Rain Village (18 page)

When the show ended I felt drained. It had taken all my longing and hope and balled them up until I couldn’t see straight anymore, and now everyone was headed back into the midway, or back home to their families, leaving me alone on the bleachers among piles of paper cups and popcorn bags.

For a few moments the tent was almost empty. There was barely a sound, just the roar of the rides and the ballies outside. Inside, everything was as still as a landscape after a storm. I was so nervous I could barely breathe. This was my chance, I thought, for a new life.

I pushed my way past the flap in the tent, the curtain that separated the performers from the audience, and headed to the train cars curled up out back.

A miniature city had cropped up behind the big top, I saw. Aside from the train cars, where the stars of the circus and the menagerie traveled, there were tents and trucks and vans, an army of cooks and vendors and talkers and workmen spread out among the performers. Ignoring the terror that yawned open inside me, I took a deep breath and walked past the small tents that had cropped up across the field, back to the
shiny monster draped across the landscape. I hurried past fire pits lined with rocks, little portable stoves heating pots of coffee, camps of families sewing nets and costumes, and blankets spread out over the grass, despite the chilly autumn weather. I saw the bird girl in a tank top, her wings folded up beneath it, carrying a jug of water to a fire. She nodded to me as I walked by, and I looked down, trying to seem like I knew what I was doing, and scurried ahead.

The moon shone down on the metal of the train. Most of the windows were illuminated by light. The performers rushed in and out of the train cars, preparing for night, some in costume and some not, most somewhere in between, with glitter-covered skin and T-shirts. When no one was looking, I hopped onto one of the cars and pushed my way inside. The first thing I saw was the pointed top of the main tent through the dim windows, which stretched out on both sides of the car. The lights sparkling through them seemed different from the way they did outside—almost sad, and nostalgic, flickering through the dim train windows. The car was empty, and a hush hung over everything, the kind that makes you tiptoe and whisper.

Before I had time to look around, a girl entered the corridor from one of the other compartments.

“Who are you?” she said, walking straight up to me.

I jumped with surprise.

“You are so small!” she exclaimed.

I looked up at her, but she had not meant the words unkindly, I saw; she was only about ten years old, and her pale face was smeared with sloppy freckles. Her teeth were giant squares behind her lips.

“Are you looking for the sideshow tents? They’re back there,” she said, pointing in the direction I’d come. “They sleep in their tents, most of ’em.”

“No,” I whispered. “I’m looking for Lollie.”

“Who?” she asked. As I looked closer, I could tell the girl was a circus child. I would come to recognize them in an instant, with their muscled legs and arms, the sheen of the lights playing across their skin, their callused hands.

“Lollie,” I said louder. “Flying Lollie.”

“Oh!” she exclaimed, covering her mouth. “You can’t see her! She doesn’t really see people, you know. None of them do, the flyers, they’re snobs. Aren’t you in the ten-in-one? I heard they were getting new folk.”

She laughed and tilted up on her toes. The smile across her face was like a door being thrown open.

“No, no,” I said. “My friend sent me to her. My friend Mary knew her; she used to be a flyer too. A long time ago, though.”

My heart was racing, talking to this child. I felt silly, but she was part of something I longed for, fiercely. I felt it then, something I would feel again and again over the years: that the only world I was made for, this world of light and glitter, would never be part of my blood and skin the way it was part of this girl’s and Lollie’s. I envied her with all of my being, and it was as if she alone could grant me a pass into this life.

The girl looked stunned, I realized, and I felt the old shame come upon me. The words from my mouth just hung there.

But she surprised me again.

“Marionetta?” she asked. “Marionetta the flyer?”

I looked at her.

“Yes,” I said.

Her whole face shifted, as much as if the sun had flicked on in front of her, pouring lemon-colored rays through her hair and skin. Her mouth opened slightly. She almost looked as if I’d struck her.

“Do you know her?” I asked. “She had black curly hair that swarmed around her face, and eyes like cat’s eyes.”

The expression on her face was not disdain, as I had imagined before, but something as soft as wonder.

