WHAT DO YOU SEE?

Many people upon hearing the term “Romani” or “Gypsy” promptly conjure up tarot cards, nomadic caravans, uneducated children, and dirt-poor families who are either too lazy to work or too carefree to give a damn. In Europe, the words “thief” and “swindler” are synonymous with “Romani,” and the conflicts between cultures often end in violence. The roots of this animosity span centuries, and trying to make sense of them would take up an entire book on its own. Ask ten different people to explain it and you’ll get ten different answers.

While living in Italy many years later, I met Milosh, a student of the Romani who tried to clarify some of it for me. The original Roma nomads, those who didn’t settle in the Middle East and the Caucasus regions, eventually reached medieval Europe. For a while they shared the land with their neighbors and hosts, living in accord. But that didn’t mean that either side wanted to change their way of life to accommodate the other. Paying taxes was a foreign concept to the self-contained Roma; so was submitting to a king they’d never met, considering how they had their own royalty chosen by the Romani and their councils of elders. Like Europeans, Romani considered their race pure. This was reinforced when they, like the Native Americans, began to encounter mysterious illnesses that sometimes wiped out entire caravans. They were convinced that the Europeans were plagued by evil and therefore avoided dealing with outsiders.

In some countries the rich made a sport of hunting Romani for money. “Gypsy hunts” were lawful as a means to drive the nomads out and became so popular that even commoners were encouraged to participate. You got an especially large prize if your kill happened to be a Gypsy clan leader. And if you had trouble telling a Gypsy from the normal folk, the identifying brands on their chests, enforced by most feudal lords and the Church, came in handy. The Romani of medieval Europe were in the wrong place at the wrong time, one of the unlucky groups caught in the war between Church and monarchy. Many a Gypsy was burned at the stake during the Inquisition, along with the mentally ill, those unfortunate enough to anger a neighbor or a city official, or simply because somebody wanted their cow.

One of my friends once asked, “Why didn’t the Gypsies just go back to India?” But that would’ve been difficult to accomplish; after wandering for centuries they didn’t have a country to go back to.

On this side of the Atlantic, a Romani is given the famous Hollywood makeover, and suddenly “Gypsy” means a free-spirited hippie or a bohemian; it’s not seen as a stigma or even a race but as an exotic lifestyle choice. Perhaps this view has to do with the beginnings of modern America, which are to me, like the big bang theory, violent and wondrous. No one was safe from hatred and betrayal. Everyone was fighting to survive. It seemed the American Gypsies weren’t immune to the neck-breaking race for what became the American Dream. Like so many others, they were more than willing to cut their roots in order to stake their claim on prosperity. Could that be the reason the American Gypsies largely escaped the more malevolent prejudices their European counterparts suffered?

One day Dad and I stumbled upon a novelty store in the heart of Hollywood. Olga and Roxy had gone straight to the nearest mall to avoid being embarrassed by Dad. Walking down Hollywood Boulevard was one of Dad’s favorite activities, and he had a habit of stopping in front of his favorite stars with his feet planted on either side, disregarding the foot-traffic jams he created.

“Nu shto B.B. King. Zakourim (Well, B.B. King. Shall we light up)?” he’d say, and flick out his lighter and cigarette.

“Dad. People are looking.”

“Genius must draw attention. It can’t be helped.”

After I dragged Dad away from the lengthy worship of King’s star, we took one of the smaller streets winding up the hill and passed a store called Gypsy Lair, which my father indignantly translated into “Gypsy Liar” until I corrected him.

“It might be someone I know, from the old country,” he said.

But the clerk turned out to be a teenager with rosy cheeks.

“I’m, like, from San Fernando originally, but, like, I’m not at all like my parents.” The girl tossed her blond cornrows out of her face and leaned on the counter littered with “Gypsy” hair clips and gargantuan roses in a variety of the season’s trendiest colors next to a bucket of mood rings. She wore a billowy top and a long skirt with tiny bells that jingled whenever she moved.

“So you not own this?” Dad motioned around the store. It was smaller than our living room and crammed with Halloween merchandise that consisted mostly of varieties of Gypsy costumes. Sexy Gypsy and Vampire Gypsy hung next to long-haired wigs and fake-coin necklaces. There were baskets full of scarves like the ones Stevie Nicks wore and Steven Tyler wrapped around his mike stands, and a table stacked with palm-reading books and tarot cards.

“I wish. That’s how come I love working here, ’cause I’m, like, free-spirited, you know. My parents, they’re Republican, but I’m like a Gypsy. I like to travel. And, like, experience life.”

“You Gypsy?” Dad asked, drumming his fingers on the rustic counter. He was smiling.

“I’m hungry,” I said in hopes of saving the poor girl from what was to come.

