The Corner Store

The corner store was shabby, small and old. Scabby paint peeled from the weathered boards. The corrugated roof gathered rust, and birds whose droppings fell on my head when I passed. “It’s lucky” Mrs. Gromopolos cackled as she swept the path in front and watched my misfortune. The shop had prestige though because it collected customers from two streets as they passed and it seemed Mrs. Gromopolos was always open for business.1

Inside the shop it was spotless but gloomy; a 25-watt bulb that was always on lighted the interior and when Mrs. Gromopolos wasn’t sweeping, she sat in shadow behind a lift up counter. She was like a yard of pump water, straight up and down, with her lustrous black hair piled on top of her head, making her look even taller. She wore a floral apron summer and winter alike and slip on scuffs. Her hands were always busy. When she wasn’t working, she was knitting and she counted patterns aloud with her fingers, “enna theo, tria, desera, pendi.” Most of her patterns had ten stitches before starting again and it was from her I learned to count to ten in Greek.

I met Mrs. Gromopolos when she came to my rescue. I was pulling Mandy Loo, my black Bakelite doll around in a cardboard box with string for the handle and the bottom fell out of the box. At first she had laughed at me and asked why a boy was playing with dolls. I remember screaming, “I’m not a boy. I wear trousers because I have an older brother and no sisters and my hair is short because of…because of…” I couldn’t tell Mrs. Gromopolos about the lice that mum couldn’t get rid of no matter how much kerosene she used, or that my dad hacked my hair off with scissors as a way of dealing with the problem, but she seemed to understand anyway and said nothing more, although she still called me boy.
She took me into the back yard of the shop to get another box. In the yard was a small but very green garden. “Mr. Gromopolos make,” she said in broken English, “Everyday he come out here early and play.” 2

Then she invited me into the house. I learned that she lived in that room, which was a bedroom come sitting room. She had a separate kitchen out the back and in the yard there was laundry and toilet.
The place was small but immaculate, except for a large, hairy man sitting on the sagging couch watching black and white television. “Mr. Gromopolos,” she said and sniffed. Mr. Gromopolos didn’t move and seemed not to hear her. In all the time I visited Mr. Gromopolos was there on the couch. I learned to ignore him in the same way she did as we made our way through to the kitchen to cook. Once he was lying down, snoring loudly. “Ouzo” Mrs. Gromopolos grunted. “Ouzo!” I repeated, nodding as if I understood what *Ouzo* was. 3

I liked Mrs. Gromopolos and I spent all my free time in the time in the shop, especially when dad was home and drinking. I made up lies to tell my parents.
She made her own sweets and the smells of chocolate, liquorice and fudge nearly drove me into delirium on cooking days. Sometimes I helped, I stirred and watched pots and she paid me sixpence and gave me a tiny piece of caramel fudge wrapped in waxed paper to take home. On a good week I could make that fudge last for two days by only licking it, but once, on a bad week, dad found it and threw it out. I sat on the porch and cried as I watched the ants devour my precious prize. I saved my sixpences in a secret cache.4

Sometimes we made things other than sweets. She taught me how to make pasta sauce and the air was filled with the scent of tomatoes, olives and garlic. At Easter we dyed eggs red and green and she gave me small rubber gloves to wear so that the spinach and beetroot dyes wouldn’t stain my hands. She seemed to know as well as me that if my parents found out where I spent my free time the visits would be stopped. Twice we made Baklava I can still taste the sticky sweetness from the syrup when I think of it. 5

