Middlesex
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“We’re from the Ford Sociological Department,” the tall one said. “Is Mr. Stephanides at home?”
“Yes?” Lefty said.
“Mr. Stephanides, let me tell you why we’re here.”
“Management has foreseen,” the short one seamlessly continued, “that five dollars a day in the hands of some men might work a tremendous handicap along the paths of rectitude and right living and might make of them a menace to society in general.”
“So it was established by Mr. Ford”—the taller one again took over—”that no man is to receive the money who cannot use it advisedly and conservatively.”
“Also”—the short one again—“that where a man seems to qualify under the plan and later develops weaknesses, that it is within the province of the company to take away his share of the profits until such time as he can rehabilitate himself. May we come in?”
Once across the threshold, they separated. The tall one took a pad from his briefcase. “I’m going to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind. Do you drink, Mr. Stephanides?”
“No, he doesn’t,” Zizmo answered for him.
“And who are you, may I ask?”
“My name is Zizmo.”
“Are you a boarder here?”
“This is my house.”
“So Mr. and Mrs. Stephanides are the boarders?”
“That’s right.”
“Won’t do. Won’t do,” said the tall one. “We encourage our employees to obtain mortgages.”
“He’s working on it,” Zizmo said.
Meanwhile, the short one had entered the kitchen. He was lifting lids off pots, opening the oven door, peering into the garbage can. Desdemona started to object, but Lina checked her with a glance. (And notice how Desdemona’s nose has begun to twitch. For two days now, her sense of smell has been incredibly acute. Foods are beginning to smell funny to her, feta cheese like dirty socks, olives like goat droppings.)
“How often do you bathe, Mr. Stephanides?” the tall one asked.
“Every day, sir.”
“How often do you brush your teeth?”
“Every day, sir.”
“What do you use?”
“Baking soda.”
Now the short one was climbing the stairs. He invaded my grandparents’ bedroom and inspected the linens. He stepped into the bathroom and examined the toilet seat.
“From now on, use this,” the tall one said. “It’s a dentifrice. Here’s a new toothbrush.”
Disconcerted, my grandfather took the items. “We come from Bursa,” he explained. “It’s a big city.”
“Brush along the gum lines. Up on the bottoms and down on the tops. Two minutes morning and night. Let’s see. Give it a try.”
“We are civilized people.”
“Do I understand you to be refusing hygiene instruction?”
“Listen to me,” Zizmo said. “The Greeks built the Parthenon and the Egyptians built the pyramids back when the Anglo-Saxons were still dressing in animal skins.”
The tall one took a long look at Zizmo and made a note on his pad.
“Like this?” my grandfather said. Grinning hideously, he moved the toothbrush up and down in his dry mouth.
“That’s right. Fine.”
The short one now reappeared from upstairs. He flipped open his pad and began: “Item one. Garbage can in kitchen has no lid. Item two. Housefly on kitchen table. Item three. Too much garlic in food. Causes indigestion.”
(And now Desdemona locates the culprit: the short man’s hair. The smell of brilliantine on it makes her nauseous.)
“Very considerate of you to come here and take an interest in your employee’s health,” Zizmo said. “We wouldn’t want anybody to get sick, now, would we? Might slow down production.”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” said the tall one. “Seeing as you are not an official employee of the Ford Motor Company. However”—turning back to my grandfather—”I should advise you, Mr. Stephanides, that in my report I am going to make a note of your social relations. I’m going to recommend that you and Mrs. Stephanides move into your own home as soon as it is financially feasible.”
“And may I ask what your occupation is, sir?” the short one wanted to know.
“I’m in shipping,” Zizmo said.
“Nice of you gentlemen to stop by,” Lina moved in. “But if you’ll excuse us, we’re just about to have dinner. We have to go to church tonight. And, of course, Lefty has to be in bed by nine to get rest. He likes to be fresh in the morning.”
“That’s fine. Fine.”
Together, they put on their hats and left.
And so we come to the weeks leading up to the graduation pageant. To Desdemona sewing a palikari vest, embroidering it with red, white, and blue thread. To Lefty getting off work one Friday evening and crossing over Miller Road to be paid from the armored truck. To Lefty again, the night of the pageant, taking the streetcar to Cadillac Square and walking into Gold’s Clothes. Jimmy Zizmo meets him there to help him pick out a suit.
