The Third Prophecy
Sia, 78
Perth, 2006
Sia liked living alone. She’d always preferred her own company to that of others. She loved Koula, Evan and all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but there was only so much of Koula she could manage on any given day. Sia wanted to stay in her own house as long as she could.
Every morning she woke up to the sounds of kookaburras in the eucalyptus trees. She made herself some coffee in the bríki, tuned the radio to the Greek station and ate a bowl of bran cereal. She lit her kandíli in oil for Trina, Thea Tasoula and her parents, even though she hardly remembered her mother. She had died so young. Like Trina.
Sia made fasoláda. She had soaked the white beans the night before. Now she chopped up celery, carrot and parsley to add to the clear broth. This soup always tasted like it did at home in the village. She was fasting for Lent. No meat, eggs or dairy.
When she walked through the supermarket and saw the shelves full of food, everything wrapped in plastic, with so much meat and poultry just sitting there, it all felt wrong. It seemed so wasteful. To have so much on display. She could have bought anything she wanted and cooked it at any time she wanted. But, no, she just felt like fasoláda and it was Lent. It was probably the least expensive meal to make out of the whole supermarket. She often wondered if her family in Aeaea still made the same soup or if they ate whatever they wanted from the supermarket at any time they liked.
Her sister, Eleftheria, was old now too. Sometimes she spoke to her on the phone, but so much time had passed. Sia had never been able to return. To tell them what had happened. And then, once Koula arrived, the years just flew by. They passed and they passed and now Sia was seventy-eight years old. She walked with her bastoúni, just like the old women in her village had. But she was still here. She wasn’t done yet.
Sia was the one who still hard-boiled and dyed the eggs red for Greek Easter, which was coming up soon. She made the sweet kouloúria. She would stay up until midnight to prepare avgolémono. She loved whipping the lemon and egg whites into chicken broth. She always savoured that first, foamy mouthful to break the fast.
Easter had always been special, even in hard times as a child in the village. The midnight service, holding their candles, flames burning brightly. The smell of molten wax and…burning hair. She smiled when she remembered the terrible smell one evening before realising that Eleftheria had accidentally set Trina’s hair on fire. Eleftheria threw her candle to the ground and quickly patted out the fire with her bare hands. Trina shrieked when she felt Eleftheria pounding her back. Sia stood, wide-eyed, frozen, clutching her candle. The adults told them to shush, to not muck around in the holy week.
‘But my sister was on fire!’ Sia whispered to their neighbours.
After church, they would go home and break the fast with avgolémono. Oh, it was a nourishing treat after all those weeks of fasting.
They would sleep for a few hours after that and then wake on the Sunday morning. The whole family came together for the lamb cooked in the foúrnos. Sia loved the sound of the crack of the red eggs against each other after Easter lunch. Christós anésti! The scent of spring in the air. There was hope.
Even all these years later she could not quite get her head around not having Easter in spring. In Australia the seasons were upside down. Easter should be in spring like it was in Greece. In Perth it was in autumn. But the seasons were all so similar to each other over here. The winters were not the cold ones she’d had as a child.
_____
After breakfast, Sia showered and changed her clothes. She put on her comfortable walking shoes that Koula had insisted she buy. She liked to walk to the shops near her house, across the park with a lake in the middle of it and a children’s playground with a metal slide and creaky swings. The trees leaned into the lake, surrounded by soft green grass. Athena had once told her that these trees were called weeping willows. She liked that expression in English and the way the trees were positioned. Yes, they were weeping into the lake for something or someone.
Sia knew that she shouldn’t weep. She should keep going. She was still alive in this world. She liked this world! It could have been so much worse.
Every morning she passed the same houses on her way to the park, heard the same conversations, recognised the voices. There was a family that she’d been watching for a while now. She checked on them every day.
Sia walked early, before the heat was too strong. She felt like the earth was changing, and not for the better. But who would listen to her? She was an old woman with an accent. Sia wondered that if she had been born later, or in Australia, how different her life might have been. But there was no use thinking those things now. She was seventy-eight years old, but she was not done yet.
She crossed the road and walked towards the house with the family that she checked on. Every day she heard the man yell at his wife. Sometimes she heard the smashing of glass.
She said hello to the young woman whenever she passed her in the park. She wasn’t sure if she recognised Sia from her walks or just replied every time to be polite to an old lady. Her name was Rebecca and she was pregnant with their first child. After a while Sia recognised the husband as a star football player in one of the Western Australian teams. He was muscular and tattooed. He was a golden child of sport. Oh, how Australians loved sport!
