Memory of the Color Yellow

by Suzanne Jenkins

  “You don’t learn, do you?”

  The familiar voice caught me by surprise. It was my Uncle Peter. “Jeesh,” I moaned. “Did you have to hit me so hard?”

  “Sorry, Buddy,” he said, ruffling my hair. “I needed you to shut the hell up. There are microphones all over this godforsaken forest.”

  “Why didn’t you stop me at home?” I asked.

  “I didn’t know you’d left until you were almost out of sight. You’re fast, Buddy. I couldn’t catch you and didn’t dare yell for you. If we both get caught what they did to Jane Polsky is child’s play compared to what they’ll do to us.”

  Rubbing the back of my head, I knew the risk my Uncle Peter had taken to follow me. I was just preparing to speak when I heard Penelope.

  “Steve, are you there?” she said softly. “I hear you.”

  “I’m here,” I said, looking at Peter. He pushed me forward.

  “Not too close,” I warned him. “It’s electrified.”

  “I’m sorry about last night,” she said. “They knew we were meeting. My friends made me stay in so the boys could warn you to stay away from here. It’s for your own good. But I don’t want you to stay away. I missed seeing you. I’m so happy you showed up tonight.”

  With Peter standing there listening to every word, I didn’t know what to say. “We have company,” I finally said. “I wanted to see you, to make sure you were okay, but I’d better get back home. We had trouble in our neighborhood last night and I’m sure we’re being watched.”

  “Does this mean you won’t come to see me again?”

  I could sense Peter standing beside me, curious.

  “No,” I answered, defiant. “That’s not what it means. I just can’t come every night.”

  “I need you to come over the fence again,” Penelope said. “I want you so badly.”

  Hoping Peter didn’t pick up on that comment, I didn’t reply.

  “We’d better take off,” Uncle Peter whispered.

  “I’m leaving now,” I said, pulling my backpack on again. “I’ll try to come back tomorrow.”

  “You just told her you couldn’t come everyday,” Peter said, frowning.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow!” she called out, hopeful.

  My uncle pulled on my sweatshirt. “If you haven’t already, you don’t want to get any closer to her,” he said when we were out of earshot.

  “Why not?” I asked, thinking he was trying to protect my virtue.

  “I can’t say,” he answered. “It’s another thing you’ll learn at school. You must trust me on this, Steve. They’re in Tiresias for a reason.”

  “They don’t call it that inside. Now it’s Eremos. It means lonely. But they think it means paradise.”

  “I know what it means. I’m Greek, too. Remember? And trust me, that place is no paradise. It’s more like an internment camp.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s like a prison camp. People are sent there to keep the general population safe from harm.”

  “From what? What could she do to hurt me? I don’t get it.”

  He stopped and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Steve, I’m warning you. Stay away from her. Don’t try to get around the electric fence. I’m not even sure it’s safe to be as close as we were.”

  “What could happen to us?” I asked, completely stymied, worried because it was too late.

  He got flustered and pulled me along again. “Trust me,” he repeated. “You don’t want to know; it will be too easy for you to slip up and repeat what I said. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt that you aren’t going back there. I won’t say anything to your mother, yet. Try again, and believe me, I’ll tell her. It’s for your own safety.”

  “How will we get back into the house now?” I asked, starting to worry. We couldn’t both go through the front door.

  “I put the ladder out. You’d better hope Stephanie doesn’t miss me because she’ll alert your mother and then we’ll have hell on our hands.”

  We ran through the woods, staying out of sight for as long as possible, and when we got back into the residential area, he let me lead the way, ducking down, weaving between houses.

  Arriving at my window by four that morning, I climbed up first. After Peter came through, he leaned out and pushed the ladder down onto the grass. “I’ll pull it into the shed in the morning,” he whispered, saluting me and leaving my room.

