Page 64 of Hold Me Today

He’s so fluent that the last time he came out to dinner with us, the waitress thought he just arrived off the boat. Or plane, ya know, because modern times. I wish I could impress him, but I’m like the ultimate Greek failure.

And Mama says Nick is going to marry a Greek girl, too, which means I’m SOL. I’m half-Greek. Other side of me: unknown. Sometimes I wonder if maybe that other half of me is stronger somehow. Like maybe I’m Brazilian? Or French-Canadian? Or Guatemalan? Maybe I could speak and read Portuguese or Spanish. Maybe I wouldn’t just stand around, not saying a word because I’m so scared of saying it all wrong.

Then again, I’m pretty much failing Spanish class at American school. So maybe I should just hope I’m English or something, so I can stick to only sucking at two languages.

See ya next time,

MINA

It’s a train wreck:my spelling, my verbal diarrhea on the page, and still I can’t stop reading. Blood pounds away like an incessant drum in my head as I thumb some pages over, closer to the end of the notebook. I stop when I spot doodles across the headline of the page. March of 2006, two months before my graduation from bothschools.

Dear GSN,

Today, Mama got angry with me on the way to Greek school. I just wanted to know about my real dad, whoever he is. As I’m writing, everyone is standing up to do final presentations on our family histories. Athens. Thessaloniki. Sparta. Istanbul. The teacher made a face when Sophia admitted that her mom’s side came from Turkey, before that bad war in the 1920s when her family had to leave.

I asked Mama about HIS ancestry. Maybe that would explain why my skin is darker than Katya and Dimitri’s? Than Mama’s, too? Or maybe why my hair is curlier and thicker than theirs? Everyone in my family has green eyes but me, even Baba, though I’m sure that’s just a coincidence or whatever since Theio Prodromos has dark eyes. I used to wish that Baba’s brother, my uncle, could be my dad. He’s always so nice and encouraging and he never makes me feel like I’m not part of the family, even though he doesn’t know I’m not actually a Pappas, but those were kid’s wishes.

Now I just want to know WHY.

Who am I?

Can you be a part of a culture and still feel like an outsider? It’s Greek this and Greek that and I don’t look like my family and they don’t look like me, and I’m going to get up in front of my classmates and stutter over my words and this stupid talk and lie about it all.

I can’t wait to move. I’m going to go far away. I’ll miss Effie but she can visit.

No more being stuck.

MINA

Thirteen yearslater and I still don’t have the answers to any of the questions I asked myself then. Oh, I’ve thought about doing those ancestry tests and discovering the realities of my DNA. It’d be broken up by stats and color-coded charts and percentages that take a family’s roots and segment them into a scientific hypothesis of one’s genetic makeup.

Unfortunately, doing that feels incredibly less satisfying than learning the truth from my mom. If the prelude to my birth had been only a one-night stand, I wouldn’t push. But she had anaffairwith my biological father, which means she knows a name.

And a name can tell a million stories all on its own.

But even the matter of DNAs and all that doesn’t push away the clamping sensation on my heart—becauseTheioProdromos . . . I rub a hand over my chest, as though the physical ache of his death is still pressing its weight down on me. For as bullish as my dad always was, my uncle was a gentle soul. Akindsoul. The only reason we traveled to Greece every summer was to visit Prodromos, my dad’s younger brother. It was mytheiowho taught me to ride my bike the summer between kindergarten and first grade. It was mytheiowho woke Katya and Dimitri and me up in the middle of the night, sneaking us out of his house so he could buy us Nutella and strawberry crepes while we buried our feet in the sand and watched the waves crash onto the shore.

I longed for those summers spent in Greece, no matter how they often made me feel inadequate, because I always knew a friendly face waited on the other side.

And then there was Nick, of course.

“Mina,” TheioProdromos once said to me in his accented, stilted English, “if you stare at him any harder, the boy will disappear.”

If only my uncle could see me now that I’ve kissedNickandhe didn’t disappear.

I throw a quick glance at the clock perched on the nightstand. God, I’ve been reading for three hours. My parents will be home soon from dinner with friends, which means I’ll need to make myself scarce before my dad can start in on me the way he’s done since I returned to the birthing nest.

“One more.”

The last one.

It’s dated to the fifth of May, 2006. The day after prom. “Oh, girl,” I mutter to myself, “don’t even go there.”

But like on prom night itself, I can’t stop myself.

Dear GSN,

Why can’t we pay to forget the bad memories? Why is it that we can rarely remember the good—like the timeYiayiabought my very first audiobook tape, right before she passed away? I still have it and I’ll never let it go. It showed me that I love books, even if I don’t like to read. I had to stop and think about that for a second, to find that good memory. But the bad ones scar us forever . . . like Baba blaming me for Katya doing bad in her English class yesterday. He yelled a lot and he told me I was dumb and he thanked God that I wasn’t really his.

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