“I’m so totally Gypsy. I even belly dance.”

“Belly dance is Arab. You know, yes?”

She squinted.

“You know Gypsy is, how you say?” He looked at me. “Natsyonalnost.”

I had no choice. “It’s a nationality.”

The girl bit her lower lip and stood up straight for the first time. She scratched her eyebrow and I noticed a tuft of blond hair peeking out of her underarm.

“From two hundred of years back,” my father continued. “In imperial Russia, Russian Roma has permission to citizen rights. They to train and sell horses. They pay nalog, which mean tax, and any business they want, they can do. Vot tak (That’s right).”

“That’s awesome,” she said in a voice that had lost some of its free-spiritedness.

Dad turned to me yet again. “Shto takoe awesome?”

My translation produced a clearing of the throat that usually indicated displeasure.

“And this store,” he said, “is no awesome. Is shame. In old Russia we has Gypsy counts and rich families. Gypsy has freedom but also they build big houses to live.”

I knew that if I let him, Dad would go on with the history lesson until the store closed or the girl broke into sobs. I didn’t understand this urge he had to lecture or correct strangers on the subject. But as I grew older I found myself doing exactly that, because the conversation never ended at “I am Gypsy.”

*   *   *

Grandpa Andrei once warned Dad that if he thought in America everyone would accept him as he was, he might as well find himself a remote island to live out the rest of his life on.

“Remember,” Grandpa told Dad during our very last Russian New Year’s, “only your homeland will bring you happiness, especially in your old age.”

Mom had joined two long tables and then covered them with a white tablecloth to accommodate several dozen guests. The Christmas-tree lights, along with the candles and the garland lights strung from the ceiling, bounced off the crystal wineglasses and the silverware. The living room looked like it floated inside a burst of fireworks.

Earlier Dad had gone to the butcher to pick up the suckling pig he’d ordered weeks in advance. By the time it arrived at our party it had been seasoned and roasted in the fire pit of a local restaurant. Mom made her famous tort-salat. There was also salted herring with raw onion rings and massive mounds of mashed potatoes next to piles of boiled dill potatoes next to stuffed potatoes and potatoes au gratin. Bowls full of garlicky yogurt sauce nestled next to grape leaves stuffed with ground beef and rice. Armenian basturma (wind-cured beef), Astrakhanskaya caviar made with eggplant, and regular black and red caviar were all present and ready to be devoured by our increasingly intoxicated guests. There was so much liquor, you had to lean around the bottles to speak with the person across the table.

All through the night more food and vodka appeared as if my parents had come into the possession of the fabled tablecloth straight out of a Russian fairy tale that granted your wish for any food or drink you wanted.

According to the Chinese horoscope, 1990 was to be the year of the metal horse, and since every bit of luck counted in our household, everyone was to hold something metal when the TV hosts rang the midnight bell. To increase the New Year’s good fortune, our candles burned inside silver votives, people rested their cigarettes in iron ashtrays, and a neighbor named Timor brought a box of nails in case one of us found ourselves metal-less at the last minute.

“You’re young,” Grandpa said close to Dad’s ear so as to be heard, “so you chase a perfect life. But do you really think there are no labels in America?”

“This land has brought us nothing but bad luck,” Dad said. “For every good thing, five bad ones happen.”

“Not that again. This damn curse will travel wherever you take it.” Grandpa tapped his temple. “Up in that mulish head of yours.”

The TV hosts were announcing that we had a minute left until midnight, and the voices shifted from scattered-loud to deafening. We counted down the year along with the TV, with our lucky charms raised high in our hands. I was holding a fork, Roxy a teaspoon, and Zhanna a pair of tweezers she’d found in the bathroom.

Dad smacked his knees, his face now animated with daydreams. “No matter,” he said. “I don’t want to end up eighty, playing chess on the bench outside my house with a bunch of drunks I’ve known since nursery school. I don’t want to pretend to have nothing so that the Kommunisti don’t show up at my door and confiscate my life away from me. I should to be able to enjoy the money I make, even if I’m Rom.”

“What’s this nonsense?” Grandpa said. “I enjoy my money, I do. But why flaunt it?”

“All I’m saying is that everyone wants to live there. Why? Because everyone is allowed to do as they please. In America you won’t have to hide your wealth under the living-room floorboards.”

But even then Grandpa’s words felt more real than my father’s. He seemed to know things others didn’t. Very different from Dad, who acted like he knew things people just didn’t get.

After his conversation with the salesgirl inside the Gypsy Lair, Dad stayed in a sour mood for days. How a young girl could possibly be familiar with the particulars of the class system of imperial Russia was a mystery to me, but the logistics mattered little to my father, who had found the first flaws in the country he had worshipped for so very long.