Sleeping With Gypsies: A Novel

By Ginny MacKenzie

Amanda has two lives: one as normal as her brother Eugene's, the other: a chronic sleepwalker who sleepwalks into the black hills where she's "adopted" by a caravan of gypsies. There, she's empowered to protect people from the "town stalker." No one notices that Amanda's uncle, a singing police chief moonlighting at his greenhouse, incubates a deadly strain of locusts. When a hailstorm destroys the greenhouse, the locusts are released, and Amanda learns from the gypsies how to stop the pestilence. While still a teenager, Amanda and her painter-husband move to SoHo, New York's art mecca. Munk is her Svengali and master of drugs. After giving birth, she must take care of her erratic husband and her newborn, precipitating a psychotic break. But her fortune changes as she spies on gypsy workers in the factory next door. Why do they wear hairnets and baby blue dresses when the candy factory has long since closed? Why are they rustling through stacks of letters and bringing coffin-sized trunks into the dark recesses of the factory? Amanda's world is dangerous-her psychic gift of seeing omens in everyday occurrences shows her how to capture the love she searches for-one with consequences she could never imagine. GINNY MACKENZIE is a poet, fiction writer and translator. Her stories and novel excerpts have appeared in "New Letters," "Crab Orchard Review," "Wisconsin Review," "Taarts III" (anthology) and the "American Literary Review." Her poetry manuscript, "Skipstone," won the national Backwaters Poetry Award and was published by Backwaters Press. Her creative non-fiction manuscript won the University of Southern Illinois' John Guyon Award. Her poems have appeared in such magazines as "The Nation," "Agni Review," "Ploughshares," "Shenandoah", the "Mississippi Review", the "Iowa Review", and "Prairie Schooner." She is the editor and translator of two bi-lingual books by contemporary Chinese poets of the Cultural Revolution. Simon Van Booy, novelist and winner of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award says: "Sleeping with Gypsies" is a beautifully written book that holds the reader spellbound like a fly in amber."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sunstone Press
• Release date: Feb 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9781611390643

Book preview

PART I

Such a Small Place

1

Dad

No one walked alone in the backwoods since the stalker had come through town—except me. I knew the gypsies who, from time to time, inhabited the backwoods. To me, they were the only truly safe people in town. It was the gypsies who protected me, if only in spirit. But that story comes later. Deerview was where it all began. To locate Deerview, all you had to do was draw an X through Pennsylvania; the center of the X was my hometown. At any rate, it was, partially, the town’s quiet façade that accounted for its vulnerability to sin; it was rotting from the inside out. In one of the green, three-story, shingled houses on one of the most silent of streets, I spent eighteen years with my parents and younger brother, Eugene. All the streets were quiet, and all the houses nearly identical, except for the few mansions along the west branch of the Susquehanna River, where the owner of the town’s newspaper and a few local radio-show hosts lived. And, then, of course, there were the noisy, two-family houses occupied by the dozen or so black families and the considerable number of Italian families who lived, literally, on the other side of the railroad tracks. Catholics were considered excessive by the Protestant majority. Deerview was a place I hated and loved with more passion than any person I’d ever known. It looked as clean and white as a saint, and the town paid dearly for that illusion; sin breathed just beneath the surface, as determined as a heartbeat.

In the late 1950s, Deerview had a strong work ethic, and while the parents worked, we were at blackboards squeaking out perfect j’s and f’s. The girls wore plaid jumpers and penny loafers, and the boys wore starched shirts with sharply-creased pants; for the most part, we spoke only when spoken to. Summer afternoons, window fans turned over the air in our parents’ pastel bedrooms as we anticipated the arrival of the adults. The only other noise was that of children playing hopscotch after they’d learned their letters, and of starlings squabbling in the backyard cherry tree. We drew large, chalk numbers on sidewalk squares pushed up by oak trees groaning for more room. But even with the sound of children’s laughter, I thought Deerview felt lonesome. Trees outnumbered people and overpopulated the surrounding hills so that the woods became dark and dangerous.

