Anxiety

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I wasn’t worried about getting expelled. I wasn’t even worried about getting the Colonel expelled, although maybe I should have been. I was worried that it wouldn’t work because Alaska hadn’t planned it. Maybe no prank worthy of her could be pulled off without her. The Eagle stood behind the podium. “This is a day of historic significance at Culver Creek. It was the vision of our founder Phillip Garden that you, as students and we, as faculty, might take one afternoon a year to benefit from the wisdom of voices outside the school, and so we meet here annually to learn from them, to see the world as others see it. Today, our junior-class speaker is Dr. William Morse, a professor of psychology at the University of Central Florida and a widely respected scholar. He is here today to talk about teenagers and sexuality, a topic I’m sure you’ll find considerably interesting. So please help me welcome Dr. Morse to the podium.” We applauded. My heart beat in my chest like it wanted to applaud, too. As Maxx walked up to the podium, Lara leaned down to me and whispered, “He ees really hot.” “Thank you, Mr. Starnes.” Maxx smiled and nodded to the Eagle, then straightened his papers and placed them on the podium. Even I almost believed he was a professor of psychology. I wondered if maybe he was an actor supplementing his income. He read directly from the speech without looking up, but he read with the confident, airy tone of a slightly snooty academic. “I’m here today to talk with you about the fascinating subject of teenage sexuality. My research is in the field of sexual linguistics, specifically the way that young people discuss sex and related questions. So, for instance, I’m interested in why my saying the word arm might not make you laugh, but my saying the word vagina might.” And, indeed, there were some nervous twitters from the audience. “The way young people speak about one another’s bodies says a great deal about our society. In today’s world, boys are much more likely to objectify girls’ bodies than the other way around. Boys will say amongst themselves that so-and-so has a nice rack, while girls will more likely say that a boy is cute, a term that describes both physical and emotional characteristics. This has the effect of turning girls into mere objects, while boys are seen by girls as whole people—” And then Lara stood up, and in her delicate, innocent accent, cut Dr. William Morse off. “You’re so hot! I weesh you’d shut up and take off your clothes.” The students laughed, but all of the teachers turned around and looked at her, stunned silent.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  They spent what remained of their honeymoon on deck, learning how to finagle their way through Ellis Island. It wasn't so easy any- more. The Immigration Restriction League had been formed in 1894. On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Henry Cabot Lodge thumped a copy of On the Origin of Species, warning that the influx of inferior peoples from southern and eastern Europe threatened "the very fab- ric of our race." The Immigration Act of 1917 barred thirty- three kinds of undesirables from entering the United States, and so, in 1922, on the deck of the Giulia, passengers discussed how to escape the categories. In nervous cram sessions, illiterates learned to pretend to read; bigamists to admit to only one wife; anarchists to deny hav- ing read Proudhon; heart patients to simulate vigor; epileptics to 73 deny their fits; and carriers of hereditary diseases to neglect mention- ing them. My grandparents, unaware of their genetic mutation, con- centrated on the more blatant disqualifications. Another category of restriction: "persons convicted of a crime or misdemeanor involving moral turpitude." And a subset of this group: "Incestuous relations." They avoided passengers who seemed to be suffering from tra- choma or favus. They fled anyone with a hacking cough. Occasion- ally, for reassurance, Lefty took out the certificate that declared: ELEUTHERIOS STEPHANIDES HAS BEEN VACCINATED AND UNLOUSED AND IS PASSED AS VERMIN-FREE THIS DATE SEPT. 23, 1922 DISINFECTION MARITIME PIRAEUS Literate, married to only one person (albeit a sibling), democratically inclined, mentally stable, and authoritatively deloused, my grandpar- ents saw no reason why they would have trouble getting through. They each had the requisite twenty- five dollars apiece. They also had a sponsor: their cousin Sourmelina. Just the year before, the Quota Act had reduced the annual numbers of southern and eastern Euro- pean immigrants from 783,000 to 155,000. It was nearly impossible to get into the country without either a sponsor or stunning profes- sional recommendations. To help their own chances, Lefty put away his French phrase book and began memorizing four lines of the King James New Testament. The Giulia was full of inside sources familiar with the English literacy test. Different nationalities were asked to translate different bits of Scripture. For Greeks, it was Matthew 19:12: "For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake." "Eunuchs?" Desdemona quailed. "Who told you this?" "This is a passage from the Bible." "What Bible? Not the Greek Bible. Go ask somebody else what's on that test." But Lefty showed her the Greek at the top of the card and the 74 English below. He repeated the passage word by word, making her memorize it, whether or not she understood it. "We didn't have enough eunuchs in Turkey? Now we have to talk about them at Ellis Island?"

