by Alex A King
"Not at first," Mama repeats, like she's dying.
"You act like I had a choice."
"You did have a choice! To jump or not jump! What will people say?"
"Margarita, leave the girl alone, eh?"
Reasonable man, her father. He has to be to balance out his wife. Can't have two crazy people in a marriage, unless the family is the kind of wealthy that can buy an island or two.
"What will they say? There's nothing else to say, because they've already said it!"
"Your logic has no place here, Kiki." Baba shakes his head. "You should know that by now."
"Ai sto dialo!"
(Which is the cheap and dirty Greek way of saying, "Go to the devil.")
Soula pushes through the gate, carrying two paper-wrapped souvlakia. When she sees Kiki, her pretty mouth droops. "Where did you go? I told you to stay right there."
"A problem ran into me."
"Good thing you're my favorite sister. Here." She hands one of the parcels to Kiki on the way past. Then she vanishes up the stairs, sandals slapping the steps as she runs.
Squinting up at the stairs, Mama hollers, "What are you doing, Soula?"
"Going out!"
"Going out," Mama says flatly. "Always out."
"It is called being young and single," Baba tells her.
"I was young and single once, and I was never like that."
"No, you were worse," her husband says.
Footsteps on the street. One voice. "Margarita, Kiki, come quick!"
Yiayia. For an old woman, she's spry. The wheelchair is just part of the act. When she wants to—like tonight—she can run, skirt's hem bunched in her hands.
"Mama, what?"
"It is Kiki!"
"Kiki's right here."
"Yes, I see that. I am not blind, just old. Kiki," she says, out of breath. "Everybody is talking about you and the Karas boy. Helena has told everyone you are a putana, doing the sex with him while you are still in mourning."
"I didn't touch him!"
Not completely true, but Agria doesn't have eyes on the Turkish border, does it?
Does it?
Anything is possible.
Mama wags a finger. "It does not matter what you did or did not do, only what they say you do."
"Was it good?" Yiayia looks much too happy about all this.
"No! We didn't do anything," Kiki says.
"That is too bad. If my granddaughters will not have sex, then I suppose I will have to find some men for myself."
Margarita glares at her. "What are you talking about, Mama?"
"Life is interesting lately, yes? Before, it was boring. Being in a coma was the only fun I had. The things people will say when they think you cannot hear them …"
"Life is interesting," Mama mocks, but her eyes are cold, hard. "So Helena is the one saying this, eh?"
"Yes, it was Helena. What a mouth she has. I always knew she was a problem."
"Do not worry about Helena," Mama tells Kiki. "I will fix her."
Uh oh. The wrath of Margarita is coming, and Kiki's just glad it's not coming for her. But Helena? She better start enjoying her final moments.
"Oh my Virgin Mary," Yiayia says suddenly. "I think I left my wheelchair behind."
"Yes," Mama says dryly. "It is a miracle."
94
Helena
Late afternoon and the sun is still visiting, but its conversation is dying out. The village is shaking off its sleep, stretching, and in the street there are signs of movement. The air smells dry, scorched, thirsty. Before long, she'll go outside armed with the hose and show she is merciful.
"Helena, come out!"
Margarita. Helena knows her friend's call by heart.
"Helena! I know you are in there, coward!"
Helena considers sliding down the wall, curling into a ball until the other woman leaves. But she knows Margarita like she knows her own self. Margarita will not go until she has cut and weighed her kilo of Helena's flesh.
What else can she do but face her accuser?
Nothing.
Her plan is unraveling. She expected the daughter not the mother. A mistake. A sloppy calculation. The Margarita Andreous of this world do not sit by while somebody shovels skata onto their daughters.
Now she needs a new lure to bring Kiki to her.
In the meantime …
She opens the door but does not step through it. The cacti that frame the opening (it's a good luck thing), the geraniums, the gardenias, they are silent, beautiful witnesses. They know it is coming, the coup de grâce of what was once the strongest friendship.
"What do you want, Margarita? I am a busy woman."
Margarita is Artemis, goddess of the hunt, with a broom for a bow. "What are you telling people about my daughter?"
"The truth."
"You called my Kiki a whore! And you told this to everybody!"
"Like I said, the truth."
Margarita shakes her broom in the air. "If you were another woman, I would kill you where you stand. I only let you live because you have bigger troubles than any woman should have."
"You speak as if you are doing me a favor, when it is your daughter who is a cheating putana. I feel sorry for you. Two daughters and both of them—"
"Cheating? Oh you want to talk about infidelity, eh? I do not think you will like where this conversation goes if you want to talk about who was faithful and who was not!"
"I saw her with that man," Helena says, measuring and cutting her words. "Walking around with him in the middle of the night, whispering like they had secrets."
"Okay, Helena. If this is what you want …" Her old friend looks both ways for open ears. And her neighbors … Helena knows they will be listening. "Your son was fucking a tsigana! Now you tell me who is the putana, eh? Your precious Stavros was a man-whore! Put your poutso in a tsigana and you will put it in anything, even a goat! Maybe even a chicken."
What a liar Margarita is. It is a pity she didn't see it years ago. "He would never!"