Today as she approached she saw through a window that he was holding the woman’s phone. He yelled something to her and pushed her away. He kept striking her and Sia started to shake. She found herself going to the front door of this house. She shook as she watched her hand curl into a fist and knock. One, two, three.
The screaming stopped, replaced by a low sobbing. She didn’t know what she was going to say. She didn’t even know why she was interfering. But, no, she knew. She knew.
The man, covered in sweat, opened the door, ‘Who are you?’
She sensed his power and hate. She should have kept walking. No.
‘Hello, I have an appointment with your wife,’ Sia said.
‘What?’
‘She’s going to drive me to an appointment.’
‘What are you talking about?’
And then Sia saw the poor woman behind him, limping and covered in blood.
‘Help,’ she whispered.
‘Please let me help her,’ Sia said, facing the man.
‘Leave now,’ he said.
‘I can’t leave her like that. She needs to come with me,’ Sia said. ‘You have to let her come with me now.’
The last thing Sia remembered was his arm moving towards her. A white flash and then, darkness.
_____
She woke up in a hospital room, completely numb.
A nurse was speaking to her but Sia couldn’t hear what she was saying or understand it. She thought of Lara in Doctor Zhivago. She loved that film.
Why was she here and what had happened? Then she remembered the house with the family that she watched. Her eyes focused and she saw a nurse fussing with a bandage on her arm and changing a drip bag.
‘Oh, hello, sunshine!’ the nurse said. ‘I’m Vera.’
Sia took in her surroundings. She was in a white hospital ward. Maybe the emergency department?
‘Your daughter is going to be here any minute,’ she said. ‘You’ve been very brave.’
‘What happened to the girl? In the house? The football player,’ Sia said. ‘Is she okay?’
‘Don’t worry about that now,’ Vera said. ‘You were very brave to intervene. Silly, but brave.’
‘I can’t feel anything,’ Sia said.
‘You’ve had some breaks and a fall, so we need to get you looked at by the doctor and then you might need some surgery,’ she said. ‘Just rest now.’
Sia’s eyes drooped closed and she fell back into the darkness. She saw the young woman’s face, her blackened eye, the blood. The baby?
_____
Sia woke up in the hospital room. The nurse was gone.
And then she saw Koula, sobbing. Evan had his arm around her. Evan was such a good boy. For once, Koula was not talking. She was crying, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. Then she started talking into her phone, telling Athena to come back. Athena was in London, with her husband.
And then Sia fell into the void again.
_____
Sia wasn’t sure if she was dreaming. She saw Thea Thea in her village. She was speaking to Sia, nodding and holding the coffee cup.
_____
Then Sia heard the words: bleeding on the brain, stroke, may not recover.
_____
Sia woke and began to see things properly again. But when she spoke, it was if she had forgotten all her years of English. She could only speak Greek. She heard herself whisper to the nurse, who looked at her, puzzled.
‘I’ll call your daughter. Or would you like me to get a translator?’
Sia was heavy and still numb. She looked up at the tubes that were connected and dripping into her. This was a good hospital, she knew.
They should have taken Trina to the hospital that day.
They should have.
_____
Sia looked down at her body and knew it was broken. She was taking heavy medication. She had not left the bed in days.
‘It’s not looking good,’ she heard a male voice say.
But, but, but she hadn’t met Clara yet.
The heavy pain came in waves.
It wasn’t her time. It wasn’t now.
This was only the third prophecy. The fourth was still to come.
But did that mean – the woman in the house?
_____
Sia’s eyes flickered open and she looked around the room. She could smell flowers somewhere. Definitely roses. There was her nurse, Vera, writing on her clipboard. And then she saw a bunch of big roses. There was a small rectangular window. She could see a strip of turquoise sky.
‘Good morning,’ said the nurse.
‘Hello,’ croaked Sia.
‘Let me help you,’ said Vera, coming over and pouring Sia a glass of water. She opened a plastic straw from a paper packet and shoved it in the glass, then lifted the straw to Sia’s lips.
The water tasted so good. Sia drank a little and then exhaled.
‘You’re very brave,’ said Vera.
‘What happened?’ Sia asked.
‘Let’s get you a bit stronger first,’ Vera said. ‘The doctors are so impressed with how you’ve recovered. You’re very strong for a seventy-eight-year-old. Good for you.’
‘Hello!’ called out a familiar voice.
‘Sia, your daughter has come to visit. I’ll leave you two.’
‘Mama, how are you going?’ asked Koula, squeezing Sia’s hands. ‘We’ve been so worried.’
