Chapter 8
Karina took a deep breath as she turned off the ignition of her car. She sat in her parent’s driveway. Her Grandparents charcoal coloured Mercedes was in front of the garage door. Why did she feel so nervous? Was it the reaction she knew she’d get when she told them that she was no longer with Ian, or what they would say when she mentioned the theory of her not-so-Greek middle name that bothered her more? She was still unsure if Xavier was telling the truth. He could have made the whole story up for all she knew. Karina looked at herself in the rear view mirror and took a deep breath “Here goes nothing” she told herself and stepped out of the car.
“Ah Karina, you’re early?” her mother declared as she opened the door. She kissed her on both cheeks and stepped inside. The older woman looked out the front door and slowly closed it with a look of disappointment on her face. Karina knew how her parents felt about Ian; they had made no secret of it. How he was the man she should marry, the man that would give them more grand babies and make them happy. She passed the doorway of the lounge and watched her father and Papou watching soccer on the television, the usual position they held every Sunday when the family met for lunch. Neither man looked away from the screen when Karina announced her arrival from the doorway. This room had not changed since Karina was a child; it was filled with over the top ceramic statuettes of animals, figurines and fruit. The carpet was a multi coloured confusion of material with a thick texture that would last a millennia and smelled of fruit and stale wine.
The women always took their place in the kitchen, preparing the feast while the men sat back and watched sport. As far back as Karina could remember she spent her Sunday’s in this kitchen. Generations of women would congregate here and hand down their treasured recipes, one generation to the next. No need for cook books or measurements, it was all felt with the heart her Yiayia had told her. Once she stepped into the kitchen she knew she was in a safe place, the women’s inner sanctum. Yiayia was steadfast at the helm preparing stuffing for capsicums Papou had grown, her mother taking her secondary position at the sink washing dishes. Karina greeted Yiayia and sat on the stool at the island bench beside her. “No Ian today?” asked Yiayia not looking up from her work; nothing missed the old ladies attention. Even with her frail body and vacant expression, every detail caught her small dark eyes.
“No Ian today,” Karina replied sadly, looking down at the rice mixture in her Yiayia’s arthritic hands “No more Ian” Karina felt the silence in the room envelope her, it was worse than she feared. A dish had slipped from her mother’s hand and smashed on the ground. If Karina listened carefully she was sure she could hear the wind passing through the trees outside.
“What you mean, no more Ian?” asked her elderly Yiayia. Karina looked to her mother who was frozen in the moment, her soapy gloved hands and mouth open. She wanted desperately for someone to say something assuring, but she knew this would not be the case.
Karina took a long deep breath to reassure her “Ian and I have decided to take a break from each other.”
After a few more agonising moments of silence her Grandmother spoke “What you mean ‘break from each other’, what that mean? He seeing other woman?” her Yiayia said aggressively in her broken English.
“Mama, not Ian. He’s a good boy.” Karina’s mother assured her as she set the gloves on the side of the sink and approached her daughter, pulling up the stool beside her and rubbing her back consolingly. “What happened darling?” she asked, her eyes giving away the disappointment she felt at the loss of her potential son in law.
“We just grew apart Mum.” Karina could see the pain in her mother’s dark brown eyes. The eyes that were different to her own. The hair that was different to her own, everything about her mother was different to Karina and she knew Xavier had hit a nerve.
Yiayia threw her hands up in the air. “Ay, grew apart, taking break. In my day we work hard to make marriage work. Your Papou and I, we know each other one day,” the old woman held up a gnarled crooked finger at Karina “we no have ‘time apart’ and ‘taking breaks’ like peoples of today, you think too much Karina. That’s why you no married yet. Let the man do all the thinking. Your sister Helen, she is good girl who lets man do all the thinking. You be like her.” She declared in finality like the subject was closed for further discussion.
Karina felt nerves creeping up on her as she tried to summon courage to ask the question that could change her relationship with her family. On the way to her mother’s house she had thought of different ways to approach the subject but could not come up with a lead in that seemed casual enough. If her Yiayia was going to be as subtle as a sledgehammer then why couldn’t Karina? “What does Tuatha mean?” she asked the old woman.