  The conversation Peter had with me about prison camps swirled through my head as I lay there, trying to sleep. How could Penelope and the others be a threat to us and the rest of the neighborhood? I wondered if they posed a risk just here in Europe Town, or if its reach spread to the city, too. My world was so small, and I was just young enough that it didn’t occur to me that there was a Europe Town and more in every urban area and a Tiresias in every city, too.

  Slowly falling asleep, I never dreamed that my innocent meetings with Penelope would ignite a future firestorm.

  Memory of the Color Yellow

  –

  Two

  Chapter 6

  A kind of love sickness took over my body and mind, rendering me unable to eat or sleep. Certain things stirred my memory of Penelope; a distant, girlish laugh in the neighborhood, or a whiff of female while I was at the store with my mother. A torrent of despair would cruise though me when it happened, all but bringing me to my knees. It took all my willpower to stay engaged with the family, to go through the motions during meal time, pretending to find joy in playing games with my dad or spending time outdoors with my friends. It was a ruse; my life had been destroyed by a few-hour rendezvous in the woods.

  Time crawled by as Uncle Peter watched me like a hawk, day and night. He decided to paint the house the last week before school started. “You’ll help me,” he said, concerned. “I’ve already cleared it with your mother and father, so no whining.”

  “I’m not a whiner!” I protested, but I knew what he was referring to.

  After the night he caught me by the fence surrounding Tiresias, time stayed at a horrible standstill, the days stretching out miserably. I missed Penelope, worrying about her, imagining her waiting for me by the fence, thinking I didn’t care about her. I was sure she’d be there, her ears alert to any forest sounds, just as she was that last night, our meeting thwarted by Uncle Peter’s smack in the back of my head. I found out he’d hit me with his wallet, but at the time, it felt like a brick.

  My mother worried too, solicitous, but unquestioning. Peter had taken me under his wing and she was absolved from confining me to my room. But having Peter clinging to me was almost worse than being grounded. My friends stopped by to help in the house preparation; while Peter climbed the ladder to sand, my friends and I sanded the lower boards.

  “You’ll be helpin’ me paint my house when the time comes, eh?” Paul Senior asked.

  “Oh right. We’ll run down there and paint because your kid did an hour of sanding,” Peter shouted from atop the ladder. “Keep dreaming, Sahib.”

  “The summer is about a month too long,” my grandmother said under her breath, listening to the exchange.

  My friends looked forward to school starting, but I dreaded it. I was housebound and had nothing left to be excited about, no midnight runs to Tiresias in my future. Street games with my friends no longer thrilled me like having Penelope’s hands searching my face or running down my chest had done. Even our fall traditions couldn’t pull me out of despair.

  I once looked forward to the transformation of autumn, leaves turning color, pumpkins and Indian Corn growing in my grandmother’s garden. Apple picking was a rite of autumn, my grandmother, father and I walking to what remained of an ancient orchard, trees planted by a man my grandmother referred to as Johnny Appleseed, and we’d pick sacks of windfall apples up off the ground, the only fruit we were allowed to take. The apples didn’t last long. We’d peeled and sliced them, some cooked down into sauce on the wood sto
ve outside, the rest baked into pies. We’d eat apple pie for days and I never got sick of it.

  Even though we didn’t have national or religious holidays to celebrate, each family had their own traditions and fall was an important time at our house. Everyone took part in harvesting Yiayia’s garden, and we all chipped in preparing for canning the bounty. She grew kale, spinach, lemon balm, and of course, mint. We loved cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes, too. Because of the effort she put into it, our diet was more varied than our neighbors who didn’t plant, who got away with yards weed or junk-filled. We’d be ready if it ever came to us having to acquire all our own food. The activity was one thing I didn’t mind helping her with, either. I’d do just about anything for my grandmother.

  In the spring, since I’d been a small child, she and I would hike into the same woods I took to see Penelope, and pick dandelion greens called horta. Sautéed in olive oil, they were tender and delicious even to a young child. Wild grape leaves had to be picked before the first of July to ensure they’d be at their tender peak. My grandmother no longer stuffed the leaves with rice; it was scarce, taking too much water to grow. The streams where wild rice grew were off limits to us. Instead, she made grape leaves stuffed with dried fruit and nuts. “I’ll go to hell for this,” she moaned at the unorthodox filling.

