Orange, Bread, Please, Love 

by GRACE TSICHLIS

I want to be friends with my Greek dry cleaner. I do not know his name (but I imagine it is Nick). Inside the store, there is a small table in the left corner. Sitting atop is a green leafy plant and a small Greek flag, standing upright in its dirt. Racks of clothes draped in plastic jackets line the back of the store. It is never-ending. The dry cleaner pushes a button and the clothes swing forward on the racks, like magic. In the opposite corner, there is an older woman pushing on the pedal of the sewing machine. She looks just like my father’s yiayia, so even though I have never asked the Dry Cleaner where he is from, I have come to the conclusion that he is A Real Greek. 

I describe myself and my immediate family as “watered-down Greeks.” I cannot speak Greek and when I was growing up, I scoffed at the Greek language flashcards my parents encouraged my brother and I to study. A few words remain: 

Portokáli (orange, like the fruit) 

Psomí (bread) 

Parakaló (please) 

Agapó (love) 

An overwhelming collection of words that begin with P. Words that would get me nowhere fast in a foreign-to-me-but-not-to-my-ancestors country. “Please bread.” Or, “please orange.” Or, “love bread.” I would be fed, at least. Lost, but never hungry. Why is it these words that have stuck to me after all these years? I do not know. Maybe it was the dramatic accent my brother put on when throwing these words around. Maybe it is some deeper reflection of items that my family values, but that feels too generous. 

My Greek dry cleaner looks to be in his late 50s, with dark hair like mine, and thick eyebrows. When I was dropping off my boyfriend’s suit he asked for my last name. I told him, thinking he would smile knowingly like “Ah, another. One of us!” And we could have a fulfilling and beautiful conversation that I would think about for days to come. My Papou would have loved that I found a Greek dry cleaner. From beyond the grave, I imagine he is asking me to find out where the Dry Cleaner’s family is from because maybe we are from the same village (unlikely). Despite being born in America, my Papou loved Greece more than he loved America, which for a Midwest Republican, is a crazy feat. Back in the dry cleaner’s, no such fantasy occurred. The dry cleaner simply informed me that I did not have an account on file and would I like to start one? Yes, I nodded, slightly disappointed. 

I did not notice the dry cleaner’s accent the first time I stopped in. I wonder how long he has lived here in Chicago. Most of his adult life, I would imagine. If we were friends, I would know the answer. It would be a normal fact that I would know about his life. He would even perhaps give me a discount. 

I started going to this dry cleaner after a string of summer weddings that many mid-to-late twenty somethings find themselves invited to. Love was in our faces all summer long. In between the weddings, I made my boyfriend watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding. I think I love My Big Fat Greek Wedding as much as I love my boyfriend. I know that loving this movie does not make me more Greek but I like to entertain the idea. Has my dry cleaner seen it? Does he scoff at it the same way I scoffed at those flashcards? I hope not. It really is a stunning piece of cinema. The sequels, not so much, but when Tom Hanks is bankrolling your mediocre sequels, who really cares? The movie reminds me of my mother and her quiet British family meeting my dad’s loud, Greek-American family who poked and prodded and begrudgingly welcomed her in. 

Did my Papou love Greece or did he love being Greek, and is there a difference? And how are we describing the difference between Greeks and Greek Americans? Do Greeks laugh at us? Do they laugh at the intense fervor we have for a country and people that many of us have never experienced? There is something strangely comical about such a passionate desire to belong, but why? When my Papou took my Grandma (a non-Greek) to Greece all those years ago, he could only respond with nouns to the taxi driver. He told us this story with a huge laugh, but I have to wonder if losing his mother’s tongue hurt him more than he would admit. I cannot imagine losing the ability to speak my own mother’s language. There is a language my ancestors knew, but I will never speak it as freely nor as confidently. As of right now, I am confined to the flashcards. 

When I do eventually fly across the ocean, I will be a tourist. A tourist who can ask for bread and not much else. If only my dry cleaner would come along! He would know the best restaurants, the most secluded beaches, the best connections. Free ouzo at the snap of his fingers. 

On the short walk from my apartment to pick up the freshly laundered shirts, I tell myself this will be the time I ask the dry cleaner where he is from. We will have a great conversation about his hometown, and he will ask me where my family is from. I walk in silence, absorbed by these thoughts. Have I convinced myself that these kinds of friendships will somehow make me more of A Real Greek? That in wake of my Papou’s death, the last of his generation, that I must run into the arms of the nearest Greek to make up for lost time, lost history? 

Inside the dry cleaners, it is busy. A long line of impatient people has formed. I wait my turn, my nerve fading quickly; something that never happened to my Papou. He was more self-possessed and unflinching than I will ever be. When it is my turn, I grab our clothes and say nothing. I exit quietly. 

“A real Greek might end on this tragic note. But an American is inclined to stay upbeat,” Jeffrey Eugenides wrote in Middlesex. I follow his advice. 

The sun is bright. In one hand, I clutch the clean clothes, and with the other I check my phone. A text from my mom to my brother and I. Look what I found. Under the text bubble, an image appears. My mom holding a small flashcard with a white background and blue border. A cartoon orange in the center with the words πορτοκάλι—portokáli. 

At my Papou’s funeral, his niece shared stories about the lemon tree in the backyard of my great-papou and yiayia’s house. How they would slice the lemons in half and dip them in sugar for dessert. How my dad’s cousin went back to that house in the late nineties to see it in person and our distant relative thought he was there to steal the house out from under him. How my great aunt almost started a riot on a cable car in Thessaloniki. 

I go back and forth on what it means to be A Real Greek—someone who can speak the language? Someone who was born and raised in Greece? Someone who makes loukoumades and baklava from scratch? But I am constantly reminded of the language, the culture, and my family when I am simply paying attention, and that will have to be enough. The back-and-forth will not go away, but it doesn’t need to. 

Clothes from the funeral sit in a pile in the corner of our apartment. I will have to go back to the dry cleaner.