Burning (29 page)

First I started the shower, turning the temperature to hot even though I could see, through the bathroom window, in the bright flash of sunlight, that the day was already heating. Then I unwound the sheet from my body and looked once more at the stain.

It did not look like a blooming rose. It did not look like a heart, or a bird, or a flowering tree. It looked decidedly like a spot of dried blood—nothing more, nothing less.

And when I held it under running water in the sink, adding a bit of soap and rubbing the fabric back and forth, it faded away, darkening the water for just a moment before it ran clear.

Then it was gone.

When I entered the kitchen, dressed once more in my red skirt and white blouse, my damp hair tied behind me, I felt the coward’s relief that I did not find Ben’s mother alone at
the table. The entire Stanley family was there—Ben, whose smile upon seeing me was heartbreakingly honest, James, who looked at me with open-faced curiosity, and Ben’s parents, his mother in front of the stove preparing a pan of scrambled eggs and his father pouring out cups of coffee.

Ben stood up quickly when I came in. “Hey, Lala,” he said, and he came around the table to take my hand. It felt like a message—he was showing his parents what I was to him. And perhaps he meant to show me, as well, for he pulled back a chair for me at the table and offered to get me a drink.

In my family men did not serve the women. It was not done. But I was not at home anymore, and so I asked Ben if I might have a glass of water.

“Sure,” he said. And then he said, “Mom, Pops, James—this is Lala White.”

“We met yesterday,” said James. Then he asked, “Are you really a Gypsy? Can you tell me my fortune?”

His father made a sound into his coffee cup as if perhaps he would choke. “Nice to meet you, Lala,” he said. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

“Yes, thank you.” I watched in wonderment as he poured it for me.

“Sugar?”

“Yes, please.” I grew bolder. “And milk, if you have some.”

He poured a generous dollop into the cup and scooped in sugar as well. I decided that I liked this man—generous, slow to make judgments, and gentle with his boys. He ruffled James’s hair as he passed, drawing a steely-eyed gaze from his
younger son, who quickly repaired the damage with a pass of his hand.

Ben’s mother—I was less certain of her. She had set the table for five, I noticed, and she did not look unkind as she spooned the eggs onto our plates. At home, or at a home of any in my
kumpànya
, I would have immediately offered my help. But these were not my people, and I was unsure of what might be expected of me here.

Nothing good, most likely, at least when it came to Mrs. Stanley. Though she doled me out a generous portion, the tightening of her jaw revealed that she was not pleased by my presence.

I did not blame her, of course. But I saw what she perhaps did not see—Ben watching her, his face tensing up as well, in response to her measured politeness to me.

“So Ben tells us you’re from Portland?” Mr. Stanley asked after we had all had several bites of our food.

I wondered what else Ben might have shared with his family while I had been dressing.

“Yes,” I said. “Being in your desert has been quite a shock for me. I am used to the rain, as you might imagine.”

“When are you heading back?” Mrs. Stanley was fairly successful in making her question sound innocuous, but I felt waves of heat radiating off Ben at my side. His mother might not like me, but it would be in her best interest not to make that fact too plain. Ben, I could see, had cast himself in the role of my protector.

My actions were indefensible, perhaps. Truthfully, I had no desire to defend them. And they had led to a rift with my
own family that I could not undo, even if I so desired it. But to see that my choices were creating further ripples, shifts in this other family … why had I not considered this?

It was because I had not wanted to see it. I should not claim to be surprised that what I had done would affect these other people, as well as mine. But my desire to be with Ben, and the urgency I felt to part from my people, was like a stone cast into a pond. The wake of it was no longer in my control.

James appeared oblivious to the tensions at the table, carrying on a chirpy monologue about what he had seen on television the night before—a new game show that involved people throwing themselves off large objects in an attempt to win money and prizes—but I could see that his chatter was deliberate. His role in the family dynamic was to act as a diversion. He was the entertainer, with a wide smile and a smart, witty tongue. He was in his element, recreating the expressions of the game show contestants as he told us all about the show.

