Gypsies

“But we didn’t have any.

“We waited for five years.

“I didn’t know to see a doctor or anything. I just thought you waited. And it would happen or it would not as God preferred. We went to an Assembly church there and one time I asked the pastor about it, privately. Well, he turned so red he could hardly talk. A young man. ‘God willing,’ he said—he used those words. Tray,’ he told me.

“So I prayed. But nothing happened.

“I didn’t know about fertility or about how it worked, except that the man and the woman were together in bed and that was how it happened. I wondered if we were doing something wrong. Because in those days nobody talked about it. Nobody I knew ever talked about it. I finally worked up the nerve to mention how we never had babies to Ellen Conklin and she said, ‘Why, shoot, Jea

“She said to see a doctor. It might be me, she said, or it could be Willis. And maybe it could be fixed.

“Well, I saw the doctor by myself. Willis wouldn’t go. He just wouldn’t hear of it. It wasn’t the kind of thing Willis could talk about. So I went by myself, and in the end it didn’t matter that Willis didn’t go because as it turned out it was me—I was the one who couldn’t bear children.”

She looked at Karen and Laura, back and forth between them. “You know what I’m saying?”

Karen was trembling; she did not speak. Laura said coolly, “We were adopted?” Added, “I looked in the family Bible, Mama … I know we’re not in there.”

Karen felt suddenly adrift, a ship cast loose from its moorings.

Mama said, “Not adopted exactly. But I will tell you the story. What I know of it.”

They were a strange couple (Mama said). They had been going to the Assembly church for almost two years, and they were immigrants.

DPs, most people thought, refugees from what was left of Europe after the war. No one could place exactly what country they might have fled. They spoke good English but in an odd way, as if a Dutch accent had mingled with a French. They looked alike. He was tall and she was short, but they had similar eyes.

They just moved into town one day and took up residence in a shack out on the access road. Obviously they’d been through hard times. They gave then-name as Williams, so people were thinking, Well, here’s somebody without papers, somebody maybe who came into the country through the back door—it was possible.

But they were not drifters. The man—he called himself Ben—had no skills but he was willing to work and he was a hard worker. You would see him sometimes at the back of the hardware store, pushing a broom or shelving stock. People said he never complained. And he had a family.

Three little babies.

The oldest was four. The youngest was a newborn.

I see you know what I mean. But wait—don’t jump ahead.

People took pity on them because of this haggard look, a hunted look. In the Depression you might have mistaken them for criminals or hobos, but these were prosperous times and there was nothing criminal about them. And we were reading all the terrible stories then about the war—this was when the truth about the death camps came out. They weren’t Jews but they might have been gypsies or Poles or who knows what. None of us really understood what had happened over there, only that a lot of i

Ben seemed very serious about the church. I don’t know if it was ever honest conviction, however, or just the urge to fit in. Sometimes at church I would see him a pew or three in front of me, standing there with the hymnal in his hand, not really singing but just mouthing the words. And he would have this utterly lost look, the way you or I might look if we’d stumbled into a synagogue or something by mistake and couldn’t politely leave. I think he liked the processional best. He would always close his eyes and smile a little when the organ played. And he always put money in the plate—for a man in his circumstances he gave very generously.

I never thought he would abandon those children.

He seemed to like it well enough in Burleigh—and he loved those kids. You could just tell.

But this is the part I don’t know much about. Willis never talked about it.

All I know is that there was trouble one night at the shack where they lived. Willis got a phone call and went out with some church people. He came back looking very pale and, you know, shaking. But he never talked about it. Couple of police cars were out there that night, people said, and some stories circulated but no two alike, so I don’t know. Finally it was let out that Ben and his wife had left town, or maybe he had murdered his wife and run away—but I never believed that.

The pastor of our church took charge of the three children. There was a county orphanage two towns away but it had a very bad reputation—and these weren’t registered children; they had no birth or baptismal certificates. In those days, in that place, people were more casual about such things. Well, the pastor thought of us.

He talked to Willis about it.

I don’t know how much Willis liked the idea. But he knew I wanted kids and that I couldn’t have any. Maybe the pastor or some of the deacons leaned on him. Anyway, he agreed. And I think that was a brave thing to do.

He brought you three home.

“I don’t remember any of that,” Karen said dazedly.

“Well,” Mama said, “you were only just four years old—a young four at that. It’s hardly surprising. And Laura was still in diapers and Timmy was just newborn.”

“At least it makes sense,” Laura said. “It puts some order into things.” “Does it?”

“There must be a reason we’re the way we are.”

Mama said, “You shouldn’t even talk about that.”

“But we are talking about it,” Laura said. “Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about all along? Mama, that’s why we’re here.”

Karen watched her mother stand up, pace nervously to the sink.

Mama said—faintly—“It frightened your father.”

She turned to the window.

“I saw you do it once. I mean you, Karen. I remember that. It didn’t seem like such a bad thing. You showed me. You were proud of it. You drew a circle in the air and there was a nice place in that circle—a lake, some trees, a flight of birds. Like a postcard picture. It was pretty and it was the sort of thing a child might try to draw with crayons. I wasn’t frightened of it, not at that moment. Later I guess I was, because it was a miracle, you know, and frightening when you think about what it might mean. But you were so proud of it. Maybe somebody had showed you how, back before we got you. Or maybe you just knew. When I calmed down I said it was nice but don’t do it again and especially don’t show Daddy … I knew how he’d take it.”

Karen thought, I remember that! So long ago, but the memory popped right back up. How it had felt, making that circle, feeling the power in her… she had been proud.

She thought, It’s been so long! Once I was young and I could hear that song inside me, even when I didn’t want to. Now I’m empty. Drained, she thought, like a bottle.

“It was always Daddy,” Mama said, “who decided when we would move.”

“The Gray Man,” Laura said.

Mama nodded convulsively, her back turned. “You could call him that. I saw him once. One time only. Just before we left Pittsburgh. We were riding on the streetcar—I had some shopping to do. Karen, you were in school; but I had Laura and Timmy with me. And he got on the car.

“Timmy looked straight at him… both children seemed to recognize him. And I looked at him, too.