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September 29, 2024

Husband's dream, my nightmare – Chapter 4

On our way back from the hospital, neither Thanassis, my husband or I said a single word. The unease was so overwhelming, you could feel it in the air. I had woken in a puddle of blood on the stretcher and was asked to swallow two pills; I was in a state of shock. I’d given birth to a lovely baby just a little more than 40 days ago and now blood flowed between my thighs once again. The old doctor had damaged, butchered and aborted me. When Husband got me pregnant with my first child, my two brothers-in-law had convinced him to marry me because I was the first one of his conquests who refused to go through with the abortion he wanted. It was a shotgun wedding. I’d agreed to it then, but this time, I wasn’t even given a chance to voice my wishes.

I was thirsty. On the backseat of the old car the village baker owned, my body was contorted in pain. In front of me, Husband smoked like a chimney and entertained himself by trying to keep the smoke in his lungs for as long as possible. In his empire of silence, he completely ignored me. I looked at my friend Thanassis in the rear-view mirror and my mood lifted.
— “Please, Thanassis, open a window. My mouth is completely dry. I need to drink water.”
Husband continued to ignore me and swallow cigarette smoke until we stopped at the only gas station between the city and the village, located almost at the halfway point.
— “Let’s get out and stretch our legs,” Husband said.
— “Good idea,” replied Thanassis.

I opened the backseat door and did my best to get out. As I took a step, I noticed that I’d stained my dress and the backseat and that blood was trickling down my legs.
— “Thanassis, please ask someone for a wet cloth so I can freshen up. And if there’s a woman around, I’d like to talk to her.”

An elderly woman seated in a corner dropped her knitting and approached me. She understood the situation immediately when she saw my frightened eyes, my pale face and my legs glued together. The old woman wiped the blood from my thighs and handed me clean strips of fabric and suggested I go lie down while she cleaned the backseat of the car. Once inside, she led me to the back. That’s when I discovered that the gas station housed a small secret room from which the elderly lady provided nursing services as well as the occasional abortion for local women. She helped me onto her makeshift bed covered in old bedsheets.

When we finally made it back, I immediately told Despina, my sister-in-law, that after the usual postpartum examination, I’d been put to sleep without my consent and that they’d removed the embryo of another child. “Men have no idea what women go through. I was happily married and I gave birth to a still-born son,” she told me.  After a few tears were shed, I told her about the old woman at the garage. According to Despina, it was a well-kept secret that everyone knew, but never talked about. Halfway between Thessaloniki and the few villages near Krya Vrysi, young girls who ended up pregnant illicitly visited the old woman at the garage. She’d remove the unwanted package and sew up the hymen so the young girl would be eligible for marriage again.

This reminds me of a story from the time I lived in Montreal. I’d been married for just over two years and my belly was almost ready to deliver my second baby, a daughter. One of Husband’s good friends had invited us to his upcoming wedding. Mercifully one of my sisters-in-law lent me a maternity dress that fit me. Born in Canada to a couple of Greek immigrants, the 17-year-old bride worked with her father who’d become a restaurant owner on Park Avenue. She spoke English and French perfectly. In those days, believe it not, it was customary for the future husband to sleep with the bride-to-be a day or two before the wedding so that he could be certain of her virginity. Unfortunately, in this case, the promised girl wasn’t. When the groom’s mother found out, she promptly cancelled the wedding. The future husband who loved his bride dearly, ended up with empty arms and a broken heart.

But let’s get back to the day after my follow-up visit at the hospital. Husband was up and he was holding the littlest one in his arms. He was tickling him to try and make me laugh, I guess. It was my third baby, but he was holding one of his children in his arms for the very first time.

Did he want to be forgiven, exonerated, pardoned? Did he want me to believe that he’d done us a service the day before? Everything about his behaviour exasperated me. He was an uneducated, lazy, ignorant man who was full of himself, irresponsible, illogical and unpredictable. The latter terrified me the most. Did he still think that life in Greece was a lot easier than in America? It had been over six months, and he hadn’t yet found an opportunity to make a good living. Had he even actually looked for work?

That month, the garden was exploding with vegetables. I’d harvested and stored them on the second floor of the house. We’d gotten so many onions that I had to teach Despina, my sister-in-law, how to make preserves. One day, I dispatched a big white chicken for dinner. The kids had fun playing with the bird’s feathers. The oldest loved chicken thighs with shoestring fries prepared in a cast iron pan. The kids would ask for ketchup! What to do? I puréed a few ripe tomatoes and made homemade ketchup.

At the end of September, I started to worry. Seeing that Husband still wasn’t working, the baker gave me day-old bread and a few unsold buns for my kids. Were Husband’s pockets truly that empty? I had no idea how much he had. At the village coffee shop, the men were all talking about the terrible lack of good-paying jobs.
— “Where could we go?”
— “Maybe Germany?” whispered Thanassis. “Most Greek men are already there working in factories, on farms or in restaurants.”
— “Germany, Canada or the US… it’s all the same!” barked Husband when I tried to test the waters.
— “How about Hamburg, Munich or Cologne? Your two brothers live like kings in Canada with their restaurants. Their families want for nothing. Please let’s return to Canada. Let’s ask for the baby’s passport and go. Let’s not delay!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Cora
❤️

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