How to Be Brave Read online

  And then, she says something about a gynaika. I know this word. It means “woman.” And when she says it, she’s serious. Secretive. Hopeful.

  And then, she says: “Nomezo” (I think) “einai” (it’s) “time” (in English) “yia gamos” (for marriage).

  Thanks to Kyría Anna and my five years of Greek school, I understand this sentence perfectly.

  What the fuck?

  I look up at my dad, waiting for a protest, for some sort of objection.

  What does he do?

  He nods.

  He fucking nods.

  I drop my fork so hard that it knocks everyone at the table into silence, and I keep my stare on my dad. “She wants to set you up?”

  Maria looks at me, her face drained of blood. She realizes that I understand way more than she thought (maybe even more than I thought I knew). She gives me this sad and sorry look and then hustles to take dirty plates to the kitchen. She urges the others to follow her, and they all scurry, grabbing half-eaten plates of cookies and cake and pie and sweeping out the little kids from under the table until my dad and I are left in the dining room.

  My dad, who is finally clued in to the fact that I do speak some Greek, gives me a blank stare.

  That’s it.

  A blank stare.

  He can’t say no.

  He can’t deny it.

  I start to lose my shit. I can feel it inside, my heart pounding, my head pounding. I’m pissed. Beyond pissed. “Mom’s been dead, what, four months?” I yell across the table. “And she wants you to get married again?” This is bullshit.

  “Georgiamou, óxi, no.” He reaches his hand out to me. “It’s not like that.…”

  “Well, did you tell her that?” I point to the kitchen toward Maria, my godmother—the one who stood up at my parents’ wedding, who dipped me in holy water under the eyes of a priest and made a sacred promise to watch over me, to take care of me, to provide for me in case my mom and dad were to both die and I was left alone in this world to fend for myself—this woman who breaks this one, sacred promise by offering to play matchmaker when my mom’s body is not even cold in the ground.

  What the fuck?

  I stand up. “Give me the keys to the car,” I demand. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

  But he doesn’t give me the keys. Instead, he moves his stare to the table.

  He can’t even look me in the eye.

  I run toward the front door and let myself out, slamming it behind me. I walk away from the house. I need to get away. I need to run, to be free of this day that is nothing but bullshit, but I make it only a few houses down before I realize I can’t go anywhere. I’m in a fucking suburban nightmare. I plant myself on the curb under a streetlight, where it’s cold and bare and quiet. There’s nothing here. Nothing. A few trees, a few cars. No horns, no taxis, no sirens. The suburbs. I’m stuck in the fucking suburbs with nowhere to go. If I were downtown, I could walk for miles, but here—here, there’s nothing.

  Down the street, I hear the door to Maria’s house creak open.

  I hear my dad say good night to Maria in Greek.

  I hear his footsteps coming closer to me.

  He sits beside me on the cold cement curb. “Georgia—” He says my name with a heavy Americanized hard G and without the mou at the end, without the possessive my that he usually uses.

  “Your mother was sick for a very long time.” He pauses, as if to think about what he wants to say or maybe to give me a chance to agree. I refuse.

  “And, you know,” he continues, “we made an agreement.”

  …

  I refuse to give in to this. I refuse to respond.

  …

  There’s nothing but the sound of our breaths.

  The streetlight buzzing.

  A lone car in the distance.

  …

  The cold November air moves around us, blowing dust and leaves down the barren street.

  And then he repeats it again: “We made an agreement,” he says.

  Fine.

  I give in.

  “What exactly do you mean, ‘an agreement’?”

  Pause.

  Breath.

  Buzz.

  “She knew she was going to die. She told me to keep on going.”

  Pause.

  Breath.

  Buzz.

  “To get remarried, when I’m ready.”

  “Well, are you ready already?” I ask this question quickly, but as soon as the words leave me, I know it’s a question for which I don’t want to know the answer.

  I already know the answer.

  I’m not.

  It’s just too damn soon.

