The night before Viollca died, we heard the screech of the owl. Outside, orange flames danced in our campfire.

"Mama, is it a muló, the undead?" I pulled my blanket over my head.

"The owl announces death," said Mama. She patted my head, telling me not to worry, and she sang me to sleep. I was only seven.

I later awoke to the rustling of Mama's skirt, as she gathered up candles.

Viollca was a drabani, a healer, maybe a hundred years old. Her cheekbones pointed out of her thin brown face. Whenever I visited her, her dark eyes, like bright raisins, lit up.

I often sat with her in her brightly painted red caravan to pass the long summer evenings. She taught me to make charms with her claw-like hands and to read pictures in tea leaves at the bottom of cups.

She called me "Spiunitsa," her little German Spy, because of my blonde hair and blue eyes.

"Why do I look so different?" I asked, twisting red thread around dried herbs.

"You sprang forth from sunlight." She smiled, pulling me close. I could smell faint traces of garlic on her breath.

Viollca opened a wooden trunk, the lid adorned with rich carvings. She pulled out a blouse and skirt, the color of emeralds, and fanned them out over her bed.

"A painted wooden box is at the bottom." She pointed with her crippled hands. The box jingled as I lifted it, full of trinkets, bells, and other treasures.

Viollca opened the box and fished out a silver heart-shaped charm on a chain and a thick wad of paper money. "This belonged to my mother."

With trembling hands, Viollca folded the money into a red embroidered handkerchief and whip-stitched it around the edges. She sewed the packet inside the waist of my skirt.

"You and I will soon make long journeys, Spiunitsa." She kissed me on the forehead.

When the wailing began, I knew Viollca had died. I sat with her wilted corpse, dressed in her green funeral clothes, her face like wax in candlelight.

On the third day, dried branches were piled around Viollca's caravan. Mama put her ear to the ground. "Oltica, the Germans are coming and the Romani are no longer safe. I'm sending you with a non-Gypsy gadje family for a short time."

As flames swallowed the red caravan, I walked away from our camp, Viollca's treasure in my skirt. Mama's face, tears streaming down her cheeks, was lost in the smoke like a fading photograph.

The kind gadje outsider reached for my hand, but I pushed him away.

Now that I think back, the night owl predicted the deaths of many of our people.

 

First published: February 2005
comments to the writer: Knob'sWriter.iceflow.com