We collected the pink and purple hyacinths, and I chased her back down the hill to the edge of the river. At first we thought we had reached the wrong place. The wagon was gone and also the people. Only the last smoky breaths from the fire spiraling up into the crystal-blue sky above the river and the sickly sweet lily scent of the women—used to mask other odors—still lingered.
“Are you sure this is the place?” I said over and over until Helene told me to be quiet, that she needed to think.
I saw the trees that they camped under, the same ones they tied their washing to. The remains of string were still around the trees and roughly shorn in haste.
Layla was gone. Helene sat at the edge of the river and swung her legs down, looking around her constantly, thinking they would come back. I sat beside her and waited for her to tell me what we would do. She broke a stick into tiny pieces and threw them harshly at the river as if to punish it. And all the time her expression didn’t change. She could hide her anger from everyone but me. We waited until it was nearly dark, and then we headed along the road toward another village.
Helene asked a man if he had seen a group of people with a small child, and he just shook his head. Helene asked another woman, and she didn’t wait for her to finish. She said, “Go away, gypsy,” and that is how I first learned our name, knew what we were and that our journey would be continuous because there was no solid place for us, not here, not anywhere.
In the following days, I continued to ask about Layla, and Helene kept telling me that they had taken her and that we would meet up with them again. She believed that we had stayed out playing in the hills too long and they forgot all about us, though we have since thought otherwise. We didn’t see them again, but after months of begging and stealing on our own, we found another group traveling, and we joined them. Herman, the leader of the wagon and the tent people, and his brother Adrian said we could only stay for a little while, but it ended up being longer, maybe a year, because we arrived and left when the trees were shedding their leaves. When we told them about the people who took Layla, Adrian laughed. He said he knew of them and that Layla would likely be sold.
Helene and I spoke about this and wondered who would buy a child and why, and for many years we could not think of any reasons. And today it continues to haunt me, and I wonder if she is still alive. If she married and had children of her own.
Herman had, I think, two, maybe three wives. I can’t remember for certain, and neither can my sister, but there were several adults that slept in the small caravan with their five children, and at the end of the day, we were allowed the scraps from their dinner plates and the shelter of the wagon floor. And the first night, my sister had cried into her arms, and I put my face against her hair. I cried, too, but I didn’t understand then that Layla was gone for good. And each night under the wagon, we would whisper to each other and hold our palms together to seal our togetherness, and sometimes if there was still light from the fire, we would sign to each other with our special hand messages. It was a language that we created ourselves. We adapted everywhere we went, changing ourselves to fit in, like shape-shifters.
Herman’s caravan wasn’t the only one we stayed in. There were others that he would meet up with occasionally. People would ask Herman why he bothered with two stray pups. Though by that time he had found a use for us. Helene was to be his new wife in the near future, and I was good with a needle and thread. We also did what we were told and were grateful for any food we were given.
The wives were able to sell their bodies for money occasionally, but mostly we begged and stole from markets. The idea of selling our bodies we understood from early on. We had not yet understood the physicality of it, but we knew that it involved things we did not find appealing and closeness with men who always stank of beer. And while the women were selling themselves, sometimes Helene and I would steal things, especially food. And sometimes we would return with goods for Herman, which was expected, and sometimes we ate some ourselves before we returned. At times it was the only way to keep our bellies full.
Though the picture I paint is bleak, we didn’t notice because we had little else to compare it with, and the next memories that are clearer were of the children we would play with and the games late into the night and Herman telling stories around the fire: legends of men with two heads, giants that ate children, and curses that turned enemies to dust. Such tales would keep me awake at night sometimes, but still I wanted to hear more.
Since it was Helene’s eleventh year, Herman said it was time to become his wife. Though now I realize that any year would have been “time.” After Herman’s announcement, the other women dressed Helene in well-used lace and lent her some colored beads, and Helene didn’t like it. The women told Helene what Herman would do in more detail than we had occasionally witnessed ourselves, and when they saw our faces, they laughed, mouths open with rows of missing teeth. I did not like to picture what they said: Helene pressed onto the filthy straw bed and rolled out flat like dough.
Helene and I lay under the wagon, and we signed to one another. She said that we must run away, and I agreed because if Helene thought it was bad enough to leave, then it was. Helene was always right.
We ran then and stole a few things before we left: some fishing line and some pears. I was going to take a pair of earrings that one of the women had left on a table, but Helene told me that there was a difference between stealing to survive and stealing for greed. And we made our own track through the long grasses beside the river and into the next village.
It was just the two of us again for a time, and I liked that because we got to sing and dance whenever we wanted and there were no expectations and no plans of marriage. Sometimes we would pass fancy people in the street, but mostly we stayed out of sight because those people didn’t want us here and they were less kind than Herman’s women. We could tell from the way they looked at us and from the way they whispered. We needed to be with our own kind, though I think at that point I was starting to wonder about our kind. From what I had seen, they stole little children and slept with men in the villages for scraps.