One day Dad hit me too hard and I ran blindly, sobbing to the corner store, my hands covering my face were wet with blood from my broken nose and my eyes had begun to swell, blurring my vision further. Mrs. Gromopolos took one look at me, ushered me inside and locked the door. For the first time I had ever seen she turned around the open sign and the shop was closed. Then she gabbled something foreign to Mr. Gromopolos and when he ignored her, she began dialing. Suddenly dad was outside the shop, yelling and cursing. He had followed me and was threatening murder and more. Then there was silence except for sirens in the distance. I heard footsteps walking away and thought it was over. Dad would go home and sleep off the drink as he had done so many times before. However instead of the footsteps moving away they moved around the back. I heard scrabbling as dad climbed the fence; Mrs. Gromopolos gave a little squeal as he tumbled over the fence into the garden, crushing all of Mr. Gromopolos’ radishes. Before we could react, Mr. Gromopolos erupted through the door volcano like, all fire and fury. He screamed curses and half finished sentences in both Greek and English. All I heard before Mrs. Gromopolos covered my ears was something about children and radishes and then without any warning Mr. Gromopolos hit dad in the face. I heard the crack and started wailing seriously, my nose forgotten with the shock of seeing my dad get hurt.
“You killed my dad! You killed my dad!” I screamed as police arrived. My dad woke up. His nose was bloody but not broken. The police sent me off to hospital in an ambulance while they dragged my dad and Mr. Gromopolos off to the police station.
I heard later that Mr. Gromopolos had been charged and released. Dad had been charged too - with hitting me, not Mr. Gromopolos. However by the time I heard the news child welfare had visited and I had been placed in a home for children needing ‘care and protection.’ I learned to clean and cook there too although it was never with the joy that Mrs. Gromopolos showed. I remember going to court, the judge asked me where I wanted to live and I said with Mrs. Gromopolos but that raised an outcry from both mum and dad and I was sent back to the home.6

Seven years later on my sixteenth birthday, I was free to make my own decisions. Dad had moved away and my connection with mum was fragile.
I went back to the corner store and entered hesitantly. The interior was still gloomy but immaculate. A stranger sat behind the lift up counter but she looked familiar and her hands were busy with knitting, counting aloud with her fingers “enna, theo, tria…”
“Mrs. Gromopolos is that you? It’s me Sarah. Do you remember me?” The lady looked up and I saw her dark eyes that were similar but not the same as my friend’s.
She shook her head and said “Ochi, No! You look for my sister. She bring me over from Cyprus, when Yanni, Mr. Gromopolos die. Now we share and I work some days and she work some days. Today she is in the back making Clitheragi, you want I should call her? Who I say is looking for her?”
“Tell her Sarah... no say the boy is looking for her.” There was a rapid-fire exchange of Greek and Mrs. Gromopolos came into the shop. When she saw me, she threw back the countertop and shuffled towards me, her tall frame bent like a question mark. “How you been - good boy?” She said as she hugged me tightly.
“I’ve been well.” I said suddenly shy. “Mrs. Gromopolos I…” “Nah! Nah you a woman now call me Thea. Come to the back I make some soup for you. I went into the back beaming, everything was just as I remembered it except it was little smaller and there was no Mr. Gromopolos sitting on the couch. Mrs. Gromopolos took me into her kitchen and sat me down.
“Let me look at you. You look good, grown big now with nice boobies. I no think you a boy now.” She laughed and we resumed conversation as if we hadn’t had that time apart.
“Mrs. Gromopolos, I want to say sorry for that day, I brought trouble. I’m sorry I ran to you. I shouldn’t have come.”
“Where else you go? What you can do?” She asked prosaically. “Is no problem. Yanni he laugh and laugh after, and he forget to drink. Come I have something I make for you.”
She dragged me to her couch and pulled out the seat that folded out into a bed, beneath the seat was a storage compartment. She grabbed something soft wrapped in tissue paper and unwrapped it. Underneath the paper was the most beautiful jumper I had ever seen, it was sky blue, brown and black with tiny repeating patterns of black dolls across.
“Too bad you grow so much, it no fit,” she cackled “but maybe one day you have a daughter and you give to her to think of me.”
Tears filled my eyes as I sat down again and ate my fill of Baklava. Then we laughed away the afternoon and washed away the lost years with our tears of joy.
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