The Girls with No Names

by Serena Burdick

  I decided right then and there that the bespectacled doctor was neither executioner, nor mad scientist, he was an overgrown fly trapped in an old man with a fancy machine who knew nothing whatsoever about children’s hearts. I was not going to die on my parents. I would continue to gather years for them, pocket away birthdays. My survival would be long and exceptional.

  That night, I didn’t say a word to my sister about my doctor’s visit, and she didn’t ask. She’d never believed I was dying anyway. “Good night, Effie.” She kissed my cheek and dropped onto her stomach. “Now, don’t go yanking the covers off me,” she added, falling asleep with her elbow jammed into my side.

  I stared at the ceiling, envying how easily my sister went to sleep, her soft breath rustling the cool night air. The poke of her elbow was both irritating and a comfort, this point of solid, lasting bone.

  Chapter Three

  Effie

  The morning after Luella and I discovered the gypsies I did not notice anything different about my parents. I should have. It was the beginning of the earth shifting beneath our feet, and yet all I hoped was that they didn’t notice our late-night excursion.

  Hungrily, I heaped my plate full of shirred eggs and stewed prunes, exchanging a look of complicity with Luella whose plate was as full as mine.

  “Effie, really.” Mama gave a disapproving look as I poured an unreasonable amount of cream into my coffee. She wore a blouse with a high, buttoned collar that made her look as if she had no neck at all.

  “It’s unbearably bitter.” I took a sip, letting a small, undissolved lump of sugar slip into my mouth.

  “If you are grown up enough to drink coffee, then you’re old enough to get used to the bitterness,” Daddy said, his eyes roaming down the page of his newspaper. His pinstripe vest was pressed straight as a board and his hair was parted on the side with a slight wave frozen over his forehead. I could smell the pomade from across the table.

  My father, in spite of throwing lavish parties and hiring the best tailors, did not believe in indulging incidentals like tea when he preferred coffee. He was cheap in certain ways, we’d learned. My grandfather had been one of the founders of the soda water industry and Daddy had taken over the business when he died. It was thriving, according to Mama, and yet the only servants Daddy allowed were our housemaid Neala, our cook Velma—a middle-aged colored woman with towering hair who lived in Harlem and told me she took the underground at four thirty in the morning to get here in time to make our breakfast—and the formidable and ancient Parisian, Margot. There had been more servants when we were little, but Daddy believed in “economizing.” There wasn’t the need for servants like there used to be, he said. Consequently, Luella and I would not be getting our own ladies’ maids, as did every other girl we knew. Luella had thrown a fit, but Daddy wouldn’t budge. He said Margot could help us when needed. Otherwise, we’d have to learn to button our own dresses. I didn’t mind. I admired Daddy’s practicality, but didn’t dare say this to Luella.

  This morning, I wasn’t dwelling on bitter coffee or buttons. I glanced at my sister rapidly eating her eggs, certain we were thinking the same thing. The gypsies. We had to go back in the light of day. Maybe they’d tell our fortunes. Maybe they’d play their music again. After all it was Saturday, a day without school or eleven o’clock mass. On the whole our parents did not approve of idle time, but somewhere Daddy had read about the importance of exercise in children, and believed that fresh air did our minds and souls good. He’d convinced Mama that developing an appreciation for the natural world would give us a greater appreciation for God. We would awaken Sunday morning with reverence and heaps of piety.

  Incidentally, our delicious outdoor adventures only made Sunday mass more unbearable, but we weren’t about to tell our parents that.

  I sucked up my wiggly eggs, hoping we could slip away quickly, when Luella said, “Daddy, what do you know about the gypsy encampments?” This was so like her, to brazenly go to the edge of being caught just to prove she couldn’t be.

  Daddy folded his paper and set it aside. “Why? What do you know about them?”

  “Only that they’re camping near here. I read it in the paper.”

  “Then you know as much as I do.”

  “They are a vulgar people,” Mama put in, vulgarity being a word she bestowed on most of New York City these days. “Immigrants,” she added, knowing Daddy disliked the throngs of immigrants as much as she did. I had the urge to point out that she was an immigrant, but didn’t dare. The French, apparently, had overcome that vulgarity by virtue of being French.