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "I am sooo nervous," the Object said. In her lap she had a jar of Rolaids, which she was eating like candy. I understood now why she had pounded her chest the first day of class. The Obscure Object suffered from a more or less constant case of heartburn. It was worse during times of stress. A few minutes earlier, she had wandered off to smoke her last cigarette before show- time. Now she was chewing on the antacid tablets. Part of coming from old money, apparently, was having old-person habits, those gross, adult needs and desperate palliatives. The Object was still too young for the effects to tell on her. She didn't have eye bags yet or stained fingernails. But the appetite for sophisticated ruin was already there. She smelled like smoke, if you got close. Her stomach was a 336 " mess. But her face continued to give off its autumnal display. The cat eyes above the snub nose were alert, blinking and resetting their at- tention to the growing noise beyond the flats. "There's my mom and dad!" Maxine Grossinger shouted. She turned back to us and broke into a big smile. I'd never seen Maxine smile before. Her teeth were jagged and gappy, like those of a Sendak creature. She had braces, too. Her unconcealed joy made me under- stand her. She had a whole other life apart from school. Maxine was happy in her house behind the cypresses. Meanwhile, curly hair gushed from her fragile, musical head. "Oh, Jesus." Maxine was peeking out again. "They're sitting right in the front row. They're going to be staring right at me." We all peeked out, each in our turn. Only the Obscure Object re- mained seated. I saw my parents arrive. Milton stopped at the crest of the slope to look down at the hockey field. His expression sug- gested that the spectacle before him, the emerald grass, the white wooden bleachers, the school in the distance with its blue slate roof and ivy, pleased him. In America, England is where you go to wash yourself of ethnicity. Milton had on a blue blazer and cream-colored trousers. He looked like the captain of a cruise ship. With one arm on her back, he was gently leading Tessie down the steps to get a good seat. We heard the audience grow quiet. Then a pan flute was heard— Mr. da Silva playing his recorder. I went over to the Object and said, "Don't worry. You'll be fine." She had been repeating her lines silently to herself but now stopped. "You're a really good actress," I continued. She turned away and lowered her head, moving her lips again. "You won't forget your lines. We went over them a billion times. You had them down perfect yester— "Will you stop bugging me for a minute?" the Object snapped. "I'm trying to get psyched up." She glared at me. Then she turned and walked off.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Two men stood on the welcome mat. They wore gray suits, striped ties, black brogues. They had short sideburns. They carried matching briefcases. When they removed their hats, they revealed identical chestnut hair, neatly parted in the center. Zizmo took his hand out of his coat. "We're from the Ford Sociological Department," the tall one said. "Is Mr. Stephanides at home?" "Yes?" Lefty said. "Mr. Stephanides, let me tell you why we're here." "Management has foreseen," the short one seamlessly continued, "that five dollars a day in the hands of some men might work a tremendous handicap along the paths of rectitude and right living and might make of them a menace to society in general." "So it was established by Mr. Ford"— the taller one again took over—"that no man is to receive the money who cannot use it advis- edly and conservatively." "Also"— die short one again—"that where a man seems to qualify under the plan and later develops weaknesses, that it is within the province of the company to take away his share of the profits until such time as he can rehabilitate himself. May we come in?" Once across the threshold, they separated. The tall one took a pad from his briefcase. "I'm going to ask you a few questions, if you don't mind. Do you drink, Mr. Stephanides?" "No, he doesn't," Zizmo answered for him. "And who are you, may I ask?" "My name is Zizmo." 100 "Are you a boarder here?" "This is my house." "So Mr. and Mrs. Stephanides are the boarders?" "That's right." "Won't do. Won't do," said the tall one. "We encourage our em- ployees to obtain mortgages." "He's working on it," Zizmo said. Meanwhile, the short one had entered the kitchen. He was lifting lids off pots, opening the oven door, peering into the garbage can. Desdemona started to object, but Lina checked her with a glance. (And notice how Desdemona's nose has begun to twitch. For two days now, her sense of smell has been incredibly acute. Foods are be- ginning to smell funny to her, feta cheese like dirty socks, olives like goat droppings.) "How often do you bathe, Mr. Stephanides?" the tall one asked. "Every day, sir." "How often do you brush your teeth?" "Every day, sir." "What do you use?" "Baking soda." Now the short one was climbing the stairs. He invaded my grand- parents' bedroom and inspected the linens. He stepped into the bath- room and examined the toilet seat. "From now on, use this," the tall one said. "It's a dentifrice. Here's a new toothbrush." Disconcerted, my grandfather took the items. "We come from Bursa," he explained. "It's a big city." "Brush along the gum lines. Up on the bottoms and down on the tops. Two minutes morning and night. Let's see. Give it a try."

• From Middlesex (2002)

  formed her about Monty and the Brits driving Rommel's tanks out of North Africa and the American troops liberating Algeria and landing in Sicily. Munching popcorn, Tessie had watched as the months and years passed. The newsreels followed an itinerary. At first they'd con- centrated on Europe. There were tanks rolling through tiny villages and French girls waving handkerchiefs from balconies. The French girls didn't look like they'd been through a war; they wore pretty, ruf- fled skirts, white ankle socks, and silk scarves. None of the men wore berets, which surprised Tessie. She'd always wanted to go to Europe, not to Greece so much, but to France or Italy. As she watched these newsreels, what Tessie noticed wasn't the bombed-out buildings but the sidewalk cafes, the fountains, the self- composed, urbane little dogs. Two Saturdays ago, she'd seen Antwerp and Brussels liberated by the Allies. Now, as attention turned toward Japan, the scenery was changing. Palm trees cropped up in the newsreels, and tropical is- lands. This afternoon the screen gave the date "October 1944" and the announcer announced, As American troops prepare for the final in- vasion of the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, vowing to make good on his promise of "I shall return" surveys his troops. The footage showed sailors standing at attention on deck, or dropping artillery shells into guns, or horsing around on a beach, waving to the folks back home. And out in the audience my mother found herself doing a crazy thing. She was looking for Milton's face. He was her second cousin, wasn't he? It was only natural she should worry about him. They had also been, not in love exactly, but in something more immature, a kind of infatuation or crush. Noth- ing like what she had with Michael. Tessie sat up in her seat. She ad- justed her purse in her lap. She sat up like a young lady who was engaged to be married. But after the newsreel ended and the movie began, she forgot about being an adult. She sank down in her seat and put her feet up over the seat in front. Maybe it wasn't a very good movie that day, or maybe she'd seen too many movies lately— she'd gone for the last eight straight days— but whatever the reason, Tessie couldn't concentrate. She kept think- ing that if something happened to Milton, if he was wounded or, God forbid, if he didn't come back— she would be somehow to blame. She hadn't told him to enlist in the Navy. If he'd asked her, she would have told him not to. But she knew he'd done it because of 188

