I am being careful, dear granny, I promise. I have committed no sin—not even lying. I am not mentioning to miri Mamo... yet, and Sunday, I took my violin on our date so telling the vitsi I missed Kurko lunch to practise was, strictly, true.
Also, I agree that Katona was an attraction. He is a sweet-natured bird and now comes to me and sits on my head when I call him!
But Matthew is tender and respectful, and honours our Romany ways. He is made of more than money (but he has so much of it! And no fear of spending!). There’s depth there, something older than his years, and some mystery I have not yet even approached.
More soon, amalni. Sookie has returned with takeaway suppers and the four of us are painting signs with slogans to carry at the march.
—Tjiri Lolo
6 March
PS: Kez, the march was incredible. I am overwhelmed and exhausted, but had to write now, while I still hold the feelings... there were thousands, yes! Thousands of women. Old, young, white, brown (but no other Romany I saw), Grannies (not joke Gran) with canes, mothers with tiny chavvies, other students... all dancing and walking and singing for justice through Hyde Park and Oxford Circus. The weather was misery, snow and rain, and we gave up our signs once they turned to mush. But no one went home, we stood and walked all together with joy even as we fought against injustice.
There is so much possibility, Kezia. So much we can be. I hope you feel these words vibrating when you read them, because I am buzzing as I write them. Opre, raklya!
10 March
Mamo, I send you a postcard because... I can! The strike is ended, and the Royal Mail restored. So, a quick note is within the budget (and schedule! Classes have started again) of your poor, hardworking chej. Ha ha ha! The front is the Museum at the Royal Academy. One day, they will own my fiddle and my guitar. Ha ha ha! I love you! Lolo
10 March
Kez,
The enclosed postcard is Regent’s Park, pretty eh? I came often to feed birds here before Katona stole my heart. I came today on a whim, and the strangest thing happened (too long to fit on the card so...) I brought my lunch to share with the birds, and had a crowd of them, when a madwoman came to me from nowhere. She was thin and matted, unfortunate, and I had nothing but the other half of my sandwich. I was about to offer her when she ran my birds off with some yells and stomps, and told me to never feed them again. She said, “Pikey, them birds are not ya mates, they mean to do you ill.” When I asked why, she sang a strange little song I had never heard (but was caught in my head) and would not go until I agreed to leave at once. Ah, city life.
I stopped at the library on my way home and looked up the song. It’s an old English rhyme for chavvies, “A Farmer Went Trotting.” It starts with a farmer and his daughter who ride their horses together, and then, “A raven cried caww and they all tumbled down / bumpity bumpity bump! / The mare broke her knees and the farmer his crown / lumpity lumpity lump!” It goes on that the raven laughed and vowed to do this everyday to the farmer, too. Horrible! Why do people want to frighten children? Ha ha ha! I thought you would appreciate, since you say London sounds so boring.
Love,
Lolo
Note left for Lolo’s flatmates, 11 March:
E, B, and N,
I am off to my weekend holiday with Matthew. If anyone calls for me (my mother, the extended fam, or Kezia), please just tell them I am so busy studying and you will give me a message! Thanks! Lolo
11 March
Kezia, my dearest,
I am off on a holiday now. Matthew wanted to show me the English countryside. It’s lovely, but not Romania’s equal. We stopped at a small pub for lunch, a real English lunch of little pies filled with potatoes and pickles and dark malty beer. Well, I ate, and fed bits to Katona when Matthew was not looking (he gets so cross with me when I feed Katona treats, but I know a raven’s stomach can take anything I can, and he and I have become such good friends. Yes, maybe because I feed him treats!).
Matthew has had stomach trouble for a while now. I’m starting to worry because he says he can’t keep much down and it’s been going on for... almost as long as I have known him, a month? He refuses to see a doctor, however, and I will not nag him like a wife... yet. Ha ha ha!
Aside from his delicate stomach, he sunburns easily, and he takes such care to protect his face and hands.
You would never know if he was suffering because he is in excellent spirits. He hides his discomfort to not ruin my time. He is thoughtful. More soon.
2pm
Our grandmothers always told us to be careful what we say, lest we pull it into being. Right?
So, Matthew deceived me a bit. But no, I’m not angry. I do not yet know what my true feelings are. But I will return to that.
I thought we were visiting a historic inn in a particularly beautiful part of the English countryside.
But it turns out that Matthew has taken me to Ravenswood, an enormous estate he purchased. It is both opulent and peculiar, as well as terribly old-fashioned, though I am sure that is just a reflection of good aristocratic tastes. You know my peasant aesthetics, ha ha ha!
It is the biggest house I have ever been in, as big as my university.
Maybe not that big... but it is big, and feels bigger because it is so empty. Not of things: it’s full of furniture and art and quite a lot of books. It’s empty of people.
As far as I can tell, Matthew has not hired any staff or he has dismissed them for the weekend because he has romantic inclinations (he has not overstepped his bounds in any way. He has shown me to my room, which is as far away from his room as one can be while still remaining in the same wing!).
