Let Me Explain You (20 page)

But, Marina said, she wasn't going to let just anyone watch her butcher. She wasn't going to let any Stavros off the street see her hands deep in the warm, yolky blood of a calf. She needed staff, she said, with good hearts, hearts that hear. Once, she had refused to work because she didn't like the assistant that Stavros hired—he had vulture teeth.

“Vulture teeth?” Stavros said. “He is not a bird, he is a man.”

Marina didn't care. If the vulture was in the building, then Marina was not.

And this was not all. Marina could spear her own octopus, pull apart the tentacles, gut it, clean it, hang it to dry like a man's collared shirt. And then the smell—oh, the smell! like God's oven!—of octopus grilling over charcoal. But that would come later.

Marina did not pay attention to Stavroula in the beginning. The first day, Marina yelled orders and when she realized that the boss's daughter didn't take orders (having lost her Greek), Marina did the work herself. The number one rule for dishwashers was stay out of Marina's way. The kitchen belonged to Marina, the Slop Room was Stavroula's. Good, then, she would stay in the slop. Washing dishes, talking to nobody. Never talking to Litza, because Litza was gone and Stavroula was not brave enough to find her. Stavroula tuned out the Greek music that came from her father's cheap radio, which sounded exactly like her pots and pans. She didn't wink back at the busboys. She played games to get through the day. How many pans could she wash in five minutes. What was the chance she could finish the load before a new load arrived. If she was a leftover, and her sister a leftover, would they be the same leftover?

From the slop, she watched Marina. For someone who was a slave, she looked very much in charge. Stavroula could see how good Marina was at her job, and she could tell when Marina was having an off day just by how viscous a sauce was. Marina, for her part, grew to respect Stavroula's system, that the large boiling pots went to the bottom of the trash can so they could prop up the other pans. Also, Stavroula liked homemade chicken and lemon potatoes, which Marina made for her.

“The Mexican vulture was a dishwasher,” she said to Stavros, where Stavroula could hear. “This one, she's a cook.”

“No, she is not a cook. She is what I say she is.”

He left, Stavroula stopped the water. She hung her apron on his office door and grabbed her schoolbag.

Marina had a paring knife clenched between her teeth. She flicked the knife between her second and third fingers so she could speak. It was like watching a pickpocket take something of yours, right before you mistake it for someone else's. “Where are you going?”

“Home.”

“You want to quit, you do it when the dishes are done, and you do it to his face.”

Stavroula stopped on the edge of the Slop Room. “The dishes are never done.”

“You'll have to start a union, The National Society of Daughters Who Are Sick and Tired of Dishes but They Have Bosses Who Do Not Care What You Think, Only Care What the Boss Thinks.” She laughed at her own joke.

She watched Marina trim, in quick swipes, one particularly fatty place. Marina said, “
Koukla
, for a Greek, your father is not so bad. Only, he thinks protecting means controlling.” Then, “You leave it to Marina, we'll get him out of the kitchen.”

Stavroula yanked her apron from the knob, back to the sink.

Next day—three months into slop and a Christmas without Litza—one of Marina's assistants got the flu. Quiet, dependable, the way Marina liked them, but Riley was not immigrant stock. Only vegetable stock. Not so strong, not so immune to fluffy American diseases. “Dishwasher, put down the dishes and come out of the Slop Room,” Marina said. “You have real work to do.”

Stavroula tossed the blue gloves at the sink. She rubbed her wrists. She tied on a clean apron, a white one. She saw that the newest busboy had been chosen for the washing. He was putting his hands into the moist pockets of her gloves. His face said she was gross.

“Hold here,” Marina said, and Stavroula did. “Line the pan with these,” Marina said, and Stavroula did. “Rub this spice mixture onto the fat backs of the chicken, and beneath the skin,” and Stavroula did. The tasks were simple, repetitive, not so different from dishwashing. Still, it was amazing to grab the pans while they were clean, to fill them, to put them in the oven, making something instead of discarding it.

