Into the Free (6 page)

CHAPTER 7

March 1942

It has been six years since I first followed gypsy laughter to the cemetery, spying on them behind the poplar tree, then running through the woods with a gypsy boy on my trail.

And it’s been six years since Sloth died, but I still feel him with me. When the warmth of the sun wakes me in the morning, Sloth calls to me, “Morning, Wild Child.” When I stir the roux for gumbo in the heavy iron pot, Sloth helps me glide the wooden spoon in smooth, round circles. “Color of a penny.” When I check the trotlines and set a turtle free, Sloth clicks his tongue. “Coulda made a mighty fine soup.”

It’s been six years since Sloth died, but I see him all the time. I see him in the woods and in the garden and in the chicken coop. I see him between the stacks at the library and in the swaying cornfields and in between the warm green rows of cotton. He watches me when I climb my tree and gather eggs and walk to school. I am not afraid of Sloth’s ghost. I am only afraid of myself. Afraid I’m going nuts, like Jack and Mama, and that there’s no way for me to escape the madness. My blood runs crazy. That’s all there is to it.

“Those gypsies’ll steal anything not tied down,” Jack says to himself before leaving for another rodeo. I prop my feet against Sweetie’s trunk and lie flat against the grass. I try to block the sounds of Jack by focusing only on Steinbeck.
Of Mice and Men
.

I seen the guys that go around on the ranches alone. That ain’t no good. They don’t have no fun. After a long time they get mean. They get wantin’ to fight all the time.

Jack locks his guns and whiskey into a long metal box. Lets the metal from the lock and the box both bang together. Makes me jump. I’ve never seen a gypsy steal anything, so I don’t believe a word Jack says. Not about the gypsies—or anything else, for that matter.

Jack keeps slamming things and banging things and stomping his boots across the porch, so I give up on Steinbeck and climb my tree, hoping for a glimpse of the gypsies. I always long to see them come. Little dashes zipping through like light before heading back out to the free. When they finally do arrive, I find a spot in town, usually behind a brick corner or a budding tree. From there, I watch them spin colored scarves through the streets. Some come in silence, others in song. But none come alone. They are never alone.

They come every year, right on time, with the birth of spring. And with them comes the boy in the brown cap. The one who first followed me when I was just a girl. He’s no ghost, like Sloth. He’s as real as I am. I’m sure of it because others see him and talk to him, and in a strange sort of scratch across time, he has grown up with me. A living, breathing, aging human being. Not suspended like Sloth.

I have never said a word to the boy, with his dark hair and even darker eyes. But my nights have become filled with dreams of him. In my younger years, the dreams involved us steering pirate ships together or climbing foggy Asian peaks. But in recent months, the dreams have shifted. Now he fills my thoughts. Both night and day.

Over the years, while I’ve tended Sloth’s coop and managed his garden, kept up my studies and taken care of Mama, the gypsy boy has become my secret. But he is not the only secret I keep. Every year I watch the caravans of color weave their way through Iti Taloa during the gypsies’ annual pilgrimage. And every year, their music triggers thoughts about that wooden box Mama buried under the sycamore tree when I was just a little girl. I have never dug it up again, believing that the box is not mine to touch. Nor have I ever told a soul about it. Instead, I have watched the ivy swallow it whole.

I have tried to forget the box. To set my sights on the gypsies and the boy. But I’m sixteen now and craving a change. I wonder if today is the day.

When Jack finally leaves, I climb back down and go inside. I stand over Mama’s bed and tell her to listen. “The gypsies are coming,” I say, but she doesn’t answer. She’s back in the valley, and as always, there’s no telling when she’ll come out.

Last week, she spent two afternoons planting daisies, even though I warned her that a cold front was coming. I could feel it in my bones. Mama put both hands on her left hip, cocked herself to the side like a banana, tilted her narrow chin with a quick nod, and said, “You got that from your father. Listening to the wind like that.”

Even though I warned her, she kept planting daisies. And sure enough, a late freeze came and got them all.

“They’ll grow back. Daisies always do,” I said.

But Mama couldn’t take the hit. “Not this time,” she said and went to bed. She’s been there for nearly a week, wouldn’t even get up to cook for Jack. So I’ve done it for her. But she isn’t willing to eat what I cook, or wear what I set out for her, or go to the market with me. She’s locked in again, back in the valley, where nobody can reach her. Not even me.

I barely remember the years when she still sang and laughed and danced. Truth be told, I hardly remember the last time she looked up. She spends more and more time looking down. Down at the ironing board. A book. The stove. Down at the floor. Sometimes, I feel like the only thing that can snap her out of it is one of Jack’s punches. I hate to admit it, but sometimes I think about hitting her myself. Get her to come back to life. I wonder how it would feel to flash my fist into Mama’s sallow cheek. Give her one quick slap. Snap her back into my world.

