Tetka Eva’s
Into Tetka Eva’s humble wood-frame house we’d walk out of
the drizzle.
A living room shining with laughter and shouts, it’s here
that our Croatian
relatives swarm, partying it up good. Exuberance
overflows from these Nashkis,
fills the space, like downtown at rush hour.
Aunt Sylvia plants a red lip-sticked kiss on my cheek as
I reel and stagger
from a gust of perfume, then Uncle Frank bursts from the
throng, thrusts
his half glass of brown whiskey my way, “Pe-ter try this.
Pe-ter” he invites
me into forbidden territory. I’m more intrigued by
his wooden leg,
his strange accent and yellowed fingers than by the warm
booze he loves.
Dad’s aunt Eva wears an apron of blue flowers, smiling sweetly
as she delivers plates
of meat, cabbage, bread and cakes to the dining room
table, to her family. I bathe
for a secret moment in her brown eyes, sensing her quiet
joy amidst all this happy clamor.
Excitement and mystery fill me as I wander from room to room
in the small house.
It’s like crossing into a foreign county. Discovering my
extended family
in a warren of delights, of tobacco smoke, and kids
snaking through legs
of preoccupied grown-ups out into the backyard of fig and
walnut trees,
a sagging clothesline and garage to hide behind, hoping
Maryanne
might wander out here too.
The day is a bazaar revealing itself kiss by kiss in explosions
of jokes
and sweet pinches, first crushes on girl cousins, plates
of garlicky lamb,
olives and hleb, crunchy nutty and real, everything’s so
real here at Tetka Eva’s.
‘Nashkis’—Croatian for ‘Our People’
‘Hleb’---homemade bread