“It’s almost summer. How about something cream-colored? With a yellow silk necktie?”
“No. The English teacher told us. Blue or gray only.”
“They want to turn you into a Protestant. Resist!”
“I’ll take the blue suit, please, thank you,” Lefty says in his best English.
(And here, too, the shop owner seems to owe Zizmo a favor. He gives them a 20 percent discount.)
Meanwhile, on Hurlbut, Father Stylianopoulos, head priest of Assumption Greek Orthodox Church, has finally come over to bless the house. Desdemona watches the priest nervously as he drinks the glass of Metaxa she has offered him. When she and Lefty became members of his congregation, the old priest had asked, as a formality, if they had received an Orthodox wedding. Desdemona had replied in the affirmative. She had grown up believing that priests could tell whether someone was telling the truth or not, but Father Stylianopoulos had only nodded and written their names into the church register. Now he sets down his glass. He stands and recites the blessing, shaking holy water on the threshold. Before he’s finished, however, Desdemona’s nose begins acting up again. She can smell what the priest had for lunch. She can detect the aroma under his arms as he makes the sign of the cross. At the door, letting him out, she holds her breath. “Thank you, Father. Thank you.” Stylianopoulos goes on his way. But it’s no use. As soon as she inhales again, she can smell the fertilized flower beds and Mrs. Czeslawski boiling cabbage next door and what she swears must be an open jar of mustard somewhere, all these scents gone wayward on her, as she puts a hand to her stomach.
Right then the bedroom door swings open. Sourmelina steps out. Powder and rouge cover one side of her face; the other side, bare, looks green. “Do you smell something?” she asks.
“Yes. I smell everything.”
“Oh my God.”
“What is it?”
“I didn’t think this would happen to me. To you maybe. But not to me.”
And now we are in the Detroit Light Guard Armory, later that night, 7:00 p.m. An assembled audience of two thousand settles down as the house lights dim. Prominent business leaders greet each other with handshakes. Jimmy Zizmo, in a new cream-colored suit with yellow necktie, crosses his legs, jiggling one saddle shoe. Lina and Desdemona hold hands, joined in a mysterious union.
The curtain parts to gasps and scattered applause. A painted flat shows a steamship, two huge smokestacks, and a swath of deck and railing. A gangway extends into the stage’s other focal point: a giant gray cauldron emblazoned with the words FORD ENGLISH SCHOOL MELTING POT. A European folk melody begins to play. Suddenly a lone figure appears on the gangway. Dressed in a Balkan costume of vest, ballooning trousers, and high leather boots, the immigrant carries his possessions bundled on a stick. He looks around with apprehension and then descends into the melting pot.
“What propaganda,” Zizmo murmurs in his seat.
Lina shushes him.
Now SYRIA descends into the pot. Then ITALY. POLAND. NORWAY. PALESTINE. And finally: GREECE.
“Look, it’s Lefty!”
Wearing embroidered palikari vest, puffy-sleeved poukamiso, and pleated foustanella skirt, my grandfather bestrides the gangway. He pauses a moment to look out at the audience, but the bright lights blind him. He can’t see my grandmother looking back, bursting with her secret. GERMANY taps him on the back. “Macht schnell. Excuse me. Go fastly.”
In the front row, Henry Ford nods with approval, enjoying the show. Mrs. Ford tries to whisper in his ear, but he waves her off. His blue seagull’s eyes dart from face to face as the English instructors appear onstage next. They carry long spoons, which they insert into the pot. The lights turn red and flicker as the instructors stir. Steam rises over the stage.
Inside the cauldron, men are packed together, throwing off immigrant costumes, putting on suits. Limbs are tangling up, feet stepping on feet. Lefty says, “Pardon me, excuse me,” feeling thoroughly American as he pulls on his blue wool trousers and jacket. In his mouth: thirty-two teeth brushed in the American manner. His underarms: liberally sprinkled with American deodorant. And now spoons are descending from above, men are churning around and around …
… as two men, short and tall, stand in the wings, holding a piece of paper …
… and out in the audience my grandmother has a stunned look on her face …
… and the melting pot boils over. Red lights brighten. The orchestra launches into “Yankee Doodle.” One by one, the Ford English School graduates rise from the cauldron. Dressed in blue and gray suits, they climb out, waving American flags, to thunderous applause.
