Middlesex

It happened like this. One night, my grandfather got into bed with my grandmother to find that she wasn’t alone. Milton, eight years old now, was snuggled up against her side. On her other side was Zoë, who was only four. Lefty, exhausted from work, looked down at the spectacle of this menagerie. He loved the sight of his sleeping children. Despite the problems of his marriage, he could never blame his son or daughter for them. At the same time, he rarely saw them. In order to make enough money he had to keep the speakeasy open sixteen, sometimes eighteen, hours a day. He worked seven days a week. To support his family he had to be exiled from them. In the mornings when he was around the house, his children treated him like a familiar relative, an uncle maybe, but not a father.

And then there was the problem of the bar ladies. Serving drinks day and night, in a dim grotto, he had many opportunities to meet women drinking with their friends or even alone. My grandfather was thirty years old in 1932. He had filled out and become a man; he was charming, friendly, always well dressed—and still in his physical prime. Upstairs his wife was too frightened to have sex, but down in the Zebra Room women gave Lefty bold, hot looks. Now, as my grandfather gazed down at the three sleeping figures in the bed, his head contained all these things at once: love for his children, love for his wife, along with frustration with his marriage, and boyish, unmarried-feeling excitement around the bar ladies. He bent his face close to Zoë’s. Her hair was still wet from the bath, and richly fragrant. He took his fatherly delights while at the same time he remained a man apart. Lefty knew that all the things in his head couldn’t hold together. And so after gazing on the beauty of his children’s faces, he lifted them out of the bed and carried them back to their own room. He returned and got into bed beside his sleeping wife. Gently, he began stroking her, moving his hand up under her nightgown. And suddenly Desdemona’s eyes opened.

“What are you doing!”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

“I’m sleeping.”

“I’m waking you up.”

“Shame on you.” My grandmother pushed him away. And Lefty relented. He rolled angrily away from her. There was a long silence before he spoke.

“I don’t get anything from you. I work all the time and I get nothing.”

“You think I don’t work? I have two children to take care of.”

“If you were a normal wife, it might be worth it for me to be working all the time.”

“If you were a normal husband, you would help with the children.”

“How can I help you? You don’t even understand what it takes to make money in this country. You think I’m having a good time down there?”

“You play music, you drink. I can hear the music in the kitchen.”

“That’s my job. That’s why the people come. And if they don’t come, we can’t pay our bills. The whole thing rests on me. That’s what you don’t understand. I work all day and night and then when I come to bed I can’t even sleep. There’s no room!”

“Milton had a nightmare.”

“I’m having a nightmare every day.”

He switched the light on and, in its glow, Desdemona saw her husband’s face screwed up with a malice she’d never seen before. It was no longer Lefty’s face, no longer that of her brother or her husband. It was the face of someone new, a stranger she was living with.

And this terrible new face delivered an ultimatum:

“Tomorrow morning,” Lefty spat, “you’re going to go get a job.”

The next day, when Lina came over for lunch, Desdemona asked her to read the newspaper for her.

“How can I work? I don’t even know English.”

“You know a little.”

“We should have gone to Greece. In Greece a husband wouldn’t make his wife go out and get a job.”

“Don’t worry,” Lina said, holding up the recycled newsprint. “There aren’t any.” The 1932 Detroit Times classifieds, advertised to a population of four million, ran to just over one column. Sourmelina squinted, looking for something appropriate.

“Waitress,” Lina read.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Men would flirt with me.”

“You don’t like to flirt?”

“Read,” Desdemona said.

“Tool and dye,” said Lina.

My grandmother frowned. “What is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Like dyeing fabric?”

“Maybe.”

“Go on,” said Desdemona.

“Cigar roller,” Lina continued.

“I don’t like smoke.”

“Housemaid.”

“Lina, please. I can’t be a maid for somebody.”

“Silk worker.”

“What?”

“Silk worker. That’s all it says. And an address.”

“Silk worker? I’m a silk worker. I know everything.”

“Then congratulations, you have a job. If it’s not gone by the time you get there.”

An hour later, dressed for job hunting, my grandmother reluctantly left the house. Sourmelina had tried to persuade her to borrow a dress with a low neckline. “Wear this and no one will notice what kind of English you speak,” she said. But Desdemona set out for the streetcar in one of her plain dresses, gray with brown polka dots. Her shoes, hat, and handbag were each a brown that almost matched.