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 to 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.
“A long, long life,” the lady continues. “But not long enough.”
She stops abruptly and stomps her foot. Three golden bands clank against each other and spin around her nut-colored ankle. A woman next to me gasps, but the woman in the circle keeps talking, letting each syllable take its time to carry this story to the ears of her tribe. Young and old, they watch her without blinking, and I watch them. “So respected and so loved was she, that even in death, she is honored.”
It’s just a simple story. One that could have been told in a matter of seconds, whispered from one knobby-kneed kid to the next, but to the people around me, it is a legend. “Our queen fell into a hard and early labor. Child number fifteen. Fifteen! Our king was distraught. What was a man to do?” She shrugs and looks every one of us in the eye before unspooling the rest of her story. She sees I am barely paying attention. I sit straighter and try not to think about how the boy’s lips move across the steel harmonica.
She asks again, “What was a man to do?” She tells of their love. His devotion. “Ten thousand dollars to anyone who could save his bride. A fortune, even today. But there, camped in the small village of Coatopa, Alabama, no amount of money could save her.” She spreads her arms up to the dark sky, and the boy leans close to me as the woman opens herself to the night.
“Even as he suffered, he carried her body to this city. This Iti Taloa, Mississippi. And here, in this holy land, where he could have been turned away, left to bury his own, he was not judged. He was welcomed, even helped by the generous people of this town. It is a fine hour in our history. A day when we were not thrown from our wagons into the night. A day when Romany people, our people, were honored. We prepared her well. Her body, adorned in a royal robe of green. Around her neck, the heirloom shells, handed down from generation to generation.” She lowers her voice with each repetition, slowing the pace. “Shells and a long chain of golden coins. And at her feet, sacred linen. In her hands, riches that would make any beggar wail.”
Others have heard this story countless times, yet attention here is intense. I want to know everything there is to know about these people, their queen, their history, their future. I want to know about the boy folded beneath me, catching my stare and causing me to swell with shame for the sinful thoughts he stirs in me.
I reposition myself on the crate. My leg brushes against his arm. I catch my breath. We both sit motionless, his arm on my bare ankle. Waves of electricity surge between us.
The beautiful gypsy continues her performance around the fire, but I barely hear what she says. Something about sending their queen across the River Styx and giving her treasures for the journey. The woman says the church could not hold so many mourners. The boy’s arm wraps around my leg, his fingers cradle my ankle. I become the sound and the stars and the flames.
Finally, the woman bows. Her bangles lead the tribe’s applause. An elderly man stands to tell another tale. The white-shirted harmonica player whispers to me, “Let’s go.” And I follow.