American Gypsy (11 page)

Agrefina lived in a
derevnia
, a small hamlet, two hours north of Moscow. She was an oracle of sorts, a seer, but she never read for money. Mom brought her sacks of groceries one could find only in large cities. Toblerone chocolate bars were Agrefina's favorite. She'd cut them into chunks and share them with me.

I remember first seeing her house and thinking that I'd stepped into a fairy tale. It was made of logs, with a rooster-topped ridgepole on the roof and ornamental woodwork around the windowsills and doorframes. I thought they were for looks until Agrefina explained they were symbols of protection. The most important was a circular carving with a six-petaled rose in the middle, called
gromovoi znak
, or the thunder sign. It belonged to Rod, a pagan god of light and creation. Inside the house, a candle burned next to an icon of Jesus set high on a shelf. A large hand-carved cross hung over the threshold, and from it dangled a number of talismans in the form of gems and dried-herb sachets.

Having never seen anything like it, I asked Agrefina about the cross. She patted my head and replied, “The Lord minds not how we pray so long as we mean it.”

I'd immediately drawn my own version of
gromovoi znak
in my journal. People like Agrefina fascinated me. Like Romani, they adapted to changing reality while retaining their beliefs. But what Olga had in mind had little to do with tradition and a lot with making money.

I didn't want Dad to be a part of it, especially not with Olga, whose Devil tarot depicted menacing figures with impish eyes. But she'd hooked him on the idea, and I could tell by the animation in his voice that he couldn't be persuaded to give it up. At least not by me. Maybe not even by his own father, who'd always been against divination.

Many Roma found Grandpa Andrei's attitude strange, particularly since his own mother, Baba Varya, had been a notorious magicker who performed spells in addition to being a healer and a midwife.

The very first thing I remember hearing about Baba Varya was that she was a giantess. The second, everyone was afraid of her. But according to the stories I'd collected over the years, she wasn't always a witch. She'd led a rather normal life as the wife of a farmer. They had three children who all helped tend the family plot. But one day her husband died unexpectedly and everything changed.

Grandpa Andrei said that after that, his mother withdrew from life for a very long time. She wasn't able to tend the land on her own and spent her time in a roomful of black-magic books. She started doing spells for the townsfolk, barely making enough money to support the family. Eventually they lost the land. All three kids left school to work, but they never lived as well as they had when their father was alive. All the stories after this painted Baba Varya as a
vedma
(black witch).

But then I heard this from Aunt Laura: during World War II Grandpa Andrei went to prison in Siberia for faking food-ration tickets for his Roma band; the Communists didn't consider Gypsies to be model citizens yet, and the rations were issued first to those loyal to the Red Party. The sentence was ten years. Grandpa and a couple of inmates attempted escape from their labor camp in Gulak, but got lost in the tundra for days. By the time the authorities found them, Grandpa had developed gangrene in his frostbitten toes, and the prison doctor gave him no more than a couple of months before his feet would have to be amputated. Grandpa sent Baba Varya a letter. At this time, Baba Varya traveled with various caravans and only the Roma knew her whereabouts. They used something they called
Tziganskaya pochta
, or Roma mail, to contact one another. Even those Roma who didn't travel in caravans visited with relatives throughout the year. It wasn't unusual for grandparents to stay at each of their kid's houses for months, and the local Roma were always aware if someone new showed up in town. The mail was passed from hand to hand without the need for postal service. That's why Grandpa's letter was addressed to:

Varya Nikolaevna,

In care of the Roma at the central Kiev marketplace

Baba Varya immediately set off for Siberia, carrying a jar of homemade ointment, and once at the prison, she bribed the infirmary medic to allow her entrance. Grandma Ksenia claimed that the jar's contents were pure black magic, made from puppy fat, but it could have been a simple folk remedy. No one knows for sure. Black magic or not, Baba Varya saved her son.

