Rain Village (20 page)

“And that’s Clementine.” She pointed to the left, and I turned. It was the bird girl, shaking her wings out, airing them in the sunlight. She was so beautiful with her starlight hair and red lips, the wings hanging off her shimmering pale skin and folding along her waist and thighs.

“She can’t be anywhere near a pool without her wings sticking together so badly she can’t move,” Lollie whispered. “Her wings are like a giant ache on her back. She has to spend all day lying on her stomach before heaving herself up and wiggling into her sequined top and skirt. She dreams about water.

“Usually I don’t know so much about the sideshow performers,” Lollie added. “They keep to themselves. But Clementine and my youngest brother Mauro used to be in love. Quite a scandal.” She winked at me.

As we turned toward the cookhouse, a makeshift kitchen and group of tables covered by a tarp, I saw four beautiful men standing in front of it. I recognized them instantly.

“My brothers,” Lollie said.

Carlos, Paulo, José, and Mauro were perfect gentlemen as they introduced themselves to me, each more handsome than the last. They all had the same black hair that Lollie did, and curving, lush bodies. “Bodies like fruit trees,” I thought, before recognizing the words from one of Mary’s
stories. I could barely look at them. I felt like the child Costas, the kiwi-eyed boy who’d come upon all the wonders of the world at once.

“The Flying Ramirez Brothers,” they were called, on the wire or the ground and in their stretched-out white sequined costumes, cut low in the front to expose their glistening brown chests. I would learn later that in the part of Mexico they came from, the Ramirez Brothers were the stuff of legend, and girls still described beautiful boys as “almost a Ramirez,” or “able to walk on steel wires.”

“They’ll take good care of you,” Lollie said. “Maybe you’ll meet my other brother someday, too. Luis.”

My head spun as we went into the cookhouse and sat down. The brothers’ white teeth, pale-coffee skin, and ink-black hair dazzled me. I could not tell them apart as I looked up at them. Lollie stayed by my side, her hand resting lightly on my shoulder as we sat down on the wooden picnic bench.

“It is wonderful that you’re here,” said the oldest one, Carlos, reaching forward and placing his hand on mine. I tried to snatch my hand back, but he clasped it with his own. “Lollie says she knew about you, but she never told any of us about it.”

I looked at her, surprised.

“Yes,” José jumped in—José, whose hair in later years would turn white as flame. “Tell us how you got here.”

Lollie laughed. “We’re thirsty for stories! Whenever news comes from the outside, we all gather around, and you can hear everyone chattering like birds for days after.”

Mauro ran up to the cook and brought back plates of grilled meat and rice. The talk was easy; before I knew it the whole cookhouse had filled with circus people, many of whom I’d met on the way over or seen in the show the night before. I settled a bit into my skin and let myself enjoy the warmth of all of them around me at once. I told them about
my nights by the railroad, waiting for them, my months working in the factory, where the machines hummed like insects. I surprised myself with how sure my voice sounded. I watched Lollie’s face, then looked to Carlos, with his great big hands; Mauro, the youngest, whose sweet eyelashes curled from his almond-shaped eyes; Paulo, my future teacher, with hair flopping in his face and down his neck; and the bad one, José, with his murderer’s hand and quick, passionate heart. Soon the brothers would come into focus for me, and I would never mistake one for the other the way I did those first days.

“Did you know, Tessa,” Paulo leaned in, “that Lollie saved my life with her vision? Once I was going to ride a black Arabian called Diablo, who would have shaken me off his back like water if Lollie hadn’t stopped me from going to the stables herself. After Luis I wouldn’t risk it. She could tell me to stay off the wire forever, and I would.”

“I can still feel it,” Lollie said, “You know, visions don’t fade the way memories do. They become part of what you are.”

“Mary told me you could see things,” I said. “She said it gave her goose bumps to listen to you.”

At the sound of her name, everyone turned to me. I remembered what Ana had said in the train car: that all the circus people told stories about Mary.

“She is dead,” I wanted to say. “When she died there were leaves tangled in her hair, and I had to pick them out one by one.”

But I did not speak.

“Did you know Mary well, Tessa?” Mauro asked quietly.

I had no voice to answer him with. A black hole gaped in me where Mary had been, one that swallowed all my speech. I could feel the blood rushing to my face, my hands fluttering against my plate.

Mauro placed his hand over mine the way Carlos had earlier. But Mauro’s touch steadied my hand in an instant.

I looked up at him.

“Yes,” I said finally, after a long pause. “I did. I thought I knew everything about her.”

I could barely breathe. Mauro stared at me intently, as they all did.

“You know,” Lollie said slowly, brushing her hand over mine, “I remember the day she showed up here as if it were just a moment ago, just this morning.”

“Really?” I asked. I hadn’t realized how much I, too, craved to hear about her, who she was and had been.

By now it seemed that everyone in the cookhouse was gathered around our table or sitting quietly at their own, listening. I was surprised to see Ana at the next table, next to the ringmaster, who was barely recognizable in his sweatshirt and jeans. She waved at me and smiled.

“Oh, yes,” Lollie said, laughing. Her laugh cracked her face open until she was more like a girl swinging from a tree over a creek than a regal circus star. “Marionetta. Men used to drop wedding rings outside her door. Movie stars sent her garlands of roses, which she’d dump in the trash bins outside. She was never interested in men like that. Mary had only two loves in her life, William and Juan Galindo. That was how she first came to the circus. She followed Juan here. ‘Who is she?’ we asked. ‘She is a like a dog,’ he said.”

“‘Like a dog.’” I laughed.

“That’s what love makes of us,” said José.

“Well, I took her in,” Lollie continued. “I never liked Juan. For ten years straight he was the star of the Flying Ramirez Brothers. Though his family’s name was Galindo, Juan used the name of my grandfathers to spread his own fame until he became the most sought-after, popular star here, even more so than Geraldo is now.”

“And women sell clay sculptures of Geraldo in the villages we pass through,” Carlos added.

I marveled at the idea of Mary going crazy for such a man, then remembered Lollie with Geraldo just that morning. If that was love, then I didn’t want any part of it.

“So I despised Juan, of course, and