American Gypsy

by Oksana Marafioti

  “Check the address again,” Dad said.

  I looked at the napkin where I’d written it down. “It matches.”

  We parked and got out. Dad knocked on a glass door with dark curtains pulled tight, and for a few minutes nothing happened. I walked up and down the sidewalk. He knocked again. The curtains moved this time to reveal an eye.

  “Oh,” Dad said. “Hello. I here for Olga. What? No. O-l-g-a. Long-hairs Gypsy vooman.”

  The eye was joined by a finger, which pointed to an alley on our left.

  The back door cracked only wide enough to let us pass. Inside, cigarette smoke substituted for air. I followed Dad down a narrow hallway, both of us behind a balding Asian man who said nothing but nodded in the direction of a door on the other side of the poker tables. The place was jam-packed. The color red prevailed here—red lights, red carpets—and walls with giant mirrors multiplied us by the dozen. The music was an unrecognizable jumble nearly drowned out by voices and chips clinking in chorus.

  My stepmother slept on a maroon couch in the owner’s office. The look on his bulgy-eyed face suggested horrified alarm as he begged my father to keep the lady away from his establishment. He didn’t want police involvement on account of it being illegal.

  “Your wife is a menace,” he said. “She terrorizes my patrons and employees, demanding back money she lost, accusing everyone of cheating. I think it would be better for all of us if she come here no longer.”

  How could it be that one petite female had managed to bully a roomful of hardened gamblers? I’d imagined, based strictly on my cinematic experience, that the muscle at such a place could easily drop-kick a troublemaker. Yet here stood a man on the brink of a nervous breakdown because of my tiny stepmother.

  Dad agreed to keep Olga away, and hauled his wife out to the van while I followed timidly behind. At one point she woke up long enough to demand he take her back so she could finish her hand. He promised her that if she ever stepped into that place again, he’d send her back to the cold, vermin-infested village of Konotop from which she came. Unfortunately he failed to forbid her from going to the dozens of other underground gaming halls in the Los Angeles area.

  After this humiliating experience, Olga put her gambling on hiatus, concentrating instead on clients (good) and on my still unattached state (bad). She plotted or sabotaged, or found a way to sabotage while plotting. As losing money at the tables was no longer an option, she began to lose it to her second favorite vice: alcohol.

  Alcohol consumption is woven into the very fiber of Eastern European culture. (In Russian, vodka means “little water.”) People make peace while drinking, forge business deals, talk politics and philosophy. If you were a businessman and you didn’t drink, you’d be the only one at the table not making progress. But wisdom held that if you drank alone, you had a serious problem.

  Olga stashed her alcohol supply far away from wandering eyes. She’d be all right in the afternoon, but by midnight we’d have to drag her from the ladder before she started mewling on the roof again.

  It seemed the one thing holding Dad and Olga together at this stage was their business. In the same way that Olga tried to give up gambling, Dad agreed to try to behave around women. Money still poured in, so they patched up the leaky roof of their relationship for the sake of luxury and status. Where I made five dollars an hour, they raked in anywhere from two to ten thousand a day. For a simple love spell, Olga charged at least five hundred dollars, but since most of my father’s clients had bigger problems than a fizzled relationship, he accepted what a client could afford. Sometimes it was one hundred dollars, other times a fruitcake.

  When not in deadlock with each other, Olga and Dad greatly enjoyed their new lifestyle. Olga purchased diamond rings for each finger. Soon she sparkled like a disco ball.

  Dad booked more gigs, playing jazz, rock, and jazz-rock fusion. He had little desire to play only Gypsy music, maybe because he was finally free to choose. After the shows he sold his home-cooked CDs for five dollars apiece. “If only your grandfather could see me now,” he’d often say. Even though he didn’t make as much money as Olga, he was really starting to enjoy himself. His one regret was that stardom still eluded him, though he was convinced it would not be long before the Grammys called.

  He made sure to remind me daily that I could live in the same exciting manner if I changed my conformist ways. The only problem was, his idea of following my dream involved performing an occasional channeling and, let’s not forget, settling down with a nice Romani boy.

