A couple of used baby clothes with no rips. An unworn pair of green boots made of shining fake leather, with incredibly high heels. An old fur hat with flaps that buttoned under the chin. The girl rummaged through the dumpster unfazed by the smell. With a wooden stick, she pulled the bags apart, fished out her findings, and sorted them. She put the hat on right away. In the biggest pile, a scattering of jars that even the stingy wives who scrimped and saved found too dirty to rinse. On the side, she filed up a small mound of bread.
Despite the weather, before Christmas, she was wearing a shirt over her long dress, orange faded to drab beige. The fake fur hat came in handy, for it started to drizzle. She loaded up the two bags made of flowered fabric, large enough to keep all her findings, starting with the bread on the bottom and ending with the green boots like a trophy. At the sight of the pile of bread, a couple of stray dogs came close and sniffed it, then snubbed their noses at it and started barking at her. With her wooden stick, she tried to fight them off, at the same time loading up the last of the jars.
A couple of tall boys drawn by the commotion came close to see what the ruckus was all about. “Look what we have here,” the first one whistled, and walked up to her. He picked a chunk of bread and threw it at the dogs to chase them away. He laughed at the sight of her hat and pulled at the flaps, except that the girl had buttoned it carefully under her chin, so pulling at the hat choked her. She struggled to escape, crying for help in a muffled voice. The dogs barked even louder, circling them, attracted by the scuffle.
“Leave her alone. Don’t you see she’s dirty?” The other boy drew closer and pulled out the things in her bags with a stick, till everything came back out, green boots and all. The first boy, encouraged, pulled her by her long braids and started to spin her around, and the girl whimpered, startled. When they gripped at her shirt, she looked around frantic and screamed. Within twenty yards, dozens of five-floor apartment buildings were lined up, glued back to back.
When they heard the taunts of the boys, some people came out on their balconies to see what was going on. Used to stray dogs’ scuffles at night, one man who lived closer, on the second floor, stepped out barefoot, but on making out the girl’s long skirts he turned around and grinned,
“Nothing. Some boys have cornered a Gypsy girl.”
Lucia Cherciu is a Professor of English at SUNY Dutchess in Poughkeepsie, NY. Her poetry appeared in “Connecticut Review,” “Connotation Press,” “Cortland Review,” “ISLE,” “Memoir,” “Paterson Literary Review,” “The Prose-Poem Project,” and she is the author of two books of poetry: “Lepădarea de Limbă” (“The Abandonment of Language”), Vinea 2009, and “Altoiul Râsului” (“Grafted Laughter”), Brumar 2010.
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