Lola's Luck: My Life Among the California Gypsies

241 Pages·2009·0.95 MB·English

by  Carol Miller

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Lola’s
Luck
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Lola’s
Luck
M L A
Y IFE MONG THE
C G
ALIFORNIA YPSIES
CAROL MILLER
BOSTON
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First published by GemmaMedia in 2009.
GemmaMedia
230 Commerical Street
Boston, MA 02109 USA
617 938 9833
www.gemmamedia.com
© 2009 by Carol Miller
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
Printed in the United States of America
13 12 11 10 09 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN: 978-1-934848-00-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008932715
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
T
his book has been an enduring part of my life since
1975, the year Lola died, when I began scribbling
notes about her because I missed her and in an
effort to better understand the miracle of our unlikely relationship.
This final edition owes much to the editors, Louis Chunovic and
my neighbor Barbara Lehman, the former for his cutting and com-
pacting, the latter for her work on my carefree use of colons and
both for their interest and support.
Many good friends have read and offered their opinions of my
book in its various guises, among them the anthropologists Rena
Gropper and Maggi Nicholson, the photographer/linguist Diane
Tong, Mill Valley’s Frank Rosenberg, my dear Bev Manber Ander-
son, the expatriate Don Bovee, filmmaker Diana Gerba, my aero-
bics classmate Jan Cox and the talented Victoria Scott who has
helped the writing process along in so many ways, as well as others
whose names, over the decades, I seem to have forgotten, an omis-
sion for which I ask to be forgiven. My sisters, Nancy Latourelle and
Joan Davis, and my children, Colin and Leslie, knew Lola; they
have shared my fieldwork and my passions. My heartfelt gratitude
to my teacher, Anne Lamott, for her enthusiastic response to my
work, to former agent Robin Straus, to Gayle Delaney for her help
with my dreams and to my granddaughter Elicia Ho, a New Yorker
of charm and infinite grace who, in a vain attempt to promote my
memoir into a movie, once engaged the media consultant and
marketeer, Soffie Kage.
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LOLA’S LUCK
A special thanks is due Zella who, in my hippie phase, shared
the names and addresses of her California artist friends, friends
with whom, driving down the coast, looking for Psychic signs and
Machvanki, I sometimes enjoyed a hot meal and an overnight.
I never got a grant to study Gypsies and will be eternally
beholden to those Machvaia who, whenever I ran out of funds,
took me in. Ritual/belief was my focus and, in the effort to attend
as many gatherings and parties as possible, I usually worked part-
time. Katy and I were often live-together companions, and I con-
sider myself especially lucky to have been sponsored by her hus-
band King and, later, husband Chally. My blessings on all those
Machvaia who tolerated my foreign presence at the sacred events
normally forbidden Outsiders and who, in the generous spirit of
good times, shared the bounty of their company, food, drink,
crowded motel rooms, inspired music and dancing, the latest gos-
sip and the immediate nature of their feelings. I speed good luck
and good health to you all.
Mostly, I am indebted to my beloved Lola, for her love, exam-
ple and guidance.
In the following, the names of the Machvaia who are living have
been changed—with the exception of those who have requested
their real names be used.
The Roma names familiar to Americans and speakers of En-
glish are spelled accordingly: Katy, Miller, Boyd, Lyla, for example.
The Roma names that reflect the people’s mixed East-
European origin, like Duda (Doo-dah), Zhurka (Zhoor-kah),
Duiyo (Doo-ee-yo), Stevo (Stay-vo) and the words from Sanscrit,
like baX, luck, are spelled according to the following sound tips:
R, as Roma, Romani, a post-velar sounded/aspirated roll at the
back of the throat.
X= as in Scottish pronunciation of loch.
ris like the French light flap.
eor é= say i= see, a= saw, o= sew, g= go, u= goo
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K
ATY, A GYPSY OF SOME SIGNIFICANCE,
lived an easy fifteen-minute drive from the
University District, in the biggest Gypsy store-
front in the city, with the whitest, fullest ruffled curtains. But the
inside of the building was even more imposing. I was a divorced
graduate student, an aspiring anthropologist from the University
(there because one of the professors in my department said he
knew someone who knew a local Gypsy family), and I remember
looking around that first visit and feeling propelled at warp speed
away from all that I knew.
Home to me was a well-lit flat with the no-bother statement of
Scandinavian furniture. My only luxury stood on a carved rose-
wood folding stand, an oversized and open Oxford English Dictionary
with tissue paper pages.
In contrast, Katy’s storefront was a dark, two-storied Oriental
box designed to gobble up my courage. Only the walls at the front
and back had windows, doors and access to outside air and natu-
