The Immigrant Song

(My mother and your mother were washing the clothes)

The girl stands plucking branches in the wide expanse of the olive grove. Gazing upwards she closes her eyes to the heavens and welcomes the unexpected breeze dancing through her hair. It cools her sweat-drenched brow and the nape of her neck. The girl knows that the wind wants to trick her. That it leaves behind a salty residue that no amount of scrubbing can erase. Soon her once sun-kissed coppery tresses will be gone forever. The girl knows this and still she welcomes the brief respite from a hellish day. Suddenly the wind rises, making the ruffles of her newly gifted dress snap westward across her chest like a flag lying at half-mast across her milk-heavy bosom. Testing her resolve and playing games not meant for the weak of heart. Dust swirls at her feet. She’s barefoot. The girl looks down at the ebony fabric of her mourning gown and thinks of how it was so hastily sewn together by the same brown-spotted and slightly gnarled fingers that reached into her very core and pulled into the world the mewling cries of all her hungry children. She did remember to say thank you.

(My mother gave your mother a punch in the nose)

The girl stands stretching up onto her toes with arms outstretched and reaching up to the heavens. Straightening out the kinks that seem to have taken up permanent residence in her spine. She does this while standing in the cavernous belly of a stainless steel beast, listening to the whir of clicking needles, a perfectly synchronized song of a thousand nightingales masking the creaking of aching and porous bones and the back and forth roll of a rocking chair that’s been purposefully nailed to the floor. The girl thinks how nice it would have been if their porthole had been left slightly ajar. Squinting up at harsh fluorescent lights the girl turns racoon eyes back to plucking errant threads off of cashmere sweaters and musing over the sound of stamps on passports. The punch of four-by-six rectangles bearing the ink-smudged letters of her name.

(What color was the blood?)

The girl sits hunched over needlework. With every surface of her two-bedroom apartment properly encapsulated by intricately woven doilies in every shade of cream known to man, the girl can finally turn her hands to knitting capes. Capes for her many granddaughters to wear over red ruffled dresses, white knee-high socks, and black Mary Janes polished to a high gloss. The girl hopes that one day, when her granddaughters look down, bored while queued up near the nave of the church. Mouths slightly agape and restless in their readiness to receive their Holy Communion. They just might catch a glimpse of the girl as she once was, standing in the shadow of a giant fleur-de-lis, clutching a maple leaf to her heart, and singing a litany of just what it takes to run headlong into the winds of change.

-Dimitra Merkouris

This story was previously published on Writing in a Woman’s Voice (http://writinginawomansvoice.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-immigrant-song-by-dimitra-merkouris.html) and The Song Is . . . (https://thesongis.blogspot.com/2020/07/welcome-back-to-toula-merkouris.html).

From the author: “My grandmother was a strong woman in a time and under circumstances that did not provide for any other option. She was an integral part of my upbringing and she helped raise her many granddaughters through her parables. By the time I was able to figure out what they all meant, she had passed on. Her parables were the inspiration for my writing her story in the third person.”

Dimitra Merkouris lives on the best street, in the best city, in the best country in the world. She is a retired respiratory therapist, author of the children's book, Darla Dilly, Don’t Be Silly and a first-year English literature student at Queen’s University. She loves poetry, chocolate, and small brown dogs.