Cursed Be the Child

by Mort Castle

  Humbly, Evan Kyle Dean prayed to God: If it is Your will, save my soul.

  He thought he heard God’s voice: I will.

  Then the truck hit him.

  — | — | —

  Forty-Two

  Solakh.

  Pola Janichka walked out of the room, saying, “Wait until I call you, then come to me.”

  Time passed. Time that did not feel like time passed and made her feel dreamy, awake and dreaming.

  Selena heard Pola Janichka’s call.

  Selena stepped into the hall. The hall was black. Here light dared not invade. She began to walk in the direction from which she thought she had heard Pola Janichka’s summons, but then the lingering echo of Pola Janichka’s voice was all about her. She stopped walking. She did not know which way to go, and she was lost and afraid.

  You need never be lost. Life is not geography. It is far more simple and thus far more difficult. You can go ahead. You can go back. You can stand still. Those are your choices. You have no other.

  Choices, Selena Lazone? There is only one choice. If you are alive, you must go forward. That is what life is. Moving ahead. Moving onward. Life is movement and continuance, a progression.

  So then come to me, Pola Janichka said—or Selena Lazone thought she heard her say.

  Now the darkness receded from the path she walked, and her fear receded with it. Pola Janichka appeared, not so far off, not so far away at all. She beckoned.

  But Selena could not come to her, because at her feet lay a chasm, wide and deep and terrible, an impossible distance separating her from Pola Janichka.

  What separates is evil, what unites is good.

  Tshatsimo, thought Selena. That is the truth. And what is the truth that may unite us?

  Selena cried out, “I cannot come to you. Between us there is a barrier.”

  “There is nothingness,” Pola Janichka said, “but can nothing be a barrier between those who desire to be together?”

  “It can be,” Selena Lazone said. “It should not be.”

  “Why does an uncrossable abyss lie between us?”

  “Because I see it there and because I have said it is there,” Selena Lazone said.

  “And because I see it there and because I have said it is there,” said Pola Janichka. “But if neither of us sees it and if neither says it is there, then it is not there.”

  “There is nothing, and nothing cannot keep me from you or from my people,” Selena Lazone said.

  “Then come to me,” Pola Janichka said. “Come to us.”

  Selena stepped forward and did not fall.

  There is a solid foundation under my feet. I walk the pathways that others of my people have walked. New road or old road, as I journey, I follow their vurma, their signs and road marks they have left to guide me.

  Solakh.

  Together, they went on. “Where are we going?” Selena asked.

  “Where you must go,” Pola Janichka answered as they walked into the past, into the sometimes misty, sometimes too vivid realm of expectations, disappointments and remembrance.

  In the past, Selena watched herself…

  …being born, the caul clinging to her face, heard her own first wail, a cry against what she was meant to be, a scream against Baht, fate itself?…

  …her mother, bloody and weary, saying with pain-bitten lips, “The seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. Great her draba, her dukkeripin gifts. No less great, her burden.”

  …her father, surly but handsome, with the edged hardness that is found only in weak, frightened men. Grigor, drinking whiskey and smoking and laughing with the men. Ah, sometimes he had been known as Dark Fortune Grigor and sometimes Cloudy Days Grigor. Three times had the police, the Gaje shanglos, lelled him off to prison, but from this day on you could, call him Bahtalo Grigor, Lucky Grigor!

  Seventh daughter of a seventh daughter—and one born with the caul! Cohalyi, sorceress, magic her birthright. And when his daughter was of an age to be married, what a bridal price she would fetch! He would sell her to one of the rich tribes, like the Adams…no, the Volkos! Ah, so much money, lowe, those Volkos had!

  My father was a cruel and hateful man. I was only a piece of property to him.

  “Your mother was a seventh daughter, Selena,” Pola Janichka told her, “and your father was an unfortunate ignoramus. Never blame on wickedness what is more properly the work of stupidity.”

  Solakh.

  Selena watched her life, her childhood as time sped by.

  To see where you are going, you must sometimes see where you have been.