“We all know her,” the girl said. “They tell stories about her over the fire. People say she used to be covered in ice but that she glittered like a diamond. Some even say she murdered someone!”

She laughed. “We all tell stories about her,” she said.

It was the beginning of my past remaking itself.

“I’ll take you,” she said, grabbing my hand. “My name is Ana. My mom and dad do the horses. The Vadala horses, you know. My sisters and brothers and parents are in the show, and I will be soon, too. Now I just feed and brush the horses, bring them out to my dad when he practices.”

“I saw the Vadala horses,” I said, smiling. “They’re wonderful.”

We wound our way to the back of the train. All around us performers stood in groups. Everyone stared as we went past, down to the train cars at the end of the line.

She snorted. “Of course they are,” she said, and giggled. “They’re the most beautiful horses in the world! Later I’ll show you. How long will you be staying? I can’t believe you knew Marionetta—I can’t wait to tell everyone!”

“I don’t know how long,” I whispered, but she was already talking again.

“Lollie has one of the nicest cars in the train,” she said. “My dad says she’s a diva. He said Mary was one, too, that she slapped one of the roustabouts when he rigged her up wrong.” She squeezed my hand and laughed. “I was just a baby when she left.”

We stopped in front of a car that had a flying pink woman emblazoned on the side.

“Oh!” I breathed, surprised.

“See what I mean?” Ana laughed, rolling her eyes. “D-i-v-a.” Then she reached over and hugged me, kissed my cheek. I stood unmoving, abashed.

“Bye!” she singsonged, then slipped away. I watched her skip up to a group of young boys and then turn toward me, pointing. I turned to the car quickly and hurried up the steps, into my future, before someone came to throw me off the lot.

It never occurred to me that it was an audacious, crazy thing to do: walking right up to the car of one of the most famous circus stars in history, the famous
Flying Lollie,
expecting to be greeted with open arms. I would later think that it came out of that same need that had first driven me to Mary Finn, that had made me plot and scheme as I hung in the kitchen window. A blind faith and hope and longing that made me demand more of the world than it wanted to give me. I was four feet tall with hands like starfish and as small as plums. The kids in the town square, the girls in the factory, my sister and brothers might have all called me a munchkin and a freak, and I might have been my mother’s failure in this world, but I was still able to manage up a feeling that there was something beautiful in me, something they just couldn’t see. I’d known it down by the river, when I taught my body how to spin circles in the air, clean and sharp as a knife cut. I’d known it when Mary Finn told me she recognized herself in me, and I knew it as I stood in front of Flying Lollie’s train car, clutching my bag, ready for my new life to begin.

I pushed the door to the train open and walked into the narrow hallway. Another door to my right was ajar, I saw, and it swung forward at that moment, just as I was noticing the name
FLYING LOLLIE
scrolled
along the top in large gold letters and before I had a chance to even think about knocking. I had thought I’d have a moment to prepare myself, but then there she was: dressed in spangles and high heels, her hair pulled back and strewn with silver sparkles, her skin like soft sand under the sun. Her hair was even brighter up close, a shock of red against the pale, thinly lined mocha of her skin, and her eyes were large and hazel-colored, rimmed with lashes so long they made her eyes look like stars. She was much more dramatic-looking than Mary. I couldn’t imagine her bent over an herb garden or a pot of tea or a crumbling book of poems. She seemed like she would always be wearing stockings and glitter, surrounded by velvet and fur and glass. She was breathtaking. I scrambled to gather my senses and remember why it was I was here, why it was I had sought her.

“Who are you?” she asked, looking surprised and disappointed to see me quivering in front of her. Her eyes searched behind me, as if she were looking for someone else, and then focused in on my face. “What are you doing here?” Her voice was haughty and flecked with Spanish.

“My name is Tessa Riley,” I said, rushing through the words. “I’m a friend of Mary Finn.”

She just stood and stared, raising a painted eyebrow. It was like a bird’s wing over her eye. “How did you get back here?”

“Through the back door, the flaps in the tent. I’m sorry, I had to find you.”

She looked me over. “You say you know who?”

