How to Be Brave

by E. Katherine Kottaras

  Me, in the backseat of the old gray Buick,

  the Indiana skies blue and bright and filled with clouds.

  My parents, up front, laughing—

  about what I don’t remember.

  (I wish I could remember.)

  Us, on our way to the farm

  to dig our hands into brown American soil

  that was not the same as the red Greek soil

  that my dad described at length,

  repeatedly.

  We were on our way to dig up the radishes

  and pull at the tomatoes

  and bite into the apples

  that grew on the family farm

  that was built on land

  that would never belong to us.

  But we were there

  on a quiet Sunday morning,

  the highway long and clear and ours.

  My parents, in love.

  Me, safe.

  We were there, the three of us,

  the hot summer sun,

  moving on the earth

  together.

  * * *

  Evelyn heads home since her mom’s in town for four days straight and is expecting her. (“I hope she doesn’t make me pee in that fucking cup again. She’s going to be quite disappointed after all that Betty Crocker.”) Liss comes back to our apartment with my dad and me to spend the night.

  My dad takes a shower and falls asleep on the couch, Saturday Night Live droning on the TV, while Liss and I stay up rereading old copies of Rolling Stone and Vogue and doing our nails on my bed.

  “I could really use a smoke.” Liss has taken to Evelyn’s cloves. I still can’t quite stand them. Every time I try to inhale, I feel like I’m going to blow out a lung.

  “Let’s see…” Liss files through my collection of old CDs. “Etta James, Coltrane, the divine Mr. Ray Charles…” All of these belonged to my mom. After she died, I took all of her CDs from the living room, along with her old stereo system. Liss continues to browse through the box until she finds one and holds it up. The Blues. “This one?”

  I nod, so Liss puts it in the stereo and presses play. “What a voice. Your mom knew how to listen to music.”

  She did. This one in particular was one of my mom’s favorites. It’s weird, hearing Nina Simone’s raspy old voice without also hearing my mom’s humming along with it.

  “Is this okay?” Liss asks.

  “Yeah, of course. I like hearing it.” And I do.

  Liss folds open one of the Vogues to this somewhat complicated design; it’s a reverse French manicure—white polish below, black tips all around. “Want this? I think I could do it for you.”

  “Sure,” I say. Liss is really good at doing hair and nails and makeup. She has this great way of being sort of messy and absolutely stylish all at the same time. She keeps me in check.

  “Too bad Daniel won’t be in town, though, to see you all vamped up with these sexy nails.”

  “I know, right?” I spread my fingers out on a towel on the bed, though I’m not sure he’d really care. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to notice a girl’s nails.

  Liss bobs her head along with the music, but she’s still able to apply polish on my fingers perfectly. I don’t know how she does it. It takes a lot of concentration and effort, yet she makes my fingers look exactly like the magazine. It’s like a professional is doing it for me. “This is going to look so freakin’ chic.”

  “That looks amazing. I’m never going to make your nails look as good.” I can sketch and shade and play with color and light, but this kind of close design on a small canvas requires a kind of patience that I just don’t have.

  “Eh, I don’t care.” Liss shrugs and pulls out the topcoat. “You can just paint them blue with a green stripe or something. I’ll be happy with whatever.”

  She finishes up and waves a half-folded Rolling Stone over my fingers to help them dry. “Hey…” She lowers her voice. “So I’m glad Evelyn couldn’t come over tonight.”

  “Really? Why’s that? Sick of hearing about sex and drugs and all of her wondrous escapades?” This comes out a little more sarcastically than I intended. I quickly feel guilty bad-mouthing Evelyn, but then again, we’ve known her only a few months. And I’ve also come to discover that I really can take only so much of her, though I haven’t hinted at anything to Liss until just now.

  “Yeah, well, kind of. I mean, she’s fun in small doses. But there’s something else—something I wanted to tell you about.” Liss is good at not feeding into my negativity. “And I’m only sharing these dirty details with you and no one else.…” She gives me a sly smile. “But, um, I think I’m going to do it with Gregg.”

