He stayed. Later, following an evening Easter celebration, he proposed to me while we were carrying lighted candles home, a Greek Orthodox custom. Our marriage was very Greek and his mother became less the genteel lady who prepared parties for us at her home to a Cretan minotaur seeking live blood. We married, had a family and all I remember is his telling my mother that all I knew was English. I thought it odd since I also spoke fluent Greek even though I taught English at the college.

What he thought I didn't understand was the name games played by Greeks and often imitated by Haitian voodoo cults. To be honest, I didn't spend too much time thinking and evaluating those black rituals until now, when I am much older, tired, and have nothing more to do than to write. An example of what my husband thought I didn't know of black rituals used by Greeks would be to have a parrot in the hallway squawking. My Greek name given at the time of my becoming an American citizen can literally be pronounced decaya. If you drop the a, you have decay. The parrot was her way of saying pray rot.

I can't imagine what other voodoo symbols she used to avenge herself on her daughter-in-law, but to this day, she writes me loving letters and was really a woman towards me, more so than other women friends. I never did tell her that my real name in Greek translates to Dick. Oh, my God! mothers-in-laws are funny.