Middlesex: Book 3: Opa! Summary & Analysis

Cal and Julie are going away together on a weekend trip  to Pomerania. Cal picks her up in a Mercedes. He feels excited about her presence and their growing intimacy, but during the trip they sleep in separate rooms. Meanwhile, back in Callie’s childhood, it is the summer after Milton banned her from speaking to Marius. Milton is terrified that the diner is going to fail. He spends his days lying on the patio and letting his beard grow out. Lefty tries to encourage him, but after the stoke Milton has begun to perceive his father as weak. At the diner, Milton continues to have the same cheery exterior, but this masks his true feelings.

Milton and Tessie’s bedroom is “furnished entirely in Early American reproductions,” and Milton sleeps with a gun from his military days under his pillow. The gun is loaded, and the safety is off. During the summer, the city of Detroit is “bracing for race riots.” One night, a group of young black sex workers stand on Twelfth Street. They notice police arresting black men, but instead of fleeing, they fight back, soon joined by others. The riot has begun. At 6:23 a.m., Jimmy Fioretos calls the Stephanides house and frantically tells Callie to put Milton on the phone, because “the coloreds are rioting.” Milton leaps out of bed, taking his gun with him.

Driving to the diner in his half-dressed state, Milton sees children throwing bricks through storefronts. He drives straight into the smoke billowing from the fires. Back at home, Tessie takes the children into the attic along with a suitcase full of food. Distraught over the news footage of the riots on TV, Desdemona claims that this is just like what happened in Smyrna. Before the riot, the white people who lived in Callie’s neighborhood had the belief that they could accept the presence of their black neighbors as long as they behaved in a way that was “normal.” Out of the whole Stephanides family, Aunt Zo is the only one who expresses sympathy for the looters during the riot. 

Lefty, Desdemona, Tessie, and the children spend three days in the attic, not bathing or brushing their teeth, consumed by the TV news. They hear nothing from Milton. Terrified for her father, Callie realizes that no one else in her family is going to save him, and thus decides to take on the mission herself. She crosses herself “in the Orthodox fashion,” sneaks out of the attic, and gets on her bike. On seeing a military tank, she is initially frightened and considers turning around, but then decides to follow it. 

Milton is crouched under the cash register at the Zebra Room, holding a ham sandwich and trying desperately to stay awake. He hasn’t slept since he got there, and desperately needs to use the bathroom but won’t let himself. By some miracle, while all the other businesses in the area have been looted, the diner hasn’t. Milton hears the doorknob of the diner rattle and walks toward it, shouting, “I’ve got a gun!” However, he then realizes that he is not holding his gun at all, but the ham sandwich. The person at the door is Morrison, who lives across the street. Morrison is surprised to see Milton there, noting it’s not safe for white people to be in the area. He then asks if he could buy some cigarettes.

While Milton passes the cigarettes and matches through the door’s mailbox, he gestures toward the riot and asks, “What’s the matter with you people?” Morrison replies, “The matter with us […] is you.” After hearing these words, Milton starts repeating them in a mock black accent. The phrase becomes a kind of “mantra” through which he expresses his various bigoted views. Meanwhile, back in the riot, Callie struggles to navigate her way through the city. She is surrounded by the terrifying violence of a “real battle,” something that in hindsight Cal views as “The Second American Revolution.” Milton watches in horror as soldiers shoot at Morrison, who is lighting a cigarette in his living room, and kill him instantly.

Callie has finally made it to the Zebra Room and is happy to see that it hasn’t burned down. However, just at that moment, she sees a figure throw a Molotov cocktail through the window of the diner, shouting, “Opa, motherfucker!” Just as Milton grabs the fire extinguisher in a desperate attempt to put out the flames, it suddenly occurs to him that he has triply insured the diner, and that letting it burn down will lead to a huge payout. He runs out to his car, where he finally spots Callie, who says she is there to help him. He hugs her, and she cries at the sight of the burning restaurant. They drive home together. Cal reiterates that while the events of those days are referred to only as a riot, he maintains that what he witnessed was a “guerrilla uprising.”