Burning (16 page)

But the reality of the situation was that I would be entering a family fifteen thousand dollars in debt. Doubtless, my new mother-in-law would expect me to earn it back.

In many ways I would belong to Romeo’s
vìtsa
as soon as the wedding feast was finished. I would be expected to serve his family, to answer to and obey his mother unquestioningly.

I had never really considered whether or not I was a particularly obedient person. I worked in my family as a valuable part of the machine of our household. We all worked, in one capacity or another, to provide for and maintain our way of life. It was not a question of obedience. I gave with a glad heart.

But in Romeo’s family, I knew that obedience would be expected—demanded, even—by his mother, Clara Nicholas. Violeta had managed to convince her Marko to stay with our family instead of his, but I knew I would have no such sway over Romeo.

Romeo was his mother’s dearest son. The most beautiful boy, she crooned, and always with a kiss for her, always her closest and best. Under no circumstances would she allow Romeo to leave her home until we had enough children—three or four at least—that it would become necessary for us to have our own space.

And I knew, too, that Clara Nicholas did not think I was good enough for her son, regardless of the bride price I had fetched. No girl was.

I do not think I truly recognized how precious solitude was to me until it became clear that I would not have it much longer. And growing in me like ivy, strengthening each day and choking out everything else, was the resentment I felt at the impending loss of it.

“Everyone, come,” boomed my father. “We will go into town. It is too hot to sit here like this. We will go to the little store. We will buy ice cream and cold drinks.”

Father came slamming through the door of the motor home, slanting his wide-brimmed cowboy hat over his eyes to cut the glare of the sun. He wore that expression that won him so many admirers among our
kumpànya
: steely determination, the look of a man who has chosen a path and will follow it.

Today that path would lead us to ice cream. About this I would not complain. I was fond of ice cream, but more than that, I knew it would do me good to feel the air whip against my face as we rode into town, windows rolled down.

There were too many of us to fit at once into the Jeep, so it was decided that Father would make two trips. First he took Mother with the baby along with Violeta and Marko. Romeo, Alek, Anelie, and I waited for him to take them into town and then return for the rest of us.

Marko helped first my mother and then Violeta into the backseat of the Jeep. Then he handed Stefan to my mother before climbing into the front beside my father. As they drove away we waved, and Alek even ran alongside the road
as the car gained speed, jumping and calling goodbye with the energy of a child.

Then they were gone, and we settled in the tent’s shade to wait for my father to return for the rest of us.

Alek took up Romeo’s guitar. He had learned a few chords; that, I suppose, is one of the advantages of a trip like this, one where there are so few distractions.

“Show me how you do that,” begged Anelie, and Alek passed her the guitar.

“Put your fingers here and here,” he showed her. “Then go like this with your other hand.”

Romeo and I watched as Alek taught Anelie the basics of strumming the guitar. Alek looked very serious, as if he had been playing all his life.

“So the student becomes the teacher.” Romeo laughed. He sat cross-legged with his hands across his knees. He dressed in the fashion of the
gazhè
, something our boys could get away with but the girls often could not. He was wearing light-colored slacks and a white shirt unbuttoned partway down so that a flash of his chest was revealed. His skin was a beautiful color—a brownish-gold, young and taut and full of beautiful health.

He was a nice boy. He would make a fine husband. I had nothing to complain about; Romeo had never threatened me, he had never spoken harshly to me; he was handsome and clever and from a good family.

I saw it then, our life together: long, like the road in front of us, long and flat.

When Romeo reached to take my hand, I pulled away.
His eyes showed that this hurt him, but he said nothing. We stared together out at the desert highway, the heat making it waver like water, waiting for my father to return.

Though we had been in the desert for seven days, this was the first time I had left the campsite. I sat in the back of the Jeep with my brother and sister. We had the windows open all the way. Hot, dry air, like a dragon’s breath, blew my curls and Anelie’s every which way. Alek sat between us covering his face with his hands, doing his best to avoid being whipped by the tendrils of our hair.

