"I don't know why you not married yet, twenty-seven years old and single." But right now anxiety cast a cloud over Thitsa Kanta's perfect world. Today all the thitsas had carefully maintained bouffants that were almost as high as their self-esteem. She was the slimmest of the sisters, partly thanks to a lifetime of stomach trouble and partly because she worked to maintain her image of herself as the polyester-clad femme fatale who returned to Greece to visit after the war looking "like a movie star," she said, with short, permed hair instead of long braids. You got a beautiful figure, just like your aunt," said Thitsa Kanta, referring to herself. Three of my four aunts were clustered around the kitchen table of my parents' house in Worcester, Massachusetts, scrutinizing me as they ate the leftovers of Thanksgiving's desserts. She was perfectly at ease with her appearance, if not mine, as she sat gossiping with her sisters. "Lenitsa, you put on weight?" Thitsa Lilia asked as she cut into another sticky piece of pecan pie, untroubled by the fact that she currently weighed at least twice what I did. It all started the weekend after Thanksgiving 2001. Of course, that only made me more determined to go. My aunts said I'd be killed by Albanians and eaten by wolves.
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