Flamingo Boy

Some of them just avoided me, looked the other way, or walked off. I could tell also that they were nervous of me, and I did not understand why they should be. I mean it was true that if someone taunted me, if someone picked a fight – boy or girl – I always fought back and I always won. I was good at fighting. Winning was my way to survive in that school, whether in fights or in races. I found I could run faster, jump further, stand on my hands for longer than anyone else, do somersaults and backflips better than any of them. But none of that helped me to make friends.

There were some children – and a few teachers too, sad to say – who made it quite clear they did not like having me in their school, or even in their town. When I told Papa and Maman about all this, both of them told me to be proud and ignore them. But it was hard for me to realise that so many of those children who loved riding on our carousel, whom I had often helped climb up on to Tiger or Horse or Elephant, had in fact despised me all along, and not just me, but Maman and Papa too, all Roma people like us.

I was glad we lived away from them, in our caravan outside the town walls, on the other side of the canal. But I never minded at all being in the town square, working on the carousel. I was so proud of it, of Maman and Papa, and anyway I loved the bustle of the place. I did miss my Roma friends and family, though. I was away from my cousins, who were really my only friends, with whom we so often travelled during the rest of the year. Until the day I met Lorenzo, I had no one in that town I could really call a friend.

As I said, it was on a market day in spring in the school holidays that Lorenzo first came into my life. The carousel was turning, the music was playing, the rides were full of laughing children, all enjoying themselves. I was enjoying myself – everyone was. I noticed then a boy jumping up and down on the far side of the square. Even far away, I could see he was in a state of high excitement, waving his arms and clapping with joy at the sight of the carousel. Then he was taking his mother’s hand and dragging her towards us. I was used to seeing children come skipping up to the carousel, begging to be allowed to have a ride. The music drew them in – like moths to a flame, Papa always said – and I could see that this particular moth, this clapping boy, was fluttering with frantic excitement. The next time I came round on the carousel, he was still standing there, watching as the ride slowed down, calmer now, waiting, waiting, as children often did for their favourite animal ride to come by.

But, when the carousel came to a stop, I could see he was not looking at all at Elephant or Dragon, or Bull or Horse; instead, he was gazing higher up, mouth open in wonder, at the dozens of flying pink flamingos that Papa had carved, and Maman had painted, which made up the frieze that crowned our carousel.

“Flam flam! Flam flam!” he cried, pointing up at the flamingos, clapping his hands and bouncing up and down, quite unable to contain his excitement. Some people were laughing at him, but he didn’t notice. He had eyes only for the flamingos. Other children were already climbing up on the carousel by now, choosing their animal for the next ride, and I was helping them up one by one, looking after them as best I could, telling them as usual to hold on tight, not to get off while the carousel was turning.

By the time I had finished doing all that, I could see this boy was becoming quite agitated. His mother was trying to encourage him to go for a ride on Horse, but he kept shaking his head and pulling away. “I can’t understand it,” the mother was calling up to me. “Lorenzo wants to get on – I know he does. He loves horses, but he loves those flamingos up there more.”

The boy was looking at me now and – don’t ask me how – I knew at once what he was thinking. I said to him: “Flamingos need to fly free, don’t they? You can’t ride them. They would not like it. But you could ride Horse. He would love you to ride him.” I was standing right beside Horse, patting the saddle, inviting him up. “He’s a kind horse, never bites or kicks, I promise. We could ride him together, if you like.”

He was unsure. He was still thinking about it. I held out my hand. After some moments of hesitation, and a nervous look back at his mother for reassurance, he reached up and took my hand. I helped him up, and settled him on Horse, showed him how to hold on to the pole in front of him with both hands. I mounted up behind him, and put my hands on his shoulders. By now, he was bouncing up and down in the saddle, longing to get going.

“He won’t fall off, will he?” his mother asked me. “You will look after him?”

“I will stay with him,” I told her. He turned to me then and gave me such an open-hearted smile, a smile of complete trust. I have never forgotten the warmth of that first smile.

“Renzo,” he said, tapping his head. “Renzo.”

Then he tapped mine. “Kezia,” I told him.

“Zia Zia,” he said. And that is what he has called me ever since.

I waved my hand high in the air, the signal for Maman and Papa to begin the ride, that everyone was settled and ready to go. She started up the music on the barrel organ – the first tune was always “Sur le Pont d’Avignon” – and then we were moving, turning.

I had one hand on Renzo’s arm now to reassure him. I felt his whole body tense, heard a sharp intake of breath, saw the white of his knuckles as he gripped the pole with both hands. He was letting out loud shrieks of alarm and excitement. After just one turn of the carousel, these shrieks had turned to peals of ecstatic laughter, screeches of joy. Within a few minutes, he was daring to hold on to the pole with only one hand, and was waving to his mother. He was not just sitting on Horse now, he was riding him, rising to the movement, and loving every moment of it. His mother was too. Every time we passed by her, she seemed to be enjoying it as much as he was, laughing with him.

“Val Val!” he called out to her.

“Val Val!” she echoed. I had no idea what they were saying. They had their own language, those two.

Then, all too soon, it was over and they were walking away under the trees, back towards the market stalls. He kept looking over his shoulder at me, skipping along beside his mother, hopping with happiness. I hoped that he would be back, that at last I might have made a real friend in this place. But then he was lost in the crowd around the market stalls and was gone. I looked for him day after day, after that first meeting on the carousel, but he did not come back.”

CHAPTER 9 (#ulink_251ddd40-92c9-58a3-aa96-a3b245fbf2da)

Fly, Flamingo, Fly (#ulink_251ddd40-92c9-58a3-aa96-a3b245fbf2da)

“I was never more miserable than in the days that followed. At school, our teacher, Monsieur Bonnet – I still hate the sound of his name – was picking on me and punishing me continuously. He kept telling me in front of the whole class that I was an ignorant child, a stupid gypsy child, a wicked heathen child. In the playground, some of the children in my class – Joseph and Bernadette were always the ringleaders – began to gang up on me. They told me to my face that they had decided from now on that no one would speak to me, because I was a “gyppo girl”, who dressed in rags, they said, who couldn’t even read. They did not speak to “dirty gyppos”, they said. Joseph would grab at my skirt, and Bernadette would pull my hair!

There was only one teacher I liked, Madame Salomon. She would come over and talk to me sometimes when no one else would. She wasn’t my class teacher, but I wished she was. But then one day Monsieur Bonnet told us that Madame Salomon had left the school and would not be coming back. “A good thing too,” he said. “We don’t need her kind here.” I had no idea what he meant. Not then.

I ended every day at that school feeling I was utterly alone in the world. I begged Maman and Papa to let me stay home with them, to help them every day on the carousel, like I did in the evenings and at the weekends, but they were adamant. They had never learned to read or write, or to do their sums, they said, but the world was changing. Everyone needed school these days. The old ways were going, like it or not. Roma children had to learn just like other children, or else everyone would think we were ignorant. I had to go to school: that was all there was to it. I argued, I cried, I threw tantrums. Nothing would change their minds.