  A series of automobile rides blurred together, roads north and south and east and west, no destination ever as important as the going. Los Angeles. New York. Atlanta. Chicago. Miami. A summer in France in the Camargue. Once a very short stay in Limerick City, Ireland. Grigor couldn’t stand it there. Too many of the Gypsies of Ireland were abandoning their nomadic existence and living in houses, even paying taxes on them.

  With her sisters, Selena begged on the streets of cities and towns. Her mother dukkered, told fortunes for the Gaje, and Grigor took what money she earned and vanished for days at a time, and the money vanished permanently.

  And now her mother wept, her tears streaming down her cheeks, and her sisters pulled at Grigor’s clothes, begging him, but Grigor had done it; he had made the arrangements. Selena would be the bride of Tene Volko’s grandnephew. Selena was 11, going on 12. $10,000, that was the price for her.

  Pola Janichka said no. Of course, she had known of the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. Was there a Gypsy on this side of the infinite Paya, the Atlantic Ocean, unaware of such a momentous event? And now Grigor, fool that he was, meant to sell the child for $10,000 so that perhaps she could run boojoo swindles on foolish Gaje to support a lazy dolt of a Volko.

  It would not be permitted. Pola Janichka forbade it. The Rawnie, as venerable, loved, and feared as any Romany chieftain, was adamant. A far more important destiny awaited Selena Lazone.

  Grigor fumed. He was the child’s father.

  So? Pola Janichka replied. A tomcat can be a father.

  Ah, the great lady did not understand. Grigor had the girl’s best interests at heart. The Volkos were well-to-do. Selena would prosper as a Volko. He wanted a good life for his daughter.

  Pola Janichka said, “I offer you the ten thousand dollars and ten thousand more. Sell the child to me.”

  Grigor did.

  “I think I know now, but I need to have you tell me, Pola Janichka. Why did you want me?”

  “So that I might teach you, Selena Lazone, and so that you might grow in wisdom. So that you might help those who needed help. So that you might become gule romni, a wise woman, one who knows and understands others because she knows and understands herself.

  “There was yet another reason, Selena Lazone. Within me, was an abundance of love. So great a love, yes, but worthless as long as I gave it to no one. Love, like money, should not be hoarded. It should be given away freely. I wished to give that love, all of it, to you.

  “So I taught you the Darane swature, and the paramishta and the djili, and more, taught you the draba charms and armaya…”

  You did, Pola Janichka.

  “…taught you to dukker with tea leaves and palms and cards, taught you to look into the heart and mind and soul with your heart and mind and soul, to heal, to bring comfort and wholeness…”

  All this you taught me, Pola Janichka. Kako. Thank you, Pola Janichka.

  “…and it was not enough for you…”

  Out in the Gaje world that surrounded us, a world from which we were excluded and from which we excluded ourselves, I thought I saw so much more!

  Pola Janichka, because you gave me love, I learned to love. I learned to love people. And I learned to love learning. That love of learning became a fierce thing within me, Pola Janichka. I wanted to learn all that I could and to use my knowledge to help people.

  At 15, Selena looked older, matur
e, as much because of the confident way she conducted herself as her appearance, but still, she was too young to be wise. Cohalyi, yes, but she certainly could not yet be called a Rawnie.

  She came to Pola Janichka, her teacher. “I want to learn to read,” Selena Lazone said. “I want to learn to write. I want to go to school. I want to learn everything.”

  Pola Janichka said, “I hear your words, and I also hear what you truly say. You wish to be a Gajo.”

  She did not mean that, not at all, Selena protested. Why should it be forbidden for her to become literate, to gain the knowledge that the world had to offer, while yet remaining a true daughter of the Romany?

  Pola Janichka said, “If a dog sets out to learn to meow, I have to think it wishes to be a cat.”

  “But…”

  “Yekka buliasan nashti beshes pe done grastende,” Pola Janichka said. “With one backside, you cannot sit on two horses.”