Sia’s body was still numb, but there was some pain returning somewhere. She flinched.
‘Press the button,’ Koula said. ‘I’ll do it for you.’
Koula pressed the button and Sia waited until the pain numbed again with the analgesia.
‘You were stupid to get involved,’ Koula said. ‘That brute could have killed you.’
‘What? The girl? She’s okay, yes?’
Koula exhaled. ‘She’s in a coma, on life support. The baby is okay.’
‘Will she be alright?’
‘They don’t know.’
‘Oh no. The third prophecy. Oh, I will pray for her,’ Sia said. ‘For her child.’
‘Huh?’ said Koula. ‘The drugs are making you talk nonsense.’
‘When will she wake up?’
‘I don’t know. They are very grateful to you. The baby is growing well. Who knows what’s going to happen? It was lucky someone saw what happened and called the police. Mama, it was a stupid thing to do. But you probably saved her life. And the baby’s life.’
Sia’s eyes began to leak, thinking of the woman, pregnant, lying on a hospital bed with the tubes in. The baby.
‘Is she in this hospital?’ Sia asked.
‘Yes,’ Koula said. ‘But forget her for now, worry about looking after yourself. Anyway, Athena wants to speak to you on the phone. She’s in the middle of something at work and she can’t fly back to see you.’
‘Oh, I’ll speak to her. Is she having a baby yet?’
‘Not that I know of. Maybe if she does then she’ll come back from that awful place.’
‘Clara.’
‘What?’ said Koula.
‘I need to rest now,’ said Sia, her mind swirling back and forth.
_____
She floated in and out of dreams. Every day she felt stronger, took less pain relief. She watched the rectangle window and saw it change from blue to orange to black to pink to blue. It went around and around, the colours changing as if a giant artist with a paintbrush was painting that rectangle with colour, just for her. She received more visitors.
The police came.
The priest came.
And her family and friends visited, bringing her cellophane-wrapped flowers and boxes of chocolates.
_____
On her last night in the hospital, Sia couldn’t sleep. She waited until the nurse left and then she slid out of bed. She put on her slippers and dressing gown, grabbed her bastoúni and slipped out of her room, hiding from the night staff. She left the ward and headed towards the lifts. She pressed the button with her bastoúni. The lift arrived and she pressed ‘ICU’ on the third floor.
Once she arrived, she hobbled over to the entrance and stood outside. A night nurse walked out, and when the doors opened she wedged herself through the gap.
A nurse at the front desk looked at her, ‘Are you lost, dear?’
‘Rebecca,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for Rebecca.’
‘Oh, she’s just over there. She’s doing very well. You’re the lovely lady who helped her, aren’t you?’
Sia shrugged, ‘I did what any person would have done. Can I see her?’
She nodded, ‘Sure, just for a little bit.’
The nurse led her to the room, and through the window Sia saw the young woman covered in a hospital gown, her belly protruding. She was connected to a lot of things and had a mask over her face. Sia shivered.
‘Is she going to be okay?’
‘We don’t know. The baby is doing well,’ the nurse said, shaking her head. ‘That husband, what a monster. I can’t believe people are saying it wasn’t his fault. They love him because he’s good at catching a ball, for God’s sake.’
Sia closed her eyes and whispered a prayer. Please.
‘I’ll take you back to your ward,’ the nurse said. ‘I’ll tell her that you came to see her.’
When she woke in the morning, she wasn’t sure if she had actually visited Rebecca or if it had been a dream.
_____
The next morning, Koula arrived and put all Sia’s gifts, chocolates and flowers on a trolley. She did a couple of trips to the car and back.
‘Oh, Sia,’ said Vera, ‘you’ve done so well, recovered and everything.’
Sia nodded.
‘Stay out of trouble, Sia,’ said Vera, with a smile. ‘But thank you for helping that woman. Too many people would have ignored it.’
‘Are you married, Vera?’ asked Sia.
‘I was,’ said Vera, her voice changing tone. ‘But it took me a long time to leave. Sometimes it’s difficult to help yourself. To ask for help. Or for people to help you.’
Sia nodded. ‘You are okay now.’
‘Yes,’ said Vera. ‘I am.’
‘Thank you for your help,’ Sia said as Vera wheeled her to the car.
‘Thank you,’ said Koula, taking control of the wheelchair from Vera.
Vera stood at the car and waved them off.
‘Made a new friend?’ asked Koula.
Sia sat in the front seat with the window down and the breeze blowing onto her face as Koula drove her home. She smiled in relief when she saw her little house with the white picket fence and her roses open in full bloom. They needed pruning.