Mr. Stanley seemed willing to listen and laugh, to be entertained. Ben and his mother were involved in a silent discussion of which I was the clear subject, casting weighty looks at each other as they ate and sipped their coffee.

This family was no more perfect than mine. As in my family, each person at this table had a job to do. James was the entertainer. Ben was the achiever. Mrs. Stanley was the backbone. And Mr. Stanley? I believe his job was to love, unequivocally and without restraint, each of the others.

I alone at the table lacked a function. Like an unnecessary cog added to a machine that otherwise worked quite serviceably—not perfectly, but well enough—I was complicating matters.

“Mrs. Stanley,” I said, “thank you for breakfast. It was very good.” Though the eggs had been overcooked, rather rubbery in texture, of course I had eaten every bite in front of me. “May I help with the dishes?”

“No, that’s fine,” she said. “It’s James’s turn.”

When we returned to Ben’s room after breakfast, he tried to close the door behind us, but I stopped him.

There was an awkwardness between us that had not been there before we spent the night together. It seemed that he did not quite know where to put his hands or what to say to me. He sat on the edge of the bed and watched as I opened my satchel to see what my mother had sent for me.

There was my phone, wrapped in a plastic bag to keep it safe. She must have anticipated the rain. It was lucky that she had—the other things in my bag were damp. She had included two of my skirts and several shirts, along with a thin sweater. And the envelope with the money, the bills slightly wet even though they had been tucked at the bottom of the bag. I had not yet counted the money; I did so now, as Ben watched.

It took me several minutes. As I counted I separated the money into four piles—tens, twenties, fifties, and hundreds.
When I was finished the tallest stack was the hundred dollar bills. Altogether it amounted to fifteen thousand dollars. The exact amount of my bride price.

“That’s a shitload of money,” said Ben.

“As you say,” I agreed. But I did not feel any joy. Instead I saw what was
not
among the bills—a message from my mother.

In spite of myself, I had hoped that perhaps she might have slipped in a letter—just a little something, perhaps
I love you
or even
You will always be my daughter
.

I was not as impressed by the sight of all this money as Ben was. All my life my family had preferred to deal in cash, and at home my father had a hundred thousand dollars or more tucked away in various locations. He did not trust the bank, nor the government, and when we traveled to purchase cars he always brought cash with which to pay for them.

Ben had slid closer to me. He was thumbing through the bills, a look of wonder on his face. To him, this amount of money represented a fortune. In some ways, Ben Stanley was still a child. Fifteen thousand dollars was something, but a fortune it was not.

A beginning, perhaps.

“Hey,” said Ben, “this one has something written on it.”

He handed me the hundred-dollar bill. There, printed across the bottom edge in my mother’s unsure script, was one word—
Korkoro
.

Ben asked me something, but I was far away. I was with my mother in my home, and I was nearly thirteen. Separated from my family because I had begun my first blood, I felt
burdened by a confusing mixture of pride and shame. I was alone in my room—everyone else was in the kitchen eating dessert and drinking coffee.

My mother entered my room and sat with me on the bed. She stroked my hair and kissed my cheek. Then she leaned in close to me and whispered a word into my ear—
Korkoro
. Freedom.

My people do not have just one name. Of course we each have the name our families and friends know us by, and often we have another name, one by which the
gazhè
know us. But there is another name—a
first
name, whispered by a mother into her baby’s ear, a name that no one else will ever know. Our traditions tell us that keeping this first name a secret will confuse the spirits that might otherwise steal away a baby. This secret name is spoken only twice, each time whispered by the mother to the child—first, at birth, and later, at the change of puberty.

Korkoro
. For reasons she had never explained, my mother had named me Freedom. And here it was, my secret name, printed on a dirty piece of currency.

“It means ‘freedom,’ ” I told Ben, my throat burning and closed with unshed tears. I did not tell him any more.

I needed to breathe, and so Ben and I went outside. I carried my satchel with me. In it were all my possessions, my money, my secret name. I did not wish to put it down.

