Morning Will Come
In the blue moonlight, the vegetables look dark and smooth. I pick an eggplant, its vine leaving little pin pricks in my fingers.

“There,” I say. “I’ve stolen. Can we go?”

“You haven’t had the full experience yet,” David says. “You haven’t been turned against.”

His words tumble in my brain, dance, line up, fall down again. I feel a headache coming on.

“David,” I say, “I think the point is — what would we do if our family was hungry? Truly hungry. We can’t replicate that — we have a refrigerator full of food at home, and we know it. We don’t have the same need.”

When he speaks his voice is rough. “You have no idea what I need.”

I swallow. It may happen right now, right here, in this dark garden.

“David — ” I start.

Suddenly a glare of light floods the space. Everything is hazy green under a bright white orb.

“Stay where you are, you two!” says a male voice. I turn to see an older man in a straw hat. “I’ll call the police!” My heart leaps to my throat.

David raises his hands like the cops are already here, pointing guns. “Sir, please let me explain.”

“No explaining necessary — I caught you red-handed!”

I’m holding the stupid eggplant. David’s hands are empty. I walk over to the raised bed and nestle it back down into the leaves.

“Don’t touch another thing,” the man shouts at me. “Stay where you are!”

“Annie — seriously!” David scowls at me. Then he turns to the man. “I’m sorry, sir. Things have gotten a little out of control. If you’ll allow me to explain.” He pauses, and the man doesn’t respond. “I’m an associate professor at WCC — ”

“You work at the community college?” says the man.

“Yes, sir. I do.”

The man seems at a loss for a moment. We all stand in the moonlight, that goes dark with a cloud, then bright again. “Well what on earth is a college professor — especially a community college professor — doing robbing a community garden?”

David smiles. “It’s a funny story,” he says. He gestures his arm to me. “I’m here with my wife.” I raise my hand and smile. “I’m David Hamilton, and this is my wife, Anne.” He takes a couple of steps toward me so that he can loop his arm in mine, like we are just on a merry stroll. “Sir, if you’d allow us to explain, perhaps you could even help.”

That seems to break through. We all end up on green folding chairs in the little garden shed/admin building, and David explains his research project. He tells about the Traveling People, or Rom, and tells how there is a wide prejudice against them, though the nomadic lifestyle was not a choice but really a consequence of being forbidden in many places from owning land. The man nods earnestly.

David taps his fingers together, makes a triangle. “I’m passionate about the subject, sir, you see, because my great grandmother Lucille was a Rom traveler.”

I glance at the clock above the desk with the man. 2:15. I am not sure about the Grandma Lucille story. The story came about with the research. I say a silent thanks that my sister is spending the night tonight with Caitlyn while we’re on this mission, though I hope she doesn’t notice what time we come in.

“Their skills, their wealth — it all had to be portable. Not attached to the land,” David says. “Take metallurgy, for example. This is why the Rom were often skilled in metal-working, and horse trading. And basket making, for that matter.” He lifts his hands. “What I hope to achieve in this dissertation,” he says, leaning in, voice rising, “is to show the prejudices against the culture, and how a culture may take these prejudices and actually turn them around as part of its own evolution.” He glances over at me. “And the flip side, the cruel irony of how it can happen that you can actually become what people expect of you.” He slaps the desk with this last point.

I sink back into my chair.

The man clears his throat, and nods slowly. “My mother had some experiences with gypsies as well, when she was a child out in Minnesota.”

“Rom,” David says.

“What’s that?” the man says.

“Rom. They prefer to be called Rom.”

The man opens his hands on the desk, toward David. “Maybe you could meet with her sometime. She’s over at St. Luke’s home, but I’m sure she’d love to talk to you.” He pauses. “An interview, of sorts. That kind of information would likely help your project.”

David stares at the man. I can feel the tension rising off his arm. He’s on the cusp of saying something irreversible — I know it. It’s happened before. I reach out and touch his arm, and he jolts.

“Sir,” I say to the man, my voice hollow-sounding and too high-pitched in the small room with the concrete floor, “Please forgive our intrusion. If there is any way we could put this behind us…”

The man nods. “If you do talk to my mother, that would probably mean a lot to her, to be able to share her experiences.”

“We certainly will,” I tell the man as I take the number he recites.

As we walk out, I loop my arm through David’s, and walk this way the mile home. He doesn’t hold me back, but he doesn’t pull away, either. He lets me hold him. I wish I wanted to hold him.
['Little Fiction']
['Relationships', 'Family', 'Short Story', 'Siblings', 'Fiction']