There was so much of it, though—her hair and mine. Ropes of it caught up in the draft of the air, tangling together like entwined fingers and lashing poor Alek until at last the car began to slow, pulling into the town’s limits, past a sign that read
Gypsum, Population 489. Welcome to Nowhere
.

The town itself was a sad shell of a place. I could see that the small main street had been home to fewer than a dozen stores at the height of its inhabitancy. Now, though, every shop was closed and dark save for one—a double-wide storefront marked
GYPSUM STORE
.

I knew him right away, even before we reached the store. He was bent over his motorbike with the one they called Hog Boy, looking together at the engine. His helmet rested on the sidewalk behind him. The third boy—Pete—stood not far away. He seemed to be looking through the store’s window, at someone or something he could see inside. His face was wistful, dreamy.

My father parked his Jeep just behind the motorbike. When he turned off the engine, Ben Stanley looked up, away from his motorbike and directly into my eyes.

All around me my family talked—Alek whined about our hair, Anelie laughed at his complaints—and in front of us Father and Romeo were discussing the mileage the Jeep had been getting lately, deciding whether it would be better to tow it into Reno after we left this place or have Marko drive it.

At the same time, the distance dividing us—me and Ben Stanley—seemed to collapse as if the fabric of space could fold and wrinkle in upon itself, as if even though we were twenty feet apart, separated by the bodies of my family and the glass and metal of the Jeep, we were at the same time as close together as we had been out in the desert when he called on me.

Then Anelie opened the car door and she and Alek tumbled out, bickering all the way into the store. Romeo got out of the car as well. He did not open my door; he did not look back for me. The set of his back was rigid. When he walked past Ben Stanley, his foot brushed the helmet into the gutter.

I would have liked to believe it was an accident, but I knew too much about Romeo—as surefooted as a goat—and about human nature. I understood the intention behind his movement.

Before I could get out of the car, my father stopped me. My hand was on the back of the seat in front of me, and Father covered it with his.

“Stay,” he said.

The car, now that it was not in motion, felt hot like an oven’s mouth.

I did not speak. Ben Stanley had retrieved his helmet from where it had landed. He was holding it and watching me.

“Is there something you would like to talk about with me?” Father asked.

I looked at Ben Stanley. I looked beyond him, at the door to the shop where my family waited. I looked at my father’s hand atop my own. It was deeply tanned. One of his fingernails—the one on his index finger—was smaller than the others. Before I had been born, he had injured that finger with an electric saw while working on a table he was building for our home. Since then the nail had not grown back the same.

I looked in my father’s eyes. They were dark like mine, bright and dark and sharp with sight.

It was not my father’s fault.

“No,
Dadro
, nothing. There is nothing to say.”

One can learn so much, if only one looks carefully. I saw many things even before I entered the Gypsum Store: I learned from Ben Stanley’s face and the way he took half a step toward me before thinking better of it and staying where he was that he would still very much like to take me on a “date,” in spite of having met Romeo and learning of our engagement.

I learned from the way his friend Hog Boy leered at me that he too would like to find himself alone with me, and I saw that he was all bluster; when I met his gaze his ears turned pink and he looked sideways at the curb.

I saw that Pete was anxious and that I was the source of his anxiety; he looked quickly back and forth, back and forth, between me and the entrance to the Gypsum Store.

When I pulled open the door to the store and stepped inside, I understood his discomfort. Behind the cash register was a plain girl with shoulder-length brown hair in braids and a name tag that read
MELISSA
.

So this was Pete’s Melissa. The two of them were well matched, I could see that as well. She, like Pete, was clearly earnest; her hair was neatly arranged, and though her nose was pierced she wore just the tiniest sparkle of jewelry, appropriately discreet for work. Her apron appeared freshly laundered. Her nails were clipped short and unpolished.

I saw my family over in the refrigerated section of the store. Apart from my people, the store was nearly empty.

