The Secret Sister by Fotini Tsalikoglou, Mary Kritoeff Page A

up!
    With a handkerchief tied around each arm, we’d rush out onto 57th Street and arrive breathless at the park, the squirrels were never afraid of us, with blades of grass, roots, seeds and acorns we would win them over. Cheep-cheep, cheep-cheep, they knew the sound of our voices; they’d come out of their hiding places and scurry towards us, with an inexplicable and impermissible sense of trust.
    â€œThat’s how everything should be,” you’d say, taking out the acorns you’d hid in your pocket.
    The last flight of Delta Air Lines. The service from New York to Athens is being discontinued. Is Greece not a viable destination? “Fasten your seat belts.” In a few minutes, the lights will be dimmed for takeoff. A sudden lull before the explo­sion of deafening noises.
    The lights were dimmed then too for takeoff. I remember the night. The initial darkness. That’s where I came from. Like 6.92 billion others. Each one of them another. We all came out of the same darkness. From the nighttime of a womb. It was Sunday, seven o’clock in the morning. She cried out. Two or three loud screams. That was it. They gave her an epidural. She insisted on keeping her eyes open. I was born without anyone asking me. She wanted me to be born at home. Persist­ently she insisted.
    â€œI want to give birth at home—not at the hospital.”
    Her parents, Grandpa Menelaos and Grandma Erasmia, were frightened.
    â€œFrosso, that’s crazy talk!”
    â€œLet me do as I wish.”
    â€œFrosso, for God’s sake! What are you thinking? You have a birth ahead of you, not a death. You’re about to give birth and you act like a dying woman who insists on leaving her last breath in her home, so that her soul might rest in peace. Is it all the same to you—the first and last breath?”
    â€œI’ll do as I please.”
    â€œAre you confusing the new life that’s struggling to come out into the light with one that’s already on its way to darkness?”
    Strange and weird Mama. “It’s my birth,” she’d say, “and it’s my child, so I’ll do as I please.” I felt her vocal cords in my stomach . . . I was only two inches long and already I could hear her voice inside me. “I want him here, in my bed, I want the first thing he sees to be the light coming from the river.” She didn’t want me. She wanted to want. That was all.
    It was summer, and the Hudson River poured golden reflections over the houses stretching along its shores. That was where our house was. At first—and for a few days to come—it was her place of residence. Her one and only place. But that didn’t last long. There was no father.
    I never knew my father. And neither did you, Amalia.
    â€œ
Was it the same man?
”
    But we’re the same. Look at how alike we are! Look, if you don’t believe me, look in the mirror.
    â€œ
Why, yes, we’re the same, Jonathan, we’re the same.
”
    So perhaps we share the same father . . . what difference does it make? She needed a seed for her son. And another for her daughter. I was her son. Her first child. With you it was different, Amalia. For you maybe she also wanted a great love. Maybe not. You can’t order great loves. They come and find you and, if you are not frightened off, they give you unbearable bliss.
    â€œ
At home nobody ever spoke of these things. It was stifling, all the things they hid from us.”
    Sealed lips hid secrets. And if someone, Grandma, let’s say, or Grandpa, or Anthoula, tried to speak, it would be like robbing a church. It was sacrilege for anyone to try and ask something about “Daddy” or “Amalia and Jonathan’s daddy,” or to imply something about “Mrs. Efrosyni Argyriou’s husband.” Who makes the rules? Who enforces them, and at what cost? Each family is fed by its secrets. Like a strangely