Into the Free

by Julie Cantrell

  “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.

  That’s the other thing I believe without a doubt. That Mama loves me. Always. Not just in spring, when things are golden and bright, and the stars fall to her feet, but all year round. Even when the heavens tease her. I knew it then, as I know it now. Mama loves me even as she is falling apart.

  Later in the evening, I sit near Mama as she closes her eyes in bed. I wait for her to pray herself to sleep. I kiss her good night.

  “Medicine,” she whispers.

  I know better than to argue.

  I find Mama’s stash. Bottles and needles tucked in the back of her dresser drawer. She’s taught me how to fill the syringe. I draw the liquid in from a dark brown bottle, like a straw, tapping to release the bubble before injecting it under her breasts. This way, no one sees the marks. This isn’t medicine, as Mama wants me to believe. I’ve watched enough to notice how her moods change when the farmhands visit. How they always leave a paper sack with liquids or pills. Morpheus. That’s what they call it. The god of sleep.

  The house is quiet because Jack has not come home. When Mama’s breathing shifts to long, soft drags, I leave the house, careful not to let the door slam behind me.

  CHAPTER 9

  The night air is cool, and the moon is full. Its light is strong enough for me to find glowing yellow blooms. “Zheltaya,” I repeat to myself. “Yellow.”

  I have walked a mile or two since leaving Mama in her bed. I have gathered a handful of early-season crocuses when I come up over a ridge. A large bonfire sends spirals of smoke into the night. Horses, dogs, and chickens add to the noise. Wagons, painted purple and gold and red and orange, circle the travelers. Each has a high arched door on the back, nothing like the wagons that fill our town—simple and wooden, designed to haul feed and hay and kids. Around the fire, men play violins, guitars, and tambourines, while women dance and clap, spinning scarves and skirts round and round. I search, but I don’t see the boy in the crowd.

  Three goats are tied to the back of a wagon and trying to sleep. Four young girls are stringing green and blue beads around their wrists. A circle of old men play cards, while another man pretends to make two coins vanish from the pot. Behind them, two women tat a rectangle of lace. The old cat-eyed woman is telling a story, and there, sitting on an overturned milk crate, is the white-shirted boy with his harmonica pressed to his lips. My heart stops.

  At sixteen, I’ve never been kissed. Never wanted to be, until right now. But at this moment, more than anything else in the world, I want him to come to me through the high grasses that hide me from others. I want to show him the flowers and let him tell me about his travels and his tribe. I want to spend the rest of the moonlit night with him stitched to my side. I want to follow him out into the wilderness, sever all ties t
o Iti Taloa and Mama and Jack. I want.

  I walk toward the group, flowers in hand. The music stops. Everyone turns to examine me, this unwelcome visitor. The old lady opens her arms to me, “Ahhh, Zheltaya. I should know you not stay home. Come.”

  With slow steps I walk to her, trying hard not to show fear. I hand her the flowers. “Spaceeba,” she says, and I know she means to thank me. She takes the flowers and hands me her yellow scarf again, in exchange. I smile and she cups my hand.

  I glance at the boy. He nods for me to take his seat on the crate. The old gypsy gestures approval, and I sit silently. The boy sits in the grass at my feet. When he breathes, the wind bends.

  I feel a quiet reverence for the scene around me. It is magical, holy. Not because the gypsies are preaching or paying offerings or saying prayers. But because they laugh and sing and strum guitars. Their joy slowly fills the black gaps in my soul. Like river water rising.

  The old lady gestures to a younger gypsy, who replaces her in the center near the fire. The younger one wears rings on every finger and a stack of shiny bracelets. She takes a deep breath and begins the tale of the tribe’s fallen queen. The one whose grave I visited earlier today.

  The woman’s velvet skirt looks like something designed for a circus performer. Her shirt, a brilliant crimson, sparkles in the halo of the fire, as if the gypsy herself were aflame. Her long, thick braids anchor her green eyes, and she speaks with her whole body, as if the words have to be born right out of her.

  The shiny bangles chime together as the storyteller waves her arms in dramatic loops. In almost perfect English, she captivates the crowd.

  “Our dear queen,” she begins. “She lived a long life.” She pauses, stretching her body out lean, like pulling a strand of yarn. I think of the boy beneath me and the strength of his body when he stood to offer me his seat.