The Girls with No Names Read online

  “Music feeds the heart.” Marcella nodded down at me, as if she could feel my quickening pulse through my shoulder. “And mind—” she tapped the side of her head “—and soul.” She thrust her hands upward and the music seemed to come straight out of her fingertips as she lifted them into the vast bowl of blue above our heads.

  Tray emerged from the chaos and took one of his mother’s hands. She reached for mine with the other, and I was pulled from my chair. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know how to dance their dance. The fiddles drove the soles of my feet, the flutes my arms, the accordion my hips. Shaken from my inhibition, I soared until the wings in my chest weakened and faltered and I became breathless. I pitched forward, gulping for air, my lungs conspiring with my sneaky heart. No matter how many fits I had, I never got used to the terror of not being able to breathe.

  “Are you okay?” Tray cried. He pulled me aside and tried to hold me up, but I pushed him away and squatted with my head bent forward bearing down with my whole body until my breathing slowed and my struggling capillaries opened their way back to my chest.

  Tray squatted beside me, his hand tight against my shoulder blade. “I thought you were choking.”

  No one else had noticed and the musicians played on. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.” I stayed on my knees, disappointed that I’d ended such a glorious moment so pathetically. Tray eased to the ground next to me, cross-legged and yanking up tufts of grass, his head bobbing in time to the music. The top of his hair was dull with grease, the strands like dried wheat.

  A final song trilled through the air. Fiddles and bows went limp. Patience and Luella bent over their knees, gasping and laughing, their limbs shaking. A large, bearded man with pitch-black hair put an arm around Marcella and kissed her. The dulcimer player slapped Sydney on the back. I watched my sister yank up the stockings that had bunched around her ankles. When she righted herself, her face was florid, drops of sweat sliding down the sides of her cheeks. Patience drew her away and I watched them splash their faces in a tin of water by the side of a wagon.

  The bunny scratch on my arm began to throb. Tray tossed a clump of bluets in my lap, little bursts of yellow at their centers like a lapful of miniature skies holding their own suns. “The blue girl.” He smiled, jumped up and careened away.

  My tiny blue skies sprinkled to the ground when I stood up, looking for Luella. I found her sitting on the steps at the back of a wagon with Patience trying to braid her hair.

  “We should head home,” I said.

  “Did you love it?” Luella beamed. “How was my dancing?”

  “Good.” Her dancing was always good. She didn’t need me to tell her that.

  “I tore a stocking.” She flipped up her skirt to flaunt the damage, her head yanked back by Patience.

  “Hold still,” Patience ordered, her forehead scrunched with concentration. She was doing a terrible job. Thin strands slipped out everywhere. Luella’s hair never braided properly. Patience scowled, then pulled her scarf from her skirt pocket and wrapped it over Luella’s hair, tying off the ends of the braid with a look of triumph. “Much better!”

  Touching the silk, Luella craned to see the back of her hair. “I can’t take your scarf.”

  Patience shimmied her liberated hair over her shoulders like a horse showing off its mane. “I’ll just have to wear my hair like this until you bring me a replacement. Which means, I’ll be in tremendous trouble until you return.”

  Luella hopped off the wagon and as she slung her arm through mine, said, “I’ll bring you a scarf so lovely, Patience, you’ll never want to take it off.”

  “Then I’ll never be in trouble again.” Patience leaned back with one leg stuck out over the wagon step.

  “And you’ll owe me one,” Luella said.

  Their voices held a challenge, their look a friendly taunt. Later, I would realize that this teasing was a prelude to a friendship, but at the time it just drifted into the strangeness of the day. As we made our way out of camp, Sydney watched us over the crest of a horse, measuredly stroking the dip in her sleek brown spine. When he caught Luella’s eye, he said, “You should come when the moon’s out. We’ll play again.”

  It was a ridiculous invitation, but my sister only smiled.

