Not-So-Golden Greeks
My grandfather on my mother’s side—my παππούς, my papou—was a traditional Greek man in many ways. He immigrated to the United States when he was 18, desperate for love and looking for a new start. He moved to Chicago, then West Virginia, and then Chicago again. He met my grandmother, a coal miner’s daughter, in West Virginia when he was 30 and they got married six years later. She was 18 by then.
My papou spent the majority of his life running bars and skipping town, two things that usually depended upon the existence of the other. He was a self-taught businessman, handling liquor shipments, managing finances, and hiring “hot” women who loathed my grandmother—my γιαγιά, my yiayia—for reasons only known to them.
My grandparents were a beautiful couple: the tall, muscular Greek businessman and his young wife. But like all relationships, theirs was not perfect. Largely because my papou was not perfect. Largely because my papou was violent.
My grandparents had three children, my mother being the middle child. Two older girls and one pretty, precious, perfect, little boy. They loved that little boy more than they ever have, ever would, or ever could love anything else. To my grandparents, he was the reincarnation of Apollo, bringing nothing but joy and light into their lives. He shone brighter than the sun, blinding nearly everyone in his path (or in the case of my grandparents, blinding them from their two other children). This dazzling baby boy quickly bonded closer with my grandparents than either of his older sisters, the ones who looked at him with red eyes and steamy ears. ‘How could he have already made them love him like that?’—they used to ask. ‘He’s only two!’—they’d cry. That line soon turned into ‘he’s only five!,’ then ‘he’s only 10!,’ and even ‘he’s only 15!,’ as if it came as a surprise to anyone at that point.
My papou hated my mother with nearly as much force as he loved her little brother, if he was even capable of putting forth that much energy into something else, anyway. But she was her father’s daughter. She was loud, rude, defiant, and too much like him for his own liking. This temperament would’ve been an issue regardless, but my mother being a woman certainly did not help. My papou believed that women were supposed to stay quiet and look pretty. Granted he prioritized the latter above all else, but the first still mattered nonetheless. My mother—young Petrina—was a spitting image of her father, and spat the same depravity.
Everything she learned in her early life, although she’ll never come close to admitting it, can be attributed to the influence of her father. My yiayia has always told me this, ever since I was a kid. She says this because she thinks the same dynamic is at play with my mother and I—that I am like her in nearly every way. ‘The only difference is you work to change, my koúkla—my κούκλα, my doll—you want to get better.’ And though I have trouble agreeing with her, I know that she is right. Maybe I am more like my mother than I’d like to think.
Summer Smoke
Some of the fondest memories I have with Yiayia revolve around the sweltering southern summer sun. “Yiayia, it’s too hot to play out here,” I would whine in my best ‘I’m-a-little-kid-please-feel-bad-for-me’ voice.
“Koúkla, I have to be outside to smoke, you know that,” she would respond, her voice dripping with a rasp so thick that I almost always wanted to clear my throat on her behalf, as if phantom tar had begun coating my lungs too.
‘Of course you have to be outside to smoke,’ I wanted to say. ‘But no one asked you to sit outside for four hours right smack in the middle of a Texas summer.’
“Okay, Yiayia,” I responded instead, my nine-year-old voice coated in a sweetness so rich it nearly curdled under the heat of the 12-o’clock-sun. I would have done anything this woman told me to. I think she always knew that. “Will you at least tell me a story?”
“Of course, my koúkla. Always.”
Summer ’78
“You remember how your papou and I used to live in Chicago, right Koúkla?”
Of course I didn’t remember. I hadn’t even been a thought in my mother’s mind yet.
“Yes, Yiayia.”
“Good. So when we lived in Chicago, your papou ran this bar on the southside. It wasn’t very large and was sort of dingey, falling apart at the seams, but your papou cherished it dearly and was so, so very proud of it, Koúkla. He was so proud.”
I nodded.
“Well, your papou’s pride may have embellished his view of the bar… maybe just a bit. He thought it to be some great hangout, a place where good men could sit down after a long day of work—after a day like the ones your papou just couldn’t seem to escape.”
I nodded again.
“And sometimes, your papou’s bar would attract men like him, but just not quite in the ways he wished. And one night, one hot Chicago night, with pavement still holding the heat from a sun strong enough to rival the one you’re complaining about now,” she winked, “one hot Chicago night, your papou made an attempt on a man’s life.”
I laughed, but only because this confused me.
“He attempted a man’s life,” I repeated. “But why? He has his own life, why is he attempting somebody else’s?”
Yiayia’s body convulsed with her laughter, a wispy chime that soon turned into wet gasps begging for air, her staccato breaths whistling with mucus.
