Even before they arrive, we know they are coming and are ready for them. The phone has been ringing off the hook and customers who have come in have alerted us, too: “The Gypsies are in town.”
My uncle John, in his blood-stained butcher’s apron, is watching the front door of the little meat market he owns and runs. The store is in an excellent location, across from town hall, and with a full view of the village common and our major intersection. My oldest cousin, Dan, whacking chicken carcasses at a table behind the meat counter, has a sharp eye on the back entrance. My job is to pretend to sweep the floor, which in fact I swept last night after closing, and if any Gypsies come in, I am to follow them as unobtrusively as possible. We may be country people, but we are not rubes. These clever people will pull nothing on us.
This is not quite an annual event, but its history is deep and my parents and grandparents all have Gypsy stories. These stories have an odd character to them which, as a newly minted teen-ager, I am struggling to understand. On the one hand, the Gypsies are known and feared as thieves and con artists, and there is a hint of other, deeper crimes, such as prostitution and the seductive or debilitating deployment of drugs and potions. One the one hand the stories about Gypsies seem to hold a grudging respect, and even a fascination with the world they represent—their camaraderie, their freedom, their abandon, their knowledge of forbidden pleasures. The Gypsies are bad people: the Gypsies are wonderful. How to resolve this paradox?
The Gypsy children, we have been told, are especially guileful and difficult to catch. One must not be seduced by their sad brown eyes, deep as wells, or, if caught, their pleas for mercy, since in fact these are tactics and weapons of well-trained, nimble-fingered little brigands. And the women likewise, with their hypnotic gazes: this is Sirensong, and though they may seem to be looking into your heart, they are actually—so we’ve been warned—locating your wallet.
Everyone knows by now—or thinks they know—where the Gypsies are camped, or their destination. Where they have come from is anybody’s guess. Almost every year they make an appearance at the Lake County Fair where they engage in a number of quasi-legitimate activities—a food booth, a ball-toss game, fortune telling—while the children pick pockets, the women seduce drunks, and the husbands sell “oil of essence” or other exotic pharmacies. They have been seen smoking, but they are not known to drink alcohol, and there is some speculation, therefore, that this discipline may have something to do with religious practice, their otherwise pagan behavior notwithstanding. Not a few local ministers have been rebuffed by the Gypsies. Not a few others have, after a seemingly gratifying exercise in communicating the Good News, discovered their watches and wedding rings missing, or even the tires on the car they rolled up in. They live for each other, these Gypsies. Their commerce with the outside world is, therefore, of mere convenience, something to be exploited. Our own community, therefore, judges them as not worthy of trust. Indeed, they have already been convicted.
So that when a pair of Gypsies comes into our store late that very afternoon, I am preternaturally prepared for them. This pair is presumably a mother and daughter, though it would be quite impossible to prove this and could be an aunt and a niece, or even just a Gypsy woman with a boy dressed as a girl—this ruse has not been discounted. The woman is as tall as a man, her head wrapped in a red bandana, and she wears hoop ear-rings and a dress tightly cinched at the waist which sweeps the floor I have been so diligently sweeping myself. Her skin is a beautiful cinnamon color and she shows a gold tooth when she speaks to the child. The child—a girl?—is even darker than the woman she accompanies, and her face seems somehow clouded with worry. She walks as if her legs were too short for her torso and in spite of her copious clothing—sweater over blouse and a long skirt—seems a bit unhealthy somehow, perhaps under nourished, perhaps sleep deprived, perhaps just afraid. Her very black hair has been cut to just below her ears—practical, but not attractive. When her eyes lock onto mine, I am forced to smile, and I have a terrible desire to feed her something, something like ice cream. My aunt Arlene, steadfast at the cash register, would say I had already been bewitched.
The mother, if mother she is, noticing my smile, draws the girl in close to her skirt. Our first area as you come into the store is the “produce department.” This is where the mother immediately stops. After a quick inspection, she scorns the bananas, but the peaches catch her eye, and she feels them gently, and drops four into her apron—something I have never seen done before. In fact, I had not even noticed the apron until the woman made this interesting move, dropping the peaches into the hammock formed when the woman grasped the apron at its hem and held it before her.
Now she inspected our cabbages. We are very proud of our cabbages, because they are locally grown and very fresh—deep blue and crisp—and my uncle has a special friendship with the man who grows them, a Mr. Koslowski. My uncle describes these cabbages as “vigorous” to inquiring customers and reminds them they are grown without pesticides. The Gypsy woman fondles them expertly, and then drops a small one—though none are very small—into her apron. I push my broom idly. The girl turns away from her mother, tilts her head and studies me shamelessly. I can’t help myself, and in pantomime offer the girl a chance to push the broom.
She looks away, embarrassed perhaps, but her mother catches my eye and her face becomes a mask of disgust. She turns away and pushes the possible daughter ahead of her, and I then see her strolling to the meat counter, both hands swinging at her sides. You will recall that this is impossible! She had just now loaded her apron with peaches and a cabbage. This would require at least the use of one hand. Aha! I am surely onto something here. I sweep around her with my broom like a hockey player preparing to check, heading her off at the meat counter. Keen as my youthful eyes are, however, I see no suspicious bulges in the clothes, no unexplainable lumps, and the presumed mother walks as naturally as anyone would—no cabbages between those legs, surely, and nothing as delicate as a peach would survive inside those swinging arms. She walks rather proudly, in fact, and gives me just a hint of a challenging smile with just a hint also of that gold tooth behind the lips. The presumed daughter is close at hand, too, and there is likewise no sign on her person of hidden vegetables or fruit.
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