“Are you—” Sophie started to ask.
Filly butted in before she could finish. “My grandparents on my father’s side were Romani. They came to America and started a carnival and hired some of their friends and relatives to help run it. My mother was not Rom. Even though she embraced their culture, my grandmother never really liked her very much. By blood, I’m half Romani. By heart, I’m all hippie.”
“Did you ever jump the broom?” Emma asked.
Filly shook her head. “Never was good at getting both feet off the ground.”
“Did it always involve a real broom?” Sophie asked.
“Sure.” Filly nodded. “Each couple brought their own broom, and after the ceremony, it was given to them as a wedding gift. No preacher or justice of the peace asked them to promise to love, honor, and obey until death parted them—the couple just said their own vows to each other. Then the groom took the bride by the hand and, together, they jumped over the broom that was all decorated up pretty with bows and ribbon. The jump signified that they’d left their old single life behind. The joined hands said they were committed to be a couple. And the other side of the broom was their bright future.”
“I like that,” Emma said. “Makes more sense than a huge wedding.”
The word wedding sparked a vision of the huge portrait hanging over the mantel in her folks’ house. To her, the big smiles on their faces were all farce. She’d never seen them hug each other or even give a peck on the cheek. They shared a house, not a relationship, and if that’s what a wedding meant, then Emma wanted nothing to do with it.
Chapter Eight
Excitement filled the whole little trailer park that evening as Sophie, Filly, Emma, and Josh all waited at the table for Arty to hide the eggs. Finally, after half an hour, Sophie heard the familiar sound of the bell.
“What’s that?” Emma asked.
“That’s our call to line up,” Sophie explained. “Arty has hidden the eggs, and it’s almost time for us to find them.”
Filly passed out the four baskets she had decorated. “We’d better go get ready so Arty can fire his gun.”
“A real gun?” Emma asked.
Sophie nodded. “A little .22 pistol he uses to shoot snakes, but he’ll be firing blanks this evening.”
“This really is a production.” Emma took her pretty yellow basket and followed the other three to the back side of the trailers.
Sophie looped her arm in Emma’s. “Yes, it is, and I’m glad you are here with me so we can do this together again.”
Arty waited on Sophie’s back porch, gun in hand and Coco in his lap. A piece of gold Christmas tree tinsel lay stretched on the ground from the edge of the steps out about ten feet. “Toes on the gold,” he said. “When I fire the gun, you can take off, but first study your path.”
“Just shoot the dang gun and let us loose,” Filly yelled.
“I can’t believe that I’m doing this at my age,” Emma said.
“Don’t think about Victoria,” Sophie told her. “Just enjoy the fun.”
“She’s always there in my head,” Emma whispered, “telling me that I’m stupid and a big disappointment.”
“Shut her out for the next hour,” Sophie said. “Tell her to get lost.”
Arty put Coco on the porch, stood up, and fired the gun into the air. Filly moved fast but left a lot of eggs hiding behind cacti, wildflowers, and even clumps of grass. Josh took his time, finding what she had overlooked. Emma moved around the outer edge of the area, filling her basket slowly. Sophie stopped several times and watched Emma gather eggs for her yellow basket. To see her come this far meant that Sophie hadn’t done the wrong thing when she rescued her.
“Fun, ain’t it?” Sophie bent down and picked up two eggs.
“Are you going to ask me how I feel?” Emma smiled.
“Hadn’t thought about it, but now that you mention it.” Sophie grinned back at her.
“The same excitement that I did when Rebel let us hunt out in the backyard. Mother would have thrown a fit, and she probably would now if she could see me,” Emma answered.
“Why?” Sophie saw a bright-colored plastic egg in the grass, but she let Emma find it.
“She said eating eggs that had been boiled the day before would make me sick,” Emma replied, “but they didn’t. Why do we get the mothers that we do? I would have rather had Rebel.”
“Don’t know, but I’m glad I got her. Remind me to call her this evening and tell her happy Easter,” Sophie said.
The sun had begun to sink below the western horizon when Filly shouted that she had found the prize egg. She carried the big, gold plastic egg apart from the others. When she got to the porch, she popped it open to find a hundred-dollar bill.
“Do we all donate toward that?” Emma whispered to Sophie.
“No, each year one person takes care of the prize egg. This year was my turn, and I had no idea what to put inside it, so I opted for money,” Sophie answered.
“I’m going to buy a bottle of whiskey for us all to share, and a new skirt like the one Em is wearing,” Filly declared. “Now, let’s go peel the eggs, and I’ll devil them for our snack. This has been the best hunt ever. Not just because I found the prize, but because you girls are here with us.”
Sophie loved her grandmother, and Filly reminded her so much of Granny Mason. She was past eighty and still a flower child who didn’t give a tiny rat’s butt about society’s rules.
Emma laid all her beautiful eggs out on the picnic table and sighed. “They’re too pretty to break open. We should figure out a way to preserve them.”
“Oh, no.” Arty shook his head as he cracked the first one open on the edge of the table. “I’ve been looking forward to our traditional snack all day. Filly makes wonderful deviled eggs, and she won’t tell me her secret, so we only get them once a year.”
“Besides, darlin’ girl,” Filly said, “this is a spiritual lesson on many levels. We have the beauty, and then we crack them open and remove the outer shell, which is just physical prettiness anyway, and then we see what’s inside.” Filly picked up the egg that Arty had designed and smashed it on the tabletop. “What’s inside is the real prize, both in the real eggs and the plastic ones.”
“Amen,” Josh agreed. “Kind of like me buying this place. It didn’t look like much when the Realtor brought me out here to see it, but there’s an inner beauty to it.”
With another long sigh, Emma picked up the first egg and gently cracked the shell. Was this like figuring out the nightmare? Was the yolk symbolic of her heart, sitting close to the center of the egg and trying to break away from the cords that had bound it for so many years?
“I love the friendships I’ve made here.” Sophie had already peeled four of her eggs. “And the fun that we all have together.”
“We’re a family, and we’re adopting you into it just like we did Josh and Sophie,” Arty said.
Emma didn’t say a word, but she hoped like hell they weren’t like her biological family. From her experience, family meant tension and control. She’d far rather that they all just be friends.