Still, Grandpa Andrei had constantly lectured his employees about the harm that practicing occultism could do to their reputation as legitimate artists. Society didn't know the difference between gifted practitioners and scam artists. Once, he found out about Dad's spirit-channeling sessions; Dad defended his actions by claiming that he had the “gift” to help him lift the family curse. They got into a terrible fight over it and didn't speak for almost a year.

And now Olga had rekindled my father's fascination with everything occult.

“Girls, I know that the business will do well. I have seen it. Besides, your father is too old for the stage,” Olga said, a sly glint narrowing her heavily penciled eyes. “Isn't that so, my honeylambshank?”

Roxy's face lit up. “He's, like, Santa's age! It's true.”

Olga winked at Dad. “Hey, Valerio? Those picks getting too heavy for you?”

Dad dropped his sandwich on the table with an indignant frown. “Who's old? Me? Your dipshit ex-husband is old, that's who! If I have to, I can wrestle a bear.”

“Lucky for us there are no bears in Hollywood for you to terrorize.”

Okay. So they acted like they had been cozily married for years; so what? I smiled politely, not completely sold on this show of domestic incivility.

“Oh, come on,” Olga said, catching the lukewarm set of my lips. “I'm kidding. Your dad is a great musician. I'll bet you right now he'll soon be playing until his fingers fall off. I only think we can make more money by doing this on the side.”

“Yeah, right,” I said. “Nobody's going to pay you for reading their palms. This is America.”

“So what? Everybody wants to believe something else controls their lives. That way, we don't have to feel responsible for what happens to us.”

“But you can't lie to people to make them feel better.”

“Who said anything about lying? I tell them what they want to hear. Like a head doctor, no? But instead of giving people pills, I have them sprinkle dirt in their husband's shoes and pray he will stop cheating.”

“Dirt does not have superpowers,” I said.

“No, but faith does.”

 

NO JOAN OF ARC

My parents were married for seventeen years before they split. During that time, my Armenian and Roma families tolerated each other, but barely. Though not openly hostile, each side secretly regarded itself superior to the other, more cultured and sophisticated. Ironically, love of superstition was the biggest thing they had in common.

The Armenians spit over their shoulders and knocked on wood, while the Romani crossed themselves when yawning, to prevent evil spirits from entering their bodies, and poured salt around the foundations of their houses to keep them out. Every time Mom and I got on the train from Kirovakan, her hometown, to go back to Moscow, Aunt Siranoosh splashed water from a ceramic bowl onto the platform to ensure a safe journey.

At wakes, my Romani relatives poured vodka shots for the deceased so they would not feel parched on their way to Heaven, and my Armenian relatives covered the mirrors with swaths of black cloth so the dead wouldn't get lost by walking through them into the realm of the living and become ghosts.

In each culture, nearly everything was construed as a sign. Back in Moscow, if Dad missed a turn on the way to a party, he'd turn around and drive home. No one sat at the table corners unless they didn't want to ever get married. If you dropped a spoon on the floor, a woman would come calling soon; a knife signified a man; and if it happened to be a fork, the powers to be were not 100 percent sure on the gender. The signs are endless and move inside me like mice in a wheat field. To this day, I catch myself skimming tea bubbles off the top of a steaming cup and dabbing them on the crown of my head in hopes of acquiring a large sum of money.

According to Russian Roma legend, the period between December 21 and January 14 is when spirits come down (or up, depending on your viewpoint) to walk the earth in celebration of the winter solstice. If you dream of discussing Macbeth's foolish ambitions with Shakespeare himself, your chances of success increase greatly during these magical days.

The season is marked by ceremonies to divine, cleanse, and renew. The enthusiasm with which the Roma carry out these acts can be contagious, especially if there's a chance of seeing what your future husband might look like.

