INSERT DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT
1.
Cross Town
SUMMER
Yiayia resided in a white, two-story, shingled apartment stacked over the restaurant like the top two layers of a buttercream cake. The restaurant was a roomy rectangle with a long, plate glass window lining State Street. It housed both a dining room and bar, each with its own entrance from the street, creating the unintended consequence of averting a crossover of patrons. In spite of the fact that the drinking side of the restaurant shared space with the pink lunch counter, I was forbidden from walking behind the mahogany bar, not even to collect the afternoon mail.
“It isn’t proper,” Papou would insist.
But I was permitted behind the lunch counter where I never tired of setting a fat porcelain cup under the spout of the dairy dispenser and lifting the arm to fire a single creamy shot into a customer’s coffee.
My grandparents and I belong to each other. I am at ease and continents away from the house across town where tirades echo and ravage rooms and where my father spews his clipped, caustic language of intimidation.
Upstairs, in the apartment above the restaurant where we reside when we are not working, as the day breaks, Yiayia's apple green kitchen reflects the radiant morning light, encouraging all who enter in the manner of an everlasting summer. Here among the sunbeams, we work her beloved recipes on the Formica table always fitted with the center leaf, while Papou rests in his chair.
Years later, I was almost eleven when Papou passed, Yiayia and I could not figure out how to sit in the living room without Papou anchored in his recliner. The side table with the leather inlay still held his wallet, embossed by coins he carried for the newspaper. His death caused the earth to sway beneath our feet, so Yiayia had no choice but to fire her leftover resolve like marble, and cast it to forge and tumble through ages of rocks, water and sand.
With Papou gone, the restaurant passed to my grandfather’s nephews who were ready to assume all aspects of the family business. But it was in my grandmother’s kitchen where the real cooking took place.
I had awoken on this day to an intoxicating memory released from the oven. Yiayia had been awake for hours making a tiropita. Although I normally would mix the cheeses or baste the dough in a bath of butter and oil, she had left me to sleep. By the time I walked into the kitchen, all traces of her handiwork were gone save for a plate of marmalade toast and a shot of apricot juice.
“We will leave when the tiropita comes out,” she reminded me.
I finish my breakfast and climb back upstairs to wait and wander through the spare space we called the big room where I‘m greeted by an old cedar chest, a couple of bureaus, a chair and several open boxes filled with clothes. I reached for the closest box and puzzled in the flaps, and then did the same with the rest before stacking them on top of one of the bureaus. I grabbed the chair and carefully climb up the boxes. When I reach the last box, I roll until face up and a foot from the ceiling. By my twelve birthday, I’d be too old or too heavy for this game.
“Pearl, come down and eat. Meta tha bame sto Horowitz Brothers gia na parels to yfasma sou, after we will go to Horowitz Brothers for the fabric,” Yiayia reminded me.
Yiayia still enjoyed sewing the occasional dress for me and Horowitz Brothers was where she mined fabric and notions. We always went together, which was fine by me because anything was everything in the company of my grandmother. A clank from the pan hitting the oven rack and the smell of pastry as thin as leaves brought me back. I was eager for the crack of oiled filo and the confetti of crumbs to follow. It occurred to me that getting down from the top of my cardboard perch would be harder than the climb up. By the time my sneaker hit the sideboard I had less than a second to brace my weight against the old wallpaper to force a muffled crash.
“Pearl?” The sound of my name sailed up..
“Amesos, right away!” I toss back, with the tenderness that comes without effort in this house.
Hearing my name stirs such confusion, an announcement that could both startle me or lull me into safety. The affection or lack of, commanded my attention.
I walk through Yiayia’s bedroom on my way downstairs and am captured by my reflection in the moon-shaped mirror. I bear no resemblance to my mother’s mother, whose watery blue eyes, gunmetal hair and remarkably unlined face was like peering into a quiet sea. I am, rather, the image of my father and of his mother, the first Pearl, who I had only met in burgundy photos. There was no denying the shape of our eyes, large and gently sloped like poplar leaves. I abruptly abandon my twin when I am interrupted by the clash of thundering utensils bolting into the sink. This is my cue to run down to the kitchen for tiropita, the crisp feta pie now resting in the center of the table, atop the tiny pot holder I’d once woven on a plastic loom. Yiayia lifts a four inch square from a corner of the pan and motions me to sit. I surrender to my first bite of steaming cheese until there is nothing left but a spray of tiny, papery leaves melting against my tongue like snowflakes. Yiayia retreats to the hallway mirror to fix herself one last time before we leave.
“Ella Pearl, tora bame, we’re going,” she called.
On any given day, this hallway to her apartment feels like a reward for running up the sixteen stairs it takes to climb up into the apartment. The walls of the entry are lined with rolled linoleum in ochre squares patterned like ceramic tile.
Woolens and netted hats cling to hooks. There is a table for mail and bobby pins and a mirror rimmed in painted gold, hung low enough for Yiayia, who is not very tall, to reapply her lipstick. We made phone calls from a dedicated leather and mahogany chair whose creaks betrayed any hope of privacy.
“Ella.” Yiayia called out to me, gingerly approaching the staircase, one step at a time.
Yiayia’s words are dispensed with the kind of precision with which she infuses everything: the rolling of pie crust, the threading of silk through an unseen eye, the tap of her toe down and up against the pedal of the Singer that produced a racing hum whose drone and subtle vibration could right my wayward thoughts at any given moment.
“Bame Pearl.”
At the sound of her voice, I feel moored, far from the voice of my father and his language of opposition through his howling delivery of tone and verse. I recall the night before, as he was midway through another strike.
“You know nothing,” he continued. “Nothing, deeepota. Deepota ya to maezi,” “Nothing about how to run a business. I do everything,” he belted, eroding, my statue of a mother.
While my father deployed language like a weapon, my grandmother extended it like an invitation. . It was this contrast that defined the critical balance of power I knew from birth, and one which required a clear understanding of how we would all proceed at any given time. But it was Yiayia’s plump and nimble hands that reached deep into my heart, ensuring that I could spend the bulk of my days in the warm glow of her sublime company, momentarily safe from my father's fury which could be tripped by anything.
“Chapachula” my grandmother said as she smiled.
I am well versed in this endearment. It had been packed from another life and translated to mean the opposite of a neat appearance. With scratches on my legs and my hair pulled back with a stretched headband, I appear younger and prefer it that way. Yiayia’s penchant for the empire style dresses she stitched for me to wear, reinforced this illusion.
“Yiayia” I asked. “Where are we going after Horowitz?”
“ You should go home, Pearl. You’ve been here so long. Your father will want to see you.
I turned the sentence around in my mind. My stomach tensed. I was trying to craft the right words to prevent my return to the house across town. Going home was never as easy as the reverse loop when the car seemed to drive itself. I reach for the pearl, swaying from a chain around my neck and guide the pink gem back between my collarbones.
“Yiayia. They don’t know when I’m coming, so I can go tomorrow.”
And after a few quiet minutes came her reply.
“Alright Pearl, call your mother. We’ll bake something when we get back.”