Eleni and I gasped. We’d seen the necklace before, but we’d forgotten how gorgeous it was. It was an orangey-gold Greek cross about one and a quarter inches high, engraved with small swirly lines, and it had a dark, pinkish ruby in the middle. Each of the four ends of the cross looked like the tops of love hearts, curvy and divided into two parts—which made sense, since it was a wedding necklace.
“Twenty-four carats this gold,” Yiayia said, but we didn’t understand why gold would be made of carrots.
“Soooo beautiful,” Eleni cooed, opening her nostrils wide so you could see the white bony outline of her nose.
“So beautiful and so old,” I said. Just looking at it was like opening a door to a distant world.
“Like a thousand hundred years or something,” Eleni said, getting the numbers the wrong way around as usual. Which was weird considering she liked counting so much.
Yiayia put her lined face close to ours so we could see how her red lipstick had leaked into the earthquake cracks at the edges of her lips. Her breath smelled a little like clothes in a charity shop, and it mingled with the perfume she always wore, which I think was roses.
“This necklace she survive war with Turkey and the Germans and in hard, hard time when they,” (she meant the people in the past) “not have food, and they need money so bad, my Pappou he say he want sell it. But my Yiayia clever. She hide it. She keep necklace safe so she can give it to my mother. And my mother she hide it, too. They take care of it for give they daughters so they can wear it on the day of the wedding day.” Eleni and I grinned at each other because Yiayia’s English was funny. “Because of this special womens,” Yiayia went on, “this necklace still here with us now. This is big big miracle. Very special these womens. They know what is it important in the life. And this—this in you blood.”
“Imagine,” I said to Eleni, “what our blood must look like under a microscope.”
She chuckled. “And imagine. All those women wore it at their weddings, and one day we’re going to wear it, too. And they’re all dead now,” her voice went quiet and low, “and the necklace is still alive.”
I grinned. Typical Eleni. It wasn’t creepy to us, though—it made it kind of magical.
“I happy you like,” Yiayia said. “Very special, this necklace. Now even more than before.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, shifting my eyes from the necklace to Yiayia.
She looked at both of us cautiously, then said, “I tell you big big secret. OK?”
We nodded quickly. We liked secrets.
“This necklace, my leeettle Eleni, I keep it for you.”
I stared at Yiayia and then at Eleni. That wasn’t the tradition. That necklace was supposed to be given to my mom, and then she’d pass it on to Katerina—unless Kat died in a terrible, tragic accident, in which case it would come to me. Which I wasn’t hoping for, obviously, but if it happened, I wouldn’t say no. Don’t tell Katerina that.
“But Yiayia—” Eleni began, frowning.
“Oh, yessss, yessss, I knooow. I must to give to oldest daughter. Is tradition. And tradition is verrry important. If we no have tradition, then who are we?” She paused. “But this time, no. This necklace survive war and very hard time, and you, Eleni-mou, you do, too.”
I wrinkled my nose in confusion. Eleni hadn’t been in a war. What was Yiayia talking about?
“When you come in this world,” Yiayia went on, looking at Eleni, “you so smaaaall, so sweeeeet, but you heart it’s no good. I say Pappou, iss no possible make so big operation on so small baby. But they open you up like chicken on butcher table. And I pray—I pray every night and every day for ask God have mercy on you. I look through the window at you in small box in the special care and I beg you, ‘Little Eleni, stay here with us. You have beautiful life ahead of you.’ And all I hear is beep beep of machine. The doctors they whisper and the nurses, they look too much serious and I know the true. Probably you will die. And I cry because this smaaaall baby, she my granddaughter, and my heart full of love. So I say you, ‘Little Eleni-mou, I make deal with you, OK? You stay here with us, I give you the necklace. I keep it for you for when you big and strong and you meet a nice Greek boy and you marry with him. But you must to stay with us. Please. Stay with us, little Eleni.’”
She paused. Both of us were staring at her with our mouths open.
“And you live.”
Yiayia had tears in her eyes by this point, but so did we. It was like a story from a book, only better because it was true and about us.
Then Yiayia smiled at Eleni. “I think you live only for this,” she said, holding up the necklace with a wink. “You want the wedding necklace. And I understand you. It is verrrry beautiful.”
Eleni and I laughed.
“A promise,” Yiayia said with her finger pointing up, “is a promise. So I change the tradition. I’m allowed. Don’t worry. I speak with God and He tell me it’s OK. He talk with me all the time—no, really. Why you laugh? It’s true. Christina will wear it when she marry my Dimitri, and Katerina and Kallie when they get married, and both of you,” she said, looking from me to Eleni, “but the necklace it is for Eleni, for being a good baby and staying alive.”
Eleni and I looked at each other with wide open eyes. I felt a little left out, of course, because Eleni always got extra love and attention because of her heart. But I was also worried.
Yiayia wrapped the necklace back up, told us to close our eyes, and put it in her drawer. “This our secret, OK?” she whispered turning to us.
We nodded and said, “OK,” even though suddenly it didn’t feel very OK. All my skin prickled and my mouth went dry, like I’d just had a glass of tumble-dried sand mixed with cranberry juice.
What would my mom think about this?