  “They’re well behaved and polite, from what I’ve heard.” Daddy sipped his coffee.

  “Well-behaved people do not let their children crawl in the dirt. They’re savages, and thieves,” Mama replied.

  “They’re honest horse traders.”

  Mama fussed with her napkin. “They tell fortunes and take people’s money for it. That is thieving.”

  “What if the fortune comes true?” Daddy flashed her an indulgent smile.

  Mama dismissed the remark with a click of her tongue, turning to Luella. “The gypsies are an ignorant people, which makes them dishonest. If you want your fortune told you must understand that you are donating your money to thievery, not paying for an actual service. If they set up their booths on the street, I’ll indulge you and we can call it charity. Otherwise, you’re to stay away from their camps.”

  I glared at Luella, and we ate the rest of our breakfast in silence.

  Once Neala cleared our dishes away, we excused ourselves and flew upstairs for sweaters. Mama was at her desk responding to invitation requests, and Papa was getting ready for his Saturday tennis match. We promised to be home by lunch, slipping out into the April morning with our sketch pads.

  Our house was one of five brick homes on a wide cobblestone street that bordered a thickly wooded hill on the northwest end of Manhattan. No trolleys came up this far, and we had to walk five blocks for the elevated train into Manhattan for school. Mama used to walk with us to the schoolhouse when we lived on Fifth Avenue, but here it was too far and took too long for her to ride the train back and forth. Which left us on our own and gloriously independent.

  As soon as we were out of sight of the house, we discarded our notepads behind a tree and ran to the stream where we pulled off our stockings, hiked up our skirts and tiptoed into the frigid water. Overhead the sky was a promising blue. Once our feet were properly numb, we waded out, pulled our dry stockings and boots over the bright red skin of our tortured feet and climbed the hill in silent, mutual defiance of our mother’s prejudice against the gypsies. There was something fascinating about them that existed nowhere else in our lives.

  Threading our way through the trees, we heard distant voices, the occasional braying of a horse and the shouts of children. This time we didn’t stop at the tree line but walked boldly into the bright tumult of tents and caravans. Horses whinnied and dogs yapped. Cast iron pots straddled the morning fires, with smoke that coiled into the brisk air.

  We passed a man squatting by a basin of water. He plunged his hands in, looking up with a crooked smile and two front teeth missing. Women in aprons and headscarves raised their heads to gaze at us, but kept to their tasks, arching over scrub boards, wringing clothes out to dry in the sun. A boy of around thirteen years of age followed us, swiveling his stick in the dirt like the trail of a snake. I had imagined all gypsies to be dark-eyed and dark-haired, but this boy was freckled and fair, with light eyes that bore into me every time I turned to look at him.

  Without warning, Luella whirled to a stop. The boy pulled back, startled, but curious as Luella asked him whom we might speak with about hearing their music, enunciating her words as if he might not understand. When he didn’t reply she asked if he spoke English, which made him laugh.

  “Only my grandparents still speak Romani,” he said i
n a pitched English accent. “Trayton Tuttle, at your service. You may call me Tray.” He flourished his stick and rotated on his heels, turning from snake conjurer to gentry as he spoke. “I’ll take you to my ma,” he said, and marched in the opposite direction, his stick tapping the crude path as if it were Park Avenue. He disregarded the puddles, holding his head comically high and plowing right through them as mud splashed up his pant legs. I couldn’t help smiling.

  We were taken to a pillar of a woman who stood in the doorway of an open tent watching our procession. She wore a floral apron and matching headscarf. The door flaps were rolled to either side of her adding to the stage-like effect of the scene as Tray stopped, swept an illusory hat from his head and clasped it to his stomach. “I present my ma, the lovely Marcella Tuttle of Sussex.”

  He bowed with all the grace of a prince and Marcella swatted him on the back. “My little actor. Go steal someone else’s show. Better yet, play the part of a servant boy and wash those pans. They’re crusting over in the sun.” An upward lilt at the end of Marcella’s accented words made her sound as grand as the boy proclaimed her to be.