• From Middlesex (2002)

  chological evaluation will take longer. I'll need to see your child every day for at least a week, maybe two. Also it would be helpful if you could give me any childhood photographs or family movies you might have." Milton turned to Tessie. "When does Callie start school?" Tessie didn't hear him. She was distracted by Luce's phrase: "your child." "What kind of information are you trying to get, Doctor?" Tessie asked. "The blood tests will tell us hormone levels. The psychological as- sessment is routine in cases like this." "You think it's some kind of hormone thing?" Milton asked. "A hormone imbalance?" "We'll know after I've had time to do what I need to do," said Luce. Milton stood up and shook hands with the doctor. The consulta- tion was over. Keep in mind: neither Milton nor Tessie had seen me undressed for years. How were they to know? And not knowing, how could they imagine? The information available to them was all secondary stuff— 414 my husky voice, my flat chest— but these things were far from per- suasive. A hormonal thing. It could have been no more serious than that. So my father believed, or wanted to believe, and so he tried to convince Tessie. I had my own resistance. "Why does he have to do a psychologi- cal evaluation?" I asked. "It's not like I'm crazy." "The doctor said it was routine." "But why?" With this question I had hit upon the crux of the matter. My mother has since told me that she intuited the real reason for the psy- chological assessment, but chose not to dwell on it. Or, rather, didn't choose. Let Milton choose for her. Milton preferred to treat the problem pragmatically. There was no sense in worrying about a psy- chological assessment that could only confirm what was obvious: that I was a normal, well-adjusted girl. "He probably bills the insur- ance extra for the psychological stuff," Milton said. "Sorry, Cal, but you'll have to put up with it. Maybe he can cure your neuroses. Got any neuroses? No^s your time to let 'em out." He put his arms around me, squeezed hard, and roughly kissed the side of my head. Milton was so convinced that everything was going to be okay that on Tuesday morning he flew down to Florida on business. "No sense cooling my heels in this hotel," he told us. "You just want to get out of this pit," I said. "I'll make it up to you. Why don't you and your mother go out for a fancy dinner tonight. Anyplace you want. We're saving a couple bucks on this room, so you gals can splurge. Why don't you take Cal- lie to Delmonico's, Tess." "What's Delmonico's?" I asked.

• From Looking for Alaska (2005)

  I coughed again, and backpedaled, the Eagle and I tangoing our way toward his living room. “Right, well, he’s up all night every night thinking about Alaska,” I said, standing up straight and tall, trying to block the Eagle’s view of the living room with my none-too-wide shoulders. “They were very close, you know.” “I know that—” he said, and in the living room, the Colonel’s sneakers squeaked against the hardwood floor. The Eagle looked at me quizzically and sidestepped me. I quickly said, “Is that burner on?” and pointed toward the frying pan. The Eagle wheeled around, looked at the clearly not-on burner, then dashed into the living room. Empty. He turned back to me. “Are you up to something, Miles?” “No, sir. Honestly. I just wanted to talk about Chip.” He arched his eyebrows, skeptical. “Well, I understand that this is a devastating loss for Alaska’s close friends. It’s just awful. There’s no comfort to this grief, is there?” “No sir.” “I’m sympathetic to Chip’s troubles. But school is important. Alaska would have wanted, I’m sure, for Chip’s studies to continue unimpeded.” I’m sure , I thought. I thanked the Eagle, and he promised me an egg sandwich at some point in the future, which made me nervous that he would just show up at our room one afternoon with an egg sandwich in hand to find us A. illegally smoking while the Colonel B. illegally drank milk and vodka out of a gallon jug. Halfway across the dorm circle, the Colonel ran up to me. “That was smooth, with the ‘Is that burner on?’ If you hadn’t pulled that, I was toast. Although I guess I’ll have to start going to Latin. Stupid Latin.” “Did you get it?” I asked. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. God, I hope he doesn’t go looking for it tonight. Although, really, he could never suspect anything. Why would someone steal a Breathalyzer? ” — At two o’clock in the morning, the Colonel took his sixth shot of vodka, grimaced, then frantically motioned with his hand toward the bottle of Mountain Dew I was drinking. I handed it to him, and he took a long pull on it. “I don’t think I’ll be able to go to Latin tomorrow,” he said. His words were slightly slurred, as if his tongue were swollen. “One more,” I pleaded. “Okay. This is it, though.” He poured a sip of vodka into a Dixie cup, swallowed, pursed his lips, and squeezed his hands into tight little fists. “Oh God, this is bad. It’s so much better with milk. This better be point two-four.” “We have to wait for fifteen minutes after your last drink before we test it,” I said, having downloaded instructions for the Breathalyzer off the Internet. “Do you feel drunk?” “If drunk were cookies, I’d be Famous Amos.” We laughed. “Chips Ahoy! would have been funnier,” I said. “Forgive me.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "Yes." "So you probably mixed up a little bit, right? You not all white." Desdemona hesitated. "See, Pm trying to see how we can work it," Sister Wanda went on. "Minister Fard, who come to us from the Holy City of Mecca, he always be impressing on us the importance of self-reliance. Can't rely on no white man no more. Got to do for ourself, understand?" She lowered her voice. "Problem is, nobody worth a toot come for the ad. People come in here, they say they know silk, but they don't know nothing. Just hoping to get hired and fired. Get a day's pay." She nar- rowed her eyes. "That what you planning?" "No. I want only hire. No fire." "But what you is? Greek, Turkish, or what?" Again Desdemona hesitated. She thought about her children. She imagined coming home to them without any food. And tiien she swallowed hard. "Everybody mixed. Turks, Greeks, same same." "That's what I wanted to hear." Sister Wanda smiled broadly. "Minister Fard, he mixed, too. Let me show you what we need." She led Desdemona down a long, wainscoted corridor, through a telephone operator's office, and into another darker hallway. At the far end heavy drapes blocked off the main lobby. Two young guards stood at attention. "You come to work for us, few things you should know. Never, ever, go through them curtains. Main temple in there, where Minister Fard deliver his sermons. You stay back here in the women's quarters. Best cover your hair, too. That hat shows your ears, which be an enticement." Desdemona instinctively touched her ears, looking back at the guards. Their expressions remained impassive. She turned back, fol- lowing the Supreme Captain. "Let me show you the operation we got going," Sister Wanda 145 said. "We got everything. All we need is a little, you know, know- how.1 ' She started up the stairs and Desdemona followed. (It's a long stairway, three flights up, and Sister Wanda has bad knees, so it will take some time for them to reach the top. Leave them there, climbing, while I explain what my grandmother had gotten herself into.) "Sometime in the summer of 1930, an amiable but faindy myste- rious peddler suddenly appeared in the black ghetto of Detroit." (I'm quoting from C. Eric Lincoln's The Black Muslims ofAmerica. ) "He was thought to be an Arab, although his racial and national identity remain undocumented. He was welcomed into homes of culture- hungry African-Americans who were eager to purchase his silks and artifacts, which he claimed were those worn by black people in their homeland across the sea . . His customers were so anxious to learn of their own past and the country from which they came that the peddler soon began holding meetings from house to house through- . out the community. "At first, the 'prophet,' as he came to be known, confined his teachings to a recitation of his experiences in foreign lands, admoni-