The curtain had barely come down before the men from the Sociological Department approached.
“I pass the final exam,” my grandfather told them. “Ninety-three percent! And today I open savings account.”
“That sounds fine,” the tall one said.
“But unfortunately, it’s too late,” said the short one. He took a slip from his pocket, a color well known in Detroit: pink.
“We did some checking on your landlord. This so-called Jimmy Zizmo. He’s got a police record.”
“I don’t know anything,” my grandfather said. “I’m sure is a mistake. He is a nice man. Works hard.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Stephanides. But you can understand that Mr. Ford can’t have workers maintaining such associations. You don’t need to come down to the plant on Monday.”
As my grandfather struggled to absorb this news, the short one leaned in. “I hope you learn a lesson from this. Mixing with the wrong crowd can sink you. You seem like a nice guy, Mr. Stephanides. You really do. We wish you the best of luck in the future.”
A few minutes later, Lefty came out to meet his wife. He was surprised when, in front of everyone, she hugged him, refusing to let go.
“You liked the pageant?”
“It’s not that.”
“What is it?”
Desdemona looked into her husband’s eyes. But it was Sourmelina who explained it all. “Your wife and I?” she said in plain English. “We’re both knocked up.”
Minotaurs
Which is something I’ll never have much to do with. Like most hermaphrodites but by no means all, I can’t have children. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve never married. It’s one of the reasons, aside from shame, why I decided to join the Foreign Service. I’ve never wanted to stay in one place. After I started living as a male, my mother and I moved away from Michigan and I’ve been moving ever since. In another year or two I’ll leave Berlin, to be posted somewhere else. I’ll be sad to go. This once-divided city reminds me of myself. My struggle for unification, for Einheit. Coming from a city still cut in half by racial hatred, I feel hopeful here in Berlin.
A word on my shame. I don’t condone it. I’m trying my best to get over it. The intersex movement aims to put an end to infant genital reconfiguration surgery. The first step in that struggle is to convince the world—and pediatric endocrinologists in particular—that hermaphroditic genitals are not diseased. One out of every two thousand babies is born with ambiguous genitalia. In the United States, with a population of two hundred and seventy-five million, that comes to one hundred and thirty-seven thousand intersexuals alive today.
But we hermaphrodites are people like everybody else. And I happen not to be a political person. I don’t like groups. Though I’m a member of the Intersex Society of North America, I have never taken part in its demonstrations. I live my own life and nurse my own wounds. It’s not the best way to live. But it’s the way I am.
The most famous hermaphrodite in history? Me? It felt good to write that, but I’ve got a long way to go. I’m closeted at work, revealing myself only to a few friends. At cocktail receptions, when I find myself standing next to the former ambassador (also a native of Detroit), we talk about the Tigers. Only a few people here in Berlin know my secret. I tell more people than I used to, but I’m not at all consistent. Some nights I tell people I’ve just met. In other cases I keep silent forever.
That goes especially for women I’m attracted to. When I meet someone I like and who seems to like me, I retreat. There are lots of nights out in Berlin when, emboldened by a good-value Rioja, I forget my physical predicament and allow myself to hope. The tailored suit comes off. The Thomas Pink shirt, too. My dates can’t fail to be impressed by my physical condition. (Under the armor of my double-breasted suits is another of gym-built muscle.) But the final protection, my roomy, my discreet boxer shorts, these I do not remove. Ever. Instead I leave, making excuses. I leave and never call them again. Just like a guy.
And soon enough I am at it again. I am trying once more, toeing the line. I saw my bicyclist again this morning. This time I found out her name: Julie. Julie Kikuchi. Raised in northern California, graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, and currently in Berlin on a grant from the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien. But more important, right now: my date for Friday night.
It’s just a first date. It won’t come to anything. No reason to mention my peculiarities, my wandering in the maze these many years, shut away from sight. And from love, too.
The Simultaneous Fertilization had occurred in the early morning hours of March 24, 1923, in separate, vertical bedrooms, after a night out at the theater. My grandfather, not knowing he was soon to be fired, had splurged on four tickets to The Minotaur, playing at the Family. At first Desdemona had refused to go. She disapproved of theater in general, especially vaudeville, but in the end, unable to resist the Hellenic theme, she had put on a new pair of stockings, and a black dress and overcoat, and made her way with the others down the sidewalk and into the terrifying Packard.