  That ended the discussion with Pola Janichka. The discussion with herself, with what she knew and what she wanted to know, with who she was and who she dreamed of being, continued for a week. Though it brought her pain, though she realized it would bring pain to Pola Janichka, she had to be true to herself and to the promise of the person within her she felt she could be.

  She tried to explain that to Pola Janichka.

  With the edge of her hand, Pola Janichka chopped the air and cut her off. “If you choose to be one of them, the Gaje, you likewise choose not to be one of us. You become outcast. Banished. You call down upon your own head the curse of marhime. Know this, Selena Lazone.”

  “No,” Selena said. “If I am to be marhime, then it must be Pola Janichka who condemns me.”

  The moment that followed Selena’s statement and plea lasted forever.

  Then Pola Janichka said, “Bater.” She spat at Selena’s feet. In a thickly wet voice, Pola Janichka solemnly pronounced the curse—“Marhime!”—and turned her back on Selena Lazone.

  Selena Lazone turned her back on Pola Janichka and on the Romany and fled. In the Gaje world, she could not accomplish what she wished to if she were seen as a child, and so, sometimes implicitly and sometimes overtly, she declared herself a woman—and as a woman, she found work and earned enough money to live and to learn.

  And now…

  Solakh.

  “I have returned.”

  The search for knowledge had brought her here. The search for self had led her to the Rom. The past had brought her to the present.

  “Te aves yertime,” Pola Janichka said. “I forgive you, and may forgiveness flow like God’s grace from o juvindo Romano, o muli Romano, our living Romany brothers and sisters and from the spirits of our honored dead.”

  Selena Lazone was no longer marhime.

  She was Rom. She was ababina. Cohalyi. Gule romni. Sorceress, witch, magic woman.

  She was Selena Lazone—healer.

  Sitting at the table, the crystal ball between them, Selena asked, “What must I do, Puri Dai? How can I save the child, Melissa Barringer? How may I bring peace to the diakka, Puri Dai?”

  “It will require great strength and power, Selena,” Pola Janichka said. “I mean no insult, but I simply do not know if you have such strength and power.” She sighed. “And as I am now, no matter the respect others afford me in my age, I could not confront this diakka. I do not have the strength. I do not have the power.”

  Selena brought her hand to her mouth, knuckles tightly pressed to her teeth. At last, she dared to say what she had sensed since first coming tonight to the home of Pola Janichka. “Puri Dai, you are dying.”

  Pola Janichka nodded.

  “Is there nothing that can be done…”

  Pola Janichka smiled. “I get the Christian stations on cable, but the Gaje preachers have done nothing to cure me.” Then she grew serious. “There is one sure death guaranteed everyone. It happens because it must. Baht. It is that sure death that dwells within me.”

  Tears burned Selena’s eyes.

  “Do not weep, tschai, my own little girl,” Pola Janichka said. “There are beginnings and there are endings. There is completion. You are complete because you have found your people and yourself And I am complete because you have returned to me.”

  Pola Janichka smiled. “What God wills, Selena, what God wills. We will trust O Del and rejoice.”

  “Bater,” Selena Lazone said.

  “You will need help,” Pola Janichka said. She took Selena’s hands and held them, her grip warm and strong. “Your man, go get him now. He will stand by you in this. He is Rom. He is tacho rat. His heart is good. There is much we have to talk about, much that I must teach you about draba and vila and O Del and O Beng.”

  It was morning when Selena Lazone and David Greenfield departed. At her front door, Pola Janichka watched them walk into an ugly gray-black dawn. The wind blew fiercely from the north, a night wind that would not be banished by the day, cold and angry and strong.

  “Akana mukav tut le Devlesa,” Pola Janichka said.

  “I now leave you to God.”

  — | — | —

  Forty-Three

  It was a quarter to nine. He said, “I’m leaving a little early today. A few things to take care of at school. I’ll be home around the usual time, okay?” He smiled and saluted with a casual hand to his forehead. In his blank expression there was no sign there was anything at all worrisome, bothersome, or even annoying in his complacent, perhaps humdrum life.

