Cursed Be the Child (37 page)

Like a man coming out of anesthesia, he was disoriented; past and present, reality and illusion were a soft fuzz. But in the floating uncertainty, he did know one thing. Hold her. Be nice to her.

He had to do what she’d asked.

So he sat on the sofa, rocking her on his lap, and she was whispering to him, her breath a warm wind in his ear, petting his face, whispering in his ear, wiggling on his lap, patting his back, whispering warm secrets in his ear, whispering…

He felt tired, as though he were on the verge of badly needed sleep. No, it was more like he had dropped directly into dream without first drifting, into slumber.

And she whispered in his ear and whispered. Her voice was wetly sweet with promises. She promised to be nice to him. She promised to love him. She promised to be good to him. She promised to make him happy, to make him very, very happy.

A lovely child, a dear little girl. It was a wavy, feathery thought, exactly like a thought in a dream. He did want her to love him. He would be gentle and kind to her and she would always love him.

She slipped off his lap and stood between his knees. Then she knelt.

His mind lay buried beneath lazy dream weight, but in his belly and below was a stirring, a tingling of arousal.

She unzipped his trousers…

Yes!

…and her hand, small and warm, reached for him.

Something like lightning flared in his brain and he rocked forward, sinking his fingers into her shoulders, paralyzing her with his grip. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“I love you, Uncle. Don’t hurt me!”

Hurt her? He wanted to kill her! He wanted to use his fists, to feel her body break and tear as he hit her and hit her and hit her. He wanted to work her destruction with his own bare hands. She was a temptress, a monster! She was a…

“Whore! You whore!” He was a good man, and she was a whore who sought to ruin him, to destroy him, and he would punish her for that. He would kill her. He sank the fingers of his left hand deep into her shoulder, and she writhed in his grasp as he balled his right hand into a fist and drew it back.

She smiled.

He groaned. He released her. With a knee, he unintentionally pushed her back on the carpet as he got up. Fingers palsied, he yanked up his zipper, then he reeled up the stairs. He heard her call after him. “Uncle! You want me…”

Then he was in the kitchen.

With a deep breath, he understood. He had gone down to the basement to learn about the wicked spirit that threatened his niece, to meet the evil of the Barringer house.

He had indeed.

And somehow the evil had invaded him.

He could not deal with it now. He felt as though he had been beaten with clubs. He was exhausted. He needed to sleep.

Then she was there, standing at the head of the stairs to the family room. Her look was one of studied innocence even while it proclaimed that they shared a guilty secret.

She was there, too, a few minutes later, as he stood with Vicki and Warren in the foyer. There were things he had to think about, to consider, he said, and so for the time being, he didn’t want to say anything.

Vicki said she understood, but her expression told him she didn’t, not at all. “Have faith,” he told her.

Then Warren, surprisingly, stepped forward with an apology. He was sorry. He was out of line.

He knew they all wanted to do the right thing for Melissa.

“So, please, forget all the earlier brouhaha and stay the night.”

“No, thank you,” Evan Kyle Dean said. He needed distance from this place, he thought, and from the child. He needed to rest and gather his strength.

Warren got Evan his coat. He thanked him, and Evan thought he sounded sincere.

“I’m glad you came, Uncle,” the child said.

Evan Kyle Dean said, “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

The little girl smiled.

— | — | —

Forty

It was ten-thirty when David brought Selena to the house of Pola Janichka. “The Rawnie awaits you,” said the sullen Rom who admitted them. The man stood back so that Selena Lazone might not defile him by even an accidental touch of her clothing. Selena Lazone was
marhime.
With his right hand, thumb thrust between first and second fingers, the Rom gestured to ward off evil.

David spoke in Romany. He was shocked. He was hurt. He was insulted. Such rudeness from a Rom was a grievously painful thing; throughout the world, the Romany were justly praised as the most hospitable of people. David’s words oozed irony.

Hanging a step behind him, Selena said nothing, her attitude and clothing, a utilitarian car coat over a simple, dark blue dress, was that of a supplicant and a penitent.

The Rom shrugged apologetically. He meant no offense to David. As for the
marhime
woman, she was unclean, outcast from those of
tacho rat,
and her feelings need be of no more concern to him than those of a plant or a bug.

David glared.

The Rom said to go down the hall, which, like the bungalow itself, was long, narrow and dark.

David led the way to a large, impossibly cluttered room.

Dozens of candles provided shadow-dancing illumination. Some were in golden candelabra or silver or brass candlesticks; others were waxed to ashtrays or peanut butter jar lids. There was a lumpy sofa and against a wall stood a row of steel-tube armed chairs like those you used to find in budget shoe stores. There were plastic TV trays and an old sailor’s trunk, orange crates and slatted wooden folding chairs. On one wall hung an unframed painting depicting the signs of the zodiac; next to it was a poster for
Superman
showing Christopher Reeve in flight. Another wall had an elaborate religious tapestry depicting The Holy Virgin, Jesus, and St. Sarah the Black, the patron saint of the Gypsies, although not a saint recognized by the Catholic Church.

