Tending Memory

Abandoned at an early age, one parent simply packing and leaving, the other suffering an unexpected death, Michaela is raised by her grandparents. Precocious and independent, she runs away for the first time when she is four, and for the final time when she is fifteen. To survive on the street, Michaela scams her way to food and a dry place to sleep. She meets Thomas when she hides out in a seminary library, disguising her female body in baggy clothes, passing time reading books on the lives of the church fathers and saints. A scholar and would-be priest, Thomas thinks he is simply doing a good deed when he invites the runaway to stay with him. Michaela doesn't look like the gypsy traveller she claims to be. Pale as the moon, body rake-thin, hair cropped short and the colour of corn silk, she weaves with gypsy ardor the tale of her Rom origin and her olive-skinned parents. With each new telling, the currents of story and memory shift like the direction of the wind along the open road. To Michaela, home is not a location. She carries it with her in the same way she carries her memories. She is always destined to leave.