• From Middlesex (2002)

  At that Milton shot up out of his chair again. His face darkened and he tugged at his collar to help himself breathe. "Now I have a question, Milton." "What?" "How much is it worth to you to get your daughter back?" "How much do you want?" "Is this business, now? Are we negotiating a deal?" "I'm ready to make a deal." "How exciting." "What do you want?" "Twenty- five thousand dollars." "All right." "No, Milton," the voice corrected, "you don't understand. I want to bargain." "What?" "Haggle, Milton. This is business." Milton was perplexed. He shook his head at the oddity of this re- quest. But in the end he fulfilled it. "Okay. Twenty-five's too much. I'll pay thirteen thousand." "We're talking about your daughter, Milton. Not hot dogs." "I haven't got that kind of cash." "I might take twenty-two thousand." "I'll give you fifteen." "Twenty is as low as I can go." "Seventeen is my final offer." "How about nineteen?" "Eighteen." "Eighteen five." "Deal." The caller laughed. "Oh, that was fun, Milt." Then, in a gruff voice: "But I want twenty- five." And he hung up. Back in 1933, a disembodied voice had spoken to my grand- mother through the heating grate. Now, forty-two years later, a dis- guised voice spoke to my father over the phone. "Good morning, Milton." There was the music again, the faint singing. "I've got the money," said Milton. "Now I want my girl." "Tomorrow night," the kidnapper said. And then he told Mil- 501 ton where to leave the money, and where to wait for me to be re- leased. Across the lowland downriver plain Grand Trunk rose before Mil- ton's Cadillac. The train station was still in use in 1975, though just barely. The once-opulent terminal was now only a shell. False Amtrak facades concealed the flaking, peeling walls. Most corridors were blocked off. Meanwhile, all around the operative core, the great old building continued to fall into ruin, the Guastavino tiles in the Palm Court falling, splintering on the ground, the immense barbershop now a junk room, the skylights caved in, heaped with filth. The office tower attached to the terminal was now a thirteen-story pigeon coop, all five hundred of its windows smashed, as if with diligence. At this same train station my grandparents had arrived a half century earlier. Lefty and Desdemona, one time only, had revealed their secret here to Sourmelina; and now their son, who never learned it, was pulling in behind the station, also secretiy.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  thought back to the night she'd gotten pregnant and tried to recon- struct events. She turned on her side. She made a pillow stand in for Lefty, pressing it against her back. She looked around the room. There were no pictures on the walls. She hadn't been touching any toads. "What did I see?" she asked herself. "Only the wall." But she wasn't the only one tormented by anxieties. Recklessly now, and with an official disclaimer as to the veracity of what I'm about to tell you— because, of all the actors in my midwestern Epi- daurus, the one wearing the biggest mask is Jimmy Zizmo— I'll try to give you a glimpse into his emotions tiiat last trimester. Was he ex- cited about becoming a father? Did he bring home nutritive roots and brew homeopathic teas? No, he wasn't, he didn't. After Dr. Philobosian came to dinner that night, Jimmy Zizmo began to change. Maybe it was what the doctor had said regarding the syn- chronous pregnancies. A-hundred-to-one odds. Maybe it was this stray bit of information that was responsible for Zizmo's increasing moodiness, his suspicious glances at his pregnant wife. Maybe he was doubting the likelihood that a single act of intercourse in a five- month dry spell would result in a successful pregnancy. Was Zizmo examining his young wife and feeling old? Tricked? 117 In the late autumn of 1923, minotaurs haunted my family. To Desdemona they came in the form of children who couldn't stop bleeding, or who were covered with fur. Zizmo's monster was the well-known one with green eyes. It stared out of the river's darkness while he waited onshore for a shipment of liquor. It leapt up from the roadside to confront him through the Packard's windshield. It rolled over in bed when he got home before sunrise: a green-eyed monster lying next to his young, inscrutable wife, but then Zizmo would blink and the monster would disappear. When the women were eight months pregnant, the first snow fell. Lefty and Zizmo wore gloves and mufflers as they waited on the shore of Belle Isle. Nevertheless, despite his insulation, my grand- father was shivering. Twice in the last month they'd had close calls with the police. Sick with jealous suspicions, Zizmo had been erratic, forgetting to schedule rendezvous, choosing drop-off points with in- sufficient preparation. Worse, the Purple Gang was consolidating its hold on the city's rum-running. It was only a matter of time before they ran afoul of it. Meanwhile, back on Hurlbut, a spoon was swinging. Sourmelina, legs bandaged, lay back in her boudoir as Desdemona performed the first of the many prognostications that would end with me. "Tell me it's a girl." "You don't want a girl. Girls are too much trouble. You have to worry about them going with the boys. You have to get a dowry and find a husband—" "They don't have dowries in America, Desdemona." The spoon began to move. "Ifies a boy, I'll kill you."