My younger sister and brother were staring down into the glass-topped case of Popsicles. They pressed their hands flat against the case, soaking up its coldness.

Marko stood near Violeta and my mother, who held Stefan in her arms, by the display of soda pops.

“Gimme root beer,” pleaded Stefan, while my mother tried to get him to accept apple juice instead.

Romeo was near the counter. A small display of sunglasses was set up there and he tried on one pair after another. I felt
him markedly ignoring me. Perhaps this should have hurt my feelings or made me uncomfortable, but it did neither of these things. His attitude seemed childish and impotent, and I felt no desire to help soothe his wounded ego.

Behind me, I heard the bell above the door announce another customer’s entrance. Before the door closed, Hog Boy’s loud squeal of laughter permeated the store. Then the door shut and thankfully muffled the sound.

It was Pete who had entered the store, and he sidled up beside Melissa. He wore a miserable expression and he pulled his bottom lip in between his teeth. Melissa slowly crossed her arms over her chest. She smiled a tight line. Pete started to say something to her but she ignored him. Her gaze was on me, appraising, and one eyebrow rose in a feline arch.

“A real dog, huh?” she hissed at him.

I could have heard his response if I cared to, but I took several steps away, doing my best to allow them privacy.

I had only one aim: to extend my time in the store as much as possible. Now that I was finally away from our camp, the thought of returning to it was torturous. The store was not air-conditioned, but several box fans whirred loudly, stirring up the hot, still air.

I wandered the aisles of the store though I needed nothing in particular, browsing just for the pleasure of looking at things.

The store stocked all the same basic supplies as any small-town store: boxes of cereal, canned beans, toilet paper, a row of chewing gum.

From the front of the store one would never guess that it was doing its last few days of business. But if you looked more closely, it became clear: most items were labeled
Two for One
or
Half Off
, and a whole section in the back read
Clearance: 75% Off
.

“What do you want, Lala?”

It was Anelie who asked. Her face looked up at me from the ice cream case, eyes wide with the pleasure of choosing, and I felt like one of the Questioners at a card reading.

What did I want? This, I did not know. Perhaps, though, I knew—all at once, and with a great certainty that I had not felt before—what I did
not
want.

“Why don’t you choose for me,” I said to Anelie.

“You have to choose for yourself,” she said. “I might pick the wrong thing.”

I nodded dumbly and bent my head over the ice cream case, though I did not clearly see the packages inside. I heard behind me my father’s voice as he asked who was ready to return to camp; Marko and Violeta said they would go, and Romeo, who had chosen nothing, said he also was ready to leave.

The four of them left without a word to me. I kept my head bent over the ice cream case until I heard the Jeep pull away.

It would take my father ten minutes to get to our camp. And then another ten to return to the store to fetch the rest of us.

I had twenty minutes.

“Anelie,” I said.

This is what I thought, while staring without seeing into the case of ice cream: Before Ben Stanley’s reading, he had not shuffled the cards. Tapping them, he had passed them back across to me. What if the reading I had done for Ben Stanley was, in some way, my reading, as well? What if, when Ben Stanley drew the Fool, truly the Fool was me?

Could
I be the Fool? Could I find an unexpected bend in the road? Could I step to the edge of a cliff, a steep and treacherous cliff from which there might not be any recovering?

And if I found the courage to do these things, could I take one step farther—deliberately, and understanding the cost of such a move—off the cliff’s edge? All on my own—by my own choice, of my own will?

My feet moved beneath my skirt. My hand pushed open the door. I stepped outside.

He stood beside his bike, his back to me. I saw the tight bunching of the muscles of his shoulders as he faced his friend Hog Boy. I wanted to reach out to him, to lay my hand against the tension there, to smooth it out.

I did not.

Hog Boy said something that sounded like “the scary Gypsy girl,” and it made my mouth turn up at the corners, the way Ben Stanley’s shoulders lifted slightly higher before he turned to me.

“It’s you,” he said.