Let Me Explain You

  He whispered, speaking in Greek. He said, “We all have a job to do, Stavroula, in this life. I will do mine, if you will do yours. I will protect you from her, from anyone. All you have to do, little goat, is survive.”

  Dina’s parents came and went. Her lunch tray came and went untouched. She watched them take away the baby. She was missing her child, she could not stop missing her, but she was afraid to hold her: a baby the size of a key. A keyhole. She tried the fit of the name on her tongue and was surprised to see that she could do it. “Stavroula.”

  Dina sat up. Her feet worked, they were moving her toward her child. They were stronger than her fear, they did not care about her fear. She stopped at the entry to the NICU, took a step back so she would not be seen. At the door were Stavros’s shoes. He had left work to come hold their daughter. He was here, in a green gown, in his socks, kissing Stavroula, letting only his bottom lip touch the very top of her forehead. He was not afraid of how small she was. Dina wanted to rush to him. She wanted to hold her baby now, instead of him, beside him. She was going in, she was ready. But she stopped. Stavros had begun to weep. He did not stop himself from crying, which was what she was used to seeing. He kissed the baby again, and a second, a third time. Each time, his lips barely touched her. She could not break this. She could not interrupt this moment where he was seeing, just as she had seen, how small and vulnerable their baby was. And yet—he was here, holding her.

  At seven, Stavros returned to the hospital a second time. Hero forced him to go, upon penalty of firing. In his pockets were cigars, which Hero had made him smoke, and a cash bonus, and in his arm was a baby doll with a plastic head full of plastic hair. There were clouds under his eyes, which made it difficult to see. The only sleep he had gotten in the last twenty-four hours was in the backseat of his car. After the hospital he would rest, but first he had to see his child, and then he had to talk to Dina. He would check on his little goat in the NICU, and then he would tell Dina that she was no better than a goat—no, worse.

  He got to the NICU in time to see them take her out of the incubator. They did not notice him come in. The nurse who called his daughter Honeysuckle was placing his daughter in his wife’s arms. For a moment Dina looked young, scared. He was not sure she would take Stavroula. Then her chin tipped forward, and her eyes discovered the baby tucked in her arms. Her hair fell across her face, he could only see her lips moving. It surprised him, how seeing this squeezed his heart into a lemon.

  The nurse brushed Dina’s hair behind her ear and said, “That’s right.” Then she saw Stavros, and said, “They’re getting along better,” before stepping out.

  Stavros came close. The eye was still the size of a baby’s pinky nail. It surprised him that what came out was more sadness than anger when he said, “You look forward to nine months and a son, and what you get is seven months and a daughter, and maybe not even that.”

  “She is stubborn like her parents,” Dina said. “She will only get bigger from today.” The baby seemed to barely move, but if they watched carefully, they could see the smallest, most powerful twinges of life. “This is the smallest she’ll be.”

  He understood what she was saying. She was making a promise. She had been making errors before the baby came, maybe because the baby was not real yet—it had not been real to him, yet, either—but now Stavroula was in their lives, and Dina was saying that she was going to do whatever she needed to do to make sure the baby was cared for. He did not trust her but, because he had his own promises to keep, he would make sure she kept hers.

  “Do you want to hold her? She has to go back in a minute.”

  “No,” he said. “You hold her.”

  They stood quiet until the nurse tapped the glass window. Dina put Stavroula back into the incubator. The baby kicked her duckling leg, then settled. Stavros liked that. He wanted to see her kick again. He tickled her foot so that she would kick again, and she did. Stavros took the doll from his arm and put it into the incubator, on the other side where it would not bother the baby, but where she could see she had a gift from her father. The doll was larger than his child. The doll looked stronger than his child, but the doll was not stronger than his child.

  The baby stayed in the hospital for two months, and it grew. They took the baby home, and Dina was happy. The baby was bigger. The baby was her, a better version. But then Dina found herself alone for the first time with a tender newborn entirely dependent on her. There were no nurses to help, no wires connecting the baby to a machine that blinked out vitals and made sure everything was OK.

