Middlesex

And so: Assumption Church that July morning. Incense rising with the pungency of irrational hope. Closer in (it had been drizzling out), the smell of wet wool. The dripping of umbrellas stashed under pews. The rivulets from these umbrellas flowing down the uneven floor of our poorly built church, pooling in spots. The smell of hairspray and perfume, of cheap cigars, and the slow ticking of watches. The grumbling of more and more stomachs. And the yawning. The nodding off and the snoring and the being elbowed awake.

Our liturgy, endless; my own body immune to the laws of time. And right in front of me, Zoë Antoniou, on whom time had also been doing a number.

The life of a priest’s wife had been even worse than Aunt Zo had expected. She had hated her years in the Peloponnese. They had lived in a small, unheated stone house. Outside, the village women spread blankets under olive trees, beating the branches until the olives fell. “Can’t they stop that damn racket!” Zoë had complained. In five years, to the incessant sound of trees being clubbed to death, she bore four children. She sent letters to my mother detailing her hardships: no washing machine, no car, no television, a backyard full of boulders and goats. She signed her letters, “St. Zoë, Church martyr.”

Father Mike had liked Greece better. His years there represented the best period of his priesthood. In that tiny Peloponnesian village the old superstitions survived. People still believed in the evil eye. Nobody pitied him for being a priest, whereas later on in America his parishioners always treated him with a slight but unmistakable condescension, like a crazy person whose delusions had to be humored. The humiliation of being a priest in a market economy didn’t plague Father Mike while he was in Greece. In Greece he could forget about my mother, who had jilted him, and he could escape comparison with my father, who made so much more money. His wife’s nagging complaints hadn’t begun to make Father Mike think about leaving the priesthood yet, and hadn’t led him to his desperate act . . .

In 1956 Father Mike was reappointed stateside to a church in Cleveland. In 1958 he became a priest at Assumption. Zoë was happy to be back home, but she never got used to her position as presvytera. She didn’t like being a role model. She found it difficult to keep her children looking neat and well dressed. “On what money?” she shouted at her husband. “Maybe if they paid you halfway decent the kids would look better.” My cousins—Aristotle, Socrates, Cleopatra, and Plato—had the thwarted, overbrushed look of ministers’ children. The boys wore cheap, garishly colored double-breasted suits. They had Afros. Cleo, who was as beautiful and almond-eyed as her namesake, made do with dresses from Montgomery Ward. She rarely spoke, and played cat’s cradle with Plato during the service.

I always liked Aunt Zo. I liked her big, grandstanding voice. I liked her sense of humor. She was louder than most men; she could make my mother laugh like nobody else.

That Sunday, for instance, during one of the many lulls, Aunt Zo turned around and dared to joke. “I have to be here, Tessie. What’s your excuse?”

“Callie and I just felt like coming to church,” my mother answered.

Plato, who was small like his father, sang out with mock censure, “Shame on you, Callie. What did you do?” He rubbed his right index finger repeatedly over his left.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Hey, Soc,” Plato whispered to his brother. “Is cousin Callie blushing?”

“She must have done something she doesn’t want to tell us.”

“Shush up now, you,” said Aunt Zo. For Father Mike was approaching with the censer. My cousins turned around. My mother bowed her head to pray. I did, too. Tessie prayed for Chapter Eleven to come to his senses. And me? That’s easy. I prayed for my period to come. I prayed to receive the womanly stigmata.

Summer sped on. Milton brought our suitcases up from the basement and told my mother and me to start packing. I tanned with the Object at the Little Club. Dr. Bauer haunted my mind, judging the proportions of my legs. The appointment was a week away, then half a week, then two days . . .