I expected there to be a lot of servants for a house this size (I guess), but no one greeted us, and Matthew cooked our dinner (yes! he cooked—an unexpectedly tasty meal—and the kitchen is as large as my whole flat!).
So, it seems to only be the three of us, Matthew, me, and Katona as chaperone (ha ha ha!), though there are strange echoes and thuds. I know all houses make noise, so a large house must make large noises, right?
I am in my room (large!) trying to relax and consider what I feel. Coming here must have been important to Matthew. He must have been afraid that I would refuse him if he told me outright where we were going. Perhaps I’m being presumptuous, but I wonder if invoking “wife” pulled something into being, like our grannies say. Maybe he wanted to show me the house that he bought to live in as a married couple?
Oh my. My, my, my, my. I do not know how I feel about that. And I do not exactly like this house, I mean, to live in myself.
The location is odd. It’s in neither village nor country, exactly. Just remote. And you know I love the countryside, so it’s not that we are too far from of a city. It’s just as if the house is nowhere. I mean, of course, it is somewhere, but I don’t think I could tell you where.
There are no landmarks, just land.
3:15pm
I just went to ask Matthew about where we are. He seemed to think that a stupid question (I think his pains must be worsening). He said they are moorlands, quite well known even, in the West Midlands. Shesti. I do not know what they would be known for except being horrible, and West Midlands only confuses me more... west of middle? Perhaps I am stupid. But I will tell you, these are not the moors of Wuthering Heights, though, amal, at all (not that I am any sort of Cathy, nor Matthew a Heathcliff).
6pm
Matthew has closed his door. I think he is feeling more unwell. I can hear him inside, though moving things, as loudly as if the door were open. I can hear Katona cawing, as well. The acoustics of this house are interesting. I do not wish to disturb him now, but I am excited to play my violin here and see how the sounds travel.
I walked around the halls some. The furnishings are old but remarkably kept (Matthew mentioned at dinner that they are all heirloom pieces and have been in his family for many years).
There is a recurring motif throughout the house... a black bird—a raven, I presume�
�carrying a jewelled ring in its beak. I understand Matthew’s love of birds, then. I grew up surrounded by flocks in Bucharest, he grew up seeing their image everywhere...
This design really is everywhere, carved into chairs and the sides of tables, stitched in embroidery on linens and tapestries. Something irks me, though. The motif is so familiar (and not just because I have now seen it a hundred times, ha ha ha!). I have seen it somewhere, in a book, maybe, or? I recognise it. But from where?
10pm
Kezia, things are wrong. Very wrong. I heard voices and out my window, I see... Kezia, my relatives are here. Kezia, my mother is here. Kezia, my flatmates, in chains, severed, on the table where hours before I thought of... now, Matthew feeding, eating and drinking. The Raven King Hunyadi, sire of Dracula. And we, his slaves.
Monsters, monsters, everywhere.
Kezia, I was not dreaming. I was not ill. Miro Devla, I was not dreaming.
11:30pm
Kezia,
Twice I have escaped.
There will be no third, though they do not want to hurt me, they said, because I am the daughter of Death. They want to protect me, because I will have a daughter and my daughter, it is fated, will strengthen the Szgany.
But I do not trust them and you should not either. I walked out, agreeing, but it will never be.
Hide, miri amal. Take your Peti and never again go home. Take what you can and walk into the night.
That’s what I am going to do, though it breaks my heart. I will not tell you where I am going. We will never speak again. It will be easier to be dead.
I love you, my friend. Always.
Lolo
III.
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August 10 (Public)
BRITISH COLUMBIA’S ON fire. There’s 123(!) fires right now, and some have been burning since JULY. For real. Look at the BC emergency page. Some are just marked “out of control.” Like, they are burning, yeah, we know, and there’s not much we can do about that.
We’re getting the smoke down here, now. It’s making the sky really strange: the sun’s a dull orange coin you can look at, straight on, just about. It’s a sci-fi sky.
And if today’s anything like yesterday, the haze will hold in the heat so it’s going to be a bad one again.
Bad one. Meh. We’re lucky here, actually. All we’ve had is a hot summer made a little hotter by someone else’s misfortune, and a record 53 days without rain. Sure, it looks like the end of the world, but it isn’t. It’s another day, a perfectly fine, perfectly uncomfortable Seattle summer day.
And another perfectly fine, perfectly uncomfortable summer day in which I haven’t told my mother yet.
Dani Văduvă’s a big chicken, dear readers. Bawk, bawk, bawk.
I had chances, too. Just this morning, I brought us two iced coffees and sat while my mother reads the paper. Bless her, she still gets the paper-paper. She’s a voracious, but slow reader, smart, but painfully slow (English is, like, her third language!). And she defends her dead trees in the cutest way: “Paper feels more patient, waiting for me to finish, copilul meu.” Screens stress her out.
Anyway, I brought us coffees, sat down, and asked what she was reading.
“They’re speculating whether the smoke will interfere with the eclipse,” she reported. “I hope it clears out.”
My mother’s been trying to get me to care about this stupid eclipse for months. She bought THREE pairs of approved viewing glasses (in case one breaks). She never spends frivolously. Woman is eclipse serious.