  “Holy shit! Really?” I jump on my knees to give her a hug. “That’s crazy big news!”

  “Careful!” She nudges me back on the bed. “You’ll mess up all my hard work!”

  I lean over and turn up the stereo so that Nina Simone can help drown out any possibility of my dad hearing any of this.

  “You’re such a dork. Your dad can’t hear us. He’s asleep on the couch.”

  I ignore her snide comment about my paranoia and redirect her instead to the important information: “So wait, when? And where?” Of course, I whisper this.

  “Well, I’m not exactly sure yet.” Liss turns bright red. “The thing is, I know I’m ready, and Gregg, he doesn’t want to wait, you know? He doesn’t see the point—”

  “Wait, what? Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  “Yes,” Liss insists. “Yes. I am. For sure.” She’s got that look on her face, the one that sees only the best possible outcome. All I can see are acronyms from freshman-year health class: STD, HIV, OB/GYN.

  “What’s the big rush, though?” I shake my head. “I mean, why all the pressure to have s-e-x with him?” I whisper-spell the word.

  “Georgia, you’re paranoid. Your dad really can’t hear anything. Plus even if he could, he knows how to spell.”

  “I know. But just tell me. And how do you expect to make this happen? I mean, where?”

  “Well, here’s the thing.” Liss has now taken out the blue polish and is applying it on her own fingers. She knows better than to trust me. “There’s this party—it’s the weekend after Thanksgiving break—over at Chloe’s house.”

  “Chloe? Chloe Hollins? The one whose cousin took my spot on the cheer squad?”

  “Yes. Now, don’t get all judgy and upset.” Her fingers are only halfway done, but she twists the polish closed and places it on the side table so she can look at me. “Remember I told you that Gregg lives down the street from them? Chloe and Avery are hosting a big party that weekend. Her parents are going to be in Cabo or something. And it’s invitation only. And because Chloe knows Gregg, he’s invited, and so am I.”

  My heart shrivels inside my chest and drops into my abdominal wall. “But I’m not.” I lean back against the wall. I want to melt into it. She’s deserting me for the richy-bitchies.

  “Okay…” Liss leans toward me and takes my wrists in her hands. “Here’s the thing. I told him I am not—I repeat, am not—going to go unless you’re invited too. I don’t leave No-Woman’s-Land without you.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “But you don’t have to. I get it. Gregg’s your guy. I’d just be a third wheel.” And surrounded by a bunch of superficial jerks.

  “No. Absolutely not. You are going to be there because Gregg’s your friend too.” Liss says this as though it’s true, but the fact is, besides sitting with them under a tree on the quad while they suck face at lunch, I’ve never really talked to him. She spends a lot of Saturdays with him after soccer practice while I’m at the restaurant helping my dad. “And you’re my friend, and that’s all that matters, okay?”

  I nod, and I believe her, though my heart is still lodged somewhere near my appendix. I want to be happy for Liss, but it’s hard when she spends all her time with Gregg.

  And then I realize, she still hasn’t told me how this all connects to he
r having sex. “Wait, so are you going to do it at the party?”

  Liss leans back and smiles. “No! Ew! That would be gross and unladylike. However, it just so happens Gregg’s parents are also going to be out of town—a conference or something—that very same weekend. And so, we’ll have the entire house to ourselves, including, ahem, his bedroom.”

  “And so, you’re going to leave me alone at a frat party with Chloe Hollins and Avery Trenholm so you can go canoodle with Gregg at his place?”

  “Canoodle? What are you, eighty?” Liss teases. She grabs the bottle of polish to finish her nails. “And, well, yes, I guess. But maybe Daniel will be there.…”

  “Really? Do you think so? But why would he? He doesn’t hang around Chloe and Avery at all.”

  “No. But he knows Gregg. And, he and I have been chatting a bit at the Belize meetings, so I could probably get him in too.”

  “Wait, what? He’s going to Belize too?”

  “Yeah, didn’t you know? He wants to major in bioengineering, I guess. Champaign is his top choice.”

