In Grade Two, there was a boy in my class who was a Jehovah Witness. At seven, I didn’t know what that meant. All I knew was that he did not have to go to Assembly and that he could sit on the carpet in our classroom and draw. For an extra half hour every Friday. I wanted that.
So one day, I told my teacher that my mother did not want me attending Assembly either. (My mother had made no such declaration. ) When the teacher asked me for the reason, I puffed up my little chest and said as mightily as I could with a mouth lacking several important teeth, “Becauth I am Greek Orthodoth.”
Earlier that year–on the first day of class–the same teacher had called out the anglicized version of my name during roll call. A name that I had been using for the entire first year of big school. “Hope? Hope? Is there a Hope in the room?” Yet, that day, I refused to acknowledge her. Once she had gone through all the other names on her list, her eyes landed on me. “And who are you?” she said. I puffed up my little chest and said as mightily as I could with a mouth lacking several important teeth, “My name ith Elpitha, not Hope.”
There is a tendency for Greek somethings to change their names–streamline them, if you will–into neat English sounding names. But, not I. Elpida it was, Elpida it remained. I don’t know what happened to that hugely patriotic (and clearly trying to milk it for all it could be worth) seven year old in the years that followed.
“I don’t want to do Greek dancing, mama.” I would whine. “I hate Greek school, mama“. “Why don’t I get cheese sandwiches on white bread with the crust cut off like all the other children, mama?”
At 9, I was obsessed with the name Michele so much so that I turned it into an occupation. “When I grow up” I would think, “I want to be a Michele”. In my mind, a Michele was tall and thin and blond. I didn’t know exactly what a Michele did, but I knew what she didn’t do.
She didn’t go to Greek dancing on Friday afternoons where a short woman with impossibly strict hair–achieved by a kilo worth of hairspray–would push and pull me by my arms so that I could properly learn the steps to a traditional folk dance that we would have to perform on some national holiday celebration.
“Ena, dio, tria, HOP!” she would scream. “One, two, three HOP!” Except, she didn’t say hop using the English ‘H’ sound that is so similar to the whisper of a noise we all make when we exhale through our mouths. No! She said hop using the hard, I am simultaneously clearing and collecting saliva from the back of my throat before getting ready to ricochet it across the room Greek ‘H”.
A Michele did not have to go to Greek school twice a week after actual school. She did not have to learn a second alphabet. (Alpha, beta, gamma, delta erm… epsilon?) Or the rules of another language. A Michele would not have been confused on her 11th birthday party and proceeded to extend her hand for an informal shake before kissing all her 11 year old (non-Greek) guests twice on the cheek as she had seen her mother do. Can you say awkward? Well, I can say it in two languages.
I don’t know what happened to that Michele-loving, Greek self-hating, adolescent in the years that followed.
“Aw, I wish I sounded Greek when I spoke in English” I would say. “It sounds so cool.” One night–four years ago–I even begged my friend, R, to teach me a dance native to her island. “It’s my favourite! Pleeease!” When I get to kiss good looking men on both cheeks for no other reason than to say hello?* And when I get to spend as much time as I want discussing how close to the side of my mouth the kiss actually landed with my girlfriends? I am extraordinarily grateful that I can make both the soft and the hard H sound.
Now, if I could just stop insulting my Greek Greek friends by saying insensitive remarks like, “Oh those fucking Greeks!” in reference to the twenty six thousand aspects of Greek life I don’t get?** Then that would really be something.
***
*OK, OK. One mention of boys. You should have seen it coming though, if you know me at all.
**Throwing whatever garbage has accumulated in a car out the window while doing 80 km/h on a busy three lane road.
Yea. I really don’t get that one.