  THE WEDDING

  Not long after our two a.m. Olga roundup, we were invited to a wedding. It was going to last for two days: a grand affair, Romani-style. According to tradition, the first day of celebration takes place at the groom’s house, while the second continues at the bride’s.

  I can’t say I willingly put on the sequined peach monstrosity Olga called a dress, but she’d paid for it, and she was acting like this wedding was a really big deal to her, so I obliged. Afterward, she made me turn in front of her bedroom mirror, exclaiming that I resembled a budding rose. Some sparkly jewelry followed, except for a heavy, solid gold bracelet—a gift for the newlyweds—which she carefully placed inside her purse. To crown it all, Olga orchestrated a hair-tease that created a halo on my head reminiscent of the long-gone Lioness. My hair was now almost to my waist—not because I wanted the trademark Gypsy locks but out of superstition. I’d heard Esmeralda say that the longer you grow your hair, the more patient you become, and with Mom practicing her plastic powers in Vegas, and Dad and Olga doing everything they weren’t supposed to, I needed all the patience I could get. Even Roxy was in on it with me, both of us growing our patience inch by inch.

  We drove to the groom’s house through the hills of Glendale, Dad and Olga up front and me budding in the backseat. The sun had long since gone down, and darkness gathered like a cape pinpricked by the streetlights. My stepmother prattled on about the bride, who supposedly had such an enormous nose that her parents, also Olga’s good friends, had no choice but to come up with their own kalim. A kalim is an offering of gold customarily given by the groom’s father to the bride’s father after they have worked out the wedding details. I didn’t believe a word of it. First, Olga liked to exaggerate. And second, we lived in the twentieth century, where no self-respecting girl would allow her parents to settle her future over a handful of precious metals. The family had come to the States recently, but surely the girl had speedily grasped the disadvantages of ancient customs the same way I had.

  Before we even saw the house, we heard the music. My heart tightened at the familiar sounds of Romani melodies.

  “We’re late,” Dad said. “I told you we should’ve gone to the service.”

  We parked two blocks away; cars already lined both sides of the street all the way up the hill.

  “I don’t think they’ve started yet,” Olga said, pointing out a stream of guests winding up the street to the house. “See? Everybody’s still outside.”

  We joined a crowd of people gathered on the front lawn, stark against a house so lit up with Christmas lights that it looked like the sun had taken residence.

  “Isn’t that dangerous, all the lights turned on together like that?”

  “Gospodi, Oksana. Only you’d notice something so trivial on a night like this,” Olga said.

  And maybe she was right.

  The air hinted of roasted meats. Men, including my father, had brought their guitars, fiddles, and accordions. Many likely never left the house without them.

  I stood there, breathing in the crisp air and the music, thinking, How could anyone not be moved by this?

  Some of the neighbors had come out, watching us as if we were a circus pitching tents. Meanwhile the guests made small talk in Rromanes, Russian, and even English. Some shook hands, others embraced. Even if many of these immigrants didn’t live a traditional Romani life anymore, they happily returned to it for special occasions.

  “Why
is everyone standing out here?” I asked.

  Olga took the pipe Dad had lit up. He had bought it off a Hindu man who’d promised that it improved health. She puffed, her eyes half-closed, the smell of cherry tobacco kissing my nose. “The newlyweds will sit at the head of the table first, before anyone’s allowed in. Then”—she pulled out the golden bracelet from her purse—“the gifts, and then we celebrate.”

  Finally the doors opened and the father of the groom invited everyone in to begin the celebration.

  Two sets of long tables ran parallel to each other, from the living room through the French doors and out to the backyard. Another table was set at the back of the garden, creating the shape of a Russian П. That was where the bride and groom were already receiving gifts.

  We stood in a slowly moving procession as if to meet royalty. When it was our turn to congratulate the bride and groom, I couldn’t stop staring at their faces, flushed and shiny-eyed. They radiated an inner dazzle that had nothing to do with the wedding. The evidence of their love was almost tangible, and I imagined wrapping myself in it, letting its bliss tingle against my skin.

