The Secret Sister Read Free Page B

common with Menelaos Argyriou? Wrapped in a filthy blanket covered in lice and vomit, on the ship’s third class deck, he sailed to America to start the story of a new life from the beginning. It was the second time. He was now leaving behind more things that he would have to pretend to forget. Not only his land and orchard, but Little Frosso with her unworn red dress. Little Frosso never made it to America. Her journey was interrupted halfway there, on the seventh day. Her body arched, bent over and sank. She never made it here and so it was as if she never left there.
    â€œ
From the time we were born, inside us we have confused here with there, now with then, before with after.
”
 
    Our family walked a tightrope between oblivion and truth. That’s how we grew up. Like so many other families since the beginning of time, the things it had to forget were more than those it could bear to remember.
    â€œ
Years later, when she chose her new name, the name Frosso was banned. And along with it the word ‘Greece’.
”
    Her eyes stopped looking at us.
    â€œ
Her breath smelled bad when she came near me. I wanted to run away.
”
    Her voice broke.
    â€œ
You wake up in the morning and the whole world has changed.
”
    She would get angry at anyone who called her Frosso. Tipsy from drinking, more and more every day.
    â€œ
And you, Jonathan, struggling to make heads or tails of it all. Even just a little bit. Otherwise you can’t live. But the heads might bite and the tails might sting.
”
 
    In eight hours, everything will be different. I’ll begin to understand everything that escapes me now.
    â€œ
Trapped in a dream. But if you don’t take a risk, how will you be saved?
”
 
    On the Holy Rock of the Acropolis—in a few hours I’ll be there. As I look at the amber color of the Marbles, will I be able to see your eyes? Or will I just hear your voice whispering once more: “You’re alone here, a stranger in a strange land”?
    â€œ
There are altars there and sanctuaries that aren’t visible, and underground arcades that lead to the sea. You’ll put on a clean white shirt, Jonathan, and if there’s a southern wind blowing, you’ll hear the sound of the waves.
” 1
    The young woman with the khaki-colored pumps is getting ready to serve lunch.
    â€œLater,” I tell her.
    She flashes a smile at me and turns to the other passengers.
    Â 
    Â 
    * * *
    Â 
    Â 
    Sometimes Mama’s face would glow. On certain Friday afternoons, when she would come by the school to pick me up and take me to the Metropolitan Museum’s gallery to see the statues. I was just a kid, but she would make me look at them for hours. What was I supposed to make of them? “Just look at them, that’s enough,” she would say. She seemed happy then. Was I her favorite son or something else? I saw statues, marbles and nude men, and young women, pots and talismans, jewelry, clasps and necklaces—what was I supposed to make of them? The museum guards, the doormen, the guides, they all knew her. “Hello, Ma’am.” “This is my son.” Why did she want me with her? She definitely went there alone. Perhaps even every day. At five thirty the Met closed. We were always the last ones to leave. One day, she led me in front of a marble stele. It showed a woman next to a man. The man was naked, one hand resting on his chin, the other holding a sword, looking at the woman. She was facing away from him. She was wrapped in a piece of fabric that enveloped her body in folds. Between them stood an ewer. “It’s a lekythos,” she said, and then: “Write it down.” In my notebook I wrote down “lekythos” in my child’s handwriting. I was seven years old, for God’s sake, what sense could I make of a funerary stele? They were both dead. The man was a warrior, he was off to battle; the woman would make