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This novel tells the story of Althea Mantourides, an emigré from Greece to America, and the relationships denied and created through this migration. The narrative alternates between Althea's point of view and that of her sixteen-year-old American daughter, Vikki. In this excerpt, Althea remembers the impact of losing her father at a young age and her own mother's refusal to mourn as a widow of that time and place (rural Greece in mid-twentieth century) should do.

THERE ARE WAYS we mourn our dead, my daughter, and none of them have to do with beauty. Rejecting the old ways, you would not understand--and in this, you remind me of one you never knew: your yiayia, my mother. She was beautiful in her mourning clothes, and perhaps that's why father returned to her at night. But I knew better. I could see that she was beautiful, but that's not why he would come to me.

For the forty days of our confinement, mother and I lived inside a tight circle. The house filled every afternoon with women who came offering sympathy. They crowded our small sitting room, drank brewed barley that passed for coffee in hard times, and remembered their dead. Mother sat in the middle of them all, in the high-backed chair, and called me to her side. As the most recent widow, she often took the mourning from the other women, and they willingly gave up their laments to her. She praised father's strength (he was like a cypress), his honor (worthy of a poet's song), and spilled the grief of his absence. When she spoke of his life, her voice was deep and strong. At the mention of his death, her voice sounded metallic and hollow, like the milking pails that sat neglected in the dairy. Sometimes her voice refused words entirely, leaving her mouth to open and close, no sound coming out. Her distress was clear to everyone.

For me, confinement was easy. Forbidden to go anywhere, there was nowhere I wanted to go. I welcomed the company of the grieving women, the way they made me shiver when they sang, putting words to the things I felt but did not know how to say. When my friend Marta came to visit, she sometimes brought clusters of the wildflowers I could not pick with her. I was not supposed to enjoy them, but I did. I watched the clock, waiting for the moment when Marta would come through the door and put her arms around me. She smelled like mountain air and olive soap. The days were predictable, and in this I found comfort.

After the forty days--after the memorial, our slow walk to church with trays of kolyva, wheat for the dead--came uncertainty, and it was then my trials began. Mother went out the next morning with long white candles and a small jug of oil to keep the light burning at father's grave. She did not ask me to go with her but said nothing about where I should go. I dressed for school, keeping the black kerchief on my head, and stepped outside. I pictured the place in the road where Marta and I used to meet, but got only as far as the vegetable garden at the side of our barn. It was overrun with weeds.

I pulled up thistles until angry red scratches covered my palms. When that was done, I fed corn to the animals then shooed them outside except for the she-goats. I tried to milk them as I had seen father do, but they kicked each time I touched their swollen teats; I emptied the barn of them. I reached for the pitchfork that hung high on the wall: jumping was useless, and even standing on a stool did not make me tall enough to shake the fork from its hook. I cleaned the stalls with my bare hands. By noon I was exhausted.

I had so often watched father as he worked; he made everything look easy, but I could do only the lightest of tasks. I looked around and saw empty yogurt pots piled high ouside a shed, unused barrels of brine for making cheese, the vegetable garden and beyond . . . I gave up and went back to the house. As soon as I lay on my bed, I dissolved into tears of self-pity. Like the night father most needed me--nothing I could do made a bit of difference.

I thought of myself and the things stolen from me: my father, his stories, his protective presence; playtime, flowers, and the company of classmates. My life was forever broken, and no one could mend it. Like a badly set bone, the new shape of my days was deformed without father.

But the days went on. Days became weeks, and nothing marked the passage of time except the softening sunlight and a decreasing number of visitors to the farm. Even Marta came less often. Mother went out every day with candles and oil, and I stayed behind. I did what I could but frequently gave up in despair midway through some chore. I sat alone for hours at a time, staring at the walls. I waited for mother to come home, served her meager meals that seemed to take great effort, and went to bed, body heavy from its exertion, heart empty from neglect.

Nothing moved me. Until I saw my face in the looking glass.

Opening the door to the house one afternoon, I glimpsed my eyes staring back at me from the entryway. I was stunned. Rushing to the mirror, which hung in a wood frame from a twisted leather cord, I turned the glass to face the wall. It had been that way, faceless, since father's death. As it should have been. It had been that way that very morning, when I left the house to feed the animals. That it was no longer that way, but instead full of light and life, seemed an unspeakable danger. I turned back the mirror, but my alarm did not fade. I could not shake the idea that the house had suffered further ruin, and I struggled to find a meaning behind this omen.

Mother was responsible, this much I knew. No one else had come and gone. There was no question that she had done this forbidden thing. And what reason would any woman have to turn the face of a mirror, except to see her own? I sank down. Sitting on the floor, I imagined what mother had seen that morning: a woman on her way to mourn; a woman with an oval face, dark symmetrical brows arched above gray-green eyes, a shapely mouth, and skin stretched taut across high cheekbones. I saw a woman thin but beautiful, hungry but divine. And what I saw, I hated.

In times past, I sat frequently at the dressing table in my parents' room, watching mother in a mounted mirror while she worked behind me, tugging gently at my head as she braided my hair and tied up the ends with ribbon to form twin loops. Anticipating the coming years, I thought there was a chance, however slim, that I might become at least half as beautiful. My own skin was darker from long hours in the sun, but unfreckled and still smooth. My hair, while it did not blaze like mother's, was glossy black and just as thick. My eyes, also dark, dominated my face with their wide-set roundness and heavy lashes. My nose was not so fine, and my cheeks appeared too plump, but when I pinched them I felt the bones underneath and hoped in time these would reveal themselves.

My present looks made me wince. I had averted my eyes as I turned the mirror, yet I had not been quick enough. There I saw a much older girl, one beauty had passed over. Although most of my features still huddled close to the middle of my face like a child's, they looked pinched and tired rather than promising. My wide eyes looked cavernous and dull. My skin did not shine; I saw myself through a layer of sweat and grime. My hair, mostly hidden beneath my black scarf, appeared frazzled and dull where it escaped; flecks of straw caught in its tangled strands. The work I did daily mapped itself over my youth, like dirt roads crossing a green hillside.

I wanted nothing more than to turn my image away the way I had turned the mirror, but it held fast in my mind. As I spun thoughts furiously, one after the other, my feelings sharpened to a point of resentment. I wanted to be clean and pretty like mother; in the next instant, the wanting made me feel dirty inside. It was bad enough that mother had given in to vanity, that she dishonored herself--and father!--with this show of desire for an unblemished life. But in so doing, she had been reckless; she left the mirror exposed, and through her carelessness she dragged me, too, into the same dishonor.

Suddenly I knew what I had to do. Pushing myself up, I hurried to the small table beside the high-backed chair where father's portrait watched over the sitting room. I looked into his eyes. Father, the loss of him, deserved everything I could stand. It was not my face but my soul that had become disfigured. I would scour the yearning from my heart, cover myself gladly with the dirt of the farm. What would it matter? Inside I would sparkle and shine. Pure of mind, I would carry on his work. I would make him proud, win him back. Kissing the picture, I sealed my promise. I would mourn him as he deserved.

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