  “No, koúkla mou. Óxi. I am not ready.” He inches closer to me. I can tell he’s being careful. Like I’m some fragile glass or something. He motions that he wants to wrap his arm around my shoulders. I let him. “But one day, I will be. Not now, but yes, one day.”

  Shit.

  “I loved your mother. She was … she was Diana. There will never be anyone else like her.” He shakes his head. “Katálave?”

  He’s asking me if I understand.

  I force myself to nod, and then I collapse into the crux of his bent arm, his thick coat soft and heavy under my head.

  I don’t want to admit it, but I do understand completely.

  She asked him to be brave, too.

  At first, there was just:

  Coughing,

  Congestion,

  Nausea,

  Numbness.

  The doctor saw:

  Creatinine.

  Distension.

  Hypertension.

  Sepsis.

  Thick words.

  Medical words.

  Foreign words.

  It was worse than we’d realized.

  And then, in the CCU,

  that last time:

  The glare of the cold white walls

  from the long fluorescent bulb

  that fell hard against her

  gray skin

  against the cold metal

  and plastic wires.

  The mask on her face.

  The steady, careful pulse of machines,

  monitors,

  mechanical boxes that lived for her,

  that sustained whatever was left.

  Her body was broken.

  She was a butchered animal

  with her arms limp

  and her chest heaving with the push of the machine,

  her eyelids shifting,

  her feet trembling.

  Automatic responses, they’re called.

  I wonder what was there,

  inside,

  the moments before her heart stopped.

  I wonder if she could hear what I said

  how sorry I was,

  just so deeply sorry.

  8

  Saturday morning, 8:15 A.M. It’s early, and I was up late writing and painting and watching old reruns of Phineas and Ferb. I just want to stay here, under my warm blanket. It’s snowing outside. Through my bedroom window, I can see fluffy globs of snow falling onto tree branches. I could stay here for hours watching it. I could drift back into dreamland. It would be so easy.

  I’m in no mood to go anywhere or do anything, particularly not anything involving any level of physical activity, but I promised Liss and Evelyn that we’ll do another item on the list.

  Which means I have to get out of bed.

  Ugh. Whose big idea was this?

  Oh right. Mine.

  Item #10: Tribal dancing.

  The class starts at nine A.M. sharp.

  I gotta get out of bed.

  Lord knows how I came to find out about this in the first place. We can thank the Internet gods, I suppose. Them and my mom’s cardiologist.

  It was a year ago, maybe, the day before my mom’s last stent procedure. I was standing in the hallway playing with my phone while Dr. Mehlman, who took care of my mom for more than ten years, talked to her and my dad
inside the room. When he came out, he saw me and got quiet. At first he just said, “You can go in now,” and I was about to head inside, except that he took my elbow to hold me back. He was tall and lean and had the face of a bird, and he peered at me through his wire glasses and said, “Don’t let this happen to you.”

  I never told my mom or dad, but that night I made a promise with myself and my future children and grandchildren to lose weight and start taking care of myself. Of course, I decided to start counting calories, and I went online to find some form of physical exercise that seemed like it might even be a little fun. I bookmarked links to Zumba, cardio ballet, kickboxing, TRX suspension, plyometrics. They all sounded great, but most of them were either really expensive or met only at five in the morning (WTF?), or they looked like they required a level of coordination that I simply did not possess. But along the way, as I clicked from studio to studio on Yelp, I came across this one particular studio (SOUL POWER YOGA, all caps) that caught my interest. It was brand-new, less than a mile from my house, and relatively cheap, especially since they offered student discounts with an ID. They had a bunch of different classes, yoga, qigong, et cetera, but the one that stood out to me was the one called “tribal yoga dance.” One class was only $12 and, better yet, only $9 with a student ID.

  The Soul Power Yoga Web site linked to some videos that previewed what a typical tribal yoga dance class was like. It was insane. I recognized some elements from our yoga unit in PE—Downward-Facing Dog and Tree Pose and the like—but then there was this whole other element that was totally raunchy. Their hips were writhing and their hair was spiraling. It was like belly dancing gone wild.