  Fortunately, my grandmother was somewhat the hoarder, and boxes and bags of garbanzo beans, gigantes plaki (large white beans) and white rice had a place of honor in my mother’s bedroom closet.

  “It’s the driest place in the house, so kill me,” Yiayia said when my mother complained there was no room for her clothes.

  Fall foraging yielded as much as spring. Mushrooms, berries, and fennel and dill seeds were abundant. Yiayia also liked to look for nuts, but she’d cautioned to never steal a squirrel’s stash.

  “Stray nuts on the ground or on the tree are okay,” she explained. “But if you find them in a hole in the ground, leave them there. That’s what the squirrel will eat in the winter.”

  We’d pick acorns off the ground to haul home for boiling, changing the water to remove the bitterness. She’d lay them out to dry and then we’d begin the process of shelling the nuts to grind into flour. When her hands were occupied, it was easier to get her to reminisce about the past, and I was getting better at steering her in conversation. The family would lean in conspiratorially, the excitement of the forbidden topics taking over the fear of exposure.

  “Our main fall holiday before the revolution was Thanksgiving,” Yiayia said. “We got away with celebrating it afterwards because it wasn’t religious, but about ten years ago, after you were born, The Council said no more Thanksgiving celebrations. We could still have the meal mind you, just had to be careful not to call it Thanksgiving, or wish anyone a Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “Your yiayia used to put all the other cooks to shame with her turkey,” Rose said. “Oh it was fabulous! One year, she found a twenty-two pounder, didn’t you Eleni?”

  “I did indeed. It was a poor substitute for lamb. But it’s the desserts that I miss, the baklava and the egg custard dishes.”

  We were able to get plenty of eggs, but milk was a luxury. And the filo dough was too difficult to make without certain flours no longer available to those of us in Europe Town. In place of Thanksgiving, we celebrated the Harvest, but this year I didn’t look forward to it as I once had. The angst of approaching adolescence, and heartbreak had taken all the joy away. My parents worried about my apathy, including my father, who confessed to depending on me to uplift him.

  “You’re starting to scare me. Let’s get the chess board out,” he said the last Saturday in August before school started, determined to engage me. “It’ll be good to keep your mind occupied. We’ll have snacks, and you can have a sip of ouzo if you promise not to tell your mother.”

  That was all the luring I needed. “Okay Dad. I’ll play chess with you. We haven’t played in a while.”

  So that night after dinner, while Peter drank a case of beer by himself, we drank ouzo and played chess. I should say I snuck sips of ouzo. My father slurred his words by the time I screamed checkmate, and I felt numb and a little sick. My mother, aunt and grandmother sat around watching us, knitting and talking, getting tipsy drinking their own concoction of fruit juice and retsina. I could smell the oranges and licorice. Like sugar, alcohol was plentiful in Europe Town, another way to control the populace by keeping them addicted. Voices faded in and out.

  “Steve is falling asleep sitting up,” my grandmother said, pointing at me. “Get him into bed.”

  “I’ll go by myself,” I said indignant, standing up.

  If my mother suspected I’d been drinking, my dad would get into trouble, so I made an effort to walk steadily back to my room. “Goodnight, everyone.”

  I noticed Peter watching me carefully, too drunk himself to tattle. I got into bed with my clothes on, my mind whirling at the same rate as my head spun. Feeling as though I stood at a precipice, I realized I had no control over my life, a terrifying predicament. I tried to think of happy thoughts; holding Penelope’s hand, or touching her hair, but it didn’t help. Putting one foot in front of the other to go through the boring ritual of junior high seemed beyond my capability. The shear drudgery of going back to school was so depressing; I couldn’t stand it. Thinking of the effort it would take, getting ready in the morning, leaving with my backpack, standing in line for the bus made me moan, rolling over in bed to bury my head. There was no alternative; my parents would never allow me to quit school. The best students were able to go on to college, but it wasn’t guaranteed to everyone.