Stavroula was put on potatoes for the rest of that day. The second and third days, she was put on onions. So many onions, Marina gave her goggles to wear, and then tied a scarf over her face. The scarf was Marina's, smelling of melon rind and meat. Stavroula politely declined. “Ha,” Marina said, “you would rather soupy eyes than deal with an old woman's stink.”

The crying. So many tears wet her face that the goggles slipped off. She sobbed so hard that the busboys, her friends, said, “Boss, she need a break,” and Marina said, “That's exactly what she's getting.” Her face, puffy like fruit, her eyes raw. The first cry since Litza left. She cried even after she stopped chopping, she cried on the way home and through dinner and in bed. At the end of the third day, when she could take no more, Marina took up Stavroula's knife and finished her onions.

After that, Stavroula started to really pay attention. After that, it was Marina who had her heart.

Marina liked things quick but neat. Countertops were always wiped down. Stavroula did her best to be clean. On day four, she dropped a drumstick on the floor, and Marina made her put it in the pocket of her apron so that Stavroula would feel the weight and remember not to do that again. “The worst crime you can make is a crime of waste,” Marina said. “Waste nothing, and you will make the right kind of cook.”

Stavroula said she would be careful, she would be mindful, and she would try not to waste any more. If these three things kept her out of the Slop Room, she would do them all day long. If these things kept Litza out of her head, she would keep drumsticks in all her pockets.

The assistant came back on day five. Stavroula returned to dishes. It did not bring her numbness, like it once had. She stared into the kitchen, hating even more the sour steam that wafted out of the basin.

“You think I have money to run down the drain?” Stavros asked. “You are done here. Marina needs extra hands.” That was Stavros's version. The real version, the one that Stavroula eventually learned, was that Marina had demanded it.

He had nagged her in the Slop Room, but now! This is boiling, this is cooling, this is burning, this is beeping, this is dry, this is soggy, this is messy, this is runny, this is ugly, this is no good. This is not going out.
This
is not going out. Where's the honey, flavor, seasoning, friendly? Where's the order? What are you doing so wrong? The dinner rolls should be Greek hospitality. A paying eater asks for the rice pilaf, he better taste country. I was twelve, I was doing this better than you; a hundred times faster, and a thousand times right.

“I thought you said she was a cook,” he said to Marina. “All she can make is beans.”

“Beans are not easy. You of all
malakas
know the truth about beans.” But when he left, she said to Stavroula, “
Koukla
, you work like you're still in the Slop Room. A griddle is not a sink.”

“I know that.”

“I don't think so. Just because the food is going into someone's gizzard doesn't mean it goes down a drain. You can't cook and daydream. You have to be here with the eggs when they're frying.”

“I am here.”

“No, you're leaving the eggs to fend for themselves. You have to come back, wherever you are.”

Be Present
, that was the first lesson, and Marina did not mean show up. Someone could show up every day, Marina said, and still never be present. Do you hear what I am saying,
koukla
? You must be mindful, be now. Be the spatula, be the heat, be the cheese sizzle in the pan. The past is true, but the present is truer because it's all we have. The second lesson,
Be on Time
, but that did not mean clocking in. It meant getting a feel for traffic, it meant knowing when someone was going to come in hungry. Anticipate the waitresses, who had personalities like cats. Have a sense of urgency that has nothing to do with lunch, which has just passed, and everything to do with dinner, which is facing us down.
Be Prepared
. That didn't mean pens and school-rulers. It meant understand what the customer is going to order before the customer orders. It meant have the resources inside to imagine the future.

“That's impossible.”

“That is how Marina cooks.”

Stavroula learned one lesson after another. This kept her from the slop, and it kept her from Litza. Except for the awareness, which snuck in every now and then, which said: Litza, wherever she was, wasn't getting this. Dina was no Marina. Stavroula had been curious about her biological mother, sure, despite her feelings for Mother, but she was wary, too. Stavroula once agreed to meet Dina for hot chocolate, not lunch, but left with the feeling that she had been with someone her own age and who would never get any older. Dina would never be a good mother, Stavroula knew this instinctively. Litza was alone, while Stavroula—suddenly, the eggs weren't being sent back. Suddenly, Marina could trust her to take care of the specials. In exchange, Stavroula got to learn real cooking. Her heritage made sense. It was seductive. She did not tell her father how much she enjoyed making
gigantes.