  Ignoring her, Tray said, “These fair maidens of the hill have come to hear our accomplished music.” He spread his palms as if we’d sprung from them, lowering an intense gaze at Luella. “If you’re not careful, the music might change you in ways you’re unprepared for.” He turned his delicate face toward me, and I thought he’d make a fine actor one day, with a face like that. Cocking his head to one side, he said, “You, I believe, are not so easily influenced.”

  His sentence was cut short by a broad hand that reached into our scene and yanked him by the collar. “Enough of this dandy play. You get those pans washed or I’ll wash your hide.” There was a boot to Tray’s behind. “Job and I already brushed down the horses and emptied the water buckets. You get on and do the one thing you’re asked and stop messing about.”

  Tray stumbled, righted himself and straightened his imaginary jacket without missing a beat. “There are ladies present,” he said, haughtily, lifting a stack of pans and carting them away with a wink at me over his shoulder.

  The intruder was a gangly young man, youth persisting in his smooth face, the man-to-be surfacing in his baritone and swagger. He had a wide jaw and eyes that were dark, but not lightless. He stuck out his hand. “Sydney Tuttle,” he said, shaking first my hand and then Luella’s before addressing Marcella. “You can’t let him go on like that, Ma. People will think him odd.”

  Marcella was a woman armed with size, her shoulders round and large as a man’s, her back straight, her step deliberate. “You leave him be,” she said, moving to the fire and setting her intention on prying a loaf of bread from an iron pan.

  Sydney walked off, drawing Luella’s attention without offering her a glance.

  Marcella ripped the bread into sections, eyeing us over the snaking smoke. “Tray’s friendlier than he should be,” she said. “What is it you want?”

  My tongue went heavy in my mouth, but Luella spoke up without hesitation. “We heard your singing yesterday. It was the most beautiful sound. We hoped we might be lucky enough to hear it again.”

  Marcella remained taciturn. “We don’t sing for strangers, not our own words, anyway. Not unless we’re spied on.”

  I tugged on Luella’s sleeve, but she plunged ahead. “We didn’t mean any disrespect, we just happened by. It was magnificent. Any stranger would have stopped to listen.”

  Sparks shot up from the fire as Marcella poked it with a stick. “Like I said, we don’t sing for strangers.”

  My throat was thick with nerves. I wanted to leave, but Luella stood rooted. “I’m Miss Luella Tildon and this is my sister Miss Effie Tildon.” She gave a slight curtsy. “You are Marcella Tuttle of Sussex which makes us officially introduced and no longer strangers.”

  The corner of Marcella’s lip curled as if suppressing a grin. She eyed Luella, giving a final jab to the fire. “Your parents know you’re here?”

  “Of course,” Luella answered. “My father says you’re fine horse traders.”

  “Ha!” The syllable rang out in disbelief. Marcella looked at me, jutting her chin at two chairs. “Sit.” It was not a tone you disobeyed.

  Luella pinched my hand as we sat which meant, I told you so. She always got her way.

  Bone China plates, as lovely as the ones we had at home, were placed in our laps and we balanced them on our knees trying to keep hunks of bread from sliding off. The bread was crispy, dense and sweetened with raisins. I had never eaten anything baked out of doors and I imagined I could taste the crust of earth, the nectar of ash. Through the tent flap I saw a tidy room with a trunk and a double bed on a wooden frame with an ivory coverlet. These gypsies were as civilized as my father said, and yet I sensed what it was about them that made my mother fearful. There was a pulse around them, an enigmatic energy, as if the blood of their music, even in silence, vibrated up through the ground beneath their feet.

  A little way off a girl watched us. She looked about Luella’s age, or at least as mature in figure, with dark hair and skin. Her cheeks turned into a wide smile as she watched me rip the bread with my teeth. I felt on display, sized up by my ability to eat in an outdoor chair with a plate on my knees.

  Walking over, the girl dropped to the ground with her legs curled back under a skirt embroidered in red, blue and yellow flowers. “I’m Patience,” she said, and we introduced ourselves in turn.