  Huh. So this is very good news. Liss and I are both applying to the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, which is only two hours south of Chicago—far enough to be away from home, close enough to be not too far away from home. Liss says she wants to major in biology or something like that (though she should study fashion—she’s that good), and I wrote “Undeclared—Liberal Arts” as my prospective major. My dad doesn’t even know that I’m applying to Champaign, but I’ll tell him about it in the spring, if/when I get in. So far, he hasn’t really even mentioned college. I think he assumes that I’m going to go to Chicago City College, where my mom taught, before I transfer to a university. I don’t have the heart to break it to him yet. That can wait until spring.

  So Daniel Antell might be at the party, too. A Positive Thought indeed.

  But then again.

  Liss is going to be with Daniel in Belize.

  Huh.

  It shouldn’t bother me, but for some reason, it does. Maybe because she hasn’t mentioned anything about it until just this moment.

  I wave my fingers to help dry them, and I try to pretend like nothing’s wrong. “How many people are going from your class?”

  “Four, I think. Marcus Garcia, Pete Hammell, Daniel, and me.”

  Daniel and me. Why does that last part bother me so much?

  Okay, Georgia. Don’t make this about you. Liss is telling you that she might very well have sex with Gregg. That’s big news. That’s her news. Focus on that. She has absolutely no interest in Daniel.

  “Anyway, you’ll come to the party?” Liss goes back to the original point of the conversation. “I figure we can cover for each other. I’ll just tell my mom I’m sleeping here, and you can tell your dad that you’re at my place.”

  “Yeah, sure.” I shrug. Be nice, Georgia. Don’t be a bitch. “Thanks for making it a point to include me.”

  “Of course! Are you kidding? Anyway, I’ll need you there for emotional support after. I mean, it’s my big night, right?”

  Our nails dry and we spend some time online searching for answers to some of Liss’s more graphic questions about s-e-x that were either glossed over in health or that were so irrelevant to our experiences that we didn’t pay close enough attention to remember the answers. Thanks to Cosmopolitan.com and Yourtango.com I learn quite a bit, but Liss still has all these questions about lubrication and positions that I have no idea about. It all still seems so unbelievable to me. And frankly, it all seems sort of frightening. I’m nowhere near even thinking about anything like what Liss is about to experience. Daniel Antell is a definite maybe, which could mean something or it could mean a whole lot of nothing. Maybe he was just being nice. Maybe he actually just blew me off. I mean, we didn’t really set a date. I don’t say this to Liss—this is the exact opposite of a positive thought—but I can’t help but wonder.

  We finally pass out sometime around three A.M., Nina Simone on repeat, our nails perfect, and everything else a big unanswered question.

  7

  Turkey Day. Oak Lawn, Illinois. South Side, Chicago. The Middle of Nowhere, Land of Lawns and Driveways. Ah, the suburbs. I hate them. Even though we’re sort of what my mom used to call “isolated” since we’re downtown, away from my dad’s many cousins and nieces and nephews, I like it better that way. I like the city with its congestion and grime. I like not being involved in the family drama, the politics of it all. I like seeing these people, whose faces I only sort of recognize in my own, only four times per year at baptisms and weddings and funerals. But they’re strangers, mostly. I certainly don’t speak the same language: Greek mixed with an obsession with all things White Sox and Chicago Bears, sprinkled with a dash of conservative politics and minimalls.

  We’ve been driving for over an hour to get here. Traffic sucked and conversation was pretty much awkward and stilted and weird during that whole hour, since my dad and I have nothing to say to each other. Dad finds the street (I don’t know how, since they all look the same) and parks the Buick in the driveway. Before he gets out, he takes a deep breath and looks at me with a long, deep, serious expression. I’m expecting him to say something about Mom or about the family or about how much holidays suck when someone you loved so much has died, but instead he exhales and says, “You can carry the pies?”

  We walk up the steps, and my dad rings the doorbell. The house is big and plain and ugly. Sandy-white bricks, two-car garage, and evergreen bushes perfectly manicured to emulate floating planets. Everything you would have ever wanted in the American dream and more.