  Chapter Four

  Effie

  That night Luella crept into my room with a confiscated issue of Mama’s Good Housekeeping magazine. We lay side by side, flipping through the spring fashion, Patience’s hair arrangement displayed over Luella’s shoulder.

  “Gracious.” She flicked a page. “I hope Mama doesn’t see this YWCA summer camp. ‘A hike to the lake with baskets and cameras...tennis, a little friendship fire.’ Well now, you can’t beat that! ‘Morning bible classes and afternoon vesper services...held out of doors it lays fresh emphasis on the beauty of God’s world. Refreshment of the body and soul!’ Remember how there was talk of sending us off last summer. They’re sure to do it this year.” She pressed a theatrical hand to her heart. “Daddy fears for my soul.”

  “They wouldn’t dare send me, and they won’t separate us, so I’m sure you’re safe.”

  “Promise to have a few fits to put them off?”

  “Promise,” I lied. I’d gotten good at hiding my fits and had no intention of telling anyone about my earlier mishap.

  “Patience said they won’t be moving on until fall, which means we can go to the gypsy camp every day.”

  “You mean to go back?” I wasn’t sure how I felt about sneaking out again.

  “I most certainly do. I’ll dance with the gypsies all summer if we’re not sent to some dastardly camp.”

  “But we leave for Newport in June.”

  “At least we’ll have until then.”

  We never missed summers in Newport where we had family. I looked forward to it even though most of our time was spent perched in airy mansions, or parading with the other girls in white attire on clipped green lawns like flocks of egrets. I always held out hope that Mama would let us swim at the beach. She believed it unseemly to wear a bathing suit, and so far, all we’d been allowed was a fully shrouded walk on the sand with salt on our lips and spray sneaking under our dresses. It was agony.

  Luella paused on a page where a model posed with a plume, plucked from some unfortunate bird, soaring from the back of her head. Pearls cascaded from her hair and neck and waist like a strung instrument.

  “What I wouldn’t give for a dress like that,” she breathed. “Daddy would never let me wear it.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Not ever.” Luella clapped the magazine shut and slid it under the bed out of view. She turned off the light and pulled the coverlet to her neck.

  “What did you do with Patience’s scarf?” I whispered.

  “Hid it under my mattress.”

  “Are you going to give it back?”

  “Never. I want to remember today in every boring minute of my boring life.”

  I slid down and pressed my cold feet against Luella’s. A full moon shone through the window and Luella’s eyes sparked in the cool, bright light.

  Church was unbearable the next day, the Reverend’s voice droning on and on, everything stiff and colorless; seats, bibles, faces and pompadours. After, we were forced to sit all afternoon with our ancient grandmother in her town house on Gramercy Park, her powdered white face staring at us from under her black cap. She was a small, withered woman who made up for her size with dogmatic proclamations and a finely-honed sense of righteousness. I quailed in her presence and could never think of anything to say. I knew she thought me as dumb as a board.

  Today, thankfully, she directed her sharp inquiries at Luella while I watched in silence, imagining if my grandmother dared to smile how her vitrified wrinkles would crack and shatter her porcelain skin.

  School that week was as dull as church, and ballet was torture for Lue
lla. I began to understand her ardor for the gypsy camp. There was fresh life in it. I wondered if Marcella had cast a spell making our day-to-day routine colorless without them.

  On Friday, we conspired in the bathroom as Luella rubbed salve into her big toes. “Ivanov yelled at me three times because I didn’t put enough padding in my shoes and I winced through all of my bourrées. You look like a tortured fish! Smile, Luella, smile!” Luella mimicked his accent and threw her arms in the air, nearly dropping the salve in the toilet bowl. “Whoever invented pointe shoes should be shot.”

  It was a rare moment when I didn’t envy her ability to dance.

  The next day, Saturday, we were halfway out the door when Mama stepped into the hall from the parlor, snapping shut the novel she’d been reading. “It’s awfully cold to be gadding about out of doors. Which reminds me, where are your sketches from last week?”