There were not many places to go in Gypsum. There was the little store where I had gone with my family—was that
just yesterday? It seemed a lifetime ago—and there were churches, and other homes. We walked slowly down the town’s main street. It was early in the day still, but like every other day that I had been here in the desert the ground was dry and the air was terribly hot. One would never guess that the night before there had been a terrific storm.

Sometimes that is how things are. Something can occur—something that feels earth shaking, monumental, life transforming. But then the clouds clear and all seems normal again. The great change one had expected is not there after all.

And yet other things—other occurrences—can indeed shift irrevocably the entire trajectory of one’s life. The storm might have brought with it lightning that could have struck me as I walked the long highway into Gypsum. This could have happened, but it did not.

“Ben,” I said. “Have you ever gone to the festival—the Burning Man?”

“No,” he said. “I never had the money for that sort of thing.”

“Would you like to go?”

“I dunno. I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing what it’s all about. And tonight’s the big night—when they burn the Man.”

I must have looked shocked, for he laughed. “Not a
real
man,” he clarified. “They build a giant wooden structure, and on Saturday night—tonight—they spray it with kerosene and light it up. Watch it burn.”

“This,” I said, “is something I would like to see.”

Of course Ben did not like the idea of me spending my money on a ticket for him. But once I had gotten the idea in my head of going to see the Man burn, I did not wish to let it go. It was not in my habit to insist on things, but I felt as if I were stretching my wings. I wanted to see how far they could spread.

We walked to the store to purchase supplies before we left. Pete’s Melissa was again behind the counter. Ben introduced us, and she rang up our items as we laid them on the counter.

“Five bottles of water, beef jerky, mixed nuts, four apples,” she said. “Going somewhere?”

“We thought we’d check out Burning Man,” Ben told her.

She nodded. “I hear it’s pretty wild this year. Hog Boy’ll never forgive you, Ben, for going without him. He and his folks finished loading the U-Haul last night.”

“Have you been to this festival, Melissa?” I asked.

She wrinkled up her nose. “No way. All that sex and drugs. Naked chicks everywhere. I don’t think it’s really my speed.” And from the expression she gave me—inquisitive—it seemed she did not think it would be mine, either.

Most probably she was right. But that was precisely why I wanted to go there. I wanted to see what was
other
, outside of myself. Foreign.

“I’ve gotta go by Hog Boy’s place before we leave,” Ben told me after we had made our purchases. “Pete’s sticking
around until Monday, but Hog Boy and his folks are leaving today. I want to say goodbye.”

We left our supplies at Ben’s home before walking the short distance to the house that Hog Boy was leaving. He was standing in the front yard, looking depressed. A moving truck sat in the driveway.

“Hey, Ben. Gypsy chick. What’s up?”

I stood back and let Ben step forward to his friend.

“Hey there, Hog Boy. Cleaning out the sty?”

Hog Boy laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Yep. Watch out, Reno.”

Ben nodded. He lifted his hand to pat his friend on the shoulder, but it hovered there, as if he was not sure whether or not to make contact. Finally he lowered it.

“I’m gonna miss you, Hog.”

“Sure you are, off in the fucking land of milk and honey.”

Ben took those deep breaths I knew him for, and when he replied his voice was kind. “I wish you were coming with me, you know.”

Hog Boy turned to Ben. He smiled. “Yeah, I know. You’d take the whole goddamn town if you could.”

Hog Boy’s parents came out of the house. His father held the door open for his mother, who was carrying a table lamp. It was porcelain with a white shade and the figure of a little shepherd girl with a crook and bonnet. He locked the door behind her.

“Hello, Ben,” said Hog Boy’s father. “When are you leaving for college?”

“Monday.” Then he said, “This is my friend Lala. Lala, these are Hog Boy’s parents, Russell and Judy.”

We shook hands all around.

Russell said to Ben, “Well, make us proud out there.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Hog Boy’s father clapped Ben on the back and then tossed a set of keys to his son. “Your mom and I will take the truck. You follow in the car.”

“See you there,” said Hog Boy.