But, of course, I’d never hurt Mama.

Instead, I’m here. Taking care of her. Jack has packed his bags and driven away again, and now it’s just the two of us. The afternoon sun shines bright through Mama’s window, so I adjust her pillow to turn her face from the light. I pull up a chair next to the bed and I sit, holding Mama’s hand. I just want to rest for a minute before I start lunch. I smooth her hair back from her face and I watch her breathe, swallow, blink. Part of me is sinking with the sounds of her. I’m tired of her diving deep into nothing and leaving me on the surface. Waiting for her to come back up for air.

Then it happens.

Out the window, streaks of yellow fly by. Followed by red and purple and green. A rainbow has formed just outside our worn-out cabin, and I want to dive right in. I peel back the flimsy cotton panel hanging crooked over Mama’s bedroom window. Wiping a layer of dust from the pane, I tell Mama, “Look.” The rainbow is a batch of silk scarves waving in the wind.

At its end is the happy old woman I see every year. The one who caught me spying in the graveyard when I was a little girl. “Look, Mama,” I say again. I try to prop her up to see the traveler and her dancing scarves, but she just stares down at her hands and resists my attempts to reposition her. So I leave Mama in her bed and go out to the porch, hoping the gypsy boy will be here too.

The woman is surrounded by children, both gypsies and locals. It’s Friday, but school was canceled today. Something was wrong with the plumbing, so the kids are free to play. They all follow the old gypsy woman, skipping and clapping and singing. A children’s song about birds and mothers and learning to fly. It’s like a scene in a fairy tale. Nothing like anything that happens in real life. Especially at my house, where doors slam and glass breaks and adults never skip or clap or laugh. I scan the faces, looking for the boy’s deep eyes, crooked smile. He’s not here.

For years I have watched the travelers trail through town, but I’ve never seen locals join them, and they’ve never taken this route, in front of our cabin.

The woman waves to me with fingers that curl the air. I smile shyly, embarrassed to be caught staring. She motions for me to join the parade, but I slide behind the peeling porch column and try to disappear. The woman walks my way, leaving the children to wait for her in the thin edges of our gravel lane, giggling and whispering about the strange girl who thinks they can’t see her on the porch.

“You know,” says the woman. “Gypsy see invisible.”

I want her to keep talking to me.

“You want
zheltaya?”
she asks. “Yellow?” She is reading my mind. I’ve heard they can do that sort of thing. I shrug and look down at my dirty feet.

“Oh, I see,” she says. “Too old for nonsense? What this make me?”

I smile so she won’t think I am rude, but I can’t think of a single thing to say. Except to ask about the boy. I don’t dare.

“Never too old to parade,” the woman says. Then she wraps a bright-yellow scarf around my head, repeats the word “zheltaya,” and pulls me toward the crowd. I let the woman take me anywhere she wants to lead me. I worry for a second about Mama shouting, “Millie, stop! You can’t just run off with the gypsies.”

But she doesn’t even notice I am gone.

CHAPTER 8

At first I walk in silence, taking it all in. The singing, the skipping, the laughing. The gypsies parade through town every year, but I can’t figure out why local children are joining this year’s march to the cemetery. The woman holds my hand, and now we are leading the way. All through town, folks follow us. I’m sure they’re worrying, trying to decide whether they should pluck the children back from the witch’s spell. Some do, clinging tightly to their children’s shoulders. Others give their kids a gentle nudge and encourage them to join the fun.

Along the route, the woman gathers more and more children, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who played his flute and led all the kids from town.
So this is it,
I think, remembering Sloth and the long black train that runs through Mr. Sutton’s fields.
This is how I get into the free.

We follow a familiar path, the same one I walked at age ten when I first tracked the sounds of laughter to the cemetery. But this time, the walk doesn’t feel far. In fact, it ends much too soon.

When we reach the grave site, other gypsies greet the old woman with hugs and kisses and friendly words. I let go of her hand and reach up to feel my yellow scarf. I am glowing. A ray of light is shining out of me, straight and bright. I practice her word for yellow, letting the tip of my tongue dance the way hers had done. “Zheltaya.” She hears me and smiles.

We sit in the grass around the graves and a bearded man asks me a question in a language I don’t understand. A swarm of gypsy children works the locals, gathering coins in their ragged hats and stuffing their tattered pockets with change. The dark, bearded man wears a purple vest. He pulls a long peacock feather from a bundle tucked into his green cap, and he hands it to me before sitting to strum his round guitar.

And then I see him, the boy from my dreams. He wears a loose white shirt and a string of coins around his waist. His long dark hair falls over his face. He holds a shiny harmonica to his lips and taps his toes as he tunes the wind.