At well past midnight, Dad, Olga, and I sat in a tight circle around the table. A candle burned on top of the kitchen counter, next to a sink full of dirty dishes and a bottle of Jack Daniel's. In my opinion, it conveyed great disrespect to summon spirits amidst the pungent smell of fried carp and the slowly gyrating curls of cigarette smoke coming from my stepmother's lips. But I did not voice these thoughts, preferring to watch Dad watch Olga with great interest.

A piece of white poster board lay on the table. In the middle, all the letters of the Russian alphabet were arranged in a wide circle. Olga placed a small white plate marked with a single arrow at one edge in the center of the circle. “Porcelain,” she said. “The purer the material, the better the reception.”

I'd seen the plate before. It was one of the few items Dad had brought with him from Russia, where he had kept it locked away. Any object used in divination was off-limits to kids. As a little girl I once made the mistake of playing with Esmeralda's personal tarot deck. When she found me gently lowering the king of hearts onto the roof of my newly built house of cards, she moaned, “How could this have happened?” as if I'd stolen bonbons out of the special Richart chocolate box she opened only for dates with the most “marriage” potential.

I gathered the cards. “I was careful. Didn't even bend them, see?”

With a sigh, Esmeralda kneeled on the floor next to me. “They won't work anymore, sweetie. I'll have to buy a new deck.”

“I broke them?”

“Cards are part good, part bad, God and Devil all in one. Kinda like grown-ups. They need both in order to work, but kids are all good, you see? So when you played with the cards, they lost their Devil.”

Esmeralda's cards, after I'd ruined them

No one was allowed to touch Dad's plate, kid or adult. And now Olga pawed it while discussing its quality. As I got ready to say something wicked, she closed her eyes, touched her fingertips to the plate's rim, and began to chant along with my dad.

I knew what was coming, had seen this done numerous times before. It was kind of like using a Ouija board without having to pay $19.99 for the fancy lettering. But to my family, it wasn't a game.

When I was eleven, I'd overheard my parents and some of their friends channeling one night in our Moscow kitchen. I didn't see spirits, only Dad reading an incantation from a tattered book with a black leather cover. It had belonged to Baba Varya. At that age I knew her only as a
vedma
, so seeing my father use her book terrified me.

I used to love driving to the outskirts of Moscow with my mother to visit Agrefina or watch some other ancient Russian crone predict our future using stagnant water. Mom nursed not an ounce of skepticism for these peculiar practices, as if she were taking in a doctor's diagnosis. Even our own priest discussed the future with a fortune-teller's poise. I grew up with God and the Devil and every other idol in between at my doorstep. Opening that door was just a formality. Every December I participated in various divination ceremonies, and on Christmas Eve, Zhanna and I made sure to place saucers of springwater under our beds, hoping to dream about our future husbands.

At Dad and Olga's table, my heart thrashed like a cat in a sack, with a mixture of anticipation and fear. Channeling, to me, has always been like deep-cave diving: a daredevil sport.

The air around my shoulders wavered. Chills ran up and down my arms. I scooted forward in my seat just a touch.

Dad raised his head, hair shining in the abruptly frenzied candlelight. He opened his eyes and looked up to the ceiling. “Spirit, I thank you for responding. I am Valerio, and I do not bind you by any act of artifice or vengeance. Will you choose to confer?”

The plate slid to “Yes.” Olga's fingers barely touched it.

My pulse drummed inside my ears.

“Thank you,” Dad continued, exchanging a satisfied smile with Olga. “What is your name?”

“Avadata,” the plate spelled out.

A quarter of an hour later, we knew a lot about Avadata, although it did not make me any less scared. She had been born in 1888, but would reveal neither where nor any of the details of her death. According to her, the afterlife consisted of seven levels, number seven being Heaven and number one, Hell. A soul worked its way up by aiding the living and being generally virtuous. Presently, Avadata resided on level three, which, she informed us, was “a dastardly place.” But she wished to raise her status and so had been searching for ways to increase her chances. She adored cats, and often took possession of people fond of liquor and opium, a habit she had been trying to break herself of.