• From Middlesex (2002)

  Dr. Nishan Philobosian had set off for the harbor that afternoon seeking just such reassurance. He kissed his wife, Toukhie, and his daughters, Rose and Anita, goodbye; he slapped his sons, Karekin and Stepan, on the back, pointing at the chessboard and saying with mock gravity, "Don't move those pieces." He locked the front door behind him, testing it with his shoulder, and started down Suyane Street, past the closed shops and shuttered windows of the Armenian Quarter. He stopped outside Berberian's bakery, wondering whether Charles Berberian had taken his family out of the city or whether they were hiding upstairs like the Philobosians. For five days now they'd been under self-imprisonment, Dr. Philobosian and his sons playing endless games of chess, Rose and Anita looking at a copy of Photoplay he'd picked up for them on a recent visit to the American suburb of Paradise, Toukhie cooking day and night because eating was the only thing that relieved the anxiety. The bakery door showed only a sign that said open soon and a portrait— which made Philobosian wince— of Kemal, the Turkish leader resolute in astrakhan cap and fur collar, his blue eyes piercing beneath the crossed sabers of his eye- brows. Dr. Philobosian turned away from the face and moved on, re- hearsing all the arguments against putting up Kemal's portrait like that. For one thing— as he'd been telling his wife all week— the Euro- pean powers would never let the Turks enter the city. Second, if they did, the presence of the warships in the harbor would restrain the Turks from looting. Even during the massacres of 1915 the Armeni- ans of Smyrna had been safe. And finally— for his own family, at least— there was the letter he was on his way to retrieve from his of- fice. So reasoning, he continued down the hill, reaching the Euro- pean Quarter. Here the houses grew more prosperous. On either side of the street rose two-story villas with flowering balconies and high, armored walls. Dr. Philobosian had never been invited into these vil- las socially, but he often made house calls to attend the Levantine girls living inside; girls of eighteen or nineteen who awaited him in the "water palaces" of the courtyards, lying languidly on daybeds 45 amid a profusion of fruit trees; girls whose desperate need to find European husbands gave them a scandalous amount of freedom, cause itself for Smyrna's reputation as being exceptionally kind to

• From Middlesex (2002)

  mother, Euphrosyne Stephanides, speaking in this very cocoonery years ago, elucidating the mysteries of silkworms—"To have good silk, you have to be pure," she used to tell her daughter. "The silk- worms know everything. You can always tell what somebody is up to by the way their silk looks"— and so on, Euphrosyne giving exam- ples—"Maria Poulos, who's always lifting her skirt for everyone? Have you seen her cocoons? A stain for every man. You should look next time"— Desdemona only eleven or twelve and believing every word, so that now, as a young woman of twenty-one, she still couldn't entirely disbelieve her mother's morality tales, and examined the cocoon constellations for a sign of her own impurity (the dreams she'd been having!). She looked for other things, too, because her mother also maintained that silkworms reacted to historical atroci- ties. After every massacre, even in a village fifty miles away, the silk- worms' filaments turned the color of blood—"I've seen them bleed like the feet of Christos Himself," Euphrosyne again, and her daugh- ter, years later, remembering, squinting in the weak light to see if any cocoons had turned red. She pulled out a tray and shook it; she pulled out another; and it was right then that she felt her heart stop, squeeze into a ball, and begin punching her from inside. She dropped the tray, saw her tunic flutter from interior force, and un- derstood that her heart operated on its own instructions, that she had no control over it or, indeed, over anything else. 22 So my yia yia^ suffering the first of her imaginary diseases, stood looking down at Bursa, as though she might spot a visible confirma- tion of her invisible dread. And then it came from inside the house, by means of sound: her brother, Eleutherios ("Lefty") Stephanides, had begun to sing. In badly pronounced, meaningless English: "Ev'ry morning, ev'ry evening, ain't we got fun," Lefty sang, standing before their bedroom mirror as he did every afternoon about this time, fastening the new celluloid collar to the new white shirt, squeezing a dollop of hair pomade (smelling of limes) into his palm and rubbing it into his new Valentino haircut. And continuing: "In the meantime, in-between time, ain't we got fun." The lyrics meant nothing to him, either, but the melody was enough. It spoke to Lefty of jazz-age frivolity, gin cocktails, cigarette girls; it made him slick his hair back with panache . . while, out in the yard, Desde- mona heard the singing and reacted differentiy. For her, the song conjured only the disreputable bars her brother went to down in the city, those hash dens where they played rebetika and American music and where there were loose women who sang ... as Lefty put on his new striped suit and folded the red pocket handkerchief that matched . and she felt funny inside, especially her stomach, his red necktie . . .

