by Tiana Laveen
“Please…” She grabbed his hand, her body shaking like a leaf. “Bring her to me.”
“Why? Why are you so hellbent on doing this?”
“Because I’m not the only one that has fallen. You’ve fallen too… in love. You’ve changed, Angel, in so many ways. I cannot convince you that I am telling the truth. It’s not due to her being Black; it really is because she’s not Greek. But, because of things I’ve said in the past, that’s what you believe and I understand. Please allow me to prove to you that I do want you to be happy.” Her eyes watered once again. “I want all of my sons to be happy, regardless of how I’ve been perceived. I was doing what I thought would make you all happy in the long run!”
She wailed, then covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes red, her face etched with pain. “I see I was wrong! When one child tells you something you don’t like, you ignore them. When two children do about the same thing, and one is crying on the outside and the other on the inside… you listen. I’m listening now, Angel. I’m listening…”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Thank You for Shopping Inside My Heart…
Please Come Again.
They say three in the morning is the witching hour. For me I guess it’s the thinking hour. Unless I’m a warlock, then I suppose it’s both.
Vangelis reached into the curio display cabinet in his office and removed the small, delicate red globe. He rolled it gently and carefully in his palm, the glass heating from his touch.
What a perfect world this is.
He studied the globe so closely, trying to find a flaw to no avail. But there had to be one. It was man made after all, and according to his childhood teachings in the Greek Orthodox church, man was imperfect and would have to work his entire life to be more Christlike. He tried to find a scratch, perhaps a country that was not spelled correctly. Grabbing a magnifying glass, he sat down at his desk and went over that globe a million times, but he could find nothing. He was missing it—the small detail that eluded him. Perhaps Switzerland was slightly misshapen? Was the Atlantic Ocean the correct length in relation to the surrounding countries? He took a deep breath, anxiety suddenly filling him. Placing the globe down in front of him on his desk, he glared at it.
This is the pressure I put on myself. Every fucking day I strive for perfection, but there is no such thing. Why do I need it? Did I and my brothers and father help make Mom who she is? Did we force her to be this red globe? The pressure was too great but she insisted she would never break under its weight. Maybe in her effort to be everything to everyone, she truly was just trying to help with all of her meddling ways. Maybe we owe her an apology as much as she owes us one. Maybe she really does only take issue with the women not being Greek, or at least, she believes that’s the reason.
Could someone really use racist comments to try to cover something they believe is worse? Like not liking a person because they give off a bad vibe… But that’s not logical, and Mom is very logical; so, in order to express herself, she’d say ridiculous things like that… Yeah, she said those things, but oddly enough, I’ve never seen her treat an Asian, Black, or Hispanic person badly. In fact, as cheesy as it sounds, one of her favorite friends is Black, but they don’t get to see each other as much because Brenda moved back to Ohio. I’ve never heard my mother call someone a nigger or utter any racial slur. Maybe, to her, that was going too far? I honestly don’t know. Is my mind playing tricks on me? What is going on here? Mom is complicated. Why would she do such a thing? Is she crazy? Did she just want attention? Perhaps. Maybe Nico is right… maybe she and I are just alike.
He’d been thinking nonstop about the incident since he’d left his parents’ home. He could count on one hand how many times he’d seen his mother cry. Her sincerity was not in question—perhaps, regardless of his position, she was coming from a place of love, not realizing it had become a prison of darkness. Chi, on the other hand, came from a place of darkness, looking for the prison called love. He wanted to be smothered by it, craving it so badly he’d sacrifice his soul for just a taste of it. He smiled at that realization, too. The tune of Mind Orange’s ‘Some Feeling’ started to played in the background as he immersed himself in thought.