  Luella quickly lied that we’d turned our pictures in to the art teacher. Today, we were working on poems for the school poetry contest.

  “Then where are your notebooks?” Mama raised a single, perfectly arched brow. Wordlessly, I produced the leather-bound notebook I carried for story ideas. “And yours, Luella?”

  “We’re working on a poem together,” she smiled.

  Mama narrowed her eyes at me. “How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” I said. The previous day I’d had a blue fit I hadn’t been able to hide.

  Luella pulled me against her. “I’ll keep an eye on her. If she shows the slightest sign of weakness, I’ll bring her straight home.”

  Mama tapped a nervous finger on the spine of her book before giving a reluctant sigh. “Your sweaters won’t do. It’s drizzling. Go get your coats, and if it begins to really rain you’re to come directly home.”

  We did as we were instructed, kissed Mama goodbye and strolled leisurely up the road as she watched from the doorway, tearing off as soon as we rounded the corner. Bruised clouds grazed the horizon and a thin mist settled over our shoulders.

  When we arrived the gypsy camp was lively with excitement. The children were getting ready to put on a play and everyone was being ushered to their grass seats in front of a set of sheets that had been strung up between two wagons for curtains.

  Tray spotted us with a jump and a wave, popping out from one of the wagons to escort us to a rug spread over the grass. The play was Romeo and Juliet with Tray playing a gallant Romeo; and a girl as sprightly as an elf playing Juliet. Romeo kneeled in the grass. Juliet hung from a wagon window. Props were imagined, or mimed, as lines were thrown into a cooperative wind that tossed them our way.

  The rain held off until our hero and heroine lay dead on the ground. Rugs and blankets were gathered up through a round of applause. Tray gave a quick bow and moved into the audience, taking my hand and pulling me toward a tent where Marcella stood inside slapping raindrops from her crocheted shawl.

  I knew we should be getting home, but inside the tent the raindrops rang against the taut canvas like tiny cymbals. The gypsies, it appeared, could make music out of anything.

  Taking an orange scarf from his pocket, Tray tied it around his head and said, “Shall I tell your fortune?” batting his lashes at me.

  “Do you ever stop acting?” I laughed.

  “I never act! I transform. Now, for your fortune?”

  “I didn’t bring any money.”

  “That’s all right. If it’s a bad fortune, people never want to pay anyway.”

  “Will it be bad?”

  Tray shrugged. “You never know.”

  A red, medallion rug was laid out on the tent floor and he sat cross-legged on it, gesturing me to the ground. I kneeled in front of him.

  “Don’t go frightening the child,” Marcella said, slipping out with a soft thunk of the tent flap.

  I was annoyed she called me a child.

  Tray slapped his hands together, rubbing them rapidly. “You’ll need to remove your gloves.”

  “Why?”

  “So, I can read your palms.”

  I pressed my hands firmly in my lap. Once, a teacher forced me to remove my gloves, took one look at my clubbed fingernails and told me, with disgust, to put them back on immediately. “Can’t you read something else?”

  Thoughtfully, Tray pressed his hand over mine, his palm warm as a mitten. “Sure.” He smiled, crawling to the bed and producing a deck of cards from under the pillow. “It only works if you shuffle them.”

  The cards were bright and new with a Tudor Rose design on the back. On the front were moons and suns and kings and queens and beasts. I began to shuffle. They were large and awkward, nothing like the playing cards we had at home.

  “I thought only women told fortunes?” I teased, trying to cover up how nervous I was. “Where’s your crystal ball, your loop earrings? You look nothing the part.”

  He wiggled his eyebrows, grinned and latched a hand over each knee. A soft wind lifted the sides of the tent and cold, wet air slithered in. I shivered and placed the shuffled cards between us.

  Tray swept them in a circle. “Choose five, but don’t turn them over.”