  For a moment he simply stood there as Vicki tried not to stare at him. In a gray-blue housecoat that felt particularly drab, she sat at the kitchen table. Distractedly, she thought, Who is he? This is my husband, and I do not know who the man is. She wanted to be more upset by that thought, but she was not. It was not the first time in the past few hours she had had it.

  Warren had slept beautifully, while she had been awake the entire night. She had fitfully turned from side to side, trying to force herself to relax. She discovered itches and minor aches that ordinarily she never would have noticed.

  After awhile, she tried thinking of absolutely nothing. No luck. Her imagination conjured up abstract, shape-changing horrors and inky, lurking fears. She attempted to picture soporific scenes of golden sandy beaches and green woodlands. Her mind’s eye could see only desolate snow or flickering, black-tinged flames. She tried to pray. The words, the pleas to God, had been in her mind, but despite her sincerity had been hollow and floating and utterly futile.

  More than anything else, though, it was the wind, as all night long it encircled the house, awful and threatening.

  Awake, so horribly awake, she lay beside her husband. Warren, damn him, slept like there was absolutely nothing at all wrong with the Barringer family, nothing whatsoever troubling Missy.

  Sometime between three and four in the morning, she thought surely she would start to cry. She reached out and touched Warren’s elbow, then his hip. His breathing did not change.

  “Warren.”

  No answer.

  “Warren?” She wanted him to awaken and hold her.

  Warren did not awaken. He would not. He rolled heavily onto his side, his back to her.

  She felt like shaking him, striking him, slugging him with her fist right between the shoulder blades, but then the moment passed. She had no right to expect anything of him because he was a stranger.

  At the door now, seemingly puzzled by something, Warren asked, “You okay, Vicki?”

  “Sure, okay,” Vicki told the stranger—and he left the house. Her pinched laughter surprised and frightened her.

  Losing my mind, she thought, but there was no panic at the thought. Panic required energy, and she was drained. But she was going out of her mind. She felt distanced from everything, set apart from all those things and all those people that had once been a familiar microcosm of her world.

  A few minutes later, with another cup of coffee, she listlessly peered out the window at the gray day. She heard the television set playing in the rec room b
eneath her feet, violent and demented cartoon-frenetic sounds she could feel rather than hear. Missy was down there, with coloring book and the morning kiddy shows. For the moment, she did not even want to look at Melissa…

  Missy was another stranger in the house. I admit it. Right now, she scares the hell out of me. Right now, I wish she were gone!

  Vicki felt as though she had been viciously and irrevocably cut free from everyone and anyone to whom she had ever been emotionally tied.

  In a world too full of people, she was alone.

  No!

  She did have a friend, a good friend, Laura Morgan…

  Or she had had a friend.

  After that awful Sunday, there had been a rift in their friendship.

  As she had told Laura, Vicki had not gone in to work at Blossom Time on Monday. But then, five minutes after she had told Laura that, everything went berserk.

  So Vicki had not gone to work on Tuesday nor Wednesday nor the whole week.

  But Laura had not called her. Laura didn’t seem to care.

  No! Laura Morgan was a friend—a true friend.

  Vicki called Blossom Time and, when Laura answered, Vicki said “Hello,” and that was the only word she could say without a stammer. Laura sounded cold and businesslike. No, she was actually more wooden and brusque than that; Laura would have had a professionally courteous tone had she been responding to an inquiry about the price of tea roses or even to a wrong number.

  Vicki tried to explain what had happened.

  Then she stopped talking. I…I sound insane; Vicki said to herself I know I do.

  Laura Morgan said, “I’m sorry, Vicki. I don’t know what your problem is. I’m not so sure I want to.” Laura’s voice was as thin as the edge of a sheet of paper. “I’ve given this a lot of thought. I don’t like what I’m saying, Vicki, but it’s the truth. You see, you didn’t get in touch with me. I didn’t get in touch with you. I think that’s the way I wanted it to be.”