Like Jack, he makes me think of fire. But unlike Jack’s flames, which burn up my insides and leave me with the taste of ash in my mouth, this boy’s heat is simmering in my blood and energizing my bones with a wild and willing warmth.

The old woman smiles at me with broken teeth. For the first time, I look directly into her eyes. I remember when she caught me spying, as she wrapped her head in a blue scarf and winked to let me know she had seen me hiding behind the poplar tree. Even then, I thought of her as kind.

But now, I see she has what Jack calls cat eyes. One brown, one green, as if she’s been cursed. Instinct kicks in, and I’m no longer sure whether to be charmed or alarmed. What if Jack is right? Maybe these vagabonds really are planning to steal anything not tied down. Maybe they plan to steal me. Maybe they’ll sell me in the next town to a ball-round man with oil beneath his nails. Maybe I need to stop pretending I can run off with the gypsies. Maybe I should run right back home to Mama.

But the worry stops as soon as the old woman speaks again in that same thick tongue that makes me feel safe.
“Ne boyitca.”
I stare back at her, wondering what she has said. She repeats in her broken English, “No fear.” Again, she can read my mind.

None of the other children seem worried. They are listening to the stories about jewels and gold and wealth. The locals are enchanted by the shaking strings and handsome hummers. They too are entranced by the soothing syrup of the old woman’s voice.

There are countless wonders here, but it’s easy to set focus on the boy with the harmonica. He smiles at me, and my fear sinks deep into his feral eyes, pulling my worry right down with it. I want to stay with the gypsies. With the boy in the loose white shirt.

As night gathers, the excitement starts to drift away for the local children. Parents sweep in from the fringes to gather their kids. One by one the crowd disappears, until no one is left but me and about sixty travelers, many of them children, circled together counting money. It is clear I no longer belong, but I don’t want to leave. I want to learn to play the harmonica and dance in the streets. I want cat eyes and tattoos and layers of jewels that sparkle and shimmer. The elderly woman, sensing my longing, reaches for my hand and says, “Time for home.”

Twirling my peacock feather, I sit still in her candle-drawn shadow and stare down at the graves. The smell of fresh citrus fills the air and uneven flames lick the night. The boy from my dreams slips his harmonica into his white shirt pocket and rises from his graveside seat. He jingles when he moves. The string of coins around his waist must be a collection from all the girls who have swooned for him. I imagine them chasing him as he leaves town after town after town. His long, firm body stretches into darkness. If he were older, no woman in Iti Taloa could resist his charm. Certainly not Miss Harper, the nervous librarian who has become a close friend to me over the years, who finds romance only on pages of books. Not Mama, a lonely dreamer who may never return to the world of the living. Probably not even the Catholic nuns, who have vowed to avoid men, who seem so secretive and sinless in their long black habits, shuffling through town. Surely they have never laid eyes on the likes of him. He’s pure magic. And he is walking away.

“Why so down, Little Yellow?” the cat-eyed woman asks, referring to the yellow scarf still draped around my head. “I bet somebody at the home look now for you. You know the way?”

“I know the way,” I say. “I never get lost.” As an afterthought, I add, “I’d make a very good gypsy.” This brings rounds of laughter. The boy in the white shirt does not laugh. Instead, he turns and looks at me with such a smile my face turns warm and pink. I quickly look back to the woman.

“Bah,” she says. “Too young to go alone.”

“I wouldn’t be alone,” I answer. “I’d be with you.” I make an awkward gesture to the group.

“Come now, Zheltaya,” she says. “Tell me your troubles. I walk you to home.” She pulls me to my feet and hands me a tambourine. I don’t want to play it, but no matter how hard I try to keep it from tinkling, it chimes into the night. Each step I take makes music.

“See?” she says. “Music in you!”

Her laugh is contagious, and I chuckle despite feeling sorry for myself.

I drag my feet deliberately. “What language do you speak?” I ask the woman. I don’t want to sound rude, but I am curious. I want to know everything about how this life works for her, as a gypsy.

“Russian,” she says.

“And English,” I add, smiling. She laughs and holds up her fingers to indicate a tiny bit. “How many are camping tonight?”

“Maybe hundred. One fifty,” she answers, patiently letting me take my own sweet time going home.

“All from Russia?”

“Some,” she says. “Most from Brazil. Hungary.” Then she laughs, adding, “And Alabama.”

“Why would you come here? To Mississippi?” I ask.

“Here is good,” she says. I look down at my bare feet. I look up at the black hole-punched sky. I look out at the only town I’ve ever known. I wonder why she thinks here is good.

