Burning (13 page)

“Can I come?” Anelie stood up, too.

I nodded.

“Just a moment,” said Father. He motioned to Alek, who sat strumming Romeo’s guitar, and called, “Alek. Go with your sisters.”

I hid my displeasure the best I could. “I think it is too hot, Father, for any wild animals to bother us.”

“It is not animals I am worried about,” he said. “It is the local boys, and the
gazhè
at the festival.”

Alek thrust the guitar back at Romeo and stood up, clearly disgusted. Romeo smiled at me with a mouth full of sharp wolf teeth and winked. Then he looked down to his guitar and began playing a new song.

I felt myself reddening and busied myself retying my sandals so that I would not have to respond.
Coward
, I said to myself.

Although he was close to thirteen, Alek was small for his age and not strong. Too much time spent playing his video games. The thought of him protecting me and Anelie out in the desert if any predator threatened us—animal
or
human—seemed laughable.

But I knew better than to argue. And I knew also from the way Alek seemed to puff up when Father, eyeing the boy, told him to stay close to us that Father had reasons for sending Alek along that had very little to do with predators and all the world to do with his son.

“Who would want to take a walk in the middle of the day out here in the desert?” Quickly enough, the thrill of guarding his sisters wore off as Alek trudged after us.

“Have you heard the term ‘cabin fever’?”

He shook his head.

“It means I’m sick of seeing the side of our motor home,” I said simply. “I need a change of scenery.”

“Some change,” snorted Alek.

I had to agree; we couldn’t wander very far before the heat became too much to bear, and even from a hundred feet away I could still see the motor home and our tent. I could still hear the strains of music coming from Romeo’s guitar.

I felt defeated. Trapped and defeated.

There were few plants dotting the hard, cracked earth. I made my way toward the largest one in the vicinity—a gnarled, stunted plant that looked like it wanted to be a tree but could not quite muster the energy to grow past a shrub.

Anelie and Alek followed behind. The three of us sat together, as if by unspoken agreement, in the little shade offered by the shrub. It felt no cooler, but at least the brightness of the sun was lessened.

“I’ll bet it’s raining right now in Portland,” said Anelie wistfully.

“It is probably no warmer than seventy degrees,” said Alek.

All three of us closed our eyes. I think we all imagined that we were back in Portland, hidden beneath its nearly omnipresent cloud cover.

“I will never complain again of being cold.” Anelie twisted her dark, thick hair into a knot at the nape of her neck.

Looking at her felt like looking backward through time. So much about her—the way she held her head, how her hair parted just to the left of center, the particular darkness of her eyes—mirrored me.

But there were differences that time would correct. Where I was softness and curves, Anelie was still angles. Her arms and legs were just a bit too long, like a filly’s, and she sometimes seemed as if she did not know where to place them. “Gangly”—that was the word for Anelie.

I had looked like that until just before I began my monthly bleeding. Then, about six months before my first cycle, I had plumped up. My breasts began to swell, of course, but so too did the rest of me. My cheeks, the tops of my arms, my belly—all over it was as if I took on a sheen of pudgy fat.

And then my cycle began. The fat melted away, and I emerged, a woman.

For my people the days of a woman’s menstruation are a time when she is especially unclean. I was twelve when I first saw the flow of blood. I told my mother what had happened and at that moment my life shifted.

I was not allowed to help prepare the evening meal that night—not that this was such a punishment!—as a menstruating woman is unclean and cannot touch the food of the rest of the family. During the four days I bled, I could not leave the house or interact with the men in my family. And I had to wash all of my clothes separately from the rest of the family’s clothes.

These things were tradition. I understood them; tradition was part of who I was. And in those first few months, I felt a sort of pride when I had my monthly blood, when I had to stay away from my father to avoid making him unclean, too.

It grew tiresome, though, the isolation and the rules. All the rules. And the more I read the
gazhè
books, the more
frustrated I became. I began to have thoughts that I should not have.

For example—why should a woman be considered unclean just because she is menstruating? There is nothing dirty about the monthly flow of blood—it is a natural part of life! This was perhaps one of the most difficult ideas for me to truly accept, though I acted among my people as though I did.

Once you begin to question your people’s beliefs, it is a slippery slope. Soon you can find yourself questioning everything.

Must we
really
wash clothes for the upper part of the body separately from clothes for the lower part of the body?
Must
we separate women’s clothing from men’s before we put them in the washing machine?

Could not my father cook a meal, especially on the days when Mother did so many readings and looked so tired by the evening?

And from there the questions became even more dangerous: Must our fathers choose for us the men we shall marry? Must
my
father? And … must I obey him?

That evening Marko and Romeo built a fire. Father had bought some meat in town. Mother arranged it on a spit over the flames and Violeta, Anelie, and I took turns rotating it. I did most of the turning; it was uncomfortable for Violeta to bend over the fire, and Anelie was afraid of the flames.

Mother sat nearby with Stefan on her lap. He chewed a biscuit and laughed happily at the fire.

Romeo was playing his guitar again, the same song he’d wanted to play for me the evening before. But his eyes were not on his instrument; he watched me as I turned the meat, and his slow smile seemed full of intention.

He looked very handsome this evening. He was experimenting with wearing his hair a new way, combed forward rather than back, and to the side. It suited him.

His body was straight and strong. He was young and came from a good family and his eyes told me that he desired me.

So why did I feel this way—like a cornered animal, prey?

Mother took Stefan inside to wash his hands and face. Somehow, suddenly, it was just me and Romeo by the fire.

This rarely happened—finding ourselves alone together.

