“Let’s sit in the atrium,” Jackie said. “We won’t have many more evenings before winter comes to sit out here.”
I thought of my parents bundled in afghans, sitting on our open porch in every kind of weather just to escape the indoors and how much they’d love the atrium in spite of the clutter.
I followed Jackie down two steps into the porch. It was furnished in a hodgepodge of painted furniture, furniture upholstered in velvet and more floral prints, an extension of the collections inside the house spilling out. I thought of the rusty folding chairs and makeshift table on our Europe Town front porch and wished my mother could see this, could have something as nice.
“What do you think? Isn’t this better than Europe Town?” Jackie said.
Darleen walked out with a tray. “Here’s tea,” she said. “I’m sure Steve loved his home in Europe Town, Jackie. There’s no comparison.”
“Oh, I know that, but I just want him to appreciate the difference.”
“I’m not going home, am I?” The realization hit me in the gut.
Darleen set the tray down. The three of us stood in a circle, looking at the brick floor. I saw a tumbleweed of dust and hair. “No, you’re not. I’m sorry Steve.”
Sadness welled up in my chest, but I controlled it, not sure where the end would be if I let loose, the anguish and disbelief more than I had ever encountered.
“The leaders here think you have something special,” Jackie said, reaching out for my arm. “Darleen and I want a family, and when you started taking your trips, word trickled down you might become available so we applied right away. White dissidents are rare, so we were thrilled at the chance and then when we were approved…”
“I understand how overwhelmed you must be,” Darleen said. “Too much information, probably some of it shocking, in a short time.”
“You’ll learn the whole truth soon,” Jackie said.
“We don’t want to load too much on you though,” Darleen said. “Let’s sit down and have our tea, shall we? Grandmother and grandfather will join us in a moment.”
She nodded to the couch and I obediently sat, wishing I had the courage to run away. I thought I could find my way back home, but I’d have to get over that fence, yet another fence to bar the way.
“Do I have to drink this?” Jackie said, wrinkling his nose.
“Yes, you do,” Darleen said. “Steve’s family has tea at night, don’t they, Steve? We’re going to try the same routine he’s used to at home.”
“Sometimes they drink coffee if it’s a weekend. Or if there’s a problem. I bet they’re having coffee now. My mother always says, ‘If we’re going to be up all night we might as well be awake.’”
“That’s a good one,” Darleen said, smiling.
She handed me a cup of tea, and I could see my mother standing at the stove, making my father a pot of coffee. I doubted they’d be sleeping much tonight.
Chapter 14
Europe Town
The temperature had dropped to fifty, heading lower after midnight. The Manos family huddled on the front porch, bundled up against the wind, a candle’s light flickering in spite of the protection of a glass chimney. George lit a cigarette and passed it off to his mother, Eleni. Rose replaced cups of coffee with small, handled glasses from the old country full of clear retsina. The anise aroma filled the air, strong enough to overcome the wind. George had relayed the news that Steve would not be coming back. Silence punctuated by an occasional sob, it was a family in despair, powerless to rescue their only son, trying to find comfort in old routines.
“I’m not going to work tomorrow,” George said. “Let them come and drag me out of bed. They’re gonna take my kid, they can get some other sucker to drive their goddamned bus for five dollars an hour.”
“I never thought I’d hear my own voice say this,” Rose said, slowly coming out of shock. “But I agree. They can come and kill us.”
“All of us,” Peter said. “I have a bad feeling.”
“Oh, please don’t say you’re having bad feelings about baby Steve,” Stephanie groaned, sniffing.
“Okay, I won’t then,” Peter said, the aggression in his voice scary.
“Calm down, both of you. All of you,” Eleni said. “If you’re going to get drunk, keep your mean comments to yourself. This is supposed to be a time to support each other. George, think long and hard about skipping work.”
“I’m done, Manula,” he said, mother in Greek. “They think they can do a better job raising my son in this godforsaken land, I’ll give them a good reason; a lazy, unemployed slob for a father.”
Tears ran down his cheeks, but no one comforted him except for Rose’s hand placed on his knee. The quiet of the night punctuated by the wails of Candy Antoni, a hoot owl announced it was time for them to sleep.
“Come on Rose. Manula, you should go downstairs to sleep. Peter, Stephanie, we’ll face this in the morning.” George was trying to take charge, but accurately afraid it was too late.
Candy Antoni spent the evening alone with Paul Junior. A few neighbors crept over after dark with food gifts, cookies and a pie, a plate of homemade stuffed grape leaves. There would be no funeral; it wasn’t possible in Europe Town. Socializing, except for prescribed Sunday gatherings, wasn’t allowed, even for a death. She didn’t expect the Manos’ family to acknowledge what had happened. From what the visitors shared with her, they had their own pain to deal with.
“The boy, he’s not comin’ back,” Edwin Polsky whispered. “I hear the grandmother in travail all afternoon. It break my heart.”
No one dared approach the Manos house. But all eyes were focused on it, waiting.