  She tried to give the baby a bath while Stavros was at work. She had the baby next to the sink, she got that far. In the sink was the special blue tub. She turned on the faucet. The faucet ran for an hour. She picked up the baby, played with the baby, gave the baby some milk from a bottle. They could take this slow, slow and easy. She tried to lower the baby into the metal sink. There was a suctioning noise in the back of Dina’s head—a sucking, a draining—and it was getting louder. It predicted that she was going to drop the baby, glug, drown the baby, glug, burn the baby with scalding water, glug. Next to the sink, the baby’s bare arms and legs quivered. No sound came out of her mouth, but Dina was sure that the baby was suffocating from crying. The baby was shaking so hard from the cold air that its neck was going to break.

  “Stop,” Dina said. “Stop, breathe.”

  She laid Stavroula back in the crib. She could not do it.

  She called Stephanie. Stephanie did not answer, did not call her back.

  Sometime later—days, for Dina—Stavros came all the way into the house without taking his shoes off, that’s how excited he was to be home. He picked up Stavroula and brought her to the nape of his neck. “She is crying so much,” he said. “She must miss her father.” The baby stopped. “See?”

  Dina said, “I was about to give her a bath. Do you want to do it?”

  “The water is supposed to be ninety-nine degrees. It’s freezing.”

  “I know that.” She dumped the water.

  He filled the tub, then checked with his elbow as the nurses had instructed. He picked his daughter up, one hand supporting her head and shoulders, the other on her back and lower body. He made it look so easy. He waited for the baby to relax. When she uncurled into the water like a petal, he relaxed, too. He used a cotton ball to wipe one eye from the inside corner out, then used another cotton ball for the other eye.

  She leaned in, said, “Don’t swipe back and forth.”

  “Does it look like I’m swiping back and forth?”

  He was careful with the creases in her arms and legs, the folds in her calm neck. Not one tear. Dina said, “She likes it.”

  “Of course. You just have to be natural.” He filled a plastic pitcher. “You do this part.”

  “You do it.”

  “Re, just rinse. Don’t get it in her eyes.”

  Dina took the pitcher. She was not going to pour it over the baby’s face, no matter what he said. She poured water over the baby’s waist. The baby trembled, but not in a way that meant she was afraid. Stavros smiled at Dina. “You see,” he said, “we are a good team.”

  Dina looked forward to bath night. She looked forward to dinner with Stavros, which was Tonight’s Hero Special. She did not mind that her baby was Turned Off, as they called it in the NICU—sleeping all day, shutting out stimuli. The baby was nice and quiet, and when her father came home, she came alive. The baby was growing, the baby needed her.

  But not even this could stop Dina from using.

  LITZA MAVRAKIS

  * * *

  During the Year of the Broken Yolks, Dina dropped days off the rooftop with the belief that they would fly. She let them drop one by one in singles, then in full calendars. The unborn days cracked open on the pavement. Dina, from far above, watched their yolks drain.

  Litza was born. The baby was using teeth to get out of the birth canal. Dina cursed Stavros Stavros Malaka Mavrakis for doing this to her.
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  Stavros got a second raise. It gave him another inch, all of it in his mouth.

  Dina discovered she could keep her stash without him finding anything.

  A woman came to show her how to nurse, because she had been unable to nurse Stavroula. “Her mouth should be moving like a fish,” the woman said. “You should feel her chin on your breast.” Litza’s eyes were closed. Her temples and jaw working furiously. Dina felt the constant pulling as a repeating question. Will you? Will you? Will you? Litza wanted so much from her, wanted it all right now, and Dina wasn’t sure she could. Her eyes teared. “She’s biting.”

  The woman said, “She’s got no teeth.”

  “No, she has teeth.”

  “It’s just pressure you’re feeling.” The woman said, “Give it a few hours, try again.”

  Dina said she would try, she did try.