"If you say so. But people are saying it is true."
"I will ask him!" She turns around. "Stavros!" But her son is silent. He's staying out of this argument between women. "Stavros, come out here now!"
"My God," Margarita whispers, her face stretched in horror. "What are you doing?"
"Stavros will tell you himself! He will tell you—then you will believe me!"
95
Kiki
A T-shirt. A very small one.
A gift from Soula.
On the front, in English, it reads: I Did Not Fack Leo Karas.
"I can't wear this." Kiki lobs the shirt at her sister, who catches it one-handed and tosses it back. The shirt lands on Kiki's head.
"Why not?"
(Fack. It's the Greekest typo ever. See a kid spray painting a wall and chances are he'll be misspelling the word the same way. Overpasses and walls all over Greece are facked.)
"Did you miss the part where I'm a school teacher, and this is wildly inappropriate?"
Soula shrugs. "So don't wear it to school."
Down below, the gate creaks. Mama rushes into the yard, carrying her broom. Moments later, sandals slap their way up the concrete steps and land on Kiki's front doormat.
"Kiki? Kiki? Are you here?"
"We're here, Mama. What's wrong?"
"Thank the Virgin Mary!" She stomps into the living room, whisk broom still tucked under her arm, eyes wild. "It is Helena, she has gone mad!"
"Gone mad how?"
Mama uses the broom to punctuate. "She thinks Stavros is still alive—can you believe it? I went over there to tell her you are not a putana, that it was Stavros who was doing the sex with a tsigana, and she said he would tell me himself that it is a lie!"
Kiki blinks. "Stavros was sleeping with a Romani?"
Carefully-spoken words, lest Mama ignite. And no way does she want Margarita exploding before she's siphoned off everything she knows about the Romani situation. Someti
mes the grapevine yields gold. This could be one of those times.
Mama shrugs. "So they say."
"Who, Mama? Who says?"
"People."
Kiki gives her a verbal prod. "Which people?"
"Eh, just people. You know how people here are."
Like Mama. People here are just like Mama. If they don't hear a good story, they take a bad one and spin it into a better story.
"What else do you know?"
"About the tsigana?" Mama shrugs. The broom moves with her. "Eh, nothing. A tsigana is nobody."
Rattle, rattle. Shaking the gift. "Was her name Drina?"
Another shrug. It's almost becoming a tic. "Maybe. If they told me a name I forget. Who remembers such things? It is much more important we do something about Helena. She is crazy, the poor woman."
"I know," Kiki says. "And she's already getting help."
"Help from who?"
"A psychologist."
"A psychologist? Po-po." She shakes the broom. "That is not help, that is madness pretending to help madness. What Helena needs is a priest to do an exorkismos!"
Margarita has been watching too much TV again, of the pulpy horror kind. "She's not possessed, Mama. She's grieving. Kostas has already been to speak with her. It's because of him and Max that she's seeing a doctor."
"You knew?" Suddenly, her mother deflates. "And Kostas and Max knew about Helena, too?"
"I told you and you brushed it off!"
"Still, you should have told me!"
Margarita Andreou, philosopher. Her logic is circular and nonsensical.
Soula jumps into the fray. "Mama you know what people here are like. Gossip, gossip, gossip. Tell one person and it spreads like a disease. What Kiki did was a kindness, otherwise everyone would be talking about how Thea Helena is crazy."
"If people do not talk, how will anyone learn anything, eh? My own daughters, keeping secrets from me."
"I didn't know about Thea Helena," Soula tells her. "At least not until just now. And see, my world didn't end because I didn't know. Yours will not end, either."
Margarita drops onto Kiki's couch, broom and all. Underneath her, the cushions sigh. "You are children," she says. "Children who have never lost a friend. All our lives Helena and I were best friends. We knew everything about each other. I told her when I lost my virginity to a French actor, and she told me about how she stole from the church."
Soula pounces on the catnip. "You lost your virginity to a French actor? Which one?"
Their mother waves a hand in the air. "Eh, one of them. I do not remember his name. He smelled like cheese."
Kiki swaps glances with Soula. Mama must be losing it if she's admitting there was anyone before their father. The way she usually talks, she was a virgin until her children were in school.
"What is that in your hand?" Mama nods to the T-shirt Kiki's still holding.
Uh oh. "Nothing."
"It looks like something. If it was nothing I would not be able to see it."
Kiki can't argue with that, can she? "It's just a T-shirt."
But Margarita knows her daughters. She missed one secret, and now she's not about to miss another one—not when it belongs to this family.
Arm outstretched, palm up: "Show me."
"It's mine, Mama," Soula says.
"I do not care who it belongs to, I want to see it. Unless there is a problem. Is there a problem?"
"No problem," Soula says.
Except there is a problem. A big I Did Not Fack Leo Karas problem. And it's stained on the front of the shirt in big white letters, typo and all. Mama's English isn't good, but it's good enough.
Kiki hands her the T-shirt. Margarita sets aside the broom, unfolds the shirt, takes a long look. Then she folds the T-shirt neatly, sits it on the coffee table, gets up, and leaves with her broom.