“Mary Finn,” I said, and then, “Marionetta.” My heart pounded. “She told me all about this place. And you, and your brother Luis, your villa in Mexico.”

She looked at me a moment longer, then shrugged. “Many people knew Marionetta,” she said. “Why are you bothering me about it?” And with one more look at the air behind me, she closed the door in my face.

As disoriented as I was by her beauty, as long as I had anticipated this moment, I had not been prepared for her to reject me. I stood staring at the gold letters that spelled her name, the door that shut me off from everything, all the possibility in the world.

I knocked again.

The door flung open and there seemed to be a different person standing there—her face soft and hopeful, her body pressing forward. When she looked down and saw me, she seemed crushed, and then I almost saw the fury descend on her.

“What are you still doing here?” she said, her eyes watering. “I said go!
Véte!
”

“But I came here for you!” I screamed, suddenly hysterical. “I’ve practiced for years, for this, to find you!”

I kept screaming after she slammed the door again. “Please!” I said. “Please just talk to me!” I pounded on the door.

I felt a hand on my shoulder and looked behind me. I immediately recognized Flying Geraldo from the ring, though up close he was not the same man at all. There he had seemed romantic and darkly handsome, but here, in the train car, there was something in his eyes I didn’t like, something that reminded me of my father. I backed away.

He looked me over once, quickly.
“Véte, niña!”
he said, and made a shooing motion with his hands.

I walked slowly out onto the lot again, then turned and stared at Lollie’s door, at the painted lady swooping on the side of her train car. I felt unbound, completely without anchor. The life I had created in Kansas City was gone, dismantled in an instant and forgotten. Oakley was a million miles away.
This
was my life now, behind that shut door. I could almost
feel
myself unraveling, drifting away.

They don’t want me, I thought. Of course they don’t. I repeated it to myself, then forced myself to turn away, toward the tent and the
midway. The lot was darker now, and trash littered the ground. The circus folk were packing up, tearing down the makeshift kitchens, putting away their tin plates and silverware, and disappearing into the train cars and tents. The Ferris wheel hung over the lot like a giant moon.

I looked around. Ana stood a few train cars down, staring at me, and for a moment relief swept through me. I hesitated, then ran toward her.

“Are you okay?” she asked, as I approached. Her freckle-covered face was friendly, but less so than before. “Why didn’t they let you in?”

“Lollie doesn’t believe me, I guess, about Mary,” I said. “Marionetta. That I knew her. She didn’t give me a chance to tell her everything. I mean, I could tell you anything about Marionetta.”

“Really?” She looked dazzled. I wished Lollie could be a tenth as easy to win over.

“Sure,” I said. “She was my friend.”

“Did you hear the story of how she came here?” she asked, smiling. “How Juan Galindo tracked her down and found her covered in ice?”

It was as if she’d called forth Mary, right in front of me. I hadn’t heard anyone tell that story besides Mary, and I could practically
hear
Mary’s rasping voice. My bravado disappeared instantly. All of a sudden tears welled up in me; I hadn’t been prepared for them, and for a second I believed I would faint. I could not understand the sweep of emotion coming over me. I was on edge, anyway.

“Yes,” I managed to get out. I could feel my face swelling up with grief and longing.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “Where are you going, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” I said, and then the tears came, splattering down my face, into my hair, down my shirt, over and under the fabric.

“Don’t cry,” she said, tentatively putting out her hand to touch me. “I’m sure Lollie will talk to you tomorrow. It’s Geraldo, you know. He
makes her crazy. That’s what my parents say, that he makes her crazy from love. Why don’t you just go back in the morning?”

“Yes,” I said. I gulped in a breath of air. “I’ll do that.”

“You could probably go sleep in one of the midway tents,” she said. “They’ll let anyone stay there, my mom says.”

“Thank you,” I whispered. And I stumbled away, letting the tears come, not caring that the circus folk continued with their business and didn’t pay me any mind at all.

I was as invisible there as I was in Oakley, I thought. I realized, with the certainty of stone against skin, that Mary had been the one person who could see me, the one person who would
ever
see me, or care. All my dreams about the circus had been a lie, I thought; and without them, I was empty.