  Marcella handed Patience a hunk of bread and she chewed it, watching us from the same dark, distinct eyes as her brother, Sydney. I wondered where Tray had sprung from with a paleness so unlike his siblings.

  As news of our arrival spread through the camp, a crowd of children gathered around us, each with a pet of one species or another. One boy held a rope tethered to a goat that appeared perfectly content to be dragged around by its neck. Another boy, in dirty-kneed knickers, set a globed cage at my feet with a canary as bright as an egg yolk perched inside. The bird cocked his head and fluttered his resplendent feathers as the boy opened the little wire door and reached for him. “I’ve clipped his wings, so he won’t fly away,” he said, lifting the bird and letting him hop from the narrow branch of his finger to mine.

  “How charming,” cried Luella, watching the bird parade up and down my finger. “May I?” The bird hopped from my finger to hers, and Luella laughed and stroked its lemony head.

  The other children crowded closer. A scrappy girl took the empty plate from my lap and dropped a bunny into the folds of my tan skirt. It was so ensconced in knotted, gray fur I could hardly tell its tail from its head. It gave a violent kick as I lifted it and tore a line of skin from the inside of my arm.

  “Ouch!” I cried and the girl snatched the animal back.

  “You can’t hold him like that,” she scolded, tucking the bunny into her chest and pinning his feet with her hands.

  “Are you okay?” Luella said. “Let me see.”

  A string of blood beaded along my arm. It stung. “I’m fine.”

  The boy promptly took back his bird, as if Luella might also prove an unfit handler. Two children, matched in size, their hair wild and long, stared at us. The girl stuck out her hand and we realized they expected payment for their generosity. Despite our mother’s warning, we’d both brought money in hopes of getting our fortunes told. We dug into our pockets and dropped a nickel into the children’s palms. This, of course, brought more children with dogs, bunnies, birds, even insects, but we shook our heads, not about to waste what we needed to reveal our futures.

  Marcella watched us, stationed by the fire with folded arms and an amused expression. She never reprimanded the children or called them off; she let us fend for ourselves until the gaggle turned away.

  It impressed me how different Marcella was from my own mother, or any other mother I’d known. In my world, mothers stepped in to solve problems,
arrange hair and clothes, and put everything in order. Marcella, with her eagle’s eye, watched to see how things might arrange themselves.

  It was Sydney who raised his fiddler’s bow first, toasting his “brothers” and striking his fiddle with gumption. Clearly Tray had organized it, bouncing behind the musicians with glee, one man with a dulcimer, another the trombone. The three men formed a semicircle around Patience. She gave a dramatic pause, raised her hands over her head and then plunged into a dance as their notes struck the air and a man’s deep, mournful voice rose above the instruments.

  It’s evening already.

  We took a long road.

  Tie them up and Rest.

  Oh my brothers, Oh my brothers.

  Patience’s skirt lifted and her hands spun ribbons of color as she plucked the scarf tied around her braid, her loose hair creating its own commotion. The instruments quickened and just as I was certain she’d vanish in a heap of hair and fabric, her hand emerged from the whirling mass and reached for my sister. Someone made a whooping sound. The fiddles double-timed. Luella needed no instruction. She danced with Patience as if it’s what she’d always done, her arms and legs surging under the seams of her clothes, her limbs broken free. Caught up, I felt transported into a heavenly world of color and the voices of riotous angels, their haunting music opening up a longing in me that had no name.

  Watching from my chair, I was aware of Marcella’s presence only when I felt her hand on my shoulder, her fingers so close to my face I could see tiny cracks in her knuckles and smell the strangeness of her skin. It seemed an unconscious gesture, as if the music had softened her and she’d diminished, her body seeking earth instead of sky. Propped up by the narrow shelf of my shoulder, this large woman swayed and I began swaying with her from my seat. My shyness dissolved against the closeness of our bodies. My body racked with the pulse of the music, my chest with the thrum of my heart. I had never felt anything so powerful and disorienting, and there was a fluttering in my chest like the arrival of a swarm of tiny, caged canaries.