Читать книгу Greek Girl's Secrets - Efrossini AKA Fran Kisser - Страница 13

No one knew of little Efrossini’s dreams. Her first dream was to be able to sleep in that front bedroom her two older sisters had. She loved the breezes that blew through those sheer curtains and lifted them up into the air carrying subtle acacia scents from the blossoming front trees. She loved that room so much she would ask her mother weekly if she could scrub that wooden floor with a special bar soap for wooden floors her mother had made with lavender flowers. This way she could linger in that room and enjoy it like it was her very own bedroom. She also dreamed someday she would get a chance to go to America but with her whole family.

You see when she was about four years old she had tasted America. It was a chocolate bar with the famous brown wrapper. Who doesn’t know or like that bar of sweetness?

An American family rented one of the older luxurious villas in her neighborhood. Their father worked for the American consulate in downtown Thessaloniki. Efrossini’s father had painted that villa. This American family had children around the age of Efrossini and naturally, the children became friends even though they spoke different languages. They played well together and somehow, they communicated by gestures. One day the American mother treated the children with the famous American chocolate bars.

Efrossini was in love. At the tender age of four, she loved America, because of the tasty brown wrapper American chocolate bars.

Little Efrossini also loved the sound of the American language those people spoke. Efrossini had heard the English language at the movies. That language sounded different to her ears, it was stuck up as she used to say. What the little girl loved is the sound of the American language, not English with British accents.

Her sister Roula was sixteen years older than Efrossini so whenever Roula’s boyfriend Taki would come to take her on a date, Malama would insist little four-year-old Efrossini would have to go with them, as a chaperone. Taki was in the military and rode a huge, powerful, motorcycle. Because Efrossini was only four years old, she would be placed on the motorcycle between Taki and Roula and that’s the only way big sister Roula was going on a date.

On their outings, most of the time the motorcycle climbed the hills of nearby Elvetia where the scent of all the young pine trees was so clean and intense. They sat on the dry pine needles. Taki would buy little Efrossini the brown wrapper chocolate bars she loved so much. As little Efrossini was busy eating her bag full of her favorite chocolates, the young couple would hug and kiss. When they went back home Efrossini would tell her mother all about the kisses and the chocolates she had eaten. They were innocent kisses.

A few years later at grade school, she tasted the square yellow cheese. It was cut in such thin slices from the big blocks. She noticed the cheese came out of boxes that said, MADE IN AMERICA. Her mother always packed her a school lunch but Efrossini wanted what some children without a lunch received for free from the school.

She had noticed the red, white and blue flag painted on some food boxes and she liked that too. At home, she had heard kind words of America’s actions after World War II. She was hooked! She connected the beautiful flag that was America that had tasty chocolate bars and the great tasting yellow cheese. Also, all the clothes and the whole trunk from New York had a certain, wonderful American scent. It was the scent of hard candy. The sweet tasting nut and fruit cake in the beautiful tin in the last trunk, the most beautiful doll with the soft rubber body that her aunt had sent her from New York.

Some years later she wanted to learn English at school, but French was compulsory as a second language back then. French was the diplomatic language those years in Europe. That is why her father sent her to a private night school when girls of her age in those days were taking dance lessons. Efrossini had a dancing instructor back at home, her father. She learned the mambo, the tango, the waltz. All by standing on her father’s feet. It was easy for Efrossini to learn English because she already spoke French. These two languages she found out had the same alphabet, but with a different pronunciation.

Efrossini loved to read in Greek, American cartoon magazines and books. When her father enlarged and framed Austrian yiayia’s photograph, he used a piece of plywood for backing of the framed picture which had a colorful American Donald Duck painted on it, she remembers. Her father had a black and white photo of Lana Turner, the beautiful blonde American actress also hanging on their living room wall. He had placed a pin on her lips and sometimes he would have her smoke a cigarette. Obviously, he liked Lana Turner. Malama never said she minded.

In September, when her father took her to the yearly International World’s Fair in downtown Thessaloniki, they would visit the American pavilions with all the futuristic ideas and modern inventions that were to come. At that Fair she watched television for the very first time and loved it!

Her family loved anything American. America was simply a country everyone wanted to go to.

One time, they received a beautiful skirt in the American trunk that was embellished with a unicycle outlined with studded rhinestones. Her mother altered the unusual and beautiful adult yellow and white American made flounced skirt for Efrossini and she was the envy of her neighbors and friends with this spectacular American skirt.

These are the things she knew about America. The little innocent girl simply loved America.

She kept these secret thoughts and dreams to herself. Now her dream was coming true. She will be going to America the country she already loved so, from afar. She was floating on air as if she was a colorful butterfly. She was so happy, filled with anticipation and excitement. She was a beautiful butterfly flying over a field of lavender.