Burning (32 page)

She smiled at me sweetly and patted my arm. “You are a good man, Ben Stanley,” she said. “But you owe me nothing.”

This made me kind of mad, like she misunderstood me. “Owe you? It’s not a matter of
owing
you anything. Lala, I love you.” The more I spoke, the more I got kind of caught up in what I was saying. “I’m not leaving you. Listen—this is what we’ll do. Come with me to San Diego. I don’t have to live on campus. We can get an apartment. I’ll get a part-time job. We’ll be together. We can make it work, Lala. I love you.” I knew I was kind of rambling, and I felt all worked up, like I’d been running a race.

She looked for a minute like she was going to say something, but then she stopped and just touched my cheek. I wanted to say more, so much more, but I didn’t have the words. Everything else fell away. UCSD, my family, my fears and hopes—none of it mattered anymore. All I knew was that I needed her with me. Even though I hadn’t known she existed a week ago, now that I’d held her in my arms, now
that I’d felt her skin and smelled her hair, I didn’t know if I could live without her.

Lala tipped her mouth up toward me and I kissed her in that little chapel in the desert, and it felt so good to hold her like that, to shelter her with my arms, to know that I wouldn’t leave her, I wouldn’t walk away—that this was where I belonged, with Lala forever.

We kissed and kissed, and when the windstorm began, swirling around us and stirring up gypsum dust into the air, I held her even tighter; when the white sheets flapped angrily in the wind, coming loose and flying across the playa, when the air grew so thick with dust that the whole world turned white, even that was all right because Lala was in my arms and I would never let her go.

After the windstorm died down, together Ben Stanley and I explored the festival—the art projects, the musicians, people kissing and touching in ways that should be private but here were on display for anyone to see. Ben did not wish to wander through the festival; he wanted to exact a promise from me, one I was not willing to make.

But I had pulled him from the little chapel and he followed me as I explored, full of wonder at the strange sights and even stranger people.

It was clear to me that these people were playing at being Gypsies—not true Gypsies, as my people were. There would be little pleasure in pretending to be that. No, they playacted like children, like the Gypsies from the movies. I even saw a woman dressed in a long skirt, red like mine, with a belt of gold coins circling her waist. The coins were not real, of course, but little wafers of painted plastic. She wore no shirt and her nipples were pierced, something I had never before seen. Her hair was long and dark, like mine. Then I realized it was a wig.

The people at this festival were on vacation from their realities, living for a week or so as if they had no home, as if the silly clothes they wore had meaning of some kind.

But then, of course, they would return to their real homes, their true lives.

My people, too, had homes. It had been decades since most of us lived on the road. In a way, I supposed, being cast from my people would bring me into closer union with my roots. As the sun went down I considered this—how it felt to be homeless, a wanderer, like my ancestors.

Ben Stanley had offered me a home. He said I could come be with him, I could follow him to his college and live with him. Perhaps we would marry, or just live together in the
gazhikanò
way as husband and wife without commitment.

I could look into my future and imagine how this would go. We would move together into a little apartment near his college campus. During the day he would be gone, busy with his classes and his running. I would find a menial job and prepare meals for us. At night we would make love.

And what would happen then? Most likely I would get pregnant. I would be in a different town, with a different man, in a different life. But still I would not be free.

Ben had been moved by the little poem we had listened to at the wedding ceremony. It appealed to him, how straightforward it was, how simple it made love seem to be. I saw that he did not truly trust the simplicity the poem promised, but that he wanted to choose to believe it.

I knew a poem, also. This poem was about a Gypsy girl. It came to me now:

It was called “Song of the Broken Chastity.” I used to wonder, where did the girl go when she left her mother’s tent? My best guess was that she had gone to the lord who rode the fine stallion and that he cast her out as well, leaving her to wander the streets, poor, alone, heavy with child.

Had Ben Stanley been the handsome lord, he would most certainly have offered his arms to the girl. So I imagined that Ben was the stallion-riding lord offering me, a poor disgraced Gypsy girl, a home, a safe place, a loving heart.

Would it be terribly wrong if the girl refused to feel shame and left him, too,
choosing
solitude over companionship, freedom over love?

We wandered through the festival and drank our water, ate our snacks, waiting for nightfall to come to the desert.
Always Ben Stanley was at my side, waiting patiently for me to answer him.

I tried to look boldly at the people I saw, but embarrassment colored my cheeks. The way they touched one another seemed very different from how Ben and I had come together.

Night came, of course, as it always did, the sun disappearing into the horizon.

NEW HORIZONS
, the sign at the entrance to this festival had read. But there is only one horizon. There is nothing new about it, just the inevitable cycle of the sun rising and setting and rising once again. That is the Fool’s Journey—to choose a path and set out on it, to take it to its end, to find that at the end is another beginning.