  I sent the link to Liss, and she wrote back immediately, Let’s do that.

  And we were going to—I mean, I had this whole plan to lose weight—but then after my mom’s last stent, things got worse really quickly, and if I wasn’t at school, I was at the hospital and then at rehab and then back at the ICU. I didn’t do any of it, and I didn’t keep my promise to Dr. Mehlman or to my future progeny or to myself.

  I peel myself out of bed and get dressed. My head is throbbing. I pour some lukewarm coffee, snarf down a cold bagel, and head out the door.

  I arrive at the building to find that I have to climb two flights of stairs to get to the studio. Liss texts that she and Evelyn are on their way (Missed the train! Sorry!), so I head upstairs. By the time I get to the top floor, I’m winded. Isn’t that enough of a workout? Now I have to exercise, too?

  I walk down the cramped hallway to door #9. I knock first, and no one answers, so I push open the door to a small area stuffed with a couch, a desk, and a coffee table that’s serving as the front lobby and three sweaty women who are laughing and chatting it up.

  The one sitting at the desk looks up at me. She’s young and petite and bright and what my mom would call bushy-tailed.

  “I’m here for the nine A.M. class?”

  “Hi! Come in! Have a seat,” she says. “I’ll be with you in a sec.”

  I file past the two Amazon women in their skintight workout gear and now feel totally schlumpy in mine (gray sweatpants and one of my dad’s old undershirts).

  Desk Girl hands printouts of the class schedule to the Amazon ladies, who seem to have just finished their class. (7:30 A.M. on a Saturday? They’re crazy.) “We have classes for all levels: gentle, basics, power, and tribal.”

  “What’s the tribal class like?” one of the two women ask.

  “Oh, that’s the most ridiculously intense one we’ve got.” Desk Girl laughs. “It’s totally liberating, but it’s a workout for sure.”

  “Isn’t that the one I’m here for?” I say.

  Desk Girl nods, and they all laugh.

  I don’t.

  It’s not too late to leave. I could just stand right up and walk out that door. They’d never know who I was. I seriously consider bolting out the door but then it opens. It’s Liss and Evelyn, both out of breath and smiling.

  “We made it! We’re here for the tribal yoga class!” Liss announces. “Oh, Georgia, you’re here already—”

  Damn.

  Desk Girl says good-bye to the Amazon ladies and checks us in.

  “You girls are here to dance?”

  Liss and Evelyn respond that we are and I just nod.

  “Okay, then. I’m Aspen. Nice to meet you.” She shakes our hands formally. “Let’s do it.”

  It’s 9:05 already, but it looks like no one else is showing up. She shows us where to put our stuff and where to set up our mats. Thank God it’s just the three of us.

  Aspen takes off her shirt and pants to reveal a very small sports bra and very, very small black shorts. Like they’re so small I can see full-on butt cheeks.

  She turns on the stereo and the music blasts a low, heavy bass. The walls shake with the reverberation.

  “Before we start, let’s warm up a bit. I’ll show you some of the basics.” She stands in front of me on her mat, places her feet wide apart and spreads her knees, and starts shaking her body, and I swear I can nearly see everything. It’s all jiggling and wiggling and quivering. This isn’t tribal yoga dancing; it’s yoga for wannabe porn stars.

  Dear Lord, what have I gotten myself into?

  And then she starts “popping” and “bumping” (that’s what she calls it) and thrusting her hips and swirling her arms above her head and her eyes close and she’s lost in her dance. “You want to let yourself go. You want to let yourself be free. Release your hips, your back, your shoulders, your chest.”

  Next to me, Liss and Evelyn are mimicking her moves awkwardly. All I can do is stand there and gape, but then Liss punches me in the arm and yells, “Start moving! Number ten!”

  Aspen shakes herself out of her porn trance and walks to the corner of the room, where she lights some candles, closes the curtains, and shuts off the lights. It’s enough so that we can see her, but enough so that we can’t see ourselves.