When the curtain rose at the Family Theater, my relatives expected to get the whole story. How Minos, King of Crete, failed to sacrifice a white bull to Poseidon. How Poseidon, enraged, caused Minos’s wife Pasiphae to be smitten with love for a bull. How the child of that union, Asterius, came out with a bull’s head attached to a human body. And then Daedalus, the maze, etc. As soon as the footlights came on, however, the production’s nontraditional emphasis became clear. Because now they pranced onstage: the chorus girls. Dressed in silver halters, robed in see-through shifts, they danced, reciting strophes that didn’t scan to the eerie piping of flutes. The Minotaur appeared, an actor wearing a papier-mache bull’s head. Lacking any sense of classical psychology, the actor played his half-human character as pure movie monster. He growled; drums pounded; chorus girls screamed and fled. The Minotaur pursued, and of course he caught them, each one, and devoured her bloodily, and dragged her pale, defenseless body deeper into the maze. And the curtain came down.
In the eighteenth row my grandmother gave her critical opinion. “It’s like the paintings in the museum,” she said. “Just an excuse to show people with no clothes.”
She insisted on leaving before Act II. At home, getting ready for bed, the four theatergoers went about their nightly routines. Desdemona washed out her stockings, lit the vigil lamp in the hallway. Zizmo drank a glass of the papaya juice he touted as beneficial for the digestion. Lefty neatly hung up his suit, pinching each trouser crease, while Sourmelina removed her makeup with cold cream and went to bed. The four of them, moving in their individual orbits, pretended that the play had had no effect on them. But now Jimmy Zizmo was turning off his bedroom light. Now he was climbing into his single bed—to find it occupied! Sourmelina, dreaming of chorus girls, had sleepwalked across the throw rug. Murmuring strophes, she climbed on top of her stand-in husband. (“You see?” Zizmo said in the dark. “No more bile. It’s the castor oil.”) Upstairs, Desdemona might have heard something through the floor if she hadn’t been pretending to be asleep. Against her will, the play had aroused her, too. The Minotaur’s savage, muscular thighs. The suggestive sprawl of his victims. Ashamed of her excitement, she gave no outward sign. She switched off the lamp. She told her husband good night. She yawned (also theatrical) and turned her back. While Lefty stole up from behind.
Freeze the action. A momentous night, this, for all involved (including me). I want to record the positions (Lefty dorsal, Lina couchant) and the circumstances (night’s amnesty) and the direct cause (a play about a hybrid monster). Parents are supposed to pass down physical traits to their children, but it’s my belief that all sorts of other things get passed down, too: motifs, scenarios, even fates. Wouldn’t I also sneak up on a girl pretending to be asleep? And wouldn’t there also be a play involved, and somebody dying onstage?
Leaving these genealogical questions aside, I return to the biological facts. Like college girls sharing a dorm room, Desdemona and Lina were both synchronized in their menstrual cycles. That night was day fourteen. No thermometer verified this, but a few weeks later the symptoms of nausea and hypersensitive noses did. “Whoever named it morning sickness was a man,” Lina declared. “He was just home in the morning to notice.” The nausea kept no schedule; it owned no watch. They were sick in the afternoon, in the middle of the night. Pregnancy was a boat in a storm and they couldn’t get off. And so they lashed themselves to the masts of their beds and rode out the squall. Everything they came in contact with, the bedsheets, the pillows, the air itself, began to turn on them. Their husbands’ breath became intolerable, and when they weren’t too sick to move, they were waving their arms, gesturing to the men to keep away.
Pregnancy humbled the husbands. After an initial rush of male pride, they quickly recognized the minor role that nature had assigned them in the drama of reproduction, and quietly withdrew into a baffled reserve, catalysts to an explosion they couldn’t explain. While their wives grandly suffered in the bedrooms, Zizmo and Lefty retreated to the sala to listen to music, or drove to a coffee house in Greektown where no one would be offended by their smell. They played backgammon and talked politics, and no one spoke about women because in the coffee house everyone was a bachelor, no matter how old he was or how many children he’d given a wife who preferred their company to his. The talk was always the same, of the Turks and their brutality, of Venizelos and his mistakes, of King Constantine and his return, and of the unavenged crime of Smyrna burned.