On an antique sideboard with elaborate hand-carved scrollwork stood a framed picture of Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt and his musical colleague, Stephane Grappelli. It was inscribed, “Pola Janichka, thank you for blessing our music.” Grappelli’s signature was a typically artistic scrawl; Reinhardt’s was a typically Romany “X.”

Pola Janichka sat slumped, head bowed, perhaps dozing, at a card table that wouldn’t have brought six cents at a garage sale. The table was covered with a century-old, handmade lace tablecloth from the village of Brugge, Belgium. The crystal ball stood in the center of the table. In the past, Pola Janichka had said that the crystal ball originally belonged to Madame Blavatsky, Arthur Conan Doyle, or Jean Dixon; actually, she’d ordered it from the Johnson Smith catalog in 1947.

“Puri Dai,” David said quietly. “I…”

The old woman did not raise her head. “I know you’re here, sir. I know who you got with you. What does the
marhime
want?”

Selena whispered,
“Mandi…te potshinene penge lajav…”

Pola Janichka raised her head, her angry eyes cutting off Selena. “No,” she said, “don’t you talk Romany. Romany’s not your language, not now and maybe not ever. You went away to be Ms. Gajo. You learn the Anglai so good that maybe you think someday you get to turn the letters when Vanna gives up the job. For right now, you got something to say to me, you can talk Gaje talk.”

“I am here,” Selena Lazone said, translating from the Romany, although nothing like an exact translation was possible, “to pay for my shame. I beg you to lift the curse of
marhime.”

“A curse? A curse?” Pola Janichka sniffed. “That’s silly superstition, my fine Gajo lady, the kind of thing those ignorant Gypsies believe in. But a smart Gajo woman like you, a woman who reads books and everything, no, you can’t really believe in foolishness like a Romany curse.”

Quietly and slowly, Selena said, “I believe there is good and I believe there is evil. That is not superstition; it is Truth for both Romany and Gaje, for all who live and all who will ever live. People are different and so they see good and evil in different ways, but all must choose one or the other in their own way.”

Selena paused, then continued somberly, “My way is the Romany way, Rawnie. I understand this now. So that I may do what is good, so that I may serve
O Del,
I must be the Rom I was born to be.”

Pola Janichka said, “You are sincere in what you request? You truly wish to be Selena Lazone
juvel Romano, yilo tshatsrio, y tacho rat?”
A Gypsy woman, one of true heart and true blood.

Selena hesitated. “English will not let me say what I wish to say. May I speak Romany?”

“Whatever.” Pola Janichka sounded bored.

In Romany, Selena pronounced an inviolate
armaya: “Te shordjol muro rat may sigo sar te may khav.”
She said that if she were not sincere in her request and in her repentance, “May my blood spill and my life thus end even before I have another meal.”

Candle flames danced; reflecting them, the crystal ball became a miniature of the heavens encircling the world, golden stars winking and flashing in no meaningful pattern. There was the warm, airy silence that one never finds in life but only in fantasy, and the silence stretched and stretched.

Until finally, in a voice that seemed not hers but that of a very old and very tired woman, Pola Janichka said,
“Bater.”

May it be so.

“Bater,”
Selena said.

“You go on, you get out of here.” As though she only now remembered his presence, Pola Janichka animatedly spoke to David. “You like beer? I got beer. Blatz. In the refrigerator. You go drink a beer and watch the televisions. I got HBO. I got Sportsvision.” The old woman made a shooing gesture.

As he started from the room, Pola Janichka told him to wait one second so that Selena could give him her coat.

And he’d better make himself comfortable, she told him. There was lots of beer. Channel seven had some good old movies.

She and Selena, they might be awhile.

Then Selena Lazone and Pola Janichka were alone. “So sit down.”

Selena pulled a chair to the table.

Pola Janichka said, “You know,
tschai,
I loved you and I still love you, and I meant to give it all to you, everything, to teach you everything I knew. Then you ran off. Selena, that killed me a little bit.”

Selena did not reply.

“Selena, the
draba
powers, the magic that is yours…
O Del
gave you such a gift! And the teaching I gave you, another gift. And you said ‘No!’ And you throw my gifts in my face and you throw God’s gifts in His face.”

Pola Janichka half-rose. She leaned across the table and slapped Selena.

Except for an involuntary blink, Selena did not respond.

“Did that hurt?” Pola Janichka said.

“Yes.”

“Good,” Pola Janichka said. She slumped back upon her chair. “I wanted to hurt. You hurt me, now I hurt you.” With a weary sigh, Pola Janichka changed to
tshatsimo Romano,
the language of truth. “You must greatly love one who hurts you and makes you cry. You made me cry nights and days and more than that, Selena Lazone.”