Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd Read Free Book Online Page B

Persephone eating the fruit in the underworld. How the flesh splits open to reveal a small, secret womb and the seeds spill out like garnets.
    The door to the shop is locked. Closed for lunch. Ann and I cast one last look at the pomegranates and walk on, famished now, ready to find our way out of the maze. After consulting several shopkeepers—one of whom follows us to the door holding a plaster-cast statue of Poseidon, cajoling, “You buy, yes?”—we emerge into a familiar, open square that buzzes with tourists, spared another lap around the priest.
    We slip into an outdoor taverna and are barely seated when two scrawny cats appear and stare at us with pleading eyes. They lick their paws like they’ve sized us up perfectly and are preparing for a banquet. “So what would the cats like us to order?” I ask.
    “ Kotopoulo . Or psaria ,” says Ann, then translates: “Chicken. Or fish.”
    She has been studying Greek. It began over a year ago after her college trip. She came back full of purpose, with a plan to teach ancient Greek history. You couldn’t have missed the new vividness about her, as if being over here had flipped on a light inside of her that no one had quite noticed was off. Before the trip, her own pursuits had seemed overshadowed by her relationship with her boyfriend, a subtle eclipse I noticed only in retrospect. Even Sandy, a professional counselor, didn’t have a name for what had happened to her in Greece. “She seems to have ‘found herself,’” he remarked. And this “finding” had not faded, not for all this time. Until now.
    “Listen to you,” I say, trying to appear lighthearted. “You speak Greek.”
    “Just Greek food ,” she says.
    I remember at thirteen she went through the refrigerator and pantry, calling out the contents in Spanish. I remember her then—the perm that didn’t work, the braces on her teeth, giggling as she recited la leche, el pastel. It shocks me how I wish for all of that again, for what is lost and cannot come back.
    We eat roast chicken and Greek salad in silence. Idly, I begin to feed the last of the kotopoulo to the cats and instantly a dozen or so other cats materialize out of nowhere. They swarm around our table, mewing, jockeying, possibly multiplying. Waiters rush over, waving trays, snapping crisp, white napkins, and shouting in Greek. Cats hiss and scatter. It’s a dazzling eruption that hushes the taverna. Everyone turns. And there we are, Ann and I—stupid, cat-loving, American women—smiling sheepishly, bits of roast chicken sprinkled about our table.
    “Check, please,” I say.
    We slink out, head straight to the nearest bench, and collapse in laughter. We laugh until it’s not about the cats anymore. Our laughing takes on a life of its own, making us cry. Every time we think we’ve composed ourselves, one of us looks at the other, her mouth twitches, and we’re gone again.
    Gradually, though, we get hold of ourselves, and gazing around the square, I see a large church the color of oatmeal. It has two bell towers, three arched entrances, and one shining, cinnamon-tinted dome. We resort to our guidebooks and discover we’re staring at the Mitrópoli, the “Annunciation cathedral.”
    “It’s Athens’ largest Greek Orthodox church,” Ann says, reading from the book. “‘ Dedicated to the Annunciation of the Mother of God in 1862 by King Otto and Queen Amalia.’ Hey, listen to this—the bones of St. Philothei are in there. She was martyred in 1589 for rescuing women enslaved in Turkish harems.”
    “Well, the least we can do is go in and pay our respects to somebody who did that ,” I tell her.

    Entering the narthex of the cathedral, I consider the extreme laughing Ann and I have just done, how buoyant I feel, and I see how laughing can become a “narthex” in its own right—a space of divesting. The laughter has cracked the heaviness that formed around us like tight, brittle skin, and even now delivers me peeled and fresh