Mostly, it seemed as if the townspeople counted on the Courthouse, the Dimeling Hotel, and Sears to keep sin from their doorsteps—not that I knew, exactly, what sin was. But I knew that we had some. Deerview hosted its share of famous guests and displayed a generous patriotism to the smalltime movie stars and winning basketball teams that came to town. The only thing the town forgot about was safety, perhaps because it felt immune to trouble—snuggled, as it was, between the banks of the Susquehanna and the white-tipped Tyrone and Allegheny Mountains. Maybe it was just that everyone had a talent for passing the buck; I don’t know. Mostly, I just prayed I would live long enough to see what color my eyes truly became—they were such a no-color, then.

Dad! I yelled as soon as my dad opened the door.

Where’s my girl? Dad asked rhetorically, as if addressing his favorite Scottish Terrier. And soon I was standing on the tops of my Dad’s white shoes in my cotton socks. My dad, a thin, licorice-haired ladies’ man, wore summer-white suits until the cold October air blew in from the Alleghenies and chased him into winter blacks. His wing-tips held me up so high, I felt my feet would never have to touch ground, his green eyes drawing me close as we danced in the living room, my small fingers incubating in the warm nests of his hands. I would try to make myself weightless, so I could ride my dad forever.

Back then, I was five and six and seven, and wore whatever my grandmother Holly made for me. I had twenty tops from the same pattern—a modified sun blouse with ends that tied in front, between what weren’t yet breasts. All different prints and colors. I hated them all equally.

Mother called Dad Mr. Work and Worry. But my grandmother Holly would frown, her tight lips pulling tighter as if she were trying to suck them off, forever erasing the chance of being caught approving. She simply didn’t think my dad was good enough—not for my mother, not for the world. I think religion made her mean. Why did you marry him, Emma? she asked Mother. He didn’t even serve his country. God made a mistake when he made that one. Dad had lived through two World Wars and the Great Depression. But his tachycardia, his bum ticker, caused the army to reject him. He hadn’t been injured in battle or gone shoeless to put bread on the table, and I think he felt a shame that pulled him inside himself. I believe his sense of permanence in the world depended on his ability to conceal an overwhelming sense of uselessness.

Dad had never learned how to drive either, and my grandmother held this against him; I think he didn’t learn because he needed to feel he could ask someone for something. At least I never saw him driving away, and that was something.

It’s your fault, Howard, Holly said. The fact that her daughters, Emma and Ruth, partook of drink on occasion was, she believed, all Dad’s fault. You’ve got my girls sinning with you, Howard. They play cards. They dance. You think I can’t see? Thursdays, Mother drove Dad to the Budweiser distributor, a matter of some pride, since not everyone consumed enough beer to buy it by the case. But it was cheaper that way. You’re cheap, Holly said whenever she saw him. A tight-fisted one, you are.

But watching Dad from the back seat of our old Pontiac, I thought he was perfect. He grabbed an empty case of beer bottles from the trunk and strutted into the warehouse before returning with a full case of happiness—his name for it. Then happy hour and Aunt Ruth—all decked out in some silky, flowery print. All at our kitchen table. Without beer, our house was silent.

Aunt Ruth and Uncle Chester lived three houses down from us, on the top two floors of my grandmother Holly’s house. Holly looked old for as long as I remember. She believed makeup was the devil’s work, and she wore her white hair cropped short above black and white dresses buttoned to the neck and tightly-laced shoes that tied just above her ankles. She looked like the German farmwoman she was. Thursdays between 5 and 6 p.m., the hour of the beer run, Aunt Ruth kept her busy so my parents could get the happiness into the basement. One Thursday, Mother and Dad drove home with the case of beer and were in the process of getting it into the basement when Holly saw them bent over the trunk of the car. Howard, cover the case with the tablecloth and grab the other end. We’ll make a run for the door, Mother said. Everything was in place, and Mother and Dad were on schedule, as they ran the Budweiser to our basement.

Aunt Ruth had been assigned the job of keeping my grandmother occupied by washing and setting her hair. She stood behind Holly’s chair, pinning her hair into a hundred tiny curls. An hour later, she dried and combed it out, but the curls remained nearly as close to her head as when they were pinned, perfect little circles, stiff with setting lotion. See, Aunt Ruth said, Just as you like them. Perfect O’s. Even when Holly played hymns on the piano, her curls didn’t move as her spirit rose. They seemed to ground her to the piano stool and to her Presbyterian living room with the gardenia wallpaper.

