Yia Yia laughs, a tinkly, fairy laugh that infects me and pushes a smile onto my face. “She not better than you for Dimmi. She just show things you too smart to show. Dimmi is dumb, like all boys. You let him know he being dumb. You tell him with you pretty smile, and he will figure it out.”

  I can’t help but smile more when Yia Yia tells me my smile is pretty. “I don’t know if I’m the right person for Dimmi. He is so happy all the time, and people like him so much. I’m not really that type of person.”

  Yia Yia squeezes my hand with unexpected strength. It’s actually rather painful as my finger bones crush into each other. “Eliana, you the perfect person to be. For you. If Dimmi too stupid to see, you make him see. And if he still too dumb, you tell me and I smack brains back in his head.”

  I do not doubt that Yia Yia’s smack could change the composition of someone’s head.

  “You go back upstairs. Dimmi probably wondering where you are.”

  Yia Yia releases my hand and pats my cheek in a gesture that is somewhere between affection and a smack. Yia Yia is kind of a badass.

  “Thank you,” I offer her, and I walk back up the stairs to the bedroom. Hüsker Dü emanates from a crack in the door, as does Meg’s laughter. I attempt to shake off my feelings of jealousy and inadequacy. Yia Yia is right. If Dmitri is more interested in that, then screw him (I’m paraphrasing Yia Yia, of course).

  I push the door open more aggressively than I meant to, and it slams into the wall behind it.

  I am here.

  Dmitri is still on the bed, Meg practically on his lap. My stomach lurches, but I play it casual and sit next to Nicky on the floor. I grab a deck of cards, ignore the scene on the bed, and ask Nicky, “Want to play War?” I am fully aware that War is a two-person game. Just as sitting on a bed next to a girl is.

  Nicky doesn’t hesitate. He dumps the cards deftly into his palm. He shuffles and divvies up the cards, then declares, “Let the war begin.”

  I glance up at Dmitri, who is looking down at us, smiling obliviously, and concur. “Indeed.”

  Dmitri

  “She’s a special girl, you know.” Nicky is lying on the floor of my bedroom, dealing himself a game of solitaire.

  After he and I helped Mom and Yia Yia clean up from the party—Dad doesn’t do “women’s work” but he doesn’t seem to mind his sons doing it—we retreated to my room to hang out and listen to music. Bob Marley’s Legend is on the turntable. It was Nicky’s Christmas gift to me. It’s supercool because the vinyl is the colors of the Jamaican flag. Nicky said the album was on Rolling Stone’s top 100 records of all time and he figured I would like that. I never gave reggae a chance before, but really, it’s great background music, perfect for a late night after a long day.

  “Who? Meg?” I ask in response to Nicky’s statement. Ever since she slid next to me on the bed, causing her skirt to ride up so I could see her underwear, I haven’t been able to get Meg off my mind. It was royal blue. The underwear, I mean.

  “No, Einstein. Eliana. Your girlfriend?”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “I mean, yeah, of course she is.”

  “Dude. Think with the head on your shoulders.”

  “Funny. You just make that up?”

  “Nuh-uh. I read it in a book.”

  At first I think he’s kidding, but Nicky does read a lot of books.

  “Did Ellie seem weird to you today?” I ask. Something about the w
ay Eliana was acting toward me was off. And the way she and Yia Yia hugged when Ellie’s dad came to pick her up, well, I’m not sure what to think.

  I’m lying on my bed scrolling through ChatteringFaces, looking at Christmas pics posted by kids from school. It’s mostly Christmas trees and kids in pajamas oohing and aahing over presents.

  Reggie introduced me to ChatteringFaces. It’s kind of like a kids-only Instagram; you can’t join unless you’re on a preapproved list of high school and middle school students. It’s so much better than the other social media platforms. Reg said most parents hate it because they can’t keep tabs on their kids, but my parents are so clueless about technology it’s not an issue for me and Nicky.

  “Yeah, of course she did.”

  “Whaddya mean, ‘Of course’? Ellie did seem weird to you?”

  “Dimmi, she had to endure the entire Digrindakis family today.”

  “I know. I was really nervous, but I thought she handled it pretty good.”

  “Pretty well. Handled it pretty well.” Nicky is a stickler for grammar. I’m used to it, so I let it go. “But that’s not really the point. She was off-balance because of meeting the family, yes. She seemed weird”—Nicky makes air quotes around the word—“because you were flirting with Meg.”

  I sit up so fast I fall off the bed.

  “Ow! What? I wasn’t flirting! It’s just, you know, Meg.” Nicky stares at me, giving my brain time to roll back the footage from the afternoon.

  Me next to Meg.

  Me turning my back on Ellie to face Meg.

  Me not seeming to care when Ellie left the room.

  Meg’s short skirt.

  Meg’s underwear.

  Meg’s royal-blue underwear.

  “Oh shit.”

  “Yeah,” Nicky says.

  Bob Marley, singing about a “Buffalo Soldier,” whatever the hell that is, is masking my breath, which has grown short and heavy. I’m freaking out.