Roots

I stir the pot because my mother is dead. Around and around the stew goes, hypnotically swirling about in the rusty pot upon our gritty stove top. The open window to my left made me vulnerable to the sounds of the children playing soccer in the street below. Cars beep occasionally to shoo them out of the street. Vendors on their way home from a long day of work stop to sit on the stoops in front of their apartments, too exhausted to muster up the strength to climb the steps and face their families whom they can’t fully provide for. It is in these moments I think of her most. My mother, tenderly tucking a stray black curl behind my ear. Mama, with wide hips and a soft hum as she folded laundry that she pulled in from our clothesline. Mama, with eyes that grew more tired, and skin that faded into a sickly pale with each passing day we were on that ship. We had gone aboard together, never imagining we wouldn’t be leaving that way.

I stir the pot and think about how she used to do it. Her cooking was a dance, a skill that seemed almost magical to me as I used to watch her. Her hands were magicians that graced the food with an elegance that seemed to infuse her dishes with a taste that was better than anyone else in our family could muster.

Those same hands got so thin by the end; her veins became protruding blue mountain ranges on them. When those hands cupped my face that last night, it was like being held in place by two feathers. I knew, even then, the wind would sweep them away soon. I remember the way the tears felt as they slid down my face, my mouth whispering to my mother. Mamá. I said. Parakaló min me afínete.

Please don’t leave me.

Her eyes glistened as if tears would fall to match mine, but my mother was different from me. She was solid, even in death. Her tears wouldn’t dare disobey her command. She pulled me down to her and kissed my forehead. My cheek. My other cheek, lingering before she kissed the same spot once more. I willed myself to take note of the way she felt, alive and near me. Her warmth that had been my comfort in the night and my joy in the day. The way I felt protected by her touch, even as her body faded. Nothing could get to me when I was with my Mama.

Her voice was soft and strained. Den févgo, i agápi mou. I’m not leaving, my love. Epistréfo spíti. I’m returning home.

Her eyes looked above me momentarily, to above. I knew what she meant, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to accept what that meant, in the way she had seemed to. A storm wrestled in my body, restrained only by my will to keep it at bay. I had to focus. Focus on her while I still had her, for however much longer. To keep our connection alive, the tether between us. Her only daughter in a sea of boys. We always had each other, glancing at each other knowingly when the boys wrestled into a vase, or when Papa stained his shirt in the same spot every time he insisted he didn’t need to wear a napkin around his neck. She always warned him he was a messy eater. Stubborn Greeks.

A cold slapped my cheeks when Mama lifted her hands off them. She grunted, heaving her body to reach for something underneath her pillow. I tried to stop her, to let me do it so she could rest, but she just shooshed me. She had always been even more stubborn than Papa. Her hand pulled a little piece of worn cloth out from under the pillow. I caught sight of the familiar sea blue and white stripes. The cloth was just as worn as the hands that held them, fraying slightly around the edges as my mother lifted it to her chest. My father gave this to me when I was a child. She said, grabbing my hands and placing the little flag in them. Neither of us could let go. I want you to have it. To remember.

Remember? I asked. Mama, you don’t think I need a flag to remember you.

My mother shook her head, smiling slightly. The way even the little movement seemed like a marathon for her shattered my heart. Na thymáste poú írthate. She whispered. Her voice, her eyes, they were suddenly steady. To remember where you came from. It was then I realized what she was doing. She was passing me the torch, trusting me to keep it lit, to keep our family intact. I sucked in a breath and locked eyes with my mother. In them seemed a life that was oceans away and the promise of my future all swarming together.

Írthe i óra na páte kai sto spíti. She put her hand on the back of my neck, injecting her words into the core of my spine. Írthe i óra na kánete éna néo spíti gia emás... stin America.

It’s time for you to go home, too. It is time for you to make a new home for us... in America.

I fell into my mother’s arms. She didn’t know I wasn’t ready. Wasn’t ready to be the head of the family, or to be in a new world; one where she wasn’t beside me and the people didn’t speak my language. I was barely even a woman. But I couldn’t tell my mother that. Not when she was giving me her last words. Not when she believed so fully in the promise I brought with my young life. There was no way I could say it. Instead, I let her weight reassure me as it had all those times growing up. Let her protect me from the cold hard truth for just a little longer. I breathed in her skin. Underneath the body odor and that tangy smell of imminent death, she still smelt like us. Like home, in our quaint kitchen. If I closed my eyes, that’s where I would be: home. Not here, but with a mother whose smile was still bright, and brothers running into the house after a day’s work, all talking over each other at once and leaning over Mama’s shoulder to see what was for dinner. But that was a different life, a different world. One that couldn’t last anymore.

My Mama dying on a boat to America was reality.

Like she knew my thoughts, Mama started to caress my hair, letting out soft shhh’s into my ear. I relished every second. I was a little child, for a few more, precious moments.

I kardiá sas eínai stin Amerikí tóra, allá oi rízes sas, oi rízes sas stin Elláda. Eínai anthektikés. Kánoun to aíma sas ischyró. Eíste ischyroí, Poría. Xéro óti tha me kánei perífanos.

It was those words that she whispered, ferocious and ferociously invigorating, that I have woken to in my head every morning since.

Your heart is in America now, but your roots, your roots are in Greece. They are sturdy. They make your blood strong. You are strong, Portia. I know you will make me proud.

So I stir the pot, for her. For my Mama and for her dream for us. For all of us.

The sun falls upon the street outside, God’s paintbrush doing wonders upon the city scape. Overwhelmed with memory, I look to the tiny wooden side table in the room over, where I sleep. In it, there lay a little box, which holds my mother’s last gift to me. A symbol of who I am, and who I will be. I am strong, I tell myself, remembering my mother’s words.

And try I will, Mama, to make you proud.