  I chose carefully, hovering my hand over a card, almost touching it and then quickly choosing another, as if it was in the choosing that my future was decided.

  When I finally finished, Tray arranged them in a horseshoe pattern and unceremoniously flicked over the first card. I’d expected at least an incantation or a magical hand motion. The card was a picture of a woman surrounded by circled stars. Tray stared at it for a long time with a serious, contemplative expression.

  I felt like he was teasing me. “What? What does it mean?”

  He nodded, slowly. “This card is your present condition: material well-being, prudence and safety.” He flipped over another showing seven gold goblets floating on a cloud with images emerging out of each. “This is your present desire: visions of the fantastic spirit, sentiment, things seen in the glass of contemplation.” He turned over the third.

  I bolted upright. “What does that mean?” I jabbed a finger at a skeleton riding a lovely white horse. It read, Death.

  Tray remained calm. “It doesn’t mean you’re going to die.”

  “How can Death mean anything else?”

  “It’s not literal. This card means change. Extreme change like the end of something, loss, corruption, misdeeds, lies...” He flipped over the fourth card and the soles of my feet prickled. It was a heart pierced by three swords.

  “And that?” My voice cracked. I’d picked the wrong cards.

  “Is your immediate future.”

  “Is it literal?”

  “Maybe.” Tray looked straight into my eyes and I felt he was looking right down into the leaky hole in my heart. I didn’t look away. As frightening as it was, I liked that someone could see the truth. And then I could see him too, the feeling between us shifting from something intimate and personal to an expanded awareness of each other, as if we were soaring through a larger future, a future that wasn’t either one of ours, but one we were both, somehow, tangled up in.

  A gust of wind lifted the tent flap and scattered the cards. Tray caught them with a slap of his hand. The heart with the swords still faced me.

  “What does it mean?” I was ready for it.

  Tray pulled the scarf from his head, like the joke was over. “It means removal, absence, rupture, total loss.”

  Total loss. I didn’t like this. Not one bit. I wanted something good, something beautiful. I wanted the robed queen, or the angel floating in the heavens. “I should have chosen differently.”

  Tray shook his head, his face sad. “You couldn’t have. The cards choose you.”

  There was one left.

  “You turn it over,” Tray said. “It’s the Outcome.”

  Defiantly, I slapped the card over. There was a naked woman dancing with
a wand in either hand. She was encircled by a garland with the four creatures of the Apocalypse staring out from each corner, a lion, ox, eagle and man. It read: The World.

  Tray smiled, relieved, and seemingly unflustered by the woman’s exposed nipples that were embarrassing me. “You see, all good things in the end. She is sensitive, vulnerable, enjoying the joys of the earth while guarded by the divine watchers. This card is the secret within, the universe that understands itself as God. It is the soul, divine vision, self-knowledge, truth.”

  This didn’t make me feel better. As far as I was concerned this was the dead me dancing within the Divine.

  Tray put a hand on my knee. “It’s good.”

  I nodded, giving him a weak smile as Luella abruptly stuck her head in the tent. “Effie, we’d better go.”

  On my way out, I looked back at Tray who sat with his chin propped on his fist staring at the cards. I wondered if he was worried for his future, or mine.

  “Tray?”

  “Yes?” He looked at me.

  Luella was already halfway down the path. “It’s not your fault, my heart has always been damaged.”

  “I know.” He smiled. “Bye-bye, blue girl.”

  Rain dusted my hair into curls as Luella and I pushed our way through the underbrush in silence. I was grateful she didn’t want to talk about our morning. I didn’t want to tell her about my skeleton and stabbed heart future, and I didn’t want her to ask Tray to read her fortune. I was sure it would be better than mine, every card bright and promising. No doubt she would have turned over a queen and a soaring angel.

  But more than that, I wanted Tray to myself. I hardly knew him, and yet I had this sense of familiarity, like he’d been a part of my life forever, accompanied by the panicked feeling that I was going to lose him.