  And although I knew my parents expected me to go, I wondered why. It didn’t appear going to college insured you would get the job you wanted. Just look at Peter. And I wondered if my dad went to college; I’d failed to ask, but I was too drunk and too tired to get up and ask him now.

  By Monday, my funk hadn’t resolved. My mother was gentle with me that morning, aware there was something bothering me, attributing my mood to Mrs. Polsky’s murder which had happened at the same time as the last real meeting with Penelope. The weather had changed overnight, and although the sun was shining, it was cold outside. The heat clicked on right before it was time for me to get up, and it made me want to stay under the covers. The only bright spot I had to look forward to was seeing my friends.

  Standing on the porch with my backpack, I waited to join in the group-walk to the kiosk where the bus would pick us up. Twenty kids of all ages lived on my street and took the bus to school. As protocol demanded, we lined up neatly on the sidewalk, girls at the front of the line and the boys at the rear, waiting for the bus to appear. Paul and Joe were with me, horsing around as usual, but my heart wasn’t into it. I couldn’t get Penelope out of my mind. I wondered if she was starting school today, too. Joe elbowed me out of my daydream.

  “Manos, that guy’s looking for you,” he said, frowning.

  Looking up, I saw a white delivery van with a man sitting in the driver’s seat, an orange bandana around his head, straggly hair over his collar. “Hey, you! Are you Steve?” he called, looking furtive.

  “He’s Steve,” Paul called out, pointing at my head.

  The man nodded his head at me to come closer. Reluctantly, I left the safety of the line up and crossed the street to the van. “Steve, you know Penelope, right?” he whispered.

  “Yeah,” I said urgently, my heart banging in my chest. It was a miracle. All my worry led to an answer to prayer. This man was bringing me news about Penelope.

  I looked across the street, at the line up of children watching me. For anyone to approach a stranger was a forbidden act, especially one in a vehicle. No one drove but bus drivers and delivery men.

  “Do you have a message from Penelope?” I asked, my youthful enthusiasm a little too obvious.

  “I’m supposed to bring you to Eremos today, if you’ll come.”

  A trip was not what I’d been thinking
of. I couldn’t even fathom it. I looked over at the school bus stop, weighing the trouble I would get into if I skipped school over the pleasure of seeing Penelope. My friends were watching me, concerned.

  “You mean I’d get inside the fence?”

  “Yep, you get in the van with me and hide in back. I go right through the gate.”

  I could hear the diesel engine of the bus approaching and realized I had but a few seconds to decide. “Yes, I’ll come,” I said. “I’ve got to get in before the bus stops.”

  “Get in then,” he said with impatience, nodding toward the passenger door.

  He leaned over and opened the door for me. I ran around the back of the van and climbed up, my shocked friends watching, standing on the sidewalk with their mouths gapping open. It didn’t even occur to me that I might be committing a life or death mistake, that what I was about to do would be irreversible.

  Chapter 7

  The ride to Tiresias/Eremos was a brand new experience. On one hand, I was glued to the window, watching in amazement as the same path I took to get to the fence flashed by. I’d taken the bus all my life, but this was my first time being a passenger in a regular vehicle. On the other hand, I felt sick to my stomach worried about the unknown.

  “So, you ran this path to see Penelope every night, is that right?” Jim asked, glancing at me.

  Not sure if I’d get in trouble if I told the truth, my fear increased. “Not every night,” I said, hesitating. “Am I allowed to ask who you are?”

  “Jim,” he said, pulling his pocket out with the name JIM embroidered across it. “I make deliveries out here three times a week. Fresh fruit and vegetables in season, all organic. Not that shit like that matters anymore. The water you drink has been contaminated with lead for ten years.

  “In about five minutes, you’d better get in back. I can’t bring anyone through the gate without permission.”

  I wondered why he was doing this for Penelope. “Why are you doing it then?” I asked. “How do you know Penelope?”