Naked Read Online Free PDF Page B

backed into a parking space. The impact was next to nothing, but she’d broken her hip in the fall.
    “That’s a shame,” my mother said, admiring her newly frosted hair in the bathroom mirror. “I guess now they’ll have to shoot
     her.”
    My father flew to Cortland and returned announcing that once she recovered, Ya Ya would be moving in with us. “We’ll move
     a few of the girls downstairs to the basement, and Ya Ya can take the bedroom across the hall from your mother and me, won’t
     that be fun!” He tried his best to make it sound madcap and adventurous, but the poor man wasn’t fooling anybody, least of
     all my mother.
    “What’s wrong with a nursing home?” she asked. “That’s what normal people do. Better yet, you could lease her out to a petting
     zoo. Smuggle her aboard a tanker and ship her back to the old country, why don’t you. Hire her a full-time baby-sitter, enlist
     her in the goddamned Peace Corps, buy her a camper and teach her to drive — all I know is that she’s not moving in here, do
     you understand me? There’s no way I’ll have her moping around
my
house, buddy, no way in hell.”
    We had lived in our house for two years and it still smelled new until Ya Ya moved in with her blankets and trunks and mildewed,
     overstuffed chairs that carried the unmistakable scent of her old apartment. Overnight our home smelled like the cloakroom
     at the Greek Orthodox church.
    “It’s the incense,” my mother said. “Tell her she’s not allowed to burn any more of that stinking myrrh in her bed-room.”
    “Tell the girl to give me back the matches,” Ya Ya said.
    For a town its size, Raleigh was home to a surprising number of Greeks whose social life revolved around the Holy Trinity
     Orthodox Church. Our father dropped us off each Sunday on his way to the putting green and picked us up an hour or two after
     the service had ended. “She’ll make friends there,” he predicted. “They’ll love her down at the church.”
    There were quite a few oldsters at the Holy Trinity, widows like Ya Ya who dressed in black and supported themselves on canes
     and walkers. Still, it was difficult to imagine Ya Ya’s having friends. She didn’t drive, didn’t write letters or use the
     telephone, and never mentioned anyone back in Cortland, where she’d had umpteen years to make friends. What made my father
     think she might change all of a sudden?
    “She could, I don’t know, go to the movies with Mrs. Dombalis,” he said.
    “Right,” my mother agreed. “Then they can wolf down a few steaks at the Peddler before heading over to the discotheque. Face
     it, baby, it’s just not going to happen.”
    Her first Sunday in our church, Ya Ya stopped the service when she tossed aside her cane and crawled up the aisle on her hands
     and knees. The priest saw her coming, and we watched as he nervously shifted his eyes, taking one step back, then another
     and another. The man was pinned against the altar when Ya Ya finally caught up with him, caressing and ultimately kissing
     his shoes.
    Someone needed to step forward and take charge of the situation, but my mother was at home asleep and my father was at the
     golf course. That left my sisters and me, and we wanted no part of it. Members of the congregation turned their heads, searching
     for the next of kin, and we followed suit.
    “Beats me,” we said. “I’ve never seen her before in my life. Maybe she’s with the Stravides.”
    Over time we learned to anticipate this kind of behavior. My mother would take Ya Ya to the department store for new underwear,
     and we’d watch from behind the racks as she wandered out of the dressing room in her bra and knee-length bloomers. Once in
     the parking lot she would stoop to collect empty cans and Styrofoam cups, stray bits of card-board, and scraps of paper, happily
     tossing it all out the window once the car reached a manicured residential street. She wasn’t senile or vindictive, she