My house was on fire. Literally. I stood, and watched it burn, silent tears dragging soot down my cheeks like a sad clown, but I felt nothing. I was numb.
Mother had named me Misery. I’d actually thought it quite melodic. I’d loved my name until I found out what it meant. When I’d asked my mom why, she’d said that our family was cursed. She’d thought that if I faced it head on, didn’t deny it, maybe it would have no hold on me. That was a lot for a six year old to process. For many years, I felt like a little dark cloud of doom followed me around. I imagined some future confrontation with a disgruntled entity. My mother made sure I wore the Evil Eye around my neck to school every day, tucked just under the collar of my shirt.
By the time I reached sixteen, however, I rebelled in any way I could. For a traveler, known for self-sufficiency and creative ways of making ends meet, my mother had a shockingly strict set of rules for me to follow. I didn’t agree with them, and frequently broke curfew, stumbling home with mates I’d just met over sips of Irish poteen around a fire under the bridge. The lamp that hung at the back door of the caravan would still be burning, bless her, and I pretended I didn't know that she was still awake beneath her covers. She chided me when I started smoking cigarillos, but that was short lived since she still stuffed her pipe with cherry tobacco on occasion. She didn’t like it when I started working at the horse track, warning me of the dangers of trying to slip, unscathed, in and out of what she called a man’s world. I knew that she and my father, whom I didn’t remember, had met at a track. He’d been a groom, as many of our traveling group were wont to be. Horses were in our blood, as much as any other gypsy legend.
My mother made her money by hanging her shingle as a fortune teller. Many travelers looked at the profession as cliche and perpetuating a negative image of our people, but mom just said that the pack of cards she carried was all her grandmother had left her, and she figured if people were going to look down on her anyway, they might as well do so with a pinch of reservation and fear. Some, even among our people, doubted the sight, but I knew my mother was the real deal, even when I hated her for her insights, her constant advice, and wished to be anywhere else in the world than with her.
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