A month ago, I would have messaged back the fashion show’s director within seconds of receiving the email. And yet here I am instead, combing through decades-old school notebooks like they carry some mysterious piece of my soul.
“You’re a maláka,” I mutter, even as I snag the last notebook and prop it open on my knees. I’ve come this far. What’s another ten minutes of feeling like the dirt on the bottom of my shoes?
Only, it’s not another one of my workbooks.
Or, rather, it is—or was meant to be before I gave up completely, it seems, and used my time spent in Greek school penning my every thought down.
Well, damn. I totally forgot about this.
Even in English, my handwriting wasn’t all that good by senior year. It still isn’t, though I do my best to keep it neat and legible. I trace the heel of my palm over the penciled words. Then note the date at the top of the entry: September 4th, 2005.
Dear Greek School Notebook (because, let’s face it, you’re no diary),
Today is the first day of classes. I begged Mama to let me skip this year but she said no. I need to learn our culture, she said. No one else has any trouble but you, Baba told me. Why can’t either of them see how hard this is for me? I’m not a brat. I can’t remember the letters to the sounds and it’s so FRUSTRATING.
No one talks in English, not even when we have a snack break. Even Effie, when we’re here, sticks to Greek. I know she only wants a good grade. It has nothing to do with me. I wonder if this is what it’s like for people who move to a new country where they don’t know the language. Do they feel lonely like me? Do they feel like they don’t belong?
In American school, I don’t fit in because I’m weird and my parents immigrated to America, and I bring Greek food for lunch and my name is ERMIONE. No one can even spell it. Or say it. I see the panic on my teachers’ faces when they get to it on the attendance sheet.
In Greek school, I don’t fit in because I can’t keep up with everyone else. It sucks. Big time.
See ya next time,
MINA
Heart heavy, I palm the page, as though that alone might connect me with my seventeen-year-old self. Anxiety pools low in my gut, but instead of putting the notebook to the side, I flip a few pages and find another entry, this one for December of the same year:
Dear GSN,
Me again. As always, sitting in the back row and doodling. Doodling beats reciting my Christmas poem for the 100th time when I can’t even memorize the first line. Effie offered to help but I think I’m going to fake the flu. Maybe a fever. Whatever illness is going around the third week of December, so I don’t embarrass myself in front of everyone.
Including Nick.
Effie said he’ll be there, and I’d rather stab myself with this pencil than mess up talking to him.
He’s so fluent that the last time he came out to dinner with us, the waitress thought he just arrived off the boat. Or plane, ya know, because modern times. I wish I could impress him, but I’m like the ultimate Greek failure.
And Mama says Nick is going to marry a Greek girl, too, which means I’m SOL. I’m half-Greek. Other side of me: unknown. Sometimes I wonder if maybe that other half of me is stronger somehow. Like maybe I’m Brazilian? Or French-Canadian? Or Guatemalan? Maybe I could speak and read Portuguese or Spanish. Maybe I wouldn’t just stand around, not saying a word because I’m so scared of saying it all wrong.
Then again, I’m pretty much failing Spanish class at American school. So maybe I should just hope I’m English or something, so I can stick to only sucking at two languages.
See ya next time,
MINA
It’s a train wreck: my spelling, my verbal diarrhea on the page, and still I can’t stop reading. Blood pounds away like an incessant drum in my head as I thumb some pages over, closer to the end of the notebook. I stop when I spot doodles across the headline of the page. March of 2006, two months before my graduation from both schools.
Dear GSN,
Today, Mama got angry with me on the way to Greek school. I just wanted to know about my real dad, whoever he is. As I’m writing, everyone is standing up to do final presentations on our family histories. Athens. Thessaloniki. Sparta. Istanbul. The teacher made a face when Sophia admitted that her mom’s side came from Turkey, before that bad war in the 1920s when her family had to leave.
I asked Mama about HIS ancestry. Maybe that would explain why my skin is darker than Katya and Dimitri’s? Than Mama’s, too? Or maybe why my hair is curlier and thicker than theirs? Everyone in my family has green eyes but me, even Baba, though I’m sure that’s just a coincidence or whatever since Theio Prodromos has dark eyes. I used to wish that Baba’s brother, my uncle, could be my dad. He’s always so nice and encouraging and he never makes me feel like I’m not part of the family, even though he doesn’t know I’m not actually a Pappas, but those were kid’s wishes.
Now I just want to know WHY.