I don’t know what went wrong, Aunt Ruth told Dad. I was doing her hair like I always do. You must have come back early. She insisted she hadn’t misjudged anything. Everything was the same as every other Thursday. However it happened, Holly had left the house, maybe to take a walk to show off her new O’s, when she saw Mother and Dad running into our alleyway with a picnic-looking box covered with the red-and-white tablecloth. She hurried over and pulled off the tablecloth. Dad swore that …right then and there she stopped speaking to me and didn’t address me again until you kids were born. She didn’t surface much after that.

Holly didn’t like me either; I looked like Dad, except my hair was red and my eyes were no-color, but I was skinny like he was, and I had long, musician fingers like his. When she baked bread, she called Eugene from her porch until the air dripped syllables. Eu-gene. Oh, Eu-gene. Come in the house, Eu-gene. Then she served him thick slices of hot bread with rich churned butter; if she happened to see me, she mentioned there was bread in the kitchen if I wanted some. It was always cold. When I told my mother Holly hated me, she said, Where did you ever get an idea like that?

After the beer incident, Dad came into the house and said in his I-really-mean-it voice, Amanda. Get your brother. The three of us went quickly into his bedroom, closed the door to keep Mother out and turned off the lights, till all we saw was the moon rising over the starling tree that was, this late at night, empty of starlings. We lay next to Dad, who was next to the radio, all of us in pajamas. Then, at two minutes till eight, Dad asked, Can you be quiet? I need you to be quiet.

We can be quiet, Eugene said.

We’re quiet, I said.

And when he was convinced, he turned on the radio, and the room glowed in the timeless orange light of the radio dial. We knew we were safe. Gangbusters came on first, but Mr. Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons and The Shadow were the characters we identified with; heightened by eerie musical interludes interjected just before the climaxes, their sleuthing inspired our own who-done-it theories. By then, the moon looked so big it seemed to be attacking the starling tree which, so starkly outlined against the sky, appeared more vulnerable even than we found it every day after school. I’ll scare those birds away before you can kill them, I would tell my brother from my position at the bottom of the porch steps. Then I clapped my hands as Eugene ran to the basement for his gun. I would clap my hands so loudly they hurt while he shot BBs into the tree—to free it, he said, from those noisy pests lined up on its branches. Eugene called them easy targets. Now, look, you made me miss, he said, scowling.

Nothing should die just for wanting to be heard, I said.

Dad guessed the murderers on the radio shows. Mr. Keene and I think alike, he said, but even after the last mystery was solved, we didn’t have to go to bed.

I get to do it tonight, I said, breathing in my Dad’s aftershave. I felt as if I couldn’t get close enough to him, even though I was so close I could count the beer labels on his pajamas.

You did it last week, Eugene insisted and grabbed the scissors out of my hands. It’s my turn.

Then we cut the curly black hair off Dad’s legs—not too close—just close enough that we could make little nests of black hair on the white bedsheets, not unlike those the starlings made. When Mother opened the door before we finished, we yelled, Not yet, banishing her to the kitchen to do more cleaning-up.

Eugene. Look out the window, I said, Look at the moon. See how perfect and round it is. And how red. It looks as if the starlings dropped a big cherry in the sky. But Dad put his finger to his lips to shush me, and I turned back to the radio.

I believe my dad was truly loved by two women: Aunt Ruth and my mother. I’ve seen photographs. Emma, prettier than Ruth, a ribbon holding back her hair from her ears, wearing a varsity letter sweater, black-and-white oxfords, and ankle socks—holding up one of Dad’s legs. Ruth—similarly dressed but no letter—holding up the other. Dad in the air, one arm around each woman’s shoulder, swinging, his butt off the ground, sunglasses protecting his green eyes. In another, they sit on a low roof over the River Road Rod and Rifle Camp, each pointing a rifle at the photographer, six legs all crossed exactly alike and dangling over the edge of the roof. Finally, Aunt Ruth, in a Lana Turner bathing suit, a come-hither little finger in the air, sitting in the Y of a tree, and a stranger, perhaps one of Aunt Ruth’s lovers from Rockton, holding out his arms to her as if he didn’t know she was taken. Dad lost her a few years later when she married the plant man—my Uncle Chester, who owned the town’s only greenhouse.