Perhaps that is where our choice lies—in determining how we will meet the inevitable end of things, and how we will greet each new beginning.

With night’s fall the debauchery began in earnest. I had never experienced such a crowd, so many bodies in so tight a space—everyone came out for the burning of the Man.

There were drumbeats, there was dancing and singing.

Ben kept his arm around my shoulder, the weight both constricting and a comfort. Part of me wanted to huddle close to him; part of me wanted to throw off his arm and dance and dance and dance.

I thought again about how Ben Stanley had touched me—at the mine, with the horses as our only witnesses, and later in his bed. There was beauty in the way Ben and I had touched. There was beauty, too, in the wild horses. Beauty in the way they ran.

A dozen men had stuffed the Man full of explosives, and a dozen more wet it now with gasoline. The air was pungent with the smell of it and the crowd was hungry for the destruction it knew was coming.

This is how it was. Something is built—something beautiful, something you love—and then, inevitably, it falls.

Look at Ben Stanley’s town. Look at this wooden Man. One was falling without the consent of its people; the other would go out in a blaze of glory with an audience cheering for its destruction. Is it better, perhaps, to light the torch yourself than wait for it to be lit by another hand, even the hand of Fate?

Soon the effigy would be lit. I knew this because the crowd was growing louder, more rhythmic in its celebration. It was almost as if the energy of the crowd by itself would be enough to combust the wooden figure.

They had loved their Man all this long week and now they would watch him burn.

This thought recalled to me the final card of Ben Stanley’s reading: the Three of Swords. Is it better or worse when the hand that holds the sword is the hand of someone we love, someone who loves us in return? For swords do not find their way into the meat of a heart all on their own; a hand must wield them.

That hand, I saw, was mine.

There are many truths in this world, and perhaps also there are many paths. I could see before me the path I had
already chosen not to walk—the path that would have kept me close to my family through marriage to Romeo. And though I had chosen not to take that path, there were things along the way I certainly would have loved—being always near my sisters, the birth of a dark-eyed child who would look so clearly like my own people.

Here was another path, down which I knew some certain happiness would await. Ben Stanley was a kind man, and I loved him as best I could for only having known him these few days. Already I was regretting that I would not be accepting his proposal. But I knew with a cold certainty that I would not.

I wanted to tell him now, before the fire was lit. It seemed important to do so, as if perhaps I might hurt him less if I did it quickly.

I turned to him and tilted my face upward for him to kiss. His mouth was tender and warm against mine, and I did not doubt that he loved me, or that I loved him. But when our mouths parted, I whispered to him, “I cannot go with you,” and I watched his face as the swords pierced him through.

“But—what? What do you mean?”

“I am sorry, Ben, but I cannot.”

“Lala,” he said, and his voice sounded tinged now with despair. “You can’t do that. You can’t just—take off. It isn’t safe. There won’t be anyone to take care of you.”

True. That was the truth. There would be no one to take care of me. But I was days from my eighteenth birthday, when I would legally become an adult, and my knapsack was
full of money. Perhaps—the idea so fragile still that I hardly dared to voice it, even inside my own head—I could take care of myself.

“I am not your responsibility, Ben.” I tried to make my voice gentle.

“It’s not—just that. It’s not about responsibility. I
want
you to come with me, Lala. I don’t want to lose you.” His hands gripped my arms tightly, too tightly.

Always I have been very good at listening, and also at truly hearing what is said. He meant his words; he wanted to do what was right. Most likely he thought this was all he wanted. But there was more there, in his voice and in his face, something he would most likely not acknowledge. I think it was relief. Just a shadow of it, but there.

Around me I heard the crowd’s excitement cresting; the burn was close.

“Lala, please—”

Whatever he said next was lost in the roar of the crowd. I saw his lips moving still as he spoke, but heard no words. Behind me I felt a flash of heat as the Man was lit, as it caught and flared.

In Ben’s eyes I saw twin fires, the effigy aflame. As the dry wood exploded into fire, crackling and lighting the sky, I saw the Men in his eyes blur with his tears.

I think often there is no good way out of something. No nice, easy ending or neat resolution, no clear way to set things right. That works in stories, in children’s fairy tales, but not in real life.

Not everything can be fixed. And perhaps not everything
should
be.

Maybe it was all right to let things be broken for a while. Would I be doing him a favor to follow along as he lived his life?

I leaned toward him and spoke into his ear. “Do you remember the story—of the mouse girl?”

He nodded.

“I know what I am not—I am not a mountain or the wind or the sun. And I am not a mouse, either.”

“So you’re not a fucking mouse, Lala. Okay. I get it. But Lala, you can’t just—take off. It’s not safe. It’s not right.”