Apostolos.
âBut Mom, the dictators killed the students, donât you get it? They ran them over with tanks!â
âThatâs none of your concern.â
Angeliki comes over and tries to kiss up to my mother. When there are no adults around I call her Diaboliki. She calls me Teapot, ever since the first day of school with the toilet paper and thejungle. She says âteapotâ over and over until it sounds like âpotty.â Whoâs she to speak, with that smushed turd on her eyebrow?
âAre you Mariaâs mom?â
âYes, dear. Who are you?â
âIâm Mariaâs friend, Angeliki.â
âSee, hereâs a nice girl for you to be friends with. No more scribbling on desks. Will you promise me that?â
And thatâs how I lose my only friend, Apostolos. I had no idea he was seventeen years old, and studying to be plumber. Now that I know, I invent a dramatic story in my head. Heâs Hausa, Iâm Yoruba, and we canât get married because weâre from different tribes. Apostolos climbs onto the gate of the Athens Polytechnic and shouts: âGive the junta to the people!â Then he pulls me up beside him and I shout: âNo matter how wrong things go, salt never gets worms!â The police beat us up a little bit, but the worst that happens is that they break my tooth and cut off one of my fingers, and in the end we win. All the dictators from Greece and Nigeria come pouring out of the tanks and run off as fast as they can. Then we climb into one of the tanks, which turns into a house-submarine, and before we even realize whatâs happening the current has carried us all the way across the Atlantic and, oops, here we are on the coast of Nigeria. We wring out our clothes, spread them on the sand to dry and eat a couple of bananas. The tank is a tank again and we head toward Ikeja. Dad and Gwendolyn are waiting for us on the covered veranda, under the bougainvillea. Apostolos will help Unto Punto with the plumbing in the house. Until we get married, that is. Because afterward heâs going to be a doctor and Iâll be a painter and weâll have lots of kids, and Gwendolyn will take care of them. On second thought, we wonât have any kids, because one of them might die and then what would become of us? We would pull our hair and cry and eat nothing but lentils and biftekia.
A tear rolls down my cheek, then another. I keep forgetting to bring my monogrammed handkerchiefs with me to school.
When a ripe fruit sees an honest person, it falls, Gwendolyn always said. I decide to forget all the dramatic stories and say an honest personâs prayer. I stand in front of Momâs little shrine of icons, cross my hands on my chest the way Iâve been taught, and say, âLord have mercy, the Father and the Son, let us go back to Ikeja and Iâll never ask you for anything else ever again. Amen.â
One Sunday morning when heâs probably still lying in bed, like me, without much of anything to do, God actually listens.
âWake up, Maria! I have a surprise for you!â Mom calls from the kitchen.
I jump out of bed and run into the hall in my pajamas.
âYour father canât come to Athens for Christmas, so weâll go and see him. How does that sound?â
I jump up and down and twirl around in circles and dance a dance I made up myself, singing tourourou and lalala and heyhey. Out of habit, I glance up at the ceiling, too, to see if some piece of fruit might be about to fall on my head.
Iâm honest, and Ikeja is my ripe fruit.
I squeeze my eyes shut and swear Iâll die. Itâs another Sunday, we just got back from Nigeria, Mom is making her biftekia, cars are screeching to a stop outside the blue building. I try to hold my breath as if I were swimming underwater at the beach in Tarkwa, only for longer. If I can just die a little, if I can at least make myself turn blue, theyâll bring me back