“And does anybody care? No!”
“It’s like what Berenger said to Clemenceau: ‘He who owns the oil owns the world.’”
“Those damn Turks! Murderers and rapists!”
“They desecrated the Hagia Sophia and now they destroyed Smyrna!”
But here Zizmo spoke up: “Stop bellyaching. The war was the Greeks’ fault.”
“What!”
“Who invaded who?” asked Zizmo.
“The Turks invaded. In 1453.”
“The Greeks can’t even run their own country. Why do they need another?”
At this point, men stood up, chairs were knocked over. “Who the hell are you, Zizmo? Goddamned Pontian! Turk-sympathizer!”
“I sympathize with the truth,” shouted Zizmo. “There’s no evidence the Turks started that fire. The Greeks did it to blame it on the Turks.”
Lefty stepped between the men, preventing a fight. After that, Zizmo kept his political opinions to himself. He sat morosely drinking coffee, reading an odd assortment of magazines or pamphlets speculating on space travel and ancient civilizations. He chewed his lemon peels and told Lefty to do so, too. Together, they settled into the random camaraderie of men on the outskirts of a birth. Like all expectant fathers, their thoughts turned to money.
My grandfather had never told Jimmy the reason for his dismissal from Ford, but Zizmo had a good idea why it might have happened. And so, a few weeks later, he made what restitution he could.
“Just act like we’re going for a drive.”
“Okay.”
“If we get stopped, don’t say anything.”
“Okay.”
“This is a better job than the Rouge. Believe me. Five dollars a day is nothing. And here you can eat all the garlic you want.”
They are in the Packard, passing the amusement grounds of Electric Park. It’s foggy out, and late—just past 3 a.m. To be honest, the amusement grounds should be closed at this hour, but, for my own purposes, tonight Electric Park is open all night, and the fog suddenly lifts, all so that my grandfather can look out the window and see a roller coaster streaking down the track. A moment of cheap symbolism only, and then I have to bow to the strict rules of realism, which is to say: they can’t see a thing. Spring fog foams over the ramparts of the newly opened Belle Isle Bridge. The yellow globes of streetlamps glow, aureoled in the mist.
“Lot of traffic for this late,” Lefty marvels.
“Yes,” says Zizmo. “It’s very popular at night.”
The bridge lifts them gently above the river and sets them back down on the other side. Belle Isle, a paramecium-shaped island in the Detroit River, lies less than half a mile from the Canadian shore. By day, the park is full of picnickers and strollers. Fishermen line its muddy banks. Church groups hold tent meetings. Come dark, however, the island takes on an offshore atmosphere of relaxed morals. Lovers park in secluded lookouts. Cars roll over the bridge on shadowy missions. Zizmo drives through the gloom, past the octagonal gazebos and the monument of the Civil War Hero, and into the woods where the Ottawa once held their summer camp. Fog wipes the windshield. Birch trees shed parchment beneath an ink-black sky.
Missing from most cars in the 1920s: rearview mirrors. “Steer,” Zizmo keeps saying, and turns around to see if they’re being followed. In this fashion, trading the wheel, they weave along Central Avenue and The Strand, circling the island three times, until Zizmo is satisfied. At the northeastern end, he pulls the car over, facing Canada.
“Why are we stopping?”
“Wait and see.”
Zizmo turns the headlights on and off three times. He gets out of the car. So does Lefty. They stand in the darkness amid river sounds, waves lapping, freighters blowing foghorns. Then there’s another sound: a distant hum. “You have an office?” my grandfather asks. “A warehouse?”
“This is my office.” Zizmo waves his hands through the air. He points to the Packard. “And that’s my warehouse.” The hum is getting louder now; Lefty squints through the fog. “I used to work for the railroad.” Zizmo takes a dried apricot out of his pocket and eats it. “Out West in Utah. Broke my back. Then I got smart.” But the hum has almost reached them; Zizmo is opening the trunk. And now, in the fog, an outboard appears, a sleek craft with two men aboard. They cut the engine as the boat glides into the reeds. Zizmo hands an envelope to one man. The other whisks the tarp off the boat’s stern. In moonlight, neatly stacked, twelve wooden crates gleam.