  The babies grew, inexplicably. If she added pounds the way the babies did, she would have devoured Stavros by now. She would have eaten her own mother.

  Dr. Marone prescribed Valium.

  She saw Stavros watching her, so she picked up the baby. This new one, which made the noise of two babies.

  Stephanie sent a card from California, and in it a folded dollar bill with some sleaze in the crease. It said, Stop getting pregnant, Come Visit.

  Dina wondered what noise Stephanie would make dropping from the rooftop.

  Stories below, the yolky flecks of days hardened.

  Fat Lisa and Jermaine from next door invited her for cocktails. These were her real friends, because they were here, and they were as ready for something else as she was. She shook the vial of tiny brown rocks, which was both lunacy and universe. This was her favorite part, right before, the part where Jermaine leaned over and Fat Lisa put a flame hat on top of the candle. The spoon was a charmer. Then it was her turn. For once in her life, her turn.

  You know what those moments were like? They were like finally getting that baby elephant, stringing it with lights, strutting it through town, and delivering it to Papous’s doorstep, where he would come back from being dead just to give her a thousand kisses. Though of course she always came back to this shitty room before he could get to her.

  Stavros came home, yolk after yolk, and said, When was the last time you changed them? And each time she said, I Just Did, no matter how pulpous their diapers. It was not uncommon for Stavroula, unsupervised, to smear her own shit on the wall. Good thing he did not find out about the iron, which she left on, which she had turned on because she wanted to smooth out the walls, and which Stavroula almost pulled to her stomach like a stuffed animal.

  Stephanie’s final card came. Dina knew it was the last, because in place of a return address was Dina’s own apartment number, plus the admission, I said Yes to Vegas.

  Dina turned twenty, and Fat Lisa and Jermaine baked her a bakeless birthday cake. It was the nicest thing anyone did for her that year.

  Dr. Marone said No more Valium, I’ll lose my license. Then he called Stavros so Stavros could drive her to rehab. Stavros, her small Greek husband who mislearned Valium as a word to describe bravery. (Well, he was right, wasn’t he.)

  Six rehabs in eight months, talk about dropping days. The days did not even pretend to be days. In places like the ones visited upon Dina, days were shells. Days would not poke their beaks out into the world. Days plummeted when you let them go. They got thrown from the rooftop—if you were Dina and Renee, Dina’s new friend—where they cracked against counselors’ windshields.

  There was more hope than this. In the first rehab, there was hope. Dina did an uncommon thing, she stared at herself in the mirror, she studied the slippery hair and the face the color of cigarette filters, the skin on her nose that always reminded her of cooked turkey, and the weak, untamable eye. She told herself, “Dina, for the first time in your life, don’t fail. Do it for your girls.”

  The second rehab, she told herself, “Dina, don’t fail.”

  The third one, “Dina, your girls.”

  The fourth, she said, “Dina, for the first time in your life,” with Renee egging her on. From a pay phone, she called Stavros to tell him she had fallen in love, and it was not with him, and it was not with his children. Renee had kissed her, a real kiss, and it surprised her enough to shove Renee off the bed. But then she had joined her on the floor, and then back on the bed, and now she was leaving him to go live her life.

  He was so upset, he was conducting his whole plea in English. He said, “Pregnancy is just the waiting hour, now is where you show up. Now is when you must be the mother.”

  “I learned something about myself this year,” Dina told him. “I’m nobody’s mother.”

  “You have two babies, which is Stavroula and Litza.”

  “No, what I have are eggs.”

  “What do I do, re? What does a man do with two babies?”

  “Drop them from the roof!”—this from Renee, laughing enough for Stavros to hear.

  “I can’t protect these children by myself. You hear me? I can’t promise to them one thing.”

  She was tired of people demanding sacrifices of her that they themselves had never made. “I never got protection, Stavro. I never got a life.”

  Dina checked out of the fifth rehab, court-appointed, before her release date. She did it because Renee did it. A few days later she watched paramedics turn Renee on her left side, slip a lubricated endotracheal tube down her throat until it reached her stomach. They washed out the yolky fluids with salt water until what came up was clear.