• From Middlesex (2002)

  But there were times when I felt that something was different about the way I was made. At Camp Ponshewaing I'd learned, on certain humid bunkhouse nights, of the bicycle seats and fence posts that had seduced my campmates at tender ages. Lizzie Barton, roast- ing a marshmallow on a stick, told us how she had become fond of the post of a leather saddle. Margaret Thompson was the first girl in town whose parents owned a massaging shower head. I added my own sense data to these clinical histories (that was the year I fell in love with gym ropes), but there remained a vague, indefinable gap between the stirrings my friends reported and the clutching ecstasy of my own dry spasms. Sometimes, hanging down from my top bunk into the beam of someone's flashlight, I would finish my little self- revelation with "You know?" And in the dimness three or four stringy-haired girls would nod, once, and bite the corner of their lips, and shift their eyes away. They didn't know. I worried at times that my crocus was too elaborate a bloom, not a common perennial but a hothouse flower, a hybrid named by its originator like a rose. Iridescent Hellene. Pale Olympus. Greek Fire. But no— that wasn't right. My crocus wasn't for show. It was in a state of becoming and might turn out fine if I waited patientiy. Maybe it happened like this to everybody. In the meantime, it was best to keep everything under wraps. Which was what I was doing down in the basement. Another tradition at Baker & Inglis: every year the eighth graders 330 put on a classical Greek play. Originally, these plays had been per- formed in the Middle School auditorium. But after Mr. da Silva took his trip to Greece, he got the idea of converting the hockey field into a theater. With its bleachers set into the slope and its nat- ural acoustics, it was a perfect mini-Epidaurus. The custodial staff brought risers out and set up a stage on the grass. The year of my infatuation with the Obscure Object, the play Mr. da Silva selected was Antigone. There were no auditions. Mr. da Silva filled the major roles with his pets from Advanced English. Everyone else he stuck in the chorus. So the cast list read like this: Joanne Maria Barbara Peracchio as Creon; Tina Kubek as Eurydice; Maxine Grossinger as Ismene. In the role of Antigone herself— the only real possibility from even a physical standpoint— was the Obscure Object. Her midterm grade had been only a C minus. Still, Mr. da Silva knew a star when he saw one. "We have to learn all these lines?" asked Joanne Maria Barbara Peracchio at our first rehearsal. "In two weeks?" "Learn what you can," said Mr. da Silva. "Everyone's going to be wearing a robe. You can keep your script underneath. Miss Fagles will also be our prompter. She'll be in the orchestra pit."

• From Middlesex (2002)

  stone building opposite. I listened to the police sirens, the angry horns. My pillow was thin. It smelled like a smoker. Across the strip of carpet my mother was already asleep. Before my conception, she had agreed to my father's oudandish plan to determine my sex. She had done this so that she wouldn't be alone, so that she would have a girlfriend in the house. And I had been that friend. I had always been close to my mother. Our temperaments were alike. We liked nothing better than to sit on park benches and watch the faces go by. Now the face I was watching was Tessie's in the other bed. It looked white, blank, as if her cold cream had removed not only her makeup but her personality. Tessie's eyes were moving, though; under the lids they skated back and forth. Callie couldn't imagine the things Tessie was seeing in her dreams back then. But I can. Tessie was dreaming a fam- ily dream. A version of the nightmares Desdemona had after listening to Fard's sermons. Dreams of thegerms of infants bubblingy dividing. Of hideous creatures growing up from pale foam. Tessie didn't allow herself to think about such things during the day, so they came to her at 422 night. Was it her fault? Should she have resisted Milton when he tried to bend nature to his will? Was there really a God after all, and did He punish people on Earth? These Old World superstitions had been banished from my mother's conscious mind, but they still oper- ated in her dreams. From the other bed I watched the play of these dark forces on my mother's sleeping face. 423 LO KIR G IMSELF UP in WEBSTER'S tossed and turned every night, unable to sleep straight through. I was like the princess and the pea. A pellet of disquiet kept unset- ii ding me. Sometimes I awoke with the feeling that a spotiight had been trained on me while I slept. It was as if my ether body had been conversing with angels, somewhere up near the ceiling. When I opened my eyes they fled. But I could hear the traces of the commu- nication, the fading echoes of the crystal bell. Some essential infor- mation was rising from the depths of my being. This information was on the tip of my tongue and yet never surfaced. One thing was cer- tain: it was all connected with the Object somehow. I lay awake thinking about her, wondering how she was, and pining, grieving.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  were still awaiting their holiday season. Kissinger was still shuttling between Paris and Washington to maintain his sex appeal. In actual- ity, the Paris Peace Accords would be signed the following January and the last American troops would pull out of Vietnam in March. But as I peeked in at my brother's inert body, no one knew that yet. I was aware only of what a strange thing it was to be male. Society dis- criminated against women, no question. But what about the discrim- ination of being sent to war? Which sex was really thought to be expendable? I felt a sympathy and protectiveness for my brother I'd never felt before. I thought of Chapter Eleven in an army uniform, squatting in the jungle. I imagined him wounded on a stretcher, and I started to cry. The voice on the radio droned on: "February twenty- first— one hundred and forty-one. February twenty-second— seventy- four. February twenty-third— two hundred and six." I waited until March 20, Chapter Eleven's birthday. When the voice announced his draft number— it was two hundred and ninety, he would never go to war— I burst into his room. Chapter Eleven leapt out of bed. We looked at each other and— almost unheard of between us— we hugged. The next fall, my brother left not for Canada but for Ann Arbor. Once again, as when Chapter Eleven's egg had dropped, I was left alone. Alone at home to note my father's growing anger at the nightiy news, his frustration at the "half-assed" way the Americans were waging the war (napalm notwithstanding) and his increasing sympathy for President Nixon. Alone, also, to detect a feeling of use- lessness that began to plague my mother. With Chapter Eleven out of the house and me growing up, Tessie found herself with too much time on her hands. She began to fill her days with classes at the War Memorial Community Center. She learned decoupage. She wove plant hangers. Our house began to fill up with her craft projects. There were painted baskets and beaded curtains, paperweights with various objects suspended in them, dried flowers, colored grains and beans. She went antiquing and hung an old washboard on the wall. She took yoga, too. It was the combination of Milton's disgust at the antiwar move- ment and Tessie's sense of uselessness that led them to begin reading the entire one-hundred-and-fifteen-volume set of the Great Books se- ries. Uncle Pete had been touting these books for a long time, not to mention quoting from them liberally to score points in Sunday de- 301

• From Middlesex (2002)

  thought that this was the start of something. I thought I was bud- ding. But time after time the swelling and soreness went away, and nothing came of it. Of all the things I had to get used to at my new school, the most difficult, therefore, was the locker room. Even now with the season over, Coach Stork was standing by the door, barking. "Okay, ladies, hit the showers! Come on. Hustie up!" She saw me coming and managed to smile. "Good effort," she said, handing me a towel. Hierarchies exist everywhere, but especially in locker rooms. The swampiness, the nudity bring back original conditions. Let me per- 295 form a quick taxonomy of our locker room. Nearest the showers were the Charm Bracelets. As I passed by, I glanced down the steamy corridor to see them performing their serious, womanly movements. One Charm Bracelet was bending forward, wrapping a towel around her wet hair. She snapped upright, twisting it into a turban. Next to her another Bracelet was staring into space with empty blue eyes as she anointed herself with moisturizer. Still another Bracelet lifted a water bottle to her lips, exposing the long column of her neck. Not wanting to stare, I looked away, but I could still hear the sound they made getting dressed. Above the hiss of shower heads and the slap of feet on tiles, a high, thin tinkling reached my ears, a sound almost like the tapping of champagne flutes before a toast. What was it? Can't you guess? From the slender wrists of these girls, tiny silver charms were chiming together. It was the ringing of tiny tennis rack- ets against tiny snow skis, of miniature Eiffel Towers against half-inch ballerinas on point. It was the sound of Tiffany frogs and whales chiming together; of puppies tinkling against cats, of seals with balls on their noses hitting monkeys with hand organs, of wedges of cheese ringing against clowns' faces, of strawberries singing with inkwells, of valentine hearts striking the bells around the necks of Swiss cows. In the midst of all this soft chiming, one girl held out her wrist to her friends, like a lady recommending a perfume. Her father had just returned from a business trip, bringing her back this latest present. The Charm Bracelets: they were the rulers of my new school. They'd been going to Baker & Inglis since kindergarten. Since pre- kindergarten! They lived near the water and had grown up, like all Grosse Pointers, pretending that our shallow lake was no lake at all but actually the ocean. The Atiantic Ocean. Yes, that was the secret wish of the Charm Bracelets and their parents, to be not Midwest- erners but Easterners, to affect their dress and lockjaw speech, to summer in Martha's Vineyard, to say "back East" instead of "out East," as though their time in Michigan represented only a brief so- journ away from home.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  From hints Aunt Zo let slip in the kitchen I was aware that some- thing happened to women every so often, something they didn't like, something men didn't have to put up with (like everything else). Whatever it was, it seemed safely far off, like getting married or giv- ing birth. And then one day at Camp Ponshewaing, Rebecca Ur- banus climbed up on a chair. Rebecca was from South Carolina. She had slave-owning ancestors and a trained voice. During dances with the boys from the neighboring camp, she waved a hand in front of her face as though holding a fan. Why was she up on a chair? We were having a talent show. Rebecca Urbanus was maybe singing or reciting the poetry of Walter de la Mare. The sun was still high and her shorts were white. And then suddenly, as she sang (or recited), the back of her white shorts darkened. At first it appeared to be only a shadow of the surrounding trees. Some kid's waving hand. But no: while our band of twelve-year-olds sat watching, each of us in camp 284 T-shirt and Indian headband, we saw what Rebecca Urbanus didn't. While her upper half performed, her bottom half upstaged her. The stain grew, and it was red. Camp counselors were unsure how to re- act. Rebecca sang, arms outflung. She revolved on her chair before her theater-in-the-round: us, staring, perplexed and horrified. Cer- tain "advanced" girls understood. Others, like me, thought: knife wound, bear attack. Right then Rebecca Urbanus saw us looking. She looked down herself. And screamed. And fled the stage. I returned from camp browner and leaner, pinned with a single badge (ironically, for orienteering). But that other badge, which Carol Horning displayed so proudly the first day of school, I was still without. I felt ambivalent about this. On the one hand, if Rebecca Urbanus's mishap was any indication, it might be safer to stay the way I was. What if something similar happened to me? I went through my closet and threw out anything white. I stopped singing altogether. You couldn't control it. You never knew. It could happen anytime. Except, with me, it didn't. Gradually, as most of the other girls in my grade began to undergo their own transformations, I began to worry less about possible accidents and more about being left be- hind, left out. I am in math class, sometime during the winter of sixth grade. Miss Grotowski, our youngish teacher, is writing an equation on the blackboard. Behind her, at wooden-topped desks, students follow her calculations, or doze, or kick each other from behind. A gray win- ter Michigan day. The grass outside resembles pewter. Overhead, flu- orescent lights attempt to dispel the season's dimness. A picture of the great mathematician Ramanujan (whom we girls at first took to be Miss Grotowski's foreign boyfriend) hangs on the wall. The air is stuffy in the way only air at school can be stuffy.

• From Holy Ghost Girl (2012)

  The tattooed young men who were dragged to the revival or bribed by their mothers to come stopped elbowing one another and listened.Brother Terrell had started over again on the first verse when a high, reedy laugh made its way up from the audience. Goose bumps popped up on my arms. The spirit sometimes moved people to wail when Brother Terrell sang a sad song, but never to laugh. Up on the platform, my mother half-stood at the organ bench looking for the source of the laughter. She gave Brother Cotton a look that meant someone ought to do something. He nodded and left the platform. The laughter stopped as suddenly as it had started and was replaced by a low burble of words and sounds. I scrambled up in my chair and scanned the back of the tent for a better look. Laverne pulled at my hand, but I ignored her. The women in front of us inched to the edge of their seats and craned their necks to see. Others turned in their seats and looked around. Brother Terrell continued to sing and sway, eyes closed.They shall walk, but not be weary They shall stumble But not fail . . .Brother Cotton hurried toward a group of people, mostly men, who stood in a little clutch in the middle section of the crowd. Someone, a girl, broke free of the group and ran up the aisle toward the platform. She passed so close to where we sat I could have reached out and touched her pale, puffy arms or felt the strands of her long blond hair whip against my fingers. She was barefoot and wore a sleeveless flowered shift that rode up her thighs as she ran. She flung herself against the sides of the prayer ramp below where Brother Terrell sat. She reached up and grabbed the railing that ran along the outside edge of the ramp and shook it. She whinnied, “David Ter-rell, David Terrell,” in the same high, eerie voice that had laughed aloud. Perched on the edge of the stage above her, Brother Terrell sang on, his black shoe tapping out the time.Brother Cotton, Dockery, and Red converged on the girl, pulling at her from behind. Dockery pried one of her hands off the ramp and pinned her arm behind her. She twisted away from him and ran back toward the congregation. Brother Cotton and Red grabbed her around the waist, but she flipped like a fish from their hands. The congregation stood and prayed aloud, “Blood of Jesus, blood of Jesus, blood of Jesus.”Men and women left their seats and walked toward the girl with their arms outstretched in her direction. Someone ululated, “Lelelelelelelelelelele.”Voices layered one over the other as people began to speak in tongues. “Ma ma so mako. Shondiddy-i. Shondiddy-i. Nenen la ma hi.”The girl turned, holding her arms out and away from her as if for balance. The two tent men and Brother Cotton circled her like a gyre.

• From Middlesex (2002)

  "Can I tell you something, though?" she asked. "About your part?" "Sure." "You know how you're supposed to be blind and everything? Well, where we go in Bermuda there's this man who runs a hotel. And he's blind. And the thing about him is, it's like his ears are his eyes. Like if someone comes into the room, he turns one ear that way. The way you do it—" She stopped suddenly and seized my hand. "You're not getting mad at me, are you?" "No." "You've got the worst expression on your face, Callie!" "I do?" She had my hand. She wasn't letting go. "You sure you're not mad?" "I'm not mad." "Well, the way you pretend to be blind is you just, sort of, stum- ble around a lot. But the thing is, this blind man down in Bermuda, he never stumbles. He stands up really straight and he knows where everything is. And his ears are always focusing in on stuff." I turned my face away. 335 "See, you're mad!" "I'm not." "You are? "I'm being blind," I said. "I'm looking at you with my ear." "Oh. That's good. Yeah, like that. That's really good." Without letting go of my hand, she leaned closer and I heard, felt, very sofdy, her hot breath in my ear. "Hi, Tiresias," she said, giggling. "It's me. Antigone." The day of the play arrived ("opening night" we called it, though there would be no others). In an improvised "dressing room" behind the stage we lead actors sat on folding chairs. The rest of the eighth graders were already onstage, standing in a big semicircle. The play was set to begin at seven o'clock and finish before sunset. It was 6:55. Beyond the flats we could hear the hockey field filling up. The low rumble got steadily louder— voices, footsteps, the creaking of bleachers, and the slamming of car doors up in the parking lot. We were each dressed in a floor-length robe, tie-dyed black, gray, and white. The Obscure Object, however, was wearing a white robe. Mr. da Silva's concept was minimal: no makeup, no masks. "How many people are out there?" Tina Kubek asked. Maxine Grossinger peeked out. "Tons." "You must be used to this, Maxine," I said. "From all your recitals." "I don't get nervous when I'm playing the violin. This is way worse."

• From Middlesex (2002)

  and collar, he told her that he would pray for my return. He advised Tessie to go to church and light a candle for me. I ask myself now what Father Mike's face looked like as he held my mother's hand in die master bedroom. Was there any hint of Schadenfreude* Of taking pleasure in the unhappiness of his former fiancee? Of enjoyment at the fact that his brother-in-law's money couldn't protect him from this misfortune? Or of relief that for once, on the ride home, his wife, Zoe, wouldn't be able to compare him unfavorably with Milton? I can't answer these questions. As for my mother, she was tranquilized, and remembers only that the pressure in her eyes made Father Mike's face appear oddly elongated, like a priest in a painting by El Greco. At night Tessie slept fitfully. Panic kept waking her up. In the morning she made the bed but, after breakfast, sometimes went to lie on it again, leaving her tiny white Keds neady on the carpet and clos- ing the shades. The sockets of her eyes darkened and the blue veins at her temples visibly throbbed. When the telephone rang, her head felt as if it would explode. "Hello?" "Any word?" It was Aunt Zo. Tessie's heart sank. "No." "Don't worry. She'll turn up." They spoke for a minute before Tessie said she had to go. "I shouldn't tie up the line." Every morning a great wall of fog descends upon the city of San Francisco. It begins far out at sea. It forms over the Farallons, cover- ing the sea lions on their rocks, and then it sweeps onto Ocean Beach, filling the long green bowl of Golden Gate Park. The fog ob- scures the early morning joggers and the lone practitioners of tai chi. It mists up the windows of the Glass Pavilion. It creeps over the en- tire city, over the monuments and movie theaters, over the Panhandle dope dens and the flophouses in the Tenderloin. The fog covers the pastel Victorian mansions in Pacific Heights and shrouds the rainbow-colored houses in the Haight. It walks up and down the twisting streets of Chinatown; it boards the cable cars, making their clanging bells sound like buoys; it climbs to the top of Coit Tower until you can't see it anymore; it moves in on the Mission, where the mariachi players are still asleep; and it bothers the tourists. The fog of 468