Middlesex

Patient reader, you may have been wondering what happened to my grandmother. You may have noticed that, shortly after she climbed into bed forever, Desdemona began to fade away. But that was intentional. I allowed Desdemona to slip out of my narrative because, to be honest, in the dramatic years of my transformation, she slipped out of my attention most of the time. For the last five years she had remained bedridden in the guest house. During my time at Baker & Inglis, while I was falling in love with the Object, I had remained aware of my grandmother only in the vaguest of ways. I saw Tessie preparing her meals and carrying trays out to the guest house. Every evening I saw my father make a dutiful visit to her perpetual sickroom with its hot-water bottles and pharmaceutical supplies. At those times Milton spoke to his mother in Greek, with increasing difficulty. During the war Desdemona had failed to teach her son to write Greek. Now in her old age she recognized with horror that he was forgetting how to speak it as well. Occasionally, I brought Desdemona’s food trays out and for a few minutes would reacquaint myself with her time-capsule life. The framed photograph of her burial plot still stood on her bedside table for reassurance.

Tessie went to the intercom. “Yes, yia yia,” she said. “Did you need something?”

“My feet they are terrible today. Did you get the Epsom salts?”

“Yes. I’ll bring them to you.”

“Why God no let yia yia die, Tessie? Everybody’s dead! Everybody but yia yia! Yia yia she is too old to live now. And what does God do? Nothing.”

“Are you finished with your breakfast?”

“Yes, thank you, honey. But the prunes they were not good ones today.”

“Those are the same prunes you always have.”

“Something maybe it happen to them. Get a new box, please, Tessie. The Sunkist.”

“I will.”

“Okay, honey mou. Thank you, honey.”

My mother silenced the intercom and turned back to me. “Yia yia’s not doing so good anymore. Her mind’s going. Since you’ve been away she’s really gone downhill. We told her about Milt.” Tessie faltered, near tears. “About what happened. Yia yia couldn’t stop crying. I thought she was going to die right then and there. And then a few hours later she asked me where Milt was. She forgot the entire thing. Maybe it’s better that way.”

“Is she going to the funeral?”

“She can barely walk. Mrs. Papanikolas is coming to watch her. She doesn’t know where she is half the time.” Tessie smiled sadly, shaking her head. “Who would have thought she would outlive Milt?” She teared up again and forced the tears back.

“Can I go and see her?”

“You want to?”

“Yes.”

Tessie looked apprehensive. “What will you tell her?”

“What should I tell her?”

For another few seconds my mother was silent, thinking. Then she shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Whatever you say she won’t remember. Take this out to her. She wants to soak her feet.”

Carrying the Epsom salts and a piece of the baklava wrapped in cellophane, I came out of the house and walked along the portico past the courtyard and bathhouse to the guesthouse behind. The door was unlocked. I opened it and stepped in. The only light in the room came from the television, which was turned up extremely loud. Facing me when I entered was the old portrait of Patriarch Athenagoras that Desdemona had saved from the yard sale years ago. In a birdcage by the window, a green parakeet, the last surviving member of my grandparents’ former aviary, was moving back and forth on its balsa wood perch. Other familiar objects and furnishings were still in evidence, Lefty’s rebetika records, the brass coffee table, and, of course, the silkworm box, sitting in the middle of the engraved circular top. The box was now so stuffed with mementos it wouldn’t shut. Inside were snapshots, old letters, precious buttons, worry beads. Somewhere below all that, I knew, were two long braids of hair, tied with crumbling black ribbons, and a wedding crown made of ship’s rope. I wanted to look at these things, but as I stepped farther into the room my attention was diverted by the grand spectacle on the bed.