Middlesex

. . . while out on the ice the Packard’s headlamps brighten with each acceleration, as more juice flows from the battery. They’re in the shipping lane now, equidistant from both shores. The sky a great black bowl above them, pierced with celestial fires. They can’t remember the way they came now, how many turns they took, where the bad ice is. The frozen terrain is scrawled with tire tracks leading in every possible direction. They pass the carcasses of old jalopies, front ends fallen through the ice, doors riddled with bullet holes. There are axles lying about, and hubcaps, and a few spare tires. In the darkness and whirling snow, my grandfather’s eyes play tricks on him. Twice he thinks he sees a phalanx of cars approaching. The cars toy with them, appearing now in front, now to the side, now behind, coming and going so quickly he can’t be sure if he saw them at all. And there is another smell in the Packard now, above leather and whiskey, a stringent, metallic smell overpowering my grandfather’s deodorant: fear. It’s right then that Zizmo, in a calm voice, says, “Something I always wondered about. Why don’t you ever tell anyone that Lina is your cousin?”

The question, coming out of the blue, takes my grandfather off guard. “We don’t keep it a secret.”

“No?” says Zizmo. “I’ve never heard you mention it.”

“Where we come from, everybody is a cousin,” Lefty tries to joke. Then: “How much farther do we have to go?”

“Other side of the shipping lane. We’re still on the American side.”

“How are you going to find them out here?”

“We’ll find them. You want me to speed up?” Without waiting for a reply, Zizmo steps on the accelerator.

“That’s okay. Go slow.”

“Something else I always wanted to know,” Zizmo says, accelerating.

“Jimmy, be safe.”

“Why did Lina have to leave the village to get married?”

“You’re going too fast. I don’t have time to check the ice.”

“Answer me.”

“Why did she leave? There was no one to marry. She wanted to come to America.”

“Is that what she wanted?” He accelerates again.

“Jimmy. Slow down!”

But Zizmo pushes the pedal to the floor. And shouts, “Is it you!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Is it you!” Zizmo roars again, and now the engine is whining, the ice is whizzing by underneath the car. “Who is it!” he demands to know. “Tell me! Who is it?” . . .

. . . But before my grandfather can come up with an answer, another memory comes careening across the ice. It is a Sunday night during my childhood and my father is taking me to the movies at the Detroit Yacht Club. We ascend the red-carpeted stairs, passing silver sailing trophies and the oil portrait of the hydroplane racer Gar Wood. On the second floor, we enter the auditorium. Wooden folding chairs are set up before a movie screen. And now the lights have been switched off and the clanking projector shoots out a beam of light, showing a million dust motes in the air.

The only way my father could think of to instill in me a sense of my heritage was to take me to dubbed Italian versions of the ancient Greek myths. And so, every week, we saw Hercules slaying the Nemean lion, or stealing the girdle of the Amazons (“That’s some girdle, eh, Callie?”), or being thrown gratuitously into snake pits without textual support. But our favorite was the Minotaur . . .

. . . On the screen an actor in a bad wig appears. “That’s Theseus,” Milton explains. “He’s got this ball of string his girlfriend gave him, see. And he’s using it to find his way back out of the maze.”

Now Theseus enters the Labyrinth. His torch lights up stone walls made of cardboard. Bones and skulls litter his path. Bloodstains darken the fake rock. Without taking my eyes from the screen, I hold out my hand. My father reaches into the pocket of his blazer to find a butterscotch candy. As he gives it to me, he whispers, “Here comes the Minotaur!” And I shiver with fear and delight.

Academic to me then, the sad fate of the creature. Asterius, through no fault of his own, born a monster. The poisoned fruit of betrayal, a thing of shame hidden away; I don’t understand any of that at eight. I’m just rooting for Theseus . . .

. . . as my grandmother, in 1923, prepares to meet the creature hidden in her womb. Holding her belly, she sits in the backseat of the taxi, while Lina, up front, tells the driver to hurry. Desdemona breathes in and out, like a runner pacing herself, and Lina says, “I’m not even mad at you for waking me up. I was going to the hospital in the morning anyway. They’re letting me take the baby home.” But Desdemona isn’t listening. She opens her prepacked suitcase, feeling among nightgown and slippers for her worry beads. Amber like congealed honey, cracked by heat, they’ve gotten her through massacres, a refugee march, and a burning city, and she clicks them as the taxi rattles over the dark streets, trying to outrace her contractions . . .