Who am I?
Can you be a part of a culture and still feel like an outsider? It’s Greek this and Greek that and I don’t look like my family and they don’t look like me, and I’m going to get up in front of my classmates and stutter over my words and this stupid talk and lie about it all.
I can’t wait to move. I’m going to go far away. I’ll miss Effie but she can visit.
No more being stuck.
MINA
Thirteen years later and I still don’t have the answers to any of the questions I asked myself then. Oh, I’ve thought about doing those ancestry tests and discovering the realities of my DNA. It’d be broken up by stats and color-coded charts and percentages that take a family’s roots and segment them into a scientific hypothesis of one’s genetic makeup.
Unfortunately, doing that feels incredibly less satisfying than learning the truth from my mom. If the prelude to my birth had been only a one-night stand, I wouldn’t push. But she had an affair with my biological father, which means she knows a name.
And a name can tell a million stories all on its own.
But even the matter of DNAs and all that doesn’t push away the clamping sensation on my heart—because Theio Prodromos . . . I rub a hand over my chest, as though the physical ache of his death is still pressing its weight down on me. For as bullish as my dad always was, my uncle was a gentle soul. A kind soul. The only reason we traveled to Greece every summer was to visit Prodromos, my dad’s younger brother. It was my theio who taught me to ride my bike the summer between kindergarten and first grade. It was my theio who woke Katya and Dimitri and me up in the middle of the night, sneaking us out of his house so he could buy us Nutella and strawberry crepes while we buried our feet in the sand and watched the waves crash onto the shore.
I longed for those summers spent in Greece, no matter how they often made me feel inadequate, because I always knew a friendly face waited on the other side.
And then there was Nick, of course.
“Mina,” Theio Prodromos once said to me in his accented, stilted English, “if you stare at him any harder, the boy will disappear.”
If only my uncle could see me now that I’ve kissed Nick and he didn’t disappear.
I throw a quick glance at the clock perched on the nightstand. God, I’ve been reading for three hours. My parents will be home soon from dinner with friends, which means I’ll need to make myself scarce before my dad can start in on me the way he’s done since I returned to the birthing nest.
“One more.”
The last one.
It’s dated to the fifth of May, 2006. The day after prom. “Oh, girl,” I mutter to myself, “don’t even go there.”
But like on prom night itself, I can’t stop myself.
Dear GSN,
Why can’t we pay to forget the bad memories? Why is it that we can rarely remember the good—like the time Yiayia bought my very first audiobook tape, right before she passed away? I still have it and I’ll never let it go. It showed me that I love books, even if I don’t like to read. I had to stop and think about that for a second, to find that good memory. But the bad ones scar us forever . . . like Baba blaming me for Katya doing bad in her English class yesterday. He yelled a lot and he told me I was dumb and he thanked God that I wasn’t really his.
I remember every second of standing there and trying not to cry. I remember when he said I’d be lucky if a man wanted to marry me because I’d probably have kids as stupid as I am.
He was angry and drinking and I’m sure he didn’t mean it but . . . it hurt. A lot.
Probably didn’t help that no one asked me to the dance. I thought, maybe, someone might. A few of the guys left notes in the girls’ lockers asking them, and I checked mine every morning and every afternoon before I went home, but no notes.
Aleka told me boys my age are stupid, and I think she’s right. So I went into business. Put up flyers all over the school that said I was doing girls’ hair for the dance. I charged $15. Pretty good if you ask me, because I had TWELVE girls sign up!!! I went to Effie’s house and even though it’s not that big in there, she collected the money and I borrowed her mom’s stuff. The girls and their moms came, and even though none of them are my friends, I’m glad I could make them feel beautiful. Everyone deserves to feel pretty. One day, I know I’ll feel that way too.
But one of the boys came with his date, and I asked if he wanted me to style his hair. He flipped out. Said that I have a unibrow—I DON’T. I know because I shave it off because that’s what happens when you’re hairy. You shave every day. And then he said that I should just go back to my country. I LIVE IN AMERICA. And all because I said I’d do his hair. I hope it falls out and he goes bald and it all ends up coming out of his nostrils.
I cried.
I didn’t want to cry but between Baba and that stupid boy, I cried. Nick found me like that. I wish I didn’t like him so much. He’s Effie’s big brother and he’s never looked at me as anything but a brat but then he asked me to dance, and he put on some Greek song and took me in his arms and I CRIED ALL OVER HIM.