A Shrine to an Unknown God

SACRIFICIAL BLOOD

"I'M JUST—I'm starting to think that all of this might not be a coincidence," her mom continues. "The crash, and Kennedy's death, and now Antigone—"

"This has nothing to do with Kennedy," her father says.

"How do you know that?" she asks. "I knew we never should have let them fly alone—"

"Kennedy was a grown man, honey, we didn't do anything wrong."

"Well, obviously we did." They'd been talking in hushed, hurried whispers, but now Judy's voice rises to a shout. "Or else our son wouldn't be dead."

Marisol makes a choking sound. Tears glint on her face. "I've never seen them argue like this before. Fuck, we shouldn't have—we shouldn't have done this—I need to—" she wipes the tears from her eyes, then purses her lips together and makes two peace signs with her hands. "Do I look like I've been crying?"

Before waiting for my answer (yes, she does, she looks like she's been bawling her eyes out), she steps out from behind the wall. "Is dinner ready? I'm starving." Her voice is cold, emotionless.

I stand behind her, like a child hiding behind her mother's legs.

Her father paints a big, warm smile on his face, indicating towards the kitchen table with his head. "You better be."

"It's all done. Marisol, could you run and tell your brother dinner's ready?" her mother asks, brushing her hands off on her jeans.

Marisol gives her a mock-salute and dashes off to drag Jaden from his black-hole of a bedroom, leaving me alone with her parents, who seem to think very poorly of me. I turn on the faucet and let the cool water run over my hands, rubbing this bright red raspberry-scented soap between my fingers.

"Antigone." Judy places her hand on my shoulder. Her voice is so sweet and so gentle, but her nails pinch my skin. "Where are you from, really?"

"Judy—" Desmond warns.

"What was that neighborhood you said? Apollonisi, right? Would you say it's pretty big? Don't lots of people live there? Wouldn't it come up if I googled it?"

"Don't bring this up now," he insists. "Let's just have a nice dinner."

"Certainly." I do not like to lie, and I can hear the stiffness in my own voice.

"Then why is there nothing on Apollonisi, the seaside Athens neighborhood?" she asks. "Why is there only Apollonisi the island? Why is every article about that cult that calls Apollonisi home? Are you a part of it? Are you pagan?"

"You don't need to answer that, Antigone," Marisol's father tells me. "Judy, cut it out. We'll talk about this later."

The last word she uses, pagan, genuinely doesn't register with me. I've heard it used before a couple of times, but I've never caught its definition. With all the scorn and malice behind her voice, I know it isn't something that I want to be. I pretend to not have understood the rest of what she said, either. "Forgive me—my English is not great. I do not understand."

"I was telling you that Apollonisi isn't—"

Whatever she had been about to tell me that my home isn't is silenced by Marisol's entrance into the room, toting a bleary-eyed Jaden behind her.

"What were you guys talking about?" Marisol asks.

"Nothing," her mother replies quickly—too quickly—even before the last word has passed her daughter's lips.

"Spawns!" Desmond says. "Wash your hands."

Jaden and Marisol wash their hands and all of us settle in at the table. Gucci the dog materializes at our feet, looking up at us with pleading eyes. In front of us rests heaping plates of rice, noodles and veggies, and pork.

I watch Marisol closely to see what I'm supposed to do. First her father dishes a portion of rice onto his own plate, then her mother, then her, then me, and, lastly, Jaden. It goes on like this for each of the plates, although Marisol sits out on the pork. Once all the food has been served, Marisol grabs the two wooden poles beside her plate and digs them into her food.

"Woah there, tiger, slow down a minute!" her mother chastises her, though she's looking straight at me. "We need to pray first. We always pray before we eat."

"We don't," Marisol whispers to me. "She just likes to impress our guests."

"Antigone, are you religious?" Judy asks. "Would you like to say a prayer?"

Marisol's looking from me to her mom and shaking her head at both of us.

"Not particularly," I admit. In my head, I send an apology to the gods.

"If she isn't religious," Desmond says, "don't make her pray."

"Yeah, Mom!" Marisol says. "That's a violation of her constitutional rights."

"Mom," Jaden says. "Can we eat now?"

"Isn't Greece, like, super Catholic?" Judy asks. "Don't you know a prayer or two, even if you don't practice?"

"Only in Greek." Which isn't entirely a lie. I know prayers in Greek, of course I do. They just so happen to be prayers for my gods, not Catholic prayers.

"I'm hunnnnnnnnngry," Jaden complains. "Moooooooom."

"Go ahead, then," she tells me. "Say one in Greek, why don't you?"

So I bow my head and mumble the words my own mother says as she leads cows to the altar to be slaughtered. Marisol watches me, her eyes bulging, her skin red as sacrificial blood.

Her mother's eyes never leave mine.