I should be thankful she isn’t obsessing over the fires, though. Usually, it’s the kind of thing she would focus in on, read some pattern or omen in it.
“I’m sure it’ll be fine, Mamă,” I said, or something which maybe sounded dismissive because she set down her coffee, pulled down her eyebrows in the middle like she does, and looked at me over her glasses. “Your hair is getting long, copil.”
And there was my first chance. I agree, mother. And there is a reason why... you know that photo of you at my age? The one you said was right before you left Romania? You’re wearing two braids and a headscarf, but also a The Who shirt and that pair of giant sunglasses, like a fucking rockstar. I wanna look like that because...
(Check the scan of that pic on Instagram. 1970, baby.)
Instead, I said, “I like it long.”
My mother picked up her hair and held it away from her neck. “It is so hot to be growing your hair, copil. Grow it in the winter, if you want to.”
Second chance. Well, mother. Hair may be hot, but wigs are hotter, and I want to start my life as soon as possible already,
Instead, I said, “Cut your hair, if you are uncomfortable. I’m fine.”
She dropped her hair. It fell like a heavy curtain. “Maybe,” she said, “we should both cut our hair.”
Damn it. I couldn’t tell, still can’t tell, if she’s bluffing. She’s got a stone cold poker face.
“Maybe,” was the best I could say. “Maybe we should.”
Bawk, bawk, bawk.
August 11 (Public)
MY MOTHER WAS not bluffing, people. ZOMG.
This morning, I bring out our ritual iced coffees for us, and instead of reading her paper, she looks at me and says, “Get dressed, copil. It is mamă și copilul ei haircut time.”
Sidebar: my mother has to suspect, right? She’s called me “copil” since I was, I don’t know, 6 or 7. Never “son.” Always “copil.” Child, or “copilul meu/ei,” my/her child. Never “băiat,” little boy, or “fiu,” son. Always copil, non-gender-specific copil.
Anyway, OK. My hair is pretty scruffy, and I could get a good cut that would look good now, and then grow out with some shape. “We need to go to a good place,” I say. “Vain, or Scream or Libertas.”
My mother sits up to argue, she has her cheapskate face on, but she changes her mind and agrees. “Anyplace you want.”
So, hold tight, my people. Pictures to come. We’re going to Vain!
Mamă și copilul ei haircut time FTW.
ETA: Check us out. I know mine looks pretty basic, but it’s got good bones. And Mom! I was floored she went straight for a Rosemary’s Baby-era Mia Farrow pixie cut. There was SO MUCH hair on the floor. I don’t think she’s ever had hair this short.
It changed her whole look. I mean, I knew we Văduvăs had serious eyebrow action, but this put them up front on Mom. Ba-bam!
When we got home, I supervised her tweezing a few of the strays (she’s never been a shaper), and now, those brows are ON POINT. Here’s a close-up.
Can you even believe this woman is 65? Please, please, please let me have gotten those genes. Lord knows, I missed out on the music talent, but if I got this, then no complaints, at all, ever.
OK, I hear you. DID YOU TELL HER?
What do you think?
Bawkity, bawk.
Let’s review my missed chances today:
• When Mom said, “That cut is a bit feminine on you, copil.” No shit! Mother, that’s totally what I’m going for. Nope. I must have just looked worried while I was screwing up my courage, because she quickly went on to tell me how nice it looked, and then onto whispering to me for advice on tipping.
• After the cuts, at Chipotle, because we were both starving, when the guy behind the counter asked me, “Miss, do you want guacamole for $1.25 extra?” and I did not correct him, and my mother afterward assured me that I don’t look like a girl. That’s too ba
d, Mom, because I am a girl. But instead I just smiled and ate my burrito.
• Later, waiting for the bus on Third Avenue, I got checked out by a sort of handsome chickenhawk. At first, I wondered if I’d been clocked, but his look was so deep and interested, and, well, I have to say it, enthralling, it could not have been anything but. He was totally not my type, and, you know, feminism! and standing with my mom, inappropriate! My mom totally picked up the vibe, followed it to the source, and then killed his line-of-sight like a mildly horrified mama bear.
Are we making a betting pool yet, dear readers? Like guessing the date of a baby or something? How many more times can I chicken out before I grow a waddle and wings? Post your bets in the comments. Closest wins a prize. A gift card to KFC or something, LOL.
August 12 (Public)
THE AIR’S STILL pretty bad. And now some fires near Twisp and Omak, and a few places in eastern Washington have joined the party. And my mother casually drops that she wants to pack up, take the RV down to Oregon, so we can “see the full eclipse,” then move on somewhere, maybe east again.
FUCK.
She hasn’t really talked to me about why I took a leave of absence from school. It’s been the room elephant (not including, yanno, the other stuff). I thought she was giving me some time—one of the things I know I scored on the parent front is that my mom trusts me and my judgement (she’s always been good about that). But, fuck. She’s had her own agenda, and didn’t say anything because she’s selfishly relieved. Something’s spooked her. Some something (the fires? Some tragedy on the news? A coincidental happenstance of some bullshit variety?)
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