Middlesex

“You won’t say anything to him?”

“That’ll be easy.” Lina laughed. “He doesn’t listen to me.”

Sourmelina insisted on getting a porter to carry their suitcases to the car, a black-and-tan Packard. She tipped him and climbed behind the wheel, attracting looks. A woman driving was still a scandalous sight in 1922. After resting her cigarette holder on the dashboard, she pulled out the choke, waited the requisite five seconds, and pressed the ignition button. The car’s tin bonnet shuddered to life. The leather seats began to vibrate and Desdemona took hold of her husband’s arm. Up front, Sourmelina took off her satin-strap high heels to drive barefoot. She put the car into gear and, without checking traffic, lurched off down Michigan Avenue toward Cadillac Square. My grandparents’ eyes glazed over at the sheer activity, streetcars rumbling, bells clanging, and the monochrome traffic swerving in and out. In those days downtown Detroit was filled with shoppers and businessmen. Outside Hudson’s Department Store the crowd was ten thick, jostling to get in the newfangled revolving doors. Lina pointed out the sights: the Café Frontenac … the Family Theatre … and the enormous electric signs: Ralston … Wait & Bond Blackstone Mild 10¢ Cigar. Above, a thirty-foot boy spread Meadow Gold Butter on a ten-foot slice of bread. One building had a row of giant oil lamps over the entrance to promote a sale on until October 31. It was all swirl and hubbub, Desdemona lying against the backseat, already suffering the anxiety that modern conveniences would induce in her over the years, cars mainly, but toasters, too, lawn sprinklers and escalators; while Lefty grinned and shook his head. Skyscrapers were going up everywhere, and movie palaces and hotels. The twenties saw the construction of nearly all Detroit’s great buildings, the Penobscot Building and the second Buhl Building colored like an Indian belt, the New Union Trust Building, the Cadillac Tower, the Fisher Building with its gilded roof. To my grandparents Detroit was like one big Koza Han during cocoon season. What they didn’t see were the workers sleeping on the streets because of the housing shortage, and the ghetto just to the east, a thirty-square-block area bounded by Leland, Macomb, Hastings, and Brush streets, teeming with the city’s African Americans, who weren’t allowed to live anywhere else. They didn’t see, in short, the seeds of the city’s destruction—its second destruction—because they were part of it, too, all these people coming from everywhere to cash in on Henry Ford’s five-dollar-a-day promise.

The East Side of Detroit was a quiet neighborhood of single-family homes, shaded by cathedral elms. The house on Hurlbut Street Lina drove them to was a modest, two-story building of root-beer-colored brick. My grandparents gaped at it from the car, unable to move, until suddenly the front door opened and someone stepped out.

Jimmy Zizmo was so many things I don’t know where to begin. Amateur herbalist; antisuffragist; big-game hunter; ex-con; drug pusher; teetotaler—take your pick. He was forty-five years old, nearly twice as old as his wife. Standing on the dim porch, he wore an inexpensive suit and a shirt with a pointy collar that had lost most of its starch. His frizzy black hair gave him the wild look of the bachelor he’d been for so many years, and this impression was heightened by his face, which was rumpled like an unmade bed. His eyebrows, however, were as seductively arched as a nautch girl’s, his eyelashes so thick he might have been wearing mascara. But my grandmother didn’t notice any of that. She was fixated on something else.

“An Arab?” Desdemona asked as soon as she was alone with her cousin in the kitchen. “Is that why you didn’t tell us about him in your letters?”

“He’s not an Arab. He’s from the Black Sea.”

“This is the sala,” Zizmo was meanwhile explaining to Lefty as he showed him around the house.

“Pontian!” Desdemona gasped with horror, while also examining the icebox. “He’s not Muslim, is he?”

“Not everybody from the Pontus converted,” Lina scoffed. “What do you think, a Greek takes a swim in the Black Sea and turns into a Muslim?”

“But does he have Turkish blood?” She lowered her voice. “Is that why he’s so dark?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.”

“You’re free to stay as long as you like”—Zizmo was now leading Lefty upstairs—“but there are a few house rules. First, I’m a vegetarian. If your wife wants to cook meat, she has to use separate pots and dishes. Also, no whiskey. Do you drink?”

“Sometimes.”

“No drinking. Go to a speakeasy if you want to drink. I don’t want any trouble with the police. Now, about the rent. You just got married?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of dowry did you get?”

“Dowry?”

“Yes. How much?”

“But did you know he was so old?” Desdemona whispered downstairs as she inspected the oven.

“At least he’s not my brother.”

“Quiet! Don’t even joke.”

“I didn’t get a dowry,” answered Lefty. “We met on the boat over.”

“No dowry!” Zizmo stopped on the stairs to look back at Lefty with astonishment. “Why did you get married, then?”

“We fell in love,” Lefty said. He’d never announced it to a stranger before, and it made him feel happy and frightened all at once.

“If you don’t get paid, don’t get married,” Zizmo said. “That’s why I waited so long. I was holding out for the right price.” He winked.

“Lina mentioned you have your own business now,” Lefty said with sudden interest, following Zizmo into the bathroom. “What kind of business is it?”

“Me? I’m an importer.”

“I don’t know of what,” Sourmelina answered in the kitchen. “An importer. All I know is he brings home money.”

“But how can you marry somebody you don’t know anything about?”

“To get out of that country, Des, I would have married a cripple.”

“I have some experience with importing,” Lefty managed to get in as Zizmo demonstrated the plumbing. “Back in Bursa. In the silk industry.”

“Your portion of the rent is twenty dollars.” Zizmo didn’t take the hint. He pulled the chain, unleashing a flood of water.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Lina was continuing downstairs, “when it comes to husbands, the older the better.” She opened the pantry door. “A young husband would be after me all the time. It would be too much of a strain.”

“Shame on you, Lina.” But Desdemona was laughing now, despite herself. It was wonderful to see her old cousin again, a little piece of Bithynios still intact. The dark pantry, full of figs, almonds, walnuts, halvah, and dried apricots, made her feel better, too.

“But where can I get the rent?” Lefty finally blurted out as they headed back downstairs. “I don’t have any money left. Where can I work?”

“Not a problem.” Zizmo waved his hand. “I’ll speak to a few people.” They came through the sala again. Zizmo stopped and looked significantly down. “You haven’t complimented my zebra skin rug.”

“It’s very nice.”

“I brought it back from Africa. Shot it myself.”

“You’ve been to Africa?”

“I’ve been all over.”

Like everybody else in town, they squeezed in together. Desdemona and Lefty slept in a bedroom directly above Zizmo and Lina’s, and the first few nights my grandmother climbed out of bed to put her ear to the floor. “Nothing,” she said, “I told you.”

“Come back to bed,” Lefty scolded. “That’s their business.”

“What business? That’s what I’m telling you. They aren’t having any business.”

While in the bedroom below, Zizmo was discussing the new boarders upstairs. “What a romantic! Meets a girl on the boat and marries her. No dowry.”

“Some people marry for love.”

“Marriage is for housekeeping and for children. Which reminds me.”

“Please, Jimmy, not tonight.”

“Then when? Five years we’ve been married and no children. You’re always sick, tired, this, that. Have you been taking the castor oil?”

“Yes.”