Not a word.
Until Soula says, "That went well."
"Soula." Kiki throws her arm around her sister's shoulder. "It's like you don't even know our mother. That went anything but well."
* * *
Long night. A hot one, too. There's no sea breeze to sweep the heat out of the room. It's as if the weather knows she wants to brew.
She and the night sit side by side on the narrow balcony and watch the stars unfold their drama. All that shining, it's obvious they want the attention.
What to do?
Mama—with the whole town standing behind her—confirmed Kiki's suspicions, that Stavros was—to use one of her favorite English language words—boning Drina, the Romani woman.
The problem is this exact same mob's other battle cry is that she killed Stavros.
Which isn't the truth or anything like it.
They've been wrong a lot.
But …
But they've also been right.
Even in death, Stavros's best friend stands by his side, keeping his secrets. There are no answers to be found by poking Akili with sticks.
But he's not the only snake in this pit, is he?
96
Helena
Mouth closed, ears open. She has been talking so much that she missed the other stories creeping around the village.
Now she's hearing them. Terrible stories. About Stavros, about the women he collected like komboloi beads.
About a tsigana they say was her son's favorite new toy.
Who sleeps with tsiganas? they whisper. The Boutos family must not be such a good one. No wonder Kiki killed him. She is better off.
They care nothing for Helena's shattered heart.
Akili comes on his way to the promenade. He swaggers into the yard, surrounded by a cologne-scented cloud.
"Is it true?"
He stops. "What have you heard?"
"Akili, do not play games with me. I hear the stories and now I want to know if they are true. You are the only one who can tell me."
"Not the only one," he says. "Sorry. Sorry. I didn't mean that."
"Oh, I think you did." She nods at the chair she keeps at her side for him. "Sit."
Her son's best friend hesitates. Coward. Yet she cannot be angry with anyone who loved Stavros. He lifts the chair, moves it slightly left—away from her—and sits. "What do you know?"
"It does not matter what I know. Tell me the stories."
Nod, nod. But he will not look at her. He prefers to stare at the road.
The road cannot save him.
"Stavros was popular. Girls liked him, and later, women. And he liked them."
"What about Kiki?"
"What about Kiki? They had an arrangement where they would see who they pleased, until after the wedding."
"Stavros agreed to this?"
Still fixated on the road: "It was his idea."
"He would never!"
"What did you expect? He didn't want to marry Kiki."
"He never said."
"Stavros was a good Greek son, and he didn't want to lose your blessing. But he had no intention of going to the church that day. You pushed him too far."
"Tell me about the tsigana."
"What is there to tell? He was … he was sleeping with her. But he was sleeping with a lot of women."
"She was not special?"
He shrugs. "Who knows? He saw her more than some of the others, but that's all I know."
"Does she have a name?"
"Drina," he says. "Drina is her name."
97
Kiki
Kiki wears the T-shirt—wears it all the way to the outer edge of Volos where the Romani live.
It's not hell, but it's one neighborhood to hell's left. No paved roads. Nothing but dirt, with the occasional burst of dehydrated grass spidering between lean-tos, shacks, and the rare house built with cinderblocks and desperation. The Romani vehicle of choice is the dilapidated pick-up truck. From the back they sell produce or collect the kind of garbage that yields euros if you take it to the right place.
Kiki locks Soula's car, while she figures out where to start.
She's not paranoid, but the Roma have … a reputation.
But—if she's being fair—so does she now.
The encampment seems impossibly huge, but it's still much smaller than Agria. And if everyone in Agria knows everyone else, then logic dictates that everyone knows everyone in a much smaller place—and knows them too well.
People stare at her, but they don't make eye contact. As soon as her gaze collides with theirs, they dart away.
Kiki is the xena here—the foreigner. This is the Romani's world, and they have their own rules. Maybe it's not rule Number 1, but one of the top rules definitely involves kicking Greek asses if they intrude—Kiki is sure of it.
Where to start?
At the beginning, of course. She unpicks the loosest thread, the slowest-moving target. By slow-moving she means he's not moving at all, except to slap the occasional fly out of his personal space. That shack behind him doesn't look like much, but it's casting a decent swath of shade. She trots towards the man and his shade. He's maybe forty, maybe fifty, maybe—
Does it matter? He's lived hard and it shows. But now he's relaxing in the shade, the bow-legged man in the yellow shorts. It's a battle of the colors between those shorts and the orange T-shirt that covers a basketball belly.
Not a word out of him, even when she plants herself in his shade and says, "Yia sou."
Silence.
"It's a beautiful day, isn't it?" She tugs at her shirt, makes a pitiful excuse for a breeze. "Hot."
Maybe there's a secret Romani code. Mama would say the only thing Romani respond to is cash, but she's going to try this the cheap way, with politeness.
If that fails … Money.
"I'm looking for a woman named Drina. Can you help me, please?"
He takes his sweet time answering. But he speaks when she's this close to pulling out her purse.
"Are you looking for Drina, are you? Why? Are you the police?"
"Do I look like the police?" Would the police wear short black shorts with an I Didn't Fack Leo Karas T-shirt?