He tried to tell her. “Out of everything in this place, the Greek menu is the thing that lives!”

In her gut, she understood. Whipping together cucumber, yogurt, garlic, mint for the immaculate
tzatziki
. Tucking slim-boned quail into golden pans of olive oil and oregano, or wrapping the bird in a dough of water and red earth until the mud bakes hard, or cooking it in a hulled aubergine. Grilling squid stuffed with fingers of feta cheese. Marina taught her the words—
gemista, kotopoulo, petimezi
glaze, which had been passed down from the Ancient Greeks—but no one had to teach her what they meant.

“This is the beautiful secret of your father's business,” Marina said. “This is why I work for him. There is cheap American food to lure the Americans in, and then there are the irresistible Greek dishes to turn them into lovers of Greek.”

Stavroula had friends at school, but they did not understand her like Marina.

After they had served the customers their cheap, comforting dinners, Stavroula finished homework. Food did not taste like it should after you stood over it for a whole day, so sometimes, they had only cucumbers for dinner. Marina asked her to read aloud math problems and then tried to solve them in her head. She did the computation with a finger, licking it every time she added.

One night, Marina picked up a sheet of paper. She scanned it. “This is something you have to do tonight? This is homework?”

Stavroula nodded. It was the course request form from the guidance counselor. English, math, science. Her electives for next year were Law I and Law II. Her parents liked her choices. She liked being on a track that meant she'd be somewhere else in four years. Which felt like forever, but still.

“You are not taking this culinary class?” Marina asked. “There is no check mark.”

Stavroula shrugged. “What do I have to take a class for?”

“What does anyone take classes for? To become better.”

“I am getting better. You're teaching me.”

“All we are fattening you up for is to be a wife.”

Cooking, Marina said, is the thing that has oppressed all Greek women in the history of the world who have come before us. You know how long it takes to lay out one sheet of phylo dough, then to brush it in a warm butter bath? Do this fifty more times, a hundred more times, and all you are is a Greek woman. Feed the family, and the whole village, too! Is that what you want, to be one of these? Like Marina?

“What do you mean?”

“Today is your lucky day, teenager.” Pause. “Your father and I had a discussion. Your life lessons are over. No more kitchen.”

“But I like it here.”

“You know how to work a knife like a hand now, and not a knife. You take some culinary class, you go be a professional, and you can do this for people who can get you ahead. You make money, a life for yourself.”

“I only want to work with you,” Stavroula said. Marina was sounding like her father. Stavroula wanted to hear that she mattered here. She wanted Marina to admit it, feel it. Marina was what got her through. But Marina only looked like a chicken picked apart. She was pulling at her own fingers like they were feathers.

“He won't let me take culinary class, he wants me to take law,” Stavroula begged. She was keeping the tears in her throat. Adults did not treat children's tears seriously. Right now, Marina was showing herself to be an adult.

Marina stood. “All I can give you is a job. You need more than what I can give.”

“I'll fail.” The very thing that would disgust Marina.

But she was not disgusted. She looked sad. “
Koukla
, you couldn't if you wanted to. You are too smart and too good.”

“Why do I always have to be good? Why can't I do what I love, instead?”

She meant, be with people she loved.

Marina untied her apron and let it hang defeated in front of her giant chest. Her eyes had turned from teaspoons to soupspoons. She said, “We forgot one last lesson,
koukla
, number sixty-three.” She tossed the apron with the other soiled ones. “We will have to learn it tomorrow.”

Stavroula watched Marina shuffle off in her black slippers, never turning around or bothering to check on Stavroula, inexplicably, as always, carrying a full glass of water.