  By rehab number six, Stavros had sole custody. He was shipping the girls off to Greece. He was expecting her to change her mind and come home. She did not.

  The day Stavros buckled his two girls into seats 21 D and E, Dina stood on a rooftop and wondered what noise her babies would make if they were dropped from the plane. Would they be pats of butter hitting blacktop? Would their instinct be to call for her, still?

  Stepping onto the ledge, putting one foot out, Dina wondered what noise she would make if she fell from this rooftop right now. That one was easy. She would make no noise. She would make no noise.

  Hers was the face We lost first. Hers was the face that turned to glass

  whenever she looked at Us.

  The Day She Left happened much, much earlier than The Day

  She Left.

  Twelve times what a mother gives, when that mother gives zero,

  is still zero.

  THE REBIRTH OF STAVROS STAVROS MAVRAKIS

  * * *

  Six months after Stavros left his girls in Greece—first with his brother, who spent Stavros’s money and fed them coffee and bread, then with his mother—he opened a diner. The single-room building had been a salt shed, which was good, because sprinkling salt in a Greek house got rid of an unwanted guest, and his unwanted guest was his past. Before the salt shed was a salt shed, it had been used to store coal. Its one real window opened to a brick wall not more than four inches away; the rest of the windows lined the very top of the wall. There was one cracked fluorescent lamp. Some fool, some immigrant, had installed a half-attempt sink and grill. They were both in decent condition, which meant that business had been bad for the previous owner. But that did not mean it had to be bad for Stavros.

  Cheap, cheap enough for a man still learning English. Cheap enough for Hero to lend him the money.

  “No,” Hero said. “I’m giving you money only to bring back the girls. That’s the only money I’ll give.”

  “I bring the girls here, I have to send them back the next day or the next year. Hero, you know how these things go. A man will fail from a lack of something to stand on.”

  “You are a family man first, Stavro. Then a businessman.”

  “Yes, I am a family man, but to be a family man, you have to be a businessman.”

  There was no point for Stavros to explain the apartment that still reeked of Dina or the trick of making a diaper work the way it was supposed to; the problem with turning a fa
ther into a mother. There was no way for Stavros to explain that without his own diner, everything he had done was a waste. He would think of nothing but his children, but first, he needed to make his diner a success.

  Hero tapped his chin with some papers. “I don’t think so.”

  “Charge thirty percent interest. Give me two years, I pay.” This he said in English.

  “It is not about the money.”

  “Yes, it is about the money. For me, for you, for them, it is about the money.”

  Yes, for some days he held Hero’s money in his hands. Yes, for some days he thought about using money at Hero’s twenty percent interest to go get his girls. It was a question he ground between his teeth. How many times he bit down on it, flattened it to a penny. But then what? Go back to dishwashing? Give all of his spit and nickels to the woman downstairs so she could barely keep her two eyes on his two daughters? No, these were not options. He bought the salt shed. He unlocked the latch on his very own kafenio and swept clumps of salt into the drainpipe, where it got foamy. A salt shed was not supposed to be the dream, but suddenly it was.

  The first month, disaster. He got only some single customers, which meant he could expect only single money whether he was in the kitchen morning till dawn, which meant he could not afford to stock supplies and so was forced to send out his only waiter/host/busboy for ingredients when another single customer came in. When he had enough chicken, he found loafs of bread already at their ends. When he had enough olive oil, he panicked over the cucumber-less cucumber salad. Worst, his cooking was bad. He knew it. Everything, everything with too much salt. He could not get it out of his hair, his kitchen, his life. It seemed to fall down from God’s mouth and into his recipes.

  Close to default, close to putting on the apron in Hero’s kitchen once more, but not close to defeat. Not close to going home. Never was he going home. Home did not exist. Home was this salt shed, the Galaktoboureko, which his six returning truckers called the Gala.