My tambourine is ringing through the sidewalked town, where years earlier I followed the gypsy laughter past red brick office buildings and white steeples. With the kind woman at my side, I rattle my tambourine all the way back to the outskirts, where Mr. Sutton’s farmland rises up like a swollen mother. Where his gentle horses graze on fertile grasses and tempt me to ride off in search of answers to
what if
and
what’s out there
and
why not
. Where everything around me hints there is more to offer but tells me time and again … not for me.

“When I your age,” the lady reads my mind again, “I run away. Far away. Where no one to find me. Not so easy for traveler. Home follow me.” She laughs hard, from her belly, like her soul is dancing inside.

“No one would come looking for me,” I say.

“No?” She points to Mama who has managed to move from her bed and is now sitting on the front porch swing.

“Millie?” Mama calls to me, straining to see us across the dark. We’re maybe fifty feet from the porch, but the light shines on Mama. She is looking a bit confused. “Where’d you go, Millie?”

I don’t feel like talking to Mama. I don’t have anything to say anymore. The gypsy woman has closed the door on me. She insists I belong right here, in Iti Taloa, in this dirty old slave cabin with a crazy, barely there father and a weak and withering mother. This is my life. And right now, in this very moment, I want nothing to do with any of it.

I hand the tambourine and the yellow silk scarf back to the traveler and mutter, “Thanks.” I keep the feather.

“Remember,” she says. “Ne boyitca.”

I stand in the front yard, listening to her jingle off into the distance. I move closer to Mama and lean against the sturdy trunk of my sweet gum. The tambourine bells slide into silence. I repeat what she has told me, “Ne boyitca. No fear. No fear.”

Mama sits on the porch swing, chewing her cheek and staring at her feet. I stand in the yard and stare at her. Neither of us says a word. Eventually, Mama stands, steps back through the door, and returns to her bed.

I don’t want to go back into that house. I don’t want to watch Mama breathe, swallow, blink. But I go. To make sure Mama has everything she needs.

“Jack’s not all bad,” Mama says. She rubs salve on another patch of her bruised and busted skin. I stand in the shadows, letting the smell of ointment sting my nose. I wonder how much of Mama is left inside her shell. Seems to me like every time Jack splits her open, splintered pieces of her fly out and away. Each day, she loses more of herself, until now she is a dark, hollow cave. I used to pretend I could crawl in through Mama’s mouth and fill her up again. Just stretch into her empty spaces and make her feel something, like when she was really alive. Not just caught between the here and the nether.

Sometimes, I thought she’d bow over me with all her love and hurt and history and swallow me whole. Like that big fish that swallowed Jonah. Like the mama dog who swallowed her pups.

I’d return to Mama’s womb, and in there I’d meet God. He’d define a certain penance, like waiting three days in Mama’s belly, or walking the stations of the cross, or reciting the Rosary and paying five bucks to the till, like some of the farmhands who have lived in Cabin Three. I figured it would depend on God’s denomination. Either way, I’d agree to pay. Then I’d suck up all her tiny bits and pieces with one big breath and make her whole again.

Other times, I’d imagine Mama breathing harder and harder until she gasped and turned blue. The broken pieces of her would scatter, like little stars, spread out across the blackest night. They’d shine out over all the places I’d read about. Places like Tibet and Jerusalem. They’d shine from the edge of the Nile across the Great Wall of China, down the Ganges and back to the Mississippi hills. And there, they’d shine down on Mama and me, just out of reach, as if to say,
You can’t catch me! You can’t catch me!

But from as far back as I can remember, spring has brought me hope. It’s partly on account of the crocuses, so bright and yellow they sting my eyes. Then forsythias and tulips. Soon the jasmine, honeysuckle, and all things sweet and golden, warm and wild.

The whole world is shiny in the spring—as if those taunting stars have fallen to the ground. As a child, I’d gather those yellow flowers up in little batches and bring them back to Mama. All those scattered bits and pieces held together with my tiny fingers, ready for the kitchen window. They’d rest in milk bottles lined across the sill, until one by one, they’d give themselves over to Mama. They’d wither and wilt and collapse. And with each one’s death, Mama would grow a little stronger. Or so I believed.

I believed it with all my heart. The same way I believed in miracles and magic. I spent every spare minute scouring the countryside in search of yellow blooms. Wild ones, groomed ones, planted ones, potted ones. I gathered so much echinacea and goldenrod one season that Mama started to sneeze and cough, keeping Jack awake at night. So he threw them out and threatened me, “Stop bringing weeds into this house or I’ll throw you out too!” His square jaw stretched to show a long, jagged scar below his chin. His temples bulged with rage.

Later, when Jack had left, Mama held my cheeks in her hands and said, “You’re such a sweet, sweet girl bringing me flowers.” Then she sat with me in the backyard and made me a tiara of clover blooms. She crowned me under the shade of a pecan tree and called me her princess.