Yiayia turned her head and spat on the cement, missing my criss-crossed legs by only a few inches.
I could’ve sworn her saliva began to boil.
“No, my koúkla. He attempted to take a man’s life.”
“…”
“…”
“Oh.”
That was definitely not where I saw this going.
Mr. Slick
The rest of the story came in bits and pieces, strong like Texas heat and messy like a Greek man with anger management issues. I’ll detail it briefly, partially for the sake of your attention span, but mostly to honor my family’s pride.
The man was a customer at my papou’s bar, sworn to have a tacky handlebar mustache and the thick smell of a roustabout, hair slick with grease and nails black and peeling with grime. Apparently, Mr. Slick got a little too handsy with Yiayia on the dance floor and my papou grabbed him by the right wing of his mustache and yanked him outside faster than you could say ‘murder charge as an immigrant,’ which, as you might have noticed, is something that perhaps should be said quicker, but unfortunately just is not. That’s how I like to explain this story, as something that could have been handled with just a little more finesse to avoid even worse conflict, but unfortunately, Mr. Slick circumvented that fate. Right before my papou could get a good hand on this greasy little man, he smashed a beer bottle over my papou’s head. Over my big, strong, angry, violent papou’s head. Yiayia then says that my papou threw Mr. Slick to the ground and beat his head into the concrete.
And really, that’s as best as it can be told. Plain and simple. I could try to include the untranslatable Greek profanity that erupted from his bloody underbite (untranslatable for reasons of decency, rather than a simple lack of resources, by the way), but other than that, it’s really rather frank. Legend has it (and by legend, I mean Yiayia, who has a hefty reputation for over-exaggeration) that my papou promptly lugged the man’s body over his shoulder and slung it into the dumpster behind the bar. Just like that.
He’s said to have gone back into the bar to wash his hands, and moved on with the rest of his night as if nothing had ever happened. Except it did. And my mother—little Petrina—hiding behind the side of the building with the trash bag Yiayia asked her to take out hours ago, couldn’t simply move on like her father. Something inside of her had changed. What, I am not sure. All I know is what Yiayia shortly reports: that after that night, little Petrina didn’t speak to my papou for weeks. Neither him nor Yiayia knew she had even seen the spectacle until months later, when she apparently asked nonchalantly one morning over breakfast if that funny-looking man from the dumpster was still alive. A strange question for a little girl, I know. Yiayia says that my papou looked over at her with wide eyes and an uncharacteristically kind smile that deepened his dimples and fattened his face. He assured her that the funny-looking man was, in fact, somehow alright. That the man he thought he had killed dead on the backstreets of Chicago was just fine and dandy! No worries, kid!
But Yiayia was worried, as she shared with me on her back porch when I was nine years old, and as she still shares with me now. Yiayia was worried about my mother.
My mother now—older Petrina—is a spitting image of her father, and spits the same depravity.
My Mother’s Daughter
My mother is the human embodiment of the word “unpredictable.” She is inconsistent, violent, short-tempered, and destructive. Nothing about her can ever be forecasted to a T—except for the certainty that is understanding that you will never understand what she does or why she does it. Funny enough, the most predictable thing about my mother is that she will always and forever live unpredictably. My mother is her father’s daughter.
On that hot Chicago night, my mother learned that love is angry, bloody, and violent. And because she never learned the line of separation between love and pain, her love hurts. Her love is war and her love has casualties. Her love is bruises and bleeds and ignorance and isolation.
She is the product of generations of abuse. She is her father’s daughter, who is his father’s son, who is the son of many mothers and fathers who are the children of gods. She is her father’s daughter, but I am fighting like hell to not be hers. Despite my hesitance to agree with Yiayia’s fervent comparisons of my mother and I, every part of me holds on to her acknowledgement that I am different from my mother in my desire—in my need—to be okay.
“You work to change, my koúkla, you want to get better,” she said to me.
On the darkest nights when I look in the mirror and see my mother’s face glaring back at me instead, these words are my saving grace. They are an omen of possibility. A beacon of hope. They are The Goal to chase after, a dream that I can drag back down to Earth if I just hold on to it for long enough.
I am determined to hold on to it for long enough.
I feel closest to my mother when I am on either end of hurting, and it terrifies me. But even as I am my mother’s daughter, I am the daughter of all else that has raised me. I am Yiayia’s daughter. I am the Texas summer sun’s daughter. I am my own daughter. And even if I am more like my mother than I’d like to think, I will spend lifetimes chasing change fueled by the memories of angry Greek men, Yiayia’s cigarettes, and the warmth of the Texas sun burning the backs of my calves as I run further and further into infinity.
Because I am my mother’s daughter.
Sole Magazine