One day we went into a church where people sang, and we liked the sound of it, and we hid under the last bench seat in lines called pews. The group of boys at the front of the church sang like angels, and I told Helene that if she was to marry anyone, it should be one of them, but she said she wouldn’t ever get married. When the sermon was almost over, we crawled into a tiny room with a curtain. And when the murmurings of parishioners died away, we heard the steps of the priest walking toward us. As the curtains were drawn back, I moved to flee, but Helene grabbed my arm to stay. The priest told us not to be afraid. He turned to disappear through a back door of the church and returned a few minutes later with a loaf of bread, several apples, a bottle of milk, and thick slices of ham.
He told us that God was taking care of us, and I said that God didn’t look after gypsies, and Helene elbowed me. The priest looked at us at first silently, and then he laughed softly into his chest. He said there were places that took in children, fed them, and gave them soft beds to sleep in, and he said he would take us there. We ate, and we drank, and I had never felt my belly hurt before from food.
We walked to a large house, and he introduced us to a woman, and she seemed pleased to have us. She led us into a big room with other children, and we had a bed just as he said. The lady told us we had to be quiet and say our prayers, and we copied the other children to learn them. The other children told us we spoke strangely, because our language was a mixture of mostly French and some of our mother’s Romany, too, which in time we would forget.
The next day we ate a breakfast of porridge with milk, and then we were told we must scrub the floors, and we did, and so did the other children, and we told them stories from the gypsy camps, of how the souls of evil men will take them away if they sleep too long and that children can be sold as slaves or sacrificed for good weather. That night some of the children were cryin
g and screaming, and a woman came in, a different one from the first, and when they told her why they were crying, she beat our legs with a stick.
When she left the dormitory, we learned from the other children, when they had calmed down, that people come and pick the children they want, but sometimes they don’t take sisters together, and we might be separated, which was worse than any stick to the legs.
We climbed out the window and escaped, and the other children stayed and watched us from the window, shocked that we would run away from food and the chance of a real home. We had never had a real home, so we didn’t know if that was good, but one thing was certain: we would never be separated, and we would rather be hungry than separated.
My recollections during this time are mostly defined by the wagons we joined, but there were also many months with just the two of us, sleeping behind sheds, in riverside weeds, anywhere we didn’t think we could be found in our sleep. And when we grew cold and our beds of grass had hardened with frost, we would find barns filled with animals that we could sleep near for warmth. One group we found was better than most. Their camp was a small, flat space of land that was well hidden between trees and long grasses beside a river. There was only one family of five: one man, a wife, and three children.
We inched forward on our bellies through the long grass to spy on them. The woman had a blanket on the ground that was covered with tiny colored beads she was threading onto strings. The man had his back to us. It was late in the afternoon and getting cold, but they had a fire and a small wagon and a horse with a very shiny coat.
We could hear the crackle of the fire and smell the salty meat cooking that would warm our bellies. They sat beside the fire, and the man was smoking a pipe, and he never turned his head but called out to us.
“Come and show yourself.”
I shook my head at Helene. He is talking about someone else, I said in sign language.
Helene and I stayed still, and he said it again.
Helene stood up. “No, he knows we are here. He has the sight.”
Helene took my hand, and we walked near the fire, and the man didn’t turn until we were right beside him. The woman and three small children eyed us, but the look was curious, not hostile. And the child on the ground gave a little cough while he watched us inquisitively.
“Where are you from?” he asked us.
“The village,” I lied.
“No. That’s a lie,” said the man, and Helene elbowed me in the ribs. “Tell the truth. You won’t be judged for it. Not the innocents.”
“We come from nowhere,” said Helene.
“I know no such place as nowhere,” said the man. “There is always somewhere.” I liked what he said, and later I would quote “from nowhere to somewhere” again and again until Helene grew sick of it, or perhaps in light of what happened, it made her sad, and she banned me from saying it at all, so that I could only mouth it to myself in the dark.
“Now that you are somewhere,” said the man, “would you like something to eat?”
We had eaten early that morning when the baker in the village had thrown us a bone with the remains of gnawed meat—not the flour-dusted rolls we ogled in his window—and told us that his dog would now go hungry.
“You must first say your prayers,” said the man, but we couldn’t remember them from the orphanage, and he quickly realized this also. He said a prayer to God for us, thanking him for the meal, and even now I hear the words whenever I taste my first mouthful of food.
We tried hard not to gulp the food like hungry wolves. But we did, while the two oldest children watched us curiously and the smallest one, no more than one, coughed and whined.
“He needs the roots and leaves of dandelions,” said Helene as we sat down close by but not so close that it might offend them.
“What does that do?” said the woman, who spoke like the people in the village.
“They heal. They healed my little sister when she had a cough,” said Helene.
The mother looked at the father to see what he would say.