Chapter 15
Steve
Less than twenty miles away from Europe Town, I lay in my new bed, listening to silence. Except for the awfulness of being separated from my family, the evening with Darleen and Jackie and his parents had been pleasant. The inner turmoil of the introduction of so many new, exciting opportunities while fighting the urge to cry was exhausting. Shortly after I’d arrived, Jackie’s mother, Miri and his father, John came in to meet me. They were European, John’s name a derivation of Jardani. They reminded me of a photograph I’d seen in a book my grandmother had, of a group of people who traveled around Europe in a caravan. Miri was tiny, about my height, with thick, pitch black hair in a long braid down her back. She wore a white shirt that could have been a man’s, with strings of beads and bracelets that clanged together when she moved and she was always moving. John was just the opposite, he gave the impression of rarely budging, a large, heavy-set man with a shock of white hair that needed cutting he lumbered, rather than walked. He too wore a white shirt. I discovered later it was a uniform of sorts for the adults in the Pointes. When I looked closer, I noticed his ear was pierced, the hole elongated from wearing earrings that were too heavy for the lobe. The shock of it was as bad as seeing Paul Senior’s father with his hand missing. It jarred.
A chill traveled through my body as I imagined what my father would say with a sneer under his breath, ‘”Gypsies, their names are Romani.”
As the evening progressed, I heard their history. It was unsettling to hear conversation regarding current events, an act forbidden outside of the city. They narrowly missed having to move from the once beautiful house during the rebellion to Europe Town, thanks to their son.
“The only thing that saved us from having to move away was Jackie. He’s a fourth generation, which allowed him to become a member.”
“A Coalition member,” Darleen said. “We need to differentiate between members now that Steve’s hearing the truth.”
The adults looked at me with pursed lips and nodded their heads, scaring the hell out of me. What else was I going to learn? Members of what?
“I turned eighteen the same year the revolution came to an end and I put everything I could into making sure my parents were going to be okay,” Jackie said. “You’ll be able to do the
same thing for your parents when you’re eighteen.”
I added numbers up; Jackie would be about forty now. Darleen was much younger; she looked about Penelope’s age. It was the first time I’d thought of her and the memory made me sad so I tried to concentrate on what Jackie was telling me.
“You grew up during the rebellion,” I stated, excitement growing, his suggestion that I might be able to offer my parents a better life thrilling, if I could just make the next five years fly by.
“Yep, they called us Generation Rising,” Jacked replied with pride. “A lot of my peers try to take responsibility for the rebellion, but it’s bullshit. It was the older men who hated the president in office at the time, hated him with a passion rarely seen before.”
“And hopefully won’t be seen again,” John said. “That kind of hatred initiates change.”
“What’s a president?” I asked.
“He was voted into office to lead the country, like our appointed leader does now.”
“If they voted him in, why’d they hate him?” I asked, confused.
“Ah! He’s quick!” John exclaimed. “Those who hated him were the capitalists. No matter what he did, they took exception to it. Our country never experienced anything like it before.”
“It was these older, wealthy men who put the ideology of the rebellion into practice and the revolution was the result. But to get to what you see now…,” he made a sweeping motion with his hand,” there had to be a massive shake up. People lost their lives, their homes.”
“Their fortunes, too,” John said. “Let’s not forget that. I will tell you confidentially…”
“Dad, not yet. Nothing like that yet,” Jackie said, with respect to his father.
John shut up immediately. I wondered what Jackie did for a living that allowed such salvation for his parents. I knew Darleen must have a government job; she wore the same scrub uniform Billy and Connie wore.
“Did you go to college?” I asked.
They turned to Steve with troubled expressions. “Of course,” Jackie said. “It’s mandatory.”
“It’s not in Europe Town,” I replied. “I’m going to go, was going to go, because my mom told me there was no alternative. But I don’t think it was going to be that easy.”
“And you’ll still go. Now that you’re here with us, it will be easy,” Jackie said. “Especially for you.”
“Let’s get Steve comfortable,” Darleen said quickly, her behavior transformed from confident to unsure. She looked discombobulated and I wondered what was said to upset her. “He’s taking a week off before he goes back to school. We are the lucky ones who have the privilege of helping him get up to date. He has a lot to learn in the next week!”
“Will I go back to my old school?”
“No dear, you’ll go here in the Pointes. I promise, it’s a nice school. You’ll see.”
Suddenly filled with dread, I couldn’t imagine fitting in with the kids at a school here, those who lived in these once grand, albeit dilapidated homes, especially if they knew where I came from. My stomach hurt and I felt like throwing up.
“No worries,” Darleen said, pulling me to her to hug. “Let’s have dessert and then Jackie will show you your computer!”
“Oh my, yes,” John said, animated. “His iPad, his Television, what else?”
“A phone! He’ll get a phone, too. As technology advances, he’ll need less and less. Everything will be accomplished with one device.”
I had no idea what they were talking about. The only technology we had in Europe Town was an ancient rotary phone that didn’t work much of the time. Occasionally, a teacher or someone in charge would slip up at school and mention computers, but it meant nothing to me.
“Come on, let’s see your room,” Darleen said.
We followed her through a maze of rooms to a staircase. To the right of the staircase I discovered what would have become my favorite destination in the entire house; Miri and John’s library. I stood in the doorway with my mouth hanging open. Miri did a little maneuver I would grow to love; she stood on her toes and clapped her hands.