  My godmother, Maria, answers the bell, and, along with her open arms, I’m immediately drowning in oregano and garlic. Inside, cute toddlers all dolled up in miniature suits and perfect taffeta ruffles run around at my feet. My many, many cousins (second and third), who are a little younger than me and who all hang out together every weekend, congregate in front of the Wii in the living room, yelling and screaming at Zelda or Mario or whoever they’re chasing across the screen. Within minutes, I’m worn out by the noise and energy and maybe by the sheer amount of bodies crushed together in this house. Plus I don’t have much in common with anyone here. I decide to plant myself at the dining room table next to my dad with the adults.

  Thanksgiving in the land of the Greeks means lamb and pastichio, roasted potatoes and baklava, and the few store-bought pumpkin pies that we brought. When my mom was feeling well, she would cook a traditional American meal just for us—turkey, cranberry sauce, yams with marshmallows, green-bean casserole. But those were her recipes. My dad wouldn’t even know where to start, since most of it was sourced from processed crap, and he’s too good a cook to make processed crap. Then again, he’s not cooking anything this year. Maria is in charge, and we’ll probably be sent home with mounds of leftovers, all of it delicious and none of it even remotely reminiscent of Pilgrims or Native Americans or Plymouth Rock or whatever historical myths we’re desperate to believe in.

  I pick at some lemony potatoes—Maria makes the best in the world, so perfectly crispy and peppered—and I try to decipher the conversation my dad’s having with her. I basically flunked out of Greek school in the fifth grade when the teacher, Kyría Anna, told my dad, “Den mathéne típota.” I guess I had learned enough to know that she’d said, “She won’t learn anything.” It really wasn’t fair since all the other kids had grown up speaking Greek from the moment they’d exited the womb, whereas I hadn’t and was trying my best to catch up. My parents pulled me out, anyway, generously blaming Kyría Anna for being a bad teacher, and that was the end of my education in the Greek language.

  Even so, I remember enough from her lame lessons to piece together conversations, especially since my family speaks a form of Greeknglish that goes something like greekadjective greeknoun englishverb greekpreposition englishnoun, et cetera, et cetera.

  I recognize that they’re talking about politics (I hear words like Obama, lepta [money], politico [eas
y enough], and economi [ditto]—I mean, they are Greek words, after all). Then they start to speak recipes. (Food is the international language.) Then I space out for a while and sketch on some napkins with a ballpoint pen that my godmother left behind after she wrote down my father’s recipe for some exotic kind of cookie.

  Seconds, minutes, hours disappear. I get lost in my drawings of my uncles’ faces, their lumpy noses and wrinkled eyes, in the still lifes of pitchers and half-sucked bones, in the geometric forms of a crystal glass.

  And then Maria is behind me, her arms tight around my shoulders, her muscular fingers squeezing my jaw. “Koúkla mou, eísai kaló korítsi.” My doll, she says, you are a good girl.

  This is what’s most important in Greek-land. That you are a good girl. That you broadcast your goodness to everyone. That everyone will broadcast it for you.

  If only she knew.

  When I was baptized, she was charged to take care of me, but we rarely see her, just like everyone else. “Everyone’s just living their own lives,” my mom used to say. I guess she’s right. It’s not like I ever call her, either.

  She releases me and I go back to my drawing, just spacing out. Around me, the table is cleared and desserts are brought out. My little cousins fight over the chocolate-covered cookies. Maria puts a plate of baklava and pumpkin pie in front of me.

  I tune back into the conversation while I eat. I sort of figure out that Maria is asking about me (my name sounds like Yeoryia in Greek), and I hear my dad say something about school (skoleo) and good (kalá).

  Then she asks about the restaurant (estiatório), and he shakes his head and gets quiet. Maria puts her arm around my dad’s shoulder, and I pretend to not understand. I just pick pick pick at the little crumbs of walnuts that fall out of the baklava. I wish I could talk to him about it all, too, but he would never tell me anything. I’m his little girl, his korítsi. Sometimes, when we’re crossing the street downtown, he reaches for my hand to hold it as though I’m still five.

  And then, Maria starts to whisper.

  I pick pick pick.