  “That should do it,” Aspen says, returning to her mat. “No one here is going to watch you. Just let go. Let yourself be inside your body.”

  And so I do.

  I grind and

  I pop and

  I thrust and

  I shake

  my hips.

  I twirl and wave and let myself be

  free.

  I close my eyes.

  I bury myself deep.

  I bury it all.

  I let myself be here,

  here.

  And

  at the end, when Aspen tells us to give thanks

  to our bodies,

  to my body,

  to the blood and

  the muscle and

  the bone

  that moves us forward,

  I do give thanks, but then

  I cry, too.

  It’s taken me so very long to get here.

  * * *

  I purchase the introductory package of ten classes for fifty bucks (I want to do that all of the time), and then we head back to my place. We spend the afternoon dancing in my room. We just can’t stop. The class was too much fun, the music was too good, and I haven’t felt this great in so long.

  As the afternoon shifts into night, we decide to head over to Evelyn’s for the night. I pack up a few things—clean underwear, a toothbrush, my pj’s, a change of clothes, and my hair gel—and I leave a note for my dad telling him that I’m spending the night at Liss’s. Having never met Evelyn’s mom, he’d never approve of my staying at some stranger’s house. He’s just that archaic.

  We walk a few blocks down through the freezing air to the Red Line, where we take the warm train down to Evelyn’s apartment. Her mom, as usual, is not home. And her place, as usual, is a total wreck. We stumble over empty plates and shoes and unpacked luggage. “Let’s go in my room.” We follow her in and sprawl out on her bed, pushing clothes and magazines onto the floor. It’s not any cleaner in here, but at least it’s a place where we can sit and they can smoke.

  We ord
er a pizza and change into our loungewear, as Liss calls it.

  Evelyn passes around her pack of cigarettes. They’re not cloves, so I try to partake. Liss and I each take one, and Evelyn holds out her lighter.

  “Thanks,” Liss says. “Your mom won’t care that you’ve been smoking in here?”

  “Yeah, she’ll care.” Evelyn inhales and blows the smoke to the side. “But I won’t.”

  It seems as though Evelyn purposely tries to piss off her mom, like most recently, getting caught smoking up in the janitor’s closet so that her mom had to reschedule her flights to attend meetings with Principal Q-tip about Evelyn’s progress, or lack thereof.

  “But one more time, and she said you’d be sent to another school, right?” I cough out. It’s getting a little easier, but smoking still burns my lungs and makes me dizzy. “St. Mark’s or something?”

  “Eh.” Evelyn shrugs. “She’s said that before, like a million times. It won’t happen. You know, we’ve moved so much for my mom’s job that I’ve been at five different schools in four different cities over the past four years? And I was kicked out of two of those.”

  I didn’t know that.

  She reaches out to me for the cigarette. “You guys are like my first real friends.”

  Oh.

  I feel like I should say something in return, something cheesy and heartfelt, something to make up for saying those mean things about her to Liss.

  But Evelyn keeps going before I can. “Anyway, my mom’s not going to pay fifteen thousand dollars for a snotty Catholic private school that I’ll probably get kicked out of. She couldn’t afford it.”

  “Would she move again?” Liss asks.

  “Who knows. She might. Her solution to any problem is to run from it.”

  “What about Choices?” Choices is a city-run school where potheads and pregnant moms often escape to so they can finish up their degree without the scrutiny of fifteen hundred other acne-ridden faces. I guess there are only like one hundred kids at each location.

  “Yeah. That would suck, I guess. Or maybe not. It would mean school from eight to twelve and then a job in the afternoon. But really, the only way that would happen is if Q-tip kicks me out. And he’s a wimp. He’s totally scared of my mom.”

  That’s easy to imagine. Our principal, Mr. McKee, is short and thin and has a bald, shiny head, thus the nickname. His personality is just as limp as a Q-tip, too. I’ve never met Evelyn’s mom, but from the various photos lying around the house, she looks nice enough. After hearing about their constant moves, though, I can see why Evelyn likes to piss her off so much.