“It wouldn’t hurt to try,” he said. The mother agreed.
We ran off searching and digging in the dark ground, dirt embedded in the scratches on our skin and under our nails, and we took the roots as well, and we came back with armfuls.
Helene and I then crushed the leaves and ground up the roots, and we said to boil them and feed them to the sick child on a spoon and spread the remains of the paste on his chest. The wife looked at her husband curiously, and he nodded. After they did this, the child stopped coughing and became rested and fell asleep.
“And where are you girls heading to?”
Helene thought all questions were tricks, and she didn’t answer, but I said that we were looking for Layla. They wanted to know who she was, and I told them about the others we had met and Layla being taken, and the wife put her hand to her mouth and looked at her own children and shook her head. She was odd and startled easily and looked about her nervously and seemed not like a gypsy at all.
Then she said, “You poor little rabbits. You can sleep here tonight. It is not too cold on the ground near the fire, and you can have one of our blankets.”
And the man made us “earn” our food by helping his wife thread the rest of the beads, and she told us what color beads look best with others. There was a little shiny one made from tin, and I thought about putting it in my pocket and then thought that these people were too kind and I could never steal anything from them. We loved threading beads, and I imagined that this was what my life should be, with a husband, threading beads, and children, not sick, lying on the ground before me.
“We are going into the village tomorrow. You girls can come and sell the beads with us, and if you sell some, you can have a bigger helping of food.”
When we lay down we faced each other beside the fire, and there was a sky full of stars, and Helene’s face looked orange and beaming, and we held hands, and we sang a tune that we remembered from our mother’s camp. The man said, “Shh! We are trying to sleep,” but it wasn’t said in anger. “You can sing it tomorrow for the people in the village!” We whispered, and then Helene made a whistling sound while she was trying to sing and whisper, and it sounded funny, and we felt happy with our new family, and we laughed into our hands and fell asleep like that, our hands over our faces and our heads together.
The mother woke us up and said we had to leave for the village, and she gave us a cloth and bowl of water to clean our faces, and the baby had begun coughing again. We stopped at the edge of a market with the wagon, and then the man tied the horses to a stake in the ground, and the mother laid out her wares on a blanket and suggested we sing our special song.
Several villagers bought some of the beaded necklaces and bangles, while Helene and I sang the song over and over, and the woman said that it was the best sale they’d had. But some people just walked past and whispered. A policeman came and said we had to leave, but by then we were ready to go. With the money, the father bought some bones of mutton, and we went back to the camp and played with the children all afternoon. I thought that we had found a permanent family, where we could be daughters and not wives to the same man.
Before it grew dark we went and found more of the plants to boil after a dinner of stew, scraping the meat off the bones with our teeth, and the man was true to his word. We had more to eat, and the woman stewed some apples, and we had that, too. The woman said that we were very thin, thinner than most children, but we didn’t care, because we weren’t hungry that night.
We found more of the plant for the woman to feed the child, who looked sicker, grayish, but was quieter and no longer coughed. The mother felt the child and said he was warmer than usual, but the father said he was fine, the child just needed rest after so many wakeful hours, and Helene and I went to sleep quickly that night by the fire.
In the morning we were woken up by the sounds of the mother, wailing as she rushed out of the wagon past us toward the stream. S
he was still wailing as she held her sick baby in the water, and the two other small children poked their heads out from the back of the wagon. The father stepped out pulling his braces over his shoulders. He walked to just near us and watched the woman.
“You should be going,” he said without looking at us. And we jumped up and walked away without anything this time, no shawl, no food, and when we thought they could no longer see us, we ran until we could no longer hear the wailing.
Magic flowers didn’t work, and we never suggested these again, because Helene said that the cure was cursed now. That maybe it was cursed because it had been used for Layla once and she was now stolen.
We were once again on our own.
CHAPTER 20
We came to a large town called Amiens. It was where a lot of children hid on the streets and came out at nighttime. We found some other children by themselves in a tent made from sheets of tin at the edge of the town. Towns were generally not friendly places. People did not like the sight of gypsy children at the entrances to their shops, and the general agreement was that we brought diseases and other things into the town.
According to Helene, I am an August baby and Helene is March, but the days of those months were lost well before my parents left. I had no birth certificate, and neither did Helene. There were no doctors. Babies were born, or died. The only help was from the women who knew things from before. There was no one to write our names down in a register, a church, or a hospital. No papers that said we were here. When I learned later at Jerome’s that people were recorded, I thought that it was a strange thing people had to know, and in some way I still think it is better to be no one in particular at times.
We shared a tent with the other children. Some were only five, others were older teens who “worked,” they said, but that was just code for stealing. For a period we were wild and free, with no adult to tell us what to do again, but Helene didn’t like the idea of stealing any more.
“We have to find real work and pay for things with money instead of stealing,” she said. When she would say this, the other children would laugh at her.
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