Mom has been crying. Her eyes are puffy. She doesn’t shake me, doesn’t squeeze my wrists, just combs her fingers through my hair.
“I think the eggs in my suitcase broke,” I say.
“No use crying over broken eggs,” Mom replies, which is almost as clever as one of Gwendolyn’s proverbs. Then she hugs me. Her hugs still smell just as warm, just as African as ever.
•
I’m wearing a light blue school smock out of Laura Peiraiki-Patraiki fabric that we bought at Mignon. It has two sashes at the sides that tie in a bow at the back, like Gwendolyn’s aprons. I’ve got my red backpack over both shoulders so I don’t get a hunchback. My ponytail bounces up and down, creating a breeze that cools the nape of my neck. Mom and I are walking hand in hand down Themistocles Street. For the first little while she’ll take me to school and pick me up at the end of the day, but I have to learn the route in case she’s sick one day and can’t come. “If you get sick, I’ll stay home and take care of you,” I say. Mom laughs with her whole body, since she’s wearing her dress with the big yellow daisies and the pleats on the front. In that dress she laughs even when she’s not laughing.
She drops me off at the entrance to my new elementary school. I wave to her from inside the fence like a tiger in a cage. We’re supposed to line up according to grade, so I get into line with the other fourth graders for the annual blessing, the national anthem, and morning prayer. After that we do drills—at ease! attention! at ease! attention!—and then finally file into our classrooms, which all have doors that open onto the schoolyard. Mine is D3, a room that’s painted green halfway up and white the rest of the way, with a world map hanging from a nail over the blackboard. Whenever we have to write on the board the map gets rolled up to make space. My teacher’s name is Aphrodite Dikaiakou and she looks sort of African, which is a good sign. She has short, curly hair and dark skin. I go sit at a desk in the last row, in the empty seat next to a girl with braids who tells me her name is Angeliki Kotaki. She has a mole on her eyebrow that looks like a smushed turd. I feel sorry for her because of the mole and decide to protect her. I’ll become her best friend and if people dare to make fun of her, they’ll have me to deal with.
“You, new girl, stand up!”
Kyria Aphrodite is talking to me.
“Well, where have you come to us from?”
“From Africa.”
“Are you sure you didn’t come from the moon?”
The other kids laugh. The boy in front of me turns around and makes animal faces. I gather my courage and cry, “I came from Africa! From Nigeria!”
“Fine, there’s no need to shout. Come sit up front so I can keep an eye on you.”
I sit all by myself at a desk in the front row. The desk is green, the color of Papoutsanis soap, and covered in doodles and carved notes: lots of names and love forever, the names of the soccer teams Olympiakos and Panathinaikos, and then fuck you and fart on my balls. A high school class meets in the same room in the evening. Someone has written, I’m Apostolos. What’s your name? In beautiful round letters I spell out the only two words I’ve mastered in Greek: Maria Papamavrou.
Kyria Aphrodite tells us what we’re going to learn in the fourth grade and why it will be a challenging year. We’re going to have to work our very hardest at arithmetic, grammar, penmanship, and geography. Then she gives us a spelling test by dictation: “The children eat their breakfast and go to school. They are diligent students. Mother prepares the afternoon meal. Father works very hard. At lunchtime they eat all together as a family and then relax. In the afternoon they go for a walk in the park.” It’s almost right, except that we don’t all eat together anymore. Mom and I eat on the balcony with the sawed-off railing. Now that no one is there to see, Dad probably eats on the covered veranda in Ikeja with his tie loosened, without washing his hands. And Gwendolyn, standing at the kitchen counter—“Oh dear, like a goat!” Mom sighs.
Recess is the worst part of the day. The kids gather around me and ask if my father is a black priest, since that’s what my last name means. Someone notices that half of my pinky finger is missing and shouts: “Look, guys! A lion ate her finger!” Petros, the boy who was making animal faces, asks if we brought our hut with us from Africa. Angeliki, who I thought would be my friend, says that there’s no toilet paper in Africa so people poo in the jungle and wipe themselves with leaves from the trees.
“That’s not true!” I say, stamping my foot on the schoolyard cement. “We have three bathrooms in Ikeja, and pink toilet paper, pink!”
“Liar! There’s no such thing as pink toilet paper, or a house with three bathrooms!” Angeliki says.
I pull her hair to shut her up and she starts to cry. “You’re a chicken, Kotaki!” I say, because chicken in Greek is kota. Then I stick out my tongue and run to the other end of the yard where the canteen is. I should really get in line, but I’m so angry I just push my way to the front. The canteen sells zodiac crackers, orangeade, koulouria, which are like bread only round with a hole in the middle, and . . . rocket pops! For only fifty lepta! Two drachmas of pocket money a day equals four rocket pops! I buy my ice cream and sink my teeth into something sugary that’s not at all cold. It only looks like an ice cream pop, it’s actually stale marzipan. I throw it in the trash and feel like crying, for the hundredth time since we came to Athens.
As soon as we file back into the classroom, Kyria Aphrodite grabs me by the ear and drags me to the blackboard.
“Why did you hit Angeliki during recess? Why did you tear her sash?”
“I didn’t tear her sash. I just pulled her hair a little . . .”
“You pulled out a whole clump of my hair and you twisted my ear and you ruined my uniform, too!”
“Liar! Your uniform was already torn!”
“Now listen to me, Maria. You have the greatest number of mistakes of anyone on your spelling test, and let’s not even mention your behavior. I don’t know what your school in Africa was like, but this is a civilized country. Go and stand in the corner until the bell rings, and if you ever do anything like that again, you’ll get what’s coming to you.”
So now I’m standing in front of the blackboard, facing the world map. It’s the most wonderful part of the whole day. I can stare for hours at Nigeria, which is yellow, like my mother’s dress, or like the banana boats at the beach. In the middle is the flag with its three stripes, two green ones that stand for agriculture and a white one that stands for unity and peace. I don’t know what’s happening behind my back, and I don’t care, either. I’ll become the worst student in the entire school, so I can spend my days standing and staring at the map of Africa.
“Aunt Amalia, what does ‘fart on my balls’ mean?”
“Christ and the Virgin Mary!” Aunt Amalia puts her hand over her mouth as if she’s afraid something bad might come out. She’s frozen in place on the path with the statues, in front of the bust of Manto Mavrogenous, who fought in the Greek War of Independence even though she was a woman. Aunt Amalia brought me to the Field of Ares to ride my bike because Mom is busy. Busy means shutting herself up in her room and crying as she strokes her belly and sighs. At the very most she might throw a glance at the biftekia cooking on the stove, then go lie down on the couch.
Aunt Amalia has her hair in a bun under a net and is wearing her camelhair overcoat with the collar up. I can’t stand overcoats. I wear my yellow raincoat and galoshes even when it isn’t raining. A bird doesn’t change its feathers when winter comes, as Gwendolyn says.
“Where did you learn that, child?”
“It