Romeo did not waste the opportunity. The song ended abruptly and he placed his guitar back in its case. I stood up and turned to face him, arranging a smile on my lips.

“Lala,” he said, and he put a hand on my hip, squeezing me there. “You look delicious.”

I tried to speak, but before a word could come out Romeo’s mouth was upon mine, his kiss aggressive, his hot tongue filling my mouth. I tried to step back but the fire was behind me and my skirt was long. There was nowhere to go, and so I stood perfectly still and waited for him to finish kissing me.

I remembered the story of the Gypsy princess. She had not welcomed her marriage; she had tried to flee from it. But
she was wed nonetheless, and in time she came to desire her husband, and she begged him to embrace her.

How long would it be, I wondered, before I accepted what had been given to me?

Would acceptance come by our wedding night, when Romeo pushed apart my thighs and claimed me as his own?

Would it come later, when I bore him a child?

Might it be possible—might it never come? It filled me with terror, the taste of it metallic in my mouth. For the first time I allowed myself to think the truth—I might
always
feel as I felt just then—trapped in a wasteland with no way out.

The door of the motor home slammed open. Romeo stepped away from me, his face flushed from the heat of the fire, grinning.

It was Anelie. She stood framed in the motor home’s doorway, holding a platter of fruit.

“The meat is burning,” she said.

We ate our dinner, put away what was left, watched as Marko and Alek scooped dirt over the fire to make sure it was completely out. It was after ten o’clock when Anelie and I climbed into the tent.

We undressed in silence, hanging our skirts and slipping into our thin nightgowns. Then we took turns braiding each other’s hair, a nightly ritual we shared.

The bedrolls were kept behind the screen, away from the eyes of the
gazhè
who visited during the day, and we spread
them out after moving our table to one side. I had begun to wonder if Anelie was going to say anything at all when at last she spoke.

“By the fire—”

My eyes were heavy with sleep and I had to bring myself back to wakefulness to answer. “Yes?”

“When Romeo kissed you—it looked so beautiful, like something from a movie. The two of you look so well together.”

“He is a handsome man,” I said.

“But you do not want him.”

It was not a question.

I hesitated before I responded. “Why do you say that?”

“Earlier, I complained to you that I would never be good at telling fortunes. Remember?”

I nodded.

Anelie could not see me in the darkened tent, but she went on. “You told me that my problem is that I do not listen, and also that I do not truly look. You told me that if I did so, I could easily see what people wanted.”

“I remember the conversation.”

“Well,” she said, her voice dropping to almost a whisper. “I have been watching
you
.”

I asked, “And what have you learned?”

“That you are not happy. That you do not want to be Romeo’s bride. That you are afraid.”

“Afraid?” I scoffed. “What could I possibly fear?”

“I don’t know,” Anelie answered. “But I saw it in your
eyes—twice. Once out in the desert, when you sat under the tree. And again, right before Romeo kissed you.”

I did not know how to respond. At last I said, “You will be a fine fortune-teller, Anelie.”

“I knew it!” Her voice had the happy triumph of one who has won a game. But then she grew more sober. “But
why
are you not happy, Lala?”

If I answered too quickly, the tremor of the tears she could not see would echo in my voice. I took measured breaths. Breaths like those Ben Stanley had taken. It seemed a lifetime ago that he had sat with me in this same tent. Now my bedroll was spread on the ground where his chair had been.

“I will
learn
to be happy, Anelie.” By the time I spoke, my voice did not betray me.

“But what if you do not? Then what?”

“Anelie,” I said, “do you remember the story of Jepas?”

“The half man? The one who was lame down one side of his body?”

“Yes. You remember it?”

“Of course I do. You used to tell it to me at night before I fell asleep. It sometimes gave me nightmares.”

I was surprised. I had not known the story frightened her. “Anelie! You should have said something. I would have told you a different story. Which part frightened you? The evil sorcerer?”

“No,” she said. “The half-man. I thought the gypsy princess was crazy to want him, no matter how strong he was.”

“That is strange,” I said. “It was the princess I did not
like. She judged Jepas solely on the way he looked. She did not deserve such a man, I used to think.”

“The princess was right not to want him. He was ugly.”

Anelie was still a child. I realized with a sinking feeling that I agreed with her, though the reasons behind her conclusions were faulty. She thought that Jepas was not a worthy suitor because of his deformity.

Jepas had married the princess without knowing her at all. He wanted her for her beauty and because she was a princess. In this way, he was no better in his desire for her than she was in her disgust over his deformity. They were two sides of a coin.

And worse, he married her in spite of her fear—because he wanted her.

He forced himself upon her, and no one spoke up to stop him. Her own father gave her away.

Perhaps he
was
twisted; and if this was true, then maybe it reflected too on the story’s audience. We were supposed to identify with Jepas; we were supposed to boo the princess when she defies him and cheer later when she grovels for his touch.

We were supposed to agree with the rules that allowed Jepas to take his hard-won prize, even if that prize was a human being.

My father Mickey White was
rom barò
; that made me a Gypsy princess. And Romeo—Romeo was just a boy. He was not a cripple, not a villain, and not a great hero, either.

But he didn’t know me, any more than Jepas had known
his bride. He knew who my father was; he knew my face. But our souls? We were strangers.

“I am scared,” I whispered to Anelie.

“What frightens you?”

It took me so long to answer that I didn’t know if Anelie was still awake to hear my answer.

“Being the Gypsy princess.”

In my dreams, Romeo was chasing me through the desert. He limped as he ran, the left side of his body a deadweight that slowed him down. He would never catch me, not like that. I ran faster and faster until my feet no longer touched the ground.

Until I flew.