ral light. Chandeliers, pinpoints far above our heads, projected
pale pools of light toward the vastness, dangerously unstable and
propelled to sway by the drafts that issued through cracks in the
molding. Wide stripes of red and green Art Deco lilies writhed and
stretched across the carpeting that Katy told me crisply, chin in the
air, had been cleverly salvaged from a theater lobby “for nothing.”
Where to rest my eyes? Every wall was curtained, draped and
papered, pattern to paisley pattern. I supposed the bravura effect
might be an egregious attempt to re-introduce the coziness of
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LOLA’S LUCK
childhood’s tent and the fertility of nature’s luxuriant form and
color. Within the twilight space, I counted bedrolls, one bed, two
sofas, several overstuffed chairs, a dining set, televisions, a variety
of sound systems, two phones but no phone book. The more pre-
cious items, gleaming Saint statues and aging maroon-red Easter
eggs, were stored in a carved Italian cabinet.
Pointing to an egg that was accidentally chipped, Katy showed
me that the yolk had miraculously changed to glass. “How does that
happen?” I wondered, expecting sulfur fumes, and earnestly hop-
ing she wouldn’t ask me to hold it.
“That’s because it’s from Easter,” she explained, explaining
nothing, as she carefully put the egg back on the shelf. I can still
see the imperious height of the black ceilings, the awesome open-
ness of the room—room enough to perform ten handsprings,
front to back.
I tried to enlist her support by explaining I needed a larger
sample to study, that one family wouldn’t do and that a community
was what I had in mind. Could she help me meet more Gypsies?
Katy said there were three kinds in the city, two of them
Kalderasha, but she came from the best, the highest class, being a
Machvanka. Apparently, from Katy’s view, I had reached my objec-
tive; a Machvanka should be quite enough. Whatever I might have
said wouldn’t have mattered. She knew outsiders were suspect and
couldn’t be trusted.
I had already tried several local Gypsy storefronts, pretending
to be a prospective client. When I timidly asked, “Do you tell for-
tunes?” the women claimed that they didn’t give readings. The
ones that obviously did (the sign read “Palm Readings”) said they
were “too busy.” While suggesting I come another day, the expres-
sions on their faces made it clear that when I did, they intended
not to be in.
I was puzzled as to why Katy, unlike the others, didn’t order me
out or tell me to come back “another day.” In fact, she never locked
her door. In those days, an open door proved that the Gypsies
inside had nothing to hide or to be ashamed of—at least that’s
what it meant to other Gypsies. There were, however, other possi-
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MY LIFE AMONG THE CALIFORNIA GYPSIES
bilities. She was a woman who made her living “reading” people
and their motives, and perhaps I intrigued her. She certainly
intrigued me, and I have always been a sucker for a mystery.
I found the slender Katy aloof and hard to figure. I had read
that Gypsy royalty is a fiction invented for outsiders. I learned first-
hand that the fiction conveys a deeper truth: the serious regard
with which all Roma would like to be treated.
In truth, I was a bit overwhelmed by the shock of her straw-
berry-orange-colored hair and the way she claimed she achieved
that color with successive stubborn treatments of household
bleach. Katy, the redheaded Gypsy Red Queen—all stride, disdain
and angles—chain-smoked and made incessant phone calls. I was
a bit dismayed by the arrogance of her style, nimbly twisting to
hold an ear to the phone while she perched on her zebra-print
barstool and painted strong nails with another leisurely coat. I was
seriously impressed by the way she made her living, telling for-
tunes. I wondered how she managed to support that big family, five
children and a variable number of adults, with whatever income
she got from the dismally hard-up clients who arrived at her store-
front. But I was drawn to Katy in ways that I didn’t, at the time, con-
sciously comprehend. Although she was an unknowing informant,
I considered Katy an expert at survival, and the most gallantly
resourceful woman I had ever met.
The preceding years of my own life had seemed unending, an
exercise in futility and postponement. Before my divorce and for
too many years, I had hid in my husband’s shadow, the diminish-
ing tail to the kite of his success. His corporate promotions, invari-
ably received like the word of Adam Smith, the capitalist god,
allowed no discussion or negotiation. Every year or two, sturdy uni-
formed men from a national trucking company would appear,
pack all our belongings into numbered cardboard boxes and
smooth-move us to another city. Each new rung up the corporate
ladder cost my children and me our small and our more significant
triumphs, our ongoing aspirations, familiar neighborhoods and
schools and the support of our cherished friends. We weren’t
always good sports about these transitions. Whatever we ruefully
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