“Oh my, he’s a reader! Thank God, the boy reads!” Grasping her hands together, she looked up at the ceiling prayerfully.
“You can come in here anytime you want, my son,” John said. “Anytime at all. They haven’t burned our books yet, and everyday I repeat my promise to read as much as I can before they do.”
Frowning, it was clear to me that Darleen wasn’t happy with John’s assessment of they. “No one ever said a thing about burning books,” she said under her breath. I thought of our two special books at home.
“It’s just a matter of time. After twenty years, they are still finding freedoms to take away,” John said.
“We only have two books. The Bible and a Dictionary.” I didn’t mention my grandmother’s secret library.
“You know why, don’t you?” John asked.
“Another time, Dad,” Jackie whispered. “Let’s show Steve his room.”
I want to refer to my room at home in Europe Town before I describe the room in Grosse Pointe Shores. I had the best room at home. My bed wasn’t the narrow beds of my friends. I had a real double bed, my parent’s old bed. Someone my dad knew from driving the bus moved into an apartment and they had an almost new bed to give away. The effort it took to get a permit for the giveaway, and to make the delivery arrangements took almost a year, but soon, the switch was made and I got their old bed. I had three pillows and two warm blankets. All my precious mementos were lined up on shelves Peter built. I had a hidden stack of contraband comic books Peter scrounged up when he was hunting for old underwear catalogs. It was a comfortable room.
The room at Jackie’s house was what I’d now call a kid’s dream room. The toys were yet to be figured out; building blocks that fit together so snuggly I could build something Jackie called spaceships with ease, more electronic devices, figurines of unknown origin which I would later learn were termed Action Figures. Kid appropriate books lined one wall. And the computer, well it didn’t take much instruction from Jackie for me to figure out how addicting it was going to be. The closet was full of clothes; not jeans and t-shirts, but pants and button up shirts, lots of leather shoes and sneakers, jackets, sweaters and coats, hundreds of items, all in my size.
“This is the uniform you’ll wear to school,” Darleen said, pulling hangers out of the closet.
The word uniform conjured the vision of Penelope and her friends in cheap, unstructured, loose cotton garments, both sexes wearing the same thing, or a sleeker version like what Darleen had on that moment. This uniform was completely different, including white shirts and ties, gray pants and a navy blue blazer. I didn’t know what it reminded me off but I had to keep from bursting out laughing. Maybe my dad’s bus driver’s uniform.
“What kind of school is it?” I asked, perplexed.
“A leadership school,” Jackie said. “It’s a privilege to go there, and I feel privileged having a son who will attend.”
He meant me, and I understood it was sweet and kind of him, but it still grated, longing for my dad. I thought all this because of curiosity about a girl. When I finally closed my eyes, I remembered Penelope telling me that the clearest memory of sight she had was of the color yellow, her grandmother’s Easter dress of yellow linen. Falling asleep, I saw Penelope standing on the wrong side of an electric fence wearing a yellow, linen dress.
Chapter 16
Tiresias
The fences and gate Steve Manos saw were not the whole of Tiresias. A cobbled trail littered with fallen leaves wound from the depot and transformer for a mile, leading to the village center. The entrance to the square, which the inhabitants couldn’t see, was clearly marked with a knee-high, hand-carved sign spelling out Paradise, the letters painted red. Penelope Randolph passed by the sign, knowing it was there, a landmark upon which the blind citizens of Paradise slapped their cane to prevent tripping.
“Ha! Paradise. I doubt it.”
“Sister Randolph, I heard that.”
“Oh Quigley, you know what I mean. It’s not that I don’t appreciate all that’s been done for me. Far from it. As a matter of fact, I’m completely saturated with deep appreciation.”
She tapped her way to the bench where Harrison Quigley sat in the center of the square, a book in his lap. He leaned to hug her when she sat down, something square and rigid poking her arm.
“What’ch you got there?” she asked, grabbing the front cover with her right hand and reading the title with her fingertips. “Oh my word, where on earth did you get this?”
“Shush, will you please?”
“Give it to me,” she said, reading more, spelling out the words. “G-I-O-V-anni’s Room! I’m impressed.”
“Whoever donated to our library this week had extremely progressive tastes in literature.”
“Can I have it when you’re done?”
“Certainly. We’ll have to do it legally, however. I value my library privileges. I don’t appreciate it when certain people don’t return my things.”
“Surely you don’t mean moi…”
“So what happened? I take it you’re alone. I thought Jim was bringing some fresh meat in for us.”
“He got scared and ran to the gate,” she replied, downtrodden. “I had a list of things I was going to ask him for, too.”
“Penelope, a teenager from Europe Town doesn’t have much gathering power,” Quigley said, trying to be gentle.
“Yes, but if I think what will happen to him happens, he’ll soon be living in the city with an entire retail extravaganza at his disposal.”
“You are a conniving little vixen,” he replied, laughing. “But I’m afraid you’ll be sorely disappointed. Once he gets a taste of the high life, he won’t be risking it to see the likes of you.”
Memory of the Color Yellow Page 13