  Once people delivered their presents and felicitations, they sat according to gender and age: men took the right side, women the left; the oldest sat closer to the head of the table, the youngest at the ends. This was done so the young would always be ready to refill glasses or fetch a shawl. In Romani culture, the elder generations enjoy almost unlimited power, and it’s a great offense to slight them in any way.

  The din in the room fluttered out the windows, but I picked up snippets of conversation here and there. Most guests spoke Russian, and they did so with their hands as much as with their mouths. To a gadjee it might have appeared as though the wedding guests were ensnared in some mass disagreement, when in truth they were just having a friendly chat.

  A little girl dashed across the floor and into the arms of a woman several seats to my right. The kid’s curls bounced, gold earrings twinkling from her tiny earlobes as she jumped up and down to get her mother’s attention away from the animated discussion the latter was having with her neighbor.

  “Well, here’s my Ninochka,” the woman said, embracing her daughter. She caught the pink bow suspended from the tip of one dark curl and quickly reclasped it at Ninochka’s temple. The other woman, hair in a loose bun, bejeweled and heavily shoulder-padded in a dress that could’ve been made out of Liberace’s cape, clucked her tongue and said in a voice rough as sandpaper, “What a beauty, what a beauty. Watch out, Alla. Ten more years and you’ll be beating away suitors with a broom.” She reached out and squeezed the little girl’s chin with plump fingers.

  “Bless you, Natasha,” Alla said. “But you don’t think she’s too dark? You know how even some of our Roma boys prefer a porcelain doll.”

  “Devlo (Goodness), Alla. It’s common knowledge that dark-skinned tziganochky (Gypsy girls) are better in bed,” Natasha said, her massive bosom shaking with laughter.

  This was welcome news to me. Cousin Zhanna had pale skin, hair the color of melted caramel, and eyes like two ambers, and even when she was little, she was considered a jewel among the Roma. Next to her I blended into the background like a muddy snow mound in the banks of a city road. Maybe I had attractions I didn’t realize. And yet, surveying the room, I noticed several women who could’ve passed for Zhanna’s sister. The younger men, all suited up and shiny-tied, had gathered close to them, their bodies taut with unspoken rivalry. In a crowd, no one would think these girls to be Romani, but such is the diversity of our folk.

  My neighbor at the table was a tawny young girl of around twelve; everything she said was harnessed to a wide grin. Lila was already engaged to a boy who kept waving at her from the other side of the room.

  Marriage deals can take place when the kids are young, but they don’t normally get married until years later. Many parents choose to do this to secure a prosperous future for their children. “After all,” many a proud mother would argue, “who better to decide the person you’d be spending the rest of your life with than your own mama, right?” Divorce is a black dress of shame, and to a man a sign of failure. Also, having a fiancé keeps many teenagers from fooling around (even with the fiancé) and ruining their reputation. If rumors of indecent behavior reach either party’s family, the engagement can be withdrawn, and nobody wants that kind of shame attached to their name.

  It took hours for the toasts to make their way around the tables. But even as people raised glasses in blessings, the music continued. I loved the songs, even if I couldn’t understand all the lyrics anymore. With time and little use, I was slowly forgetting my Rromanes—and it hurt my heart a little. This, I would learn, is similar to the experience of many Americans born into a multilingual family: even if they’re taught the language of their parents, sooner or later English becomes their language of choice.

  Lila’s enthusiasm about the wedding, the food, the way the old people danced with their hands high up and rusty hips swaying drew tendrils of joy from inside me. In that moment, I was a Roma girl, no matter what I or others thought. The music especially invoked that ancient feeling of belonging that makes us reach out for our mothers before we can see. The lilting melodies made me cry; they still do, as if the music reconnects a loose wire between my heart and my heritage. Next thing I knew, I was dancing.