Dad was a pool hustler. Pool was the bar sport, and Dad grew up in the pool hall his immigrant father bought after tending bar years to get the down payment. Everyone said Dad beat Minnesota Fats in 1940. That summer it was, Denny McDougal said. He beat the best. Dad never spoke of it. Maybe he didn’t think anyone would believe him, or maybe he’d pulled a hustle.

Dad, I asked, what was your father like? How did he die?

"He died of a bum ticker, he said, …got into trouble once by taking my dad’s gold stick pin. It was the worst trouble I ever got in."

What kind of trouble? I asked.

Trouble! he said. I loved that coat my dad had, the one with the furlined collar. He finally gave it to me. I wore it for years.

That was the most personal my dad ever got with me.

When I got older, and heavier, Dad stopped dancing with me. Mother managed the hat department in Lynch’s Department Store, and we never knew how she’d look when she came home at night. The length and color of her hair varied with the wigs she wore and the hats that covered them. Since I had the choice of which Mother to keep in my mind as my mother, I chose the one who looked the friendliest. Light-colored veils that ended at the bridge of her nose softened her eyes; straw hats with small brims gave a summer glow to her cheeks. She must have felt her body was a mannequin she had to dress every day. I guess the better she looked, the more she sold.

Dad also spent a lot of time taking care of his fistula, although I never knew exactly what a fistula was; it was only mentioned by adults and then only in whispers. Howard has to go to the hospital to have his fistula taken care of, Mother whispered to Aunt Ruth. He’d gotten it, they said, from lifting paper rolls at the stationery factory where he’d worked during the war years, after being rejected by the army because of his weak heart. When he couldn’t lift paper rolls any longer, he stayed home and took care of my brother and me. All the towels in our bathroom were stained purple from Jensen Violet, the medicine he used on it. I knew it was somewhere around his genitals and imagined a huge cancer that grew and grew, like the roots of a big oak, making him buckle like our sidewalk. It was his war injury. The only job he could do after that was bartending. Drunks liked him; he told good stories. Days, he cooked our meals and cleaned the house while Mother sold hats.

Mr. Lynch told me today I could put my shoes under his bed any time, Mother said. Mr. Lynch was her boss, and he was crazy about her. Mother was tall and slim, with promising eyes. She looked like a 1950s movie star—Ava Gardner, perhaps. My parents were Ava Gardner and Clark Gable.

Why tell me his stupid comments? Dad asked.

Do you care? Mother asked.

Are you going to cry now? Dad asked. Dad feared Mother’s tears—not because they made him give in, but because they made him feel like a heel, I think. I feared her tears too. If I didn’t scrub the floor clean enough or get home from a date on time, she stood on the stairs leading to the second floor, hanging on to the banister and letting tears flood her face without attempting to wipe them off. Then, without a word, her door would shut for the night. I never saw my parents touch each other. I wonder if, when Dad opened the door, my mother was wearing a pink, see-through nightie. Did she say, Dance with me, Howard. Did he say, Of course, my lovely pink wife.

One summer Wednesday, when I was about six, I left Dad at home protecting his fear and Mother at work promoting wigs. I was wearing one of Holly’s blouses and, after meeting Millie and Billy, the twins who lived next door, we went off to wait for Ed, the iceman, to arrive at Aunt Ruth’s house—his first delivery. When we saw him coming, we were quiet and stayed out of his way as he clamped and lifted ice blocks from his truck into her kitchen. All right, kids, get on, he said and waved us up into the sparkling shavings covering the truck’s wooden bed. The truck bed had begun to splinter—a condition having little to do with us and everything to do with years of abuse from melting ice. But, as it turned out, refrigeration would soon replace ice, putting Ed out of a job and saving him the expense of replacing it. For us, however, it was no easy job locating the dry