_____
Sia liked being back in her own house and in her own kitchen, although she hadn’t minded the hospital food. That nice lady Vera had made sure that they even catered for her lent fasting. Sia was eating no meat, no dairy, no eggs. Her meals were brought to her on trays with lots of different combinations of flavours. There was also a man who came around after every meal asking if Sia wanted a tea or a coffee. She always took her tea black. It took a longer time to drink, gave her more time to savour it. Koula criticised her for it, said she was going to get osteoporosis. But they all ate so much yoghurt she doubted any of them would get it. She thought of all the terrible illnesses and diseases there were. Surely osteoporosis was one of the better conditions to have. She had seen people being wheeled off to have chemotherapy, radiation, surgery.
And then Sia thought of Rebecca, hooked up to IVs and tubes, the baby still gestating in her body, waiting. It was a terrible situation. It was a tragedy.
Rebecca’s sister had written Sia a thank-you card. Sia did not want to be thanked, she just wanted to hear that Rebecca was well. That she’d had the baby and was recovering in hospital. That’s the news Sia wanted. That poor woman.
And today was Easter Sunday. Sia hadn’t been able to go to church, to pray properly. She lit her kandíli and closed her eyes in front of the stove. Today she would eat meat with her family at Koula’s house. Her fasting was complete.
She heard the doorbell. Evan was standing at the door.
‘Christós Anésti,’ he said, squeezing her in a gentle hug.
‘Alithós Anesti,’ she replied.
‘Are you feeling okay? I’ll help you to the car,’ Evan said. Sia locked the door behind her and limped along to Evan’s car.
‘Thank you, Evan,’ she said, climbing into the front seat.
‘You had us all worried, Sia,’ he said, as he started the car.
‘I just hope that Rebecca will recover,’ she said. ‘What will happen to that baby? What a thing.’
‘Koula thinks it was strange that you helped that woman. She thinks you’re keeping something from her,’ said Evan. ‘Something about her father.’
Sia didn’t say anything.
‘I told her that the past is in the past,’ said Evan. ‘Don’t worry.’ Sia nodded. ‘Well, we all have our secrets. Like you and the yoghurt. The flavour. It’s unique.’
‘Oh yes, the great family yoghurt secret,’ he said, smiling. ‘I was just thinking on the way over here that I wish Athena wanted to be involved too. Koula is worried about her over in London. She’s leaving it a bit late for children.’
‘Oh, I think Athena will have children soon. But I do not know how interested in yoghurt they will be. Like Athena. They might be interested in other places, have other lives.’
‘Well, she sounds happy on the phone, don’t you think?’ Evan asked.
‘I’m sure she’s fine,’ said Sia.
Evan nodded.
‘You’ve always been such a good boy, Evan,’ Sia said, looking over at him. ‘We’ve all done okay, haven’t we?’
‘Of course, Sia,’ he said, nodding. ‘I better go and check on this lamb. Koula will kill me if it’s too dry.’
Sia nodded and accepted his assistance in getting out of the car.
She leaned on her bastoúni and hobbled to the house.
‘Ah, here she is. The great saintly protector of women everywhere, Ayía Sia,’ Koula said, opening the front door.
Sia sat on the couch while she waited for her grandsons and their families to arrive. A roast lamb was rotating around and around on the spit outside. She looked over at the crystal bowl full of red eggs piled high. Koula must have done them while Sia was in hospital.
Sia had no energy for this today. She had always looked forward to Easter Sunday, always loved it. But it felt different this year.
She closed her eyes as she thought of the woman she had tried to save. She had saved herself, all those years ago. But that too had come at a cost.
At lunch, Sia ate little. When she was young she would have loved to have had this celebration with her family. Her father wasn’t perfect and he had married her off to that bad man, but he had tried. He’d worked very hard, set up the yoghurt business, made it easier for everyone else. She had to give him credit for that. And he was the one who sent her to school back in Greece. She hadn’t forgotten that it was him, not her aunt, who had given her the opportunity to use her mind and to question things. Of course Sia had questioned everything, all along.
Koula’s phone rang.
She went out of the room to speak and then returned.
‘I’m sorry, I have some very bad news,’ Koula said, tears in her eyes. ‘The woman, she has given birth to the baby, but she has died. The baby is being cared for by the sister.’
Sia’s eyes watered and she looked down at the plate. The red eggshells crushed in a small pile. Sia had not saved the woman.
‘The baby will be okay,’ Koula said to her mother, holding her hand. ‘The sister will look after the baby.’
‘Yes,’ said Sia, looking at Koula. ‘Yes, she will.’