  And the dancing never stopped; not for hours. At some point, a wiry woman bumped into me. “You know, the Crimean Romani are the best dancers in the world!” she bragged, and danced a Chechotka, a fast-paced tap dance, so fast I couldn’t see her feet move. Entire families came out on the dance floor, babies bopping up and down in their parents’ arms, men clapping their hands and women shaking their shoulders. We followed the current and the music carried us out to sea.

  At around one in the morning the groom’s father finally took mercy and shouted for the musicians to take a break, and everyone, breathless and sweating, found their places. That was when the grandmother announced it was time for the groom and bride to follow her out.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Lila.

  “They have to pass the trial of the first matrimonial night. After that they’ll officially be husband and wife.”

  “But I thought they were married at the church.”

  “Yeah, but they’re still called bride and groom until they complete the trial.”

  I looked at the bride, whose face had lost some of its shine. “I don’t think she likes that idea, whatever it is.”

  Lila giggled. “Yanko is going to stick his pole inside Madlena. I heard it’s like being bitten by a swarm of bees.”

  “They have to do that now, in the middle of the party?”

  “Oh yes, to prove the bride’s innocence. You know. That she didn’t let other boys do stuff to her. Then she’ll turn into a true wife.”

  “Don’t tell me someone’s going to stand there and wait for her to turn,” I said.

  “You’re funny,” she said, and covered her mouth, but not enough to conceal the grin. “Grandma Polyakov will bring out the sheet, so we can all see the proof.”

  With the progression of the old woman’s speech, the groom flushed like an overcooked beet. When he stood, she proceeded toward the door, expecting the newlyweds to follow.

  Only they didn’t.

  “We’ve decided to skip that part,” Yanko said. His fingers dug into the snow-white tablecloth. “It’s our private business. No one else’s.”

  Relatives and guests froze in their merriment. Both fathers scowled, something dangerous simmering beneath their furrowed brows. Mothers bit their lips and chewed their fingernails. “It’s a tradition,” one of them said. “I knew it,” the other said. “Pass the vodka,” someone else said.

  The bride stood next, wrapping a hand around her husband’s arm. To me, as she lifted her head up above the sea of disorderly Romani, she was the most beautiful girl in the room. “Please respect our decision,” she said. The words could cut steel.

&nbs
p; The house exploded with voices: arguments, jokes, threats. Yanko and his mother were trying to calm down his father. But the man bellowed, hands flying in gestures of stubbornness. The girl’s father and mother elbowed their way in, and the parents began to thrust their faces at one another, their fingers jabbing like spears. Their rigid bodies left little space between them: mothers with hands on hips; fathers thin-lipped and ready to brawl.

  Confusion reigned. I felt anxious as well, but I admired Yanko and Madlena so much that on the inside I was grinning. It took real courage to stand up to centuries of tradition. How did they do it, and in front of two hundred crazed Romani? I wasn’t even brave enough to be honest with my own father, and there was only one of him.

  When the newlyweds’ brand-new Firebird—a gift from an overzealous uncle—screeched out of the driveway, the merriment fizzled out. The young couple made off with two suitcases and their dignity intact, while the guests continued to quarrel over the lost chance to witness a bloodstained sheet. Did that mean they would forever remain bride and groom, or were they truly married now?

  * * *

  From the car window Los Angeles flickered by in a post-midnight hush. I listened to Olga and Dad blame the parents for their offspring’s disgraceful behavior, and listened to condemnation delivered through curses more appropriate for wartime deserters. This is what you leave behind when you dare to go forward, I thought: your name, in contempt for eternity. And on that night, I became aware of something I’d never given much thought before: oppression can come from within as easily as from without.

  I thought about young Mr. and Mrs. Polyakov. Had they realized that their actions might have severed them from the rest of their family? I wanted to ask what they felt the moment they stood up and spoke their convictions.

  What would it take to be as brave?

  STEVART HOPELAND

  The day of the talent show rushed at me with the speed of a comet, and all I could do was to hold myself back from telling Cruz that he’d won our bet. He had claimed we could never be just friends, and I was trying to prove him wrong, but to no avail. None of the excuses I’d made up to stop pining for him worked anymore because my heart yearned for his affections. Against all logic, I loved him.