Love is imperfect. Were it perfect, we wouldn’t love it as much. We sometimes like not knowing what the person we’ve fallen for is going to do or say… arguments at times lead to closer bonds, beautiful lovemaking, and a reconnection. Broken legs that mend… broken hearts that heal… imperfections in us all. Cheating, lying—not always out of malice, but to protect the people we love, and to get what we think we need, only to find out we never needed it at all… These are imperfections… bad life choices? Maybe both. I’m not perfect. I hate saying that… although it seems silly saying I hate saying that, but it’s true. Maybe I should be at peace with it, like Sahara is? Not once have I heard her complain about the scar on her leg from her accident and subsequent surgeries. She embraces her freckles, her curly hair, her at times silly and obtuse sense of humor. She loves her family, their imperfections and all. She accepts her mistakes and owns up to them, and yet, she still seems perfect to me.
Why do I keep putting her on a pedestal? She begged me not to… one day she will fall from grace, just like Mom, just like Harmony, just like love… When she falls to the ground like a rolling, small glass globe, carrying my entire world with her, will it hurt her more than me? That scares me… yes, she is my entire world.
He paused as his eyes sheened over. He looked down at the red globe once again and took it into his hands, holding it with a steel grip.
How crazy is that? Some things are better messed up… like a pile of leaves. It’s way more fun when you jump in it. How can something be perfect if the people who made it are not? Why do I drive myself crazy with these types of thoughts?! They never go anywhere… or maybe they do and I just don’t see the destination until later down the line…
It’s time to park.
“Alexa, please give me the findings for jewelry stores with 4.0 or greater ratings within sixty minutes or less from my zip code, please…”
This was the oddest date Sahara had ever had and it hadn’t even begun yet… Not with her sweetheart, but with a woman that wore a ton of gold jewelry, her black, thick hair practically shellacked to her head and some of the brightest red lipstick she’d ever seen. Still, Vangelis’ mother was quite attractive. She just seemed a bit overdone. After driving by her twice, Sahara parked her car and studied the woman, who stood in front of Albertson’s grocery store. Hesitating a little, she then made her way up to her.
“Hi, how are you, Mrs. Alexopoulos?” The woman’s smile faded. “Um, I must have the wrong person. My apologies.”
He showed me her picture! It looks just like her. Damn it. Sahara started to walk away and wait in her car, but then the woman spoke up.
“Boy, are you pretty…” the lady said in almost a whisper. “A doctor, too? Wonderful. Beauty and brains. I’m Angel’s mother.” The woman’s smile returned as she extended her hand for a shake.
“Thank you, Mrs. Alexopoulos. That’s very nice of you to say.” The woman held onto her hand for what felt like an extended period of time, then finally released it. “I figured we could kill two birds with one stone.” The woman seemed to laugh nervously. “I needed to get some shopping done. I told Angel I wanted to meet you and he said your schedule was jampacked except for today. Thanks for agreeing to meet with me.”
The woman started to walk toward the store and Sahara followed closely behind. Minutes later, the lady’s recyclable bags were loaded in the cart to collect her items as she prepared to go from aisle to aisle. Sahara walked beside her, their first stop by the produce.
“So, Sahara, I don’t know much about you.” The woman stretched and strained to grab a spaghetti squash from the far back.
“I can help you with that.” She leaned in to assist.
“No, I have it. Thank you, though.” Mrs. Alexopoulos looked over the squash as if it neede
d to pass some sort of emissions test, perhaps even an FBI inspection.
Oh God! I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Already, she reminds me so much of Vangelis! So particular!
She suppressed a bout of laughter.
“As I was saying, I don’t know much about you.” The woman placed the squash inside one of her bags in the cart, then pushed along. “I would like to know, though. After all, you’ll probably be my daughter-in-law soon.”
At this, Sahara burst out laughing.
“Oh, Mrs. Alexopoulos, we’re not even there yet. I don’t think—”
The woman cut her off by stopping and staring at her with stone-cold seriousness in her eyes.
“It doesn’t matter what you think, Dr. Delaney. It’s what I know. My son is madly in love with you. Unfortunately, he got his need to keep details to himself from me.” The woman huffed as she began to slowly shuffle along once again, this time stopping at the navel oranges’ stand. She picked one up, sniffed it, ran her finger over the pitted skin, then sniffed it again. “Angel is my eldest son. He is the baby the doctor told me I would never have.”
She discarded the fruit and kept going. It was obviously not to her liking. “I never told my husband that I was informed when I was teenager that I could never have children. It would have caused me to never get married, at least probably not to him. My mother-in-law would have definitely forbidden it. Besides, what man wants a woman who can’t give him a son? Or a little girl he can dote on?” The woman’s tone was cold, yet filled with traces of sorrow.
“Well, I don’t know but I would hope that a man’s love would supersede that obstacle. More importantly, you proved the doctors wrong… more evidence that we’re not always right.”
They stopped at the Granny Smith apples’ stand. They looked so pretty, vibrant and shiny. The woman picked up one and gave it the same treatment as she had given the oranges, but this time, she gave several a chance, then opted on three that fit her tastes and specifications.
“A woman has to keep some things to herself, Sahara. I fight between wanting to call you Dr. Delaney and Sahara, but because I know we will be family soon enough, I suppose calling you by your first name is okay. Is that fine with you?” The peculiar woman paused and regarded her with a syrupy smile on her face.
“Yes, I prefer you call me Sahara actually.” This woman was nothing like what Vangelis had described! There was no over-the-top, stereotypical Greek behavior of the matriarch. She wasn’t shouting, going off, or making a scene. Now, in fairness, they were in fact in a grocery store around food; he’d said grocery shopping was one of her favorite pastimes because of her love for cooking, but other than that, it was like an entirely different lady from the one he led her to believe birthed him.
“Sahara is a pretty name.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Anyway, Angel is, uh, different since he met you.” She grabbed a clear container of strawberries and raised it to inspect the bottom. “Always check your strawberries on the bottom; that is where most of the bruised ones will be. And check the expiration date. The older the strawberry is, the sweeter it will be, but you don’t want them too old or they’ll be mushy. No one likes mushy strawberries.”
Sahara chuckled. “That’s true.”
“I need to get some bananas…” They strolled over to the banana area. “As I was saying, Angel is different since you came into the picture. He is… more aggressive towards me. He’s always been his own person, but he has become mouthier, more sarcastic and snarky, I guess you could say. He’s always had a reputation of being verbally abrasive when angered, but rarely has it been directed towards me. I don’t like it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that he’s been speaking to you in that manner.”
“I’m not.” The woman smiled mildly as she spent an eternity looking at various bunches of bananas, as if they would soon be entered into some fruit pageant. “I said I didn’t like it—never said it wasn’t useful. You see, I am able to gauge his true emotions by how he speaks to me… the tone, not the words. He doesn’t tell me how he feels, ever.”
“I don’t think Vangelis feels comfortable all the time with that, honestly, Mrs. Alexopoulos… you know, expressing his emotions. Sometimes, if you catch him at just the right moment, he will open up in full bloom. Other times, it’s like trying to pull teeth.”
“I agree with you about that,” the woman stated solemnly. “Anyway, back to the pregnancy. He was a miracle for me, though I never told my husband what I had been told by the doctor, naturally. Then, before I knew it, we had three more. You see, Sahara, I know what love, fear and truth look like. I know how they feel, smell, look, and taste. I can hear bullshit a million miles away. I got into a terrible fight with Angel not once, but two times in a row over you. In all of our years, my son has never disrespected me that way. If he was willing to treat me that way, instead of just tune me out or ignore my calls like he typically would do, then I realized that whatever he felt was worth fighting for and had to be a really big damn deal. Oh, look—the grapes are on sale,” the woman said excitedly as she began to look through the selection.
“I want some grapes, too. I love grapes.”
The women stood side by side, rummaging through the boxes as if they were a team.
“One day I will show you how to make your own wine, Sahara.” The woman plucked a bunch of green grapes from a plastic bag and turned them to and fro.
“That would be so exciting for me.”
“It’s not hard. It just takes time and patience. Oh, put that bunch back, dear. Get the other one.” The woman pointed to a bag way in the back.
“Oh, this one? It’s better?”
“Yes, sometimes you have to reach, stretch, go the extra distance to get to the good stuff.” Sahara digested the woman’s words for a moment, then followed behind the swift-footed woman. “All right, let’s go down the bread and pasta aisle.”
She perused the different loaves of bread as well as the selection of bagels and rigatoni. “So, I had my four boys, Sahara, and my husband and I were very happy. God had blessed us. The reason I was told that I couldn’t have children was because I’d been assaulted as a child.”
Sahara’s heart stopped beating in her damn chest. A dull pain, one born of deep emotion, took over her being.
“Oh, goodness. I am so sorry, Mrs. Alexopoulos.”
“Yes, so was I.” The woman said with little to no emotion. “I didn’t tell my husband, Angel’s father, that I was no longer a virgin, either. That would have been another strike against me. I was a pretty young lady, but not the prettiest. I was smart though… and I knew when to keep my mouth shut. Now sure, women today are different. You have the ‘Me Too’ movement and all, but when I was a little girl, within my culture and upbringing, if you admitted such things you were looked at as damaged goods. I was only twelve.”
She shrugged. “I knew nothing about sex. I was still playing with dolls and tea sets. That’s why I nicknamed my oldest ‘Angel’… because he was my miracle baby. My sons and husband thought I called him such because I believed him perfect, and he was—but that wasn’t the true reason why. Angel was an over-achiever. He was very hard on himself if he was not the best at everything he sought out to do. So, he lived up to it. Naturally, I couldn’t correct my family regarding this. The truth was far worse than the lie.”
Sahara hated how her eyes glazed over at that moment. She quickly patted them dry as the woman selected two loaves of wheat bread then turned to walk down the condiment and pickle aisle.
“I love your son,” Sahara blurted out, not certain why she felt the need to say that.
“I’m certain you do. What’s not to love?” They both chuckled at that. “Angel is a good man, and I’m not just saying that because he’s my son. If he wasn’t a good man, I’d say that too.”
“Somehow, I believe you.” They both laughed again.
“Do you like olives, Sahara?” The woman plucked a jar from
the shelf.
“Like them? I love them. I pop them like potato chips.”
The lady smiled. “There is a fairytale story called ‘The Princess and the Pea.’ Have you heard of it?”
“Yes, I am familiar with it but don’t recall much of the details anymore.”
“Well, in that story, the prince wanted to know if the woman he liked was truly a princess, someone fit to marry and have children with. So, he elicits the help of his mother. Now, look at these pickles, Sahara. See how cloudy the water is?”
“Yes.”
“That’s no good. I prefer to get the spicy pickles because they have a little kick; nothing major but my husband suffers from heartburn so I have to get these bland bread and butter ones instead. Jackass! I told him to lay off the hot sauce for years and now we all have to suffer! If people would just take my advice things would be running like a finely oiled machine around here! But oh, no! He didn’t listen and now he’s keeping Tums and Rolaids in business. What an idiot!”
At this, Sahara broke into more laughter. The older woman grinned as she placed the pickles, the ones she resented so, in the cart.
Okay, now this is the woman Vangelis described…
On and on they went, leisurely shopping. The sounds of the cash registers, elevator music, and people chattering were like a carefully orchestrated symphony as they moved about.
“I’m sorry that I have been jumping around as I speak and not following a straight line of logic, Sahara.”
“No, that is no issue. I’m following along just fine.”
“It’s just that my mind moves so fast sometimes that I can’t catch up, and sometimes I speak my thoughts aloud instead of keeping them closed within me. Must be a Virgo thing… we’re always thinking.”
“I’m not a Virgo and I do that sometimes, too.”
