Colby Cedar Smith - Call Me Athena: Girl from Detroit

Certain long-standing institutions and public figures are mentioned, but the characters in the book are a product of the authors imagination. ATTENTION: SCHOOLS AND BUSINESSES Andrews McMeel books are available at quantity discounts with bulk purchase for educational, business, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail the Andrews McMeel Publishing Special Sales Department: . For my grandmother and her six great-grandchildren.

You think you can smother it with your boot. As you tap and kick and stomp, it spreads across the grass. Once the spark grows, it has a will of its own. It changes everything in its path. All you can do is stand there. With a useless bucket in your hands.

As you watch the entire field burn. I wish I could spin my body so fast it could rotate the earth. I wish I could reverse the months, the days, the hours. Go back to the beginning. I wish it could have been me. Mary Detroit, Michigan 1933 They say twin souls can communicate without talking.

Marguerite and I never stop. Not even when were asleep. I put my head next to hers. I imagine her thoughts traveling faster than the speed of light into my brain. All the static vanishes and we become a radio tuned to the same frequency. I wake to a swarm of mosquitoes tickling my cheek and buzzing my ears.

I swat them from the air. Youre breathing on me. I open one eye and see her. Im still asleep. So am I. Good.

We close our eyes. After a moment, I feel a tickling on my cheek again. Are you awake? My sister is as warm as a log on a fire. She fuels me. We walk down the hall into the crowded living room. Shield our bodies from our three long-limbed younger brothers, who snap and twist against each other.

Cerberus, the three-headed dog, guarding the gates of the underworld. They look up and greet us in unison, Good morning! before they rush us. John puts me in a headlock and tugs my braid. Gus wrestles Marguerite to the ground while she kicks herself free until my dad looks up from his newspaper and yells STOP! Or Ill send you back to the old country! Sometimes I wish he would. Our apartment is as small as a rabbit den. Just like rabbits my parents keep adding new babies that take up space.

I look at my mother. Hands over her eyes, wondering what to do with her brood. Her belly swells with yet another mouth to feed. Why did my parents come to America? If I had a quarter for every time I asked this question, Id be richer than Henry Ford. Mama ladles the batter for crpes onto the pan and turns itjust so. With one flick of her wrist, she flips the thin golden pancake onto the plate.

The first one there gets the crpe. So you have to be fast. My brother Jim wins the prize and slathers it with strawberry preserves. Rolls it and eats it. All hot and gooey. Not me.

I just keep grabbing and grabbing and placing the crpes in my lap. After breakfast, I will hide them in my drawers underneath my folded clothes. Its good to have a crpe on hand when you need one. And a few for your sister too. My brother John leans back. His hands crossed behind his neck.

His dirty boots on the table. ! (Rem li!) Slob! My father cuffs him on the back of the head so hard his teeth rattle. Gold tokens in a slot machine. John sits up and smirks as if someone has made a joke. I half expect him to spit gold coins into his cupped hands and scream, Jackpot! Just to spite the old man. Mary! I look at him sideways.

Yes, Baba? I cant remember the last time he addressed me. Dimitris Nicolaides came to the shop. He asked about you. My mothers eyebrows rise as her lips form into an O. I can hear the silent, O, Mary! O, what luck! She clasps her hands together. A husband. A husband.

An old, rich, Greek husband. To put me in my place. Your eyes are the color of cultures clashing she says, as she kisses me between my lashes. The dark brown of the Greeks mixed with the stormy gray of northwestern France. My eyes turn green with anger. Oh, Mary, calm yourself.

You must get used to the idea of marriage. Marguerite pats my hand. Her eyes calm as a fox. Liquid pools of the sweetest amber. My eyes glow like a serpent. The sixteen-year-old girls in our town are precious candies waiting in a crystal dish.

The boys get to reach in, choose whichever treat they want. Marguerite will be taken by a man from a good family. She is sweet and brings a smile to your mouth. When I talk, boys look like theyve bitten on something bitter. I imagine Im pulling on a silk dress with a feathered boa and matching slippers. Instead, I squeeze into a wool dress that is two sizes too small.

The fabric barely buttons across my growing breasts. I am filled with defeat even before I arrive at the battlefront. School. I tuck mothers rouge, a secret, into my pocket. Secure my stockings with hidden red ribbons around my thighs. A little color just for me.

I try to fix my hair never sleek and kept. A dark-brown, wild, tickling monster that longs for the inside of my mouth. Ive always felt a womans power is in her hair. The problem is I have more of it than most. And I have no idea how to tame it. We climb down the stairs pass through our fathers store and enter the busy street.

Our neighborhood smells like trash metal and oil ammonia slaughtered chickens and roasted goat meat. Folks from Greece, Romania, Poland, and Mexico, and many Black families whove come up from the South inhabit the row houses and duplexes along our street. Most of our neighbors came to Detroit because Ford paid his workers well. $5 a day. Word spread far and wide. My mother says Ill never have to travel to learn the ways of the world.

The whole world lives in Detroit. For twenty years the factories fed and nourished every part of this town. Food on the table. Money in the schools. Doctors for the sick. Every morning the citizens walked in one direction toward the factory floors.

The River Rouge. Animals gathering at the watering hole. Detroit drank deep. Sustenance. Now, water is scarce. We pray the source wont run dry.

Marguerite and I hold hands as we pass the lines. Neighbors wait in the courtyard of the Sacred Heart Church. A nun ladles soup into wooden bowls. The priest rips bread and places it into waiting mouths. A woman stands on a soapbox, speaking so vehemently spittle flicks from her teeth. I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God ! Its difficult to decide where to look.