Middlesex

Despite the performance of all the necessary rites, the family remained aware that Jimmy Zizmo’s soul wasn’t at rest. After death, the souls of the Orthodox do not wing their way directly to heaven. They prefer to linger on earth and annoy the living. For the next forty days, whenever my grandmother misplaced her dream book or her worry beads, she blamed Zizmo’s spirit. He haunted the house, making fresh milk curdle and stealing the bathroom soap. As the mourning period drew to an end, Desdemona and Sourmelina prepared the kolyvo. It was like a wedding cake, made in three blindingly white tiers. A fence surrounded the top layer, from which grew fir trees made of green gelatin. There was a pond of blue jelly, and Zizmo’s name was spelled out in silver-coated dragées. On the fortieth day after the funeral, another church ceremony was held, after which everyone returned to Hurlbut Street. They gathered around the kolyvo, which was sprinkled with the powdered sugar of the afterlife and mixed with the immortal seeds of pomegranates. As soon as they ate the cake, they could all feel it: Jimmy Zizmo’s soul was leaving the earth and entering heaven, where it couldn’t bother them anymore. At the height of the festivities, Sourmelina caused a scandal when she returned from her room wearing a bright orange dress.

“What are you doing?” Desdemona whispered. “A widow wears black for the rest of her life.”

“Forty days is enough,” said Lina, and went on eating.

Only then could the babies be baptized. The next Saturday, Desdemona, seized with conflicting emotions, watched as the children’s godfathers held them above the baptismal font at Assumption. As she entered the church, my grandmother had felt an intense pride. People crowded around, trying to get a look at her new baby, who had the miraculous power of turning even the oldest women into young mothers again. During the rite itself, Father Stylianopoulos clipped a lock of Milton’s hair and dropped it into the water. He chrismed the sign of the cross on the baby’s forehead. He submerged the infant under the water. But as Milton was cleansed of original sin, Desdemona remained cognizant of her iniquity. Silently, she repeated her vow never to have another child.

“Lina,” she began a few days later, blushing.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Not nothing. Something. What?”

“I was wondering. How do you . . . if you don’t want . . .” And she blurted it out: “How do you keep from getting pregnant?”

Lina gave a low laugh. “That’s not something I have to worry about anymore.”

“But do you know how? Is there a way?”

“My mother always said as long as you’re nursing, you can’t get pregnant. I don’t know if it’s true, but that’s what she said.”

“But after that, what then?”

“Simple. Don’t sleep with your husband.”

At present, it was possible. Since the birth of the baby, my grandparents had taken a hiatus from lovemaking. Desdemona was up half the night breast-feeding. She was always exhausted. In addition, her perineum had torn during the delivery and was still healing. Lefty politely kept himself from starting anything amorous, but after the second month he began to come over to her side of the bed. Desdemona held him off as long as she could. “It’s too soon,” she said. “We don’t want another baby.”

“Why not? Milton needs a brother.”

“You’re hurting me.”

“I’ll be gentle. Come here.”

“No, please, not tonight.”

“What? Are you turning into Sourmelina? Once a year is enough?”

“Quiet. You’ll wake the baby.”

“I don’t care if I wake the baby.”

“Don’t shout. Okay. Here. I’m ready.”

But five minutes later: “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

“Don’t tell me nothing. It’s like being with a statue.”

“Oh, Lefty!” And she burst into sobs.

Lefty comforted her and apologized, but as he turned over to go to sleep he felt himself being enclosed in the loneliness of fatherhood. With the birth of his son, Eleutherios Stephanides saw his future and continuing diminishment in the eyes of his wife, and as he buried his face in his pillow, he understood the complaint of fathers everywhere who lived like boarders in their own homes. He felt a mad jealousy toward his infant son, whose cries were the only sounds Desdemona seemed to hear, whose little body was the recipient of unending ministrations and caresses, and who had muscled his own father aside in Desdemona’s affections by a seemingly divine subterfuge, a god taking the form of a piglet in order to suckle at a woman’s breast. Over the next weeks and months, Lefty watched from the Siberia of his side of the bed as this mother-infant love affair blossomed. He saw his wife scrunch her face up against the baby’s to make cooing noises; he marveled at her complete lack of disgust toward the infant’s bodily processes, the tenderness with which she cleaned up and powdered the baby’s bottom, rubbing with circular motions and even once, to Lefty’s shock, spreading the tiny buttocks to daub the rosebud between with petroleum jelly.