Page 63 of Hold Me Today

Sitting on my old twin-sized bed, I cross my legs and prop my laptop against my shins. Plastered all over the walls are magazine cut-outs of models from various catwalks around the world, mostly dated to the late 90s and early 2000s. In the corner of the room, beneath the old, white desk I rarely used as a kid, is a tub stuffed to the brim with dolls. I remember needing to sit on the plastic lid while Katya helped me duct-tape it shut.

I feel a pinch in my heart that I studiously ignore by dropping my gaze to the voice-recorder app I’ve left open on my phone. Tapping the red, record button, I lean back on my childhood mattress and speak clearly for the microphone to pick up. “Date recorded: February seventh. Received invitation from local fashion show to participate as one of the hairstylists on recommendation from Tanya Banks, an old client and sister to model Chantelle Banks.” Leaving the app to record, I reach for my glass of water off the bedside table and take a sip. “Must leave confirmation of participation by the twenty-fifth. Also, uploaded job posting forAgapeinterviews.”

After another sip of water, I pause the app and save the voice memo to my drive, as well. I’ll play it back later and make any notations in my calendar for cross-referencing, like the fashion-show gig. It’s not the first time I’ve participated in large-scale shows, but this is the first time I’ll be representing my own salon and my own brand. My stomach still flutters with giddiness whenever I think about the call I received early this morning.

But, good news or not, being back in this house and under my parent’s roof, is a time warp I’d rather do without.

The mattress dips as I set aside my laptop and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The fuzzy carpet greets my bare feet as I crouch low and lift the old-fashioned skirt that my mom picked out years ago from some catalogue she obsessed over. I thrust a hand under the bed, patting around in the darkness for the slim box I know everyone but me has forgotten. My fingertips graze plastic, and I drag it out into the light.

Turning onto my butt, I pop off the box’s lid and take a moment to breathe. I breathe in the old desperation to fit in with my family, with my Greek community, and breathe out a sixteen-year-old’s identity crisis.

Finally, I peer into the box. Spiral-bound notebook after spiral-bound notebook greet me, my name written in my sloppy Greek script across the front of each one.Ερμι?νη Παπ?ς. The metal binding protests with a whine as I crack open the notebook sitting on top of them all. My sixth-grade handwriting is atrocious. “So bad,” I whisper, flipping through the pages. But not as bad as all the eraser marks and crossed-out words in the columns of each page.

I toss that notebook to the carpet and reach in for another. Seventh grade. A small part of me hopes this one will be better and show some progression. I see my attempts to remember the proper way to conjugate the past perfect tense of the verb, to love.Agape—the noun, not the verb. I don’t think I ever quite got the hang of it, but that didn’t stop me from slapping it across my LLC and DBA and the sign I ordered offline that’s sitting in my apartment.

One by one, I move through the grades until there are none left to review but one.

I don’t know why I feel the need to look through them all. It’s not anything I don’t still know: I never would have passed any grades in Greek school if it weren’t for the fact that kids flunking out didn’t happen.

I passed on the sheer merit of pity from my teachers and some made-up rule by the priests of the church, who only cared to see kids in theecclesiaand learning the mother tongue. Kids like Nick and Effie, Katya and Dimitri, and, yes, even Sophia, earned their way through to our senior year. I faked it till I couldn’t make it anymore, and then I kept faking it because to do otherwise would admit the truth: that I wasn’t as Greek as them all, both by blood and otherwise.

My forearm rests on the plastic lip of the box as I hesitate over the final notebook. I drop my head back against the edge of the mattress. Why torture myself with yet another workbook memorializing my weaknesses? Why bother going through them at all? Self-punishment, maybe? Or a push to get me moving faster and turn the wheel of ambition once more?

A month ago, I would have messaged back the fashion show’s director within seconds of receiving the email. And yet here I am instead, combing through decades-old school notebooks like they carry some mysterious piece of my soul.

“You’re amaláka,” I mutter, even as I snag the last notebook and prop it open on my knees. I’ve come this far. What’s another ten minutes of feeling like the dirt on the bottom of my shoes?

Only, it’s not another one of my workbooks.

Or, rather, itis—or was meant to be before I gave up completely, it seems, and used my time spent in Greek school penning my every thought down.

Well, damn. I totally forgot about this.

Even in English, my handwriting wasn’t all that good by senior year. It still isn’t, though I do my best to keep it neat and legible. I trace the heel of my palm over the penciled words. Then note the date at the top of the entry: September 4th, 2005.

Dear Greek School Notebook (because,let’s face it, you’re no diary),

Today is the first day of classes. I begged Mama to let me skip this year but she said no. I need to learn our culture, she said. No one else has any trouble but you, Baba told me. Why can’t either of them see how hard this is for me? I’m not a brat. I can’t remember the letters to the sounds and it’s so FRUSTRATING.

No one talks in English, not even when we have a snack break. Even Effie, when we’re here, sticks to Greek. I know she only wants a good grade. It has nothing to do with me. I wonder if this is what it’s like for people who move to a new country where they don’t know the language. Do they feel lonely like me? Do they feel like they don’t belong?

In American school, I don’t fit in because I’m weird and my parents immigrated to America, and I bring Greek food for lunch and my name is ERMIONE. No one can even spell it. Or say it. I see the panic on my teachers’ faces when they get to it on the attendance sheet.

In Greek school, I don’t fit in because I can’t keep up with everyone else. It sucks. Big time.

See ya next time,

MINA

Heart heavy,I palm the page, as though that alone might connect me with my seventeen-year-old self. Anxiety pools low in my gut, but instead of putting the notebook to the side, I flip a few pages and find another entry, this one for December of the same year:

Dear GSN,

Me again. As always, sitting in the back row and doodling. Doodling beats reciting my Christmas poem for the 100thtime when I can’t even memorize the first line. Effie offered to help but I think I’m going to fake the flu. Maybe a fever. Whatever illness is going around the third week of December, so I don’t embarrass myself in front of everyone.

Including Nick.

Effie said he’ll be there, and I’d rather stab myself with this pencil than mess up talking to him.

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