The nurse was native, born to Thira, trained in Athens, and not twenty-three; how much older he was than Cher couldn’t have mattered any less than it did. He liked women. She liked men who liked women. Cher even liked men who didn’t particularly show they liked women, who affected disdain or dislike. The man who shared his rooms at Villas Annabelle had been “aloof.” He had stayed “aloof” for that matter but exchanges had occurred pleasant for both. Cher could work with “aloof,” or had done before the donkey went down and she went over.
In the meantime, Anastas was warm. Family warm. Olive eyes of concern, concern bulging over, Cher needed concern, Cher believed his was true and the painkillers helped her believe all things. Like the halo wouldn’t stay on forever. Twelve weeks at the outside. And her bruised voice would heal. Who she would speak with that would understand Californese, she didn’t know, but she would speak when she could, tell them her name, who she was, where she stayed . . . There was a translator, a girl still in high school, who came by and asked after Cher’s comforts. Cher thinks that she wrote her name, Cher Lindegarde, on a form someone held on that first day in. Or she dreamed she held a felt tip pen that marked black and printed her name. She stayed fuzzy on details, could not pick out her doctors from the rest of the staff, relied on Anastas for comfort.
“All the bright new young actors are Jessica Simpsons,” she mumbles unintelligibly, “and the boys don’t know who they’ll be . . .” and she slept.
Mom, Mom? Mommy? Cher’s dreams give little peace. Sunny? Dad? Mom? “Ah, Anastas. I knew you’d be there.” She can’t understand a word she says on the outside. What leaves her brain as intelligible, leaves her lips as mumble-guck. He knows little English, might not know the difference . . . Would it, does it matter if he does?
When his hand leaves her own tucked under the turned down sheet, she doesn’t feel it in her sleep.
The high school girl, Alexa, understood Californese. She had a cellphone and a cousin in Sacramento her same age; they talked everyday, mostly in Greek but when Alexa insisted, in English. The cousin wanted the rush of her natural tongue; Alexa wanted to practice the foreign. “Canyonwiper,” Cher says, nodding at Alexa. Cher’s tongue is big in her mouth and she says candystriper again, more slowly this time: “Can-yon-wipe-er,” but the girl looks down and away, studies the back of her right hand and the palm and how the yellow pencil angles up between two fingers. There is color rising up from her collar, enough so that Cher wonders what has upset her and she draws a big question mark on her tablet and turns the question toward the girl, who shrugs with obvious embarrassment.
One of the doctors comes. Cher holds her hand out like a white-gloved traffic cop in New York City. She points at the girl and stares at the doctor and says, “Canyonwiper,” with all the urgency she can muster. The doctor, who counts on the girl to translate what the American patient is saying, gives Alexa a penetrating look, eyes squeezed down to pinpoint what breach in manners had taken place. It is obvious, it seems, to him that the girl has offended the alarmingly pretty patient in some manner. It is not, however, an incident that will ever be satisfied by any involved or concerned.
The doctor checked what doctors check, Alexa text-messaged her cousin in Sacramento a memo in Greek, Δεν βρέθηκαν λέξεις. Cher drifted back to sleep.
“The man, Mr. Stamatos, want you to pay for his mule, his donkey. The one they had to kills with a brick when you fall off.”
Cher looked up from her idle hands. They want me to pay for the ass that did this to me? Her tongue, as it turned out, was big in her mouth because she had very nearly bitten it off when the cable saved her life. If she had bitten it clean through, one of two things could have transpired: 1) she would’ve choked to death on her own tongue rather than the asphyxiation-by-hoodie that nearly occurred; or 2) she would’ve spat her tongue out to fall the 300 feet below and land in the vicinity of the sunken cruise ship from the year before. She would’ve been too high to have heard if it hit the water or thunked on the shoreline or rooftops.
It was the drugs that allowed her to watch the girl, Alexa, shrug and dissemble her way through what Mr. Stamatos wanted and amputated tongue scenarios. She shook her haloed head. On the tablet she wrote, I want to talk with Grace Lindegarde, my mother, or Paul Lindegarde, my father. Not talk. email. I want to email my family. Please.
“Mr. Stamatos is here, just here, outside the door. He waits for the price of his mule-”
Cher threw the tablet and the bright yellow pencil and Alexa grabbed her black curls covering her ears and dodged out the door.
In the corridor Mr. Stamatos heard three pitchy moans, like harness and tack caught to scrape against concrete till it made goosebumps stand hairs up on end. Cher was screeching “Ineedfamily. Ineedmyfamily. Sendmysistermamadaddy.” Someone, please, send me home. Anas was good for moment-comfort, touch-comfort, sense-comfort. But did anyone know her here, in Athens? Anyone besides Mr. Stamatos, the donkey man?
On Santorini, Thira, at Mama’s Cafe there’d been a few regulars. They talked. But friends? Not quite. Since leaving home for college on the opposite coast, there hadn’t been any missing home to speak of; she could rember none, zilch, zero. The wall was white and the curtains, white, and she was in danger of actually crying. Her eyes were hot. She needed a friend. She had none. Maybe one. If forced to name a name or die, Cher would say it was Sunny, her sister – her good and practical sister. Sunny, with her hardish sort of life, in Cher’s estimation, who worked it and laughed it better than how Cher imagined an itinerant auditor ought to be able to do. Postcards used to come home from all over the greater west. “Look, Cher! The biggest egg in the WORLD. Do you believe it? Winlock, Washington. What a sight!” What’s on it, Mom?” “An egg. A really big-” “What’s written on it from Sunny, I mean.” “Oh, the usual.”
Somewhere at home in a deep drawer there were photos of sunsets and cacti that went on forever, of oceans and suns that never seemed to set, of glaciers in Yellowstone and lakes in Yosemite, and sun-dusted pueblos in Rim of Fire country, New Mexico. Sunnie drove everywhere there was a Gas-M-Up Lucky Mart and Convenience Store franchise. The franchises went by a variety of names; for Cher, the GMU Lucky M&CS always stuck with her though, from the time she was a freshman in high school and Sunny’s MBA was brand new, as was the job. The Gas-M-Up Lucky Mart and Conveniece Store? All those years of books and that’s what her Sis got? Cher got stony looks from her Mom, but she never could help but laugh.
Had she mentioned her sister to the man she shared rooms with on Santorini, the aloof college dean? She thought she had. There’d been an evening, one evening less mechanical than others, and sisters had been mentioned – his, and his estrangement from her; Cher’s and her fondness for her. Yes. Her truest and best friend, if Cher had to pick, was Sunny. When her tongue healed, she would call Sunny first. What a good laugh they’d have. What a good laugh.
[word count 1308]