Both her mother and Yiayia became deathly pale, the old lady finally stopping what she was doing and looked to her mother, she seemingly had no opinion on the matter.
“Why do you ask?” asked her mother suspiciously, trying as best she could to keep her voice even and casual.
Karina looked her mother in the face with an air of suspicion. She knew she was on to something “I’ve never asked what it meant before, curious is all.”
The two elder women looked at each other; their non verbal conversation was filled with tension. Her Yiayia answered “Its old Greek name, meaning honouring God.”
Karina’s eyes narrowed and her hands shook as the old lady avoided her gaze “I thought that was Timothea?”
She waved a wrinkled hand in the air closing the subject “Many Greek names mean the same thing.”
“Is it a family name?”
“No.” Yiayia shot back quickly.
She now looked back to her mother who seemed tense “I thought I’d research our family tree,” Karina declared.
“Why?” her mother asked.
Karina shrugged her shoulders, feeling more in control than she had ever felt in her life. The power was exhilarating and she wanted to see how far she could push “I was curious to see if there was anything interesting about my descendants.”
The old woman let out a “Pfff. Nothing exciting about our family. I tell you all you need to know. We live in Cypress, we come here. End of story.”
Karina let out an arrogant laugh “I want to know what skeletons our family has in the closet. What secrets have been covered up.”
Her mother let out a sharp “Ah!” and clutched her hand to her chest.
Yiayia said something sharply to Karina’s mother in Greek then wiped her hands on a tea towel and left the room muttering. Karina turned to her mother and gave her a pleading look “What aren’t you telling me mum?”
Her mother smiled weakly, a look that didn’t touch her eyes which were now starting to water “It is something that Yiayia is very ashamed of Karina. You shouldn’t do that to her, she is an old woman.”
Karina looked toward the empty doorway the old lady had stormed out of then back to her mother. “What could be so bad that you kept it from me?”
She shook her head then reached over and pulled the capsicums and stuffing towards herself and picked up where her mother left off. “Yiayia is from a different generation Karina. You must remember that. They believe in the sanctity of marriage and family honour.”
“I get that she is the older generation but what does that have to do with me?”
Her mother shook her head slowly as she continued to stuff capsicums and lay them on a baking tray. She then started to sprinkle them with oil “Karina, Yiayia’s grandmother was not born out of marriage. It is a secret that the family has kept. It is something that would bring great shame to them.”
Karina shook her head, unsatisfied with the answer she was being given “I’m sure she was not the first child to be born out of wedlock, why the secret about my middle name though? Yiayia was the one who chose the name for me.”
“Please understand dear, it’s painful for Mama to speak of these things. In a few years I will tell you. Don’t upset her please Kari
na, she is a frail woman.”
“Why can’t you tell me now?”
Her mother let out a sigh of frustration “Fine, I will tell you. Then do not speak again of this, ok? Yiayia’s great Aunt Irina was what you would call, the black sheep of the family. Her father had arranged a marriage for her when she turned eighteen, which was tradition. On her wedding day she ran away and did not get married. This caused the family great embarrassment. No one knows what really happened to her, but she was a gypsy and travelled to a lot of different places. One of those places we know was Ireland; where she met a man and fell in love. Irina returned to Cypress heavily pregnant and was outcast by her parents for disgracing the family. Her older sister Rosa had just lost a baby in childbirth and so it was decided that Irina would give her baby to Rosa. The baby, Yiayia’s grandmother, had blonde hair and blue eyes just like yours. Irina, over time lost her mind and every time she would see the baby, and even to a time when Yiayia was almost a woman she remembers her Aunt Irina calling her grandmother ‘My little Tuatha’. No one in the family knew what it meant; everyone thought it was just a pet name. So when you were born and we saw you had blonde hair instead of black like your sister, Yiayia asked if we would name you Tuatha after her grandmother.” Karina’s mother had now put the capsicums into the oven and was tidying the broken plate on the floor, avoiding her daughter’s eyes. Before any further questions could be asked the doorbell rang and Karina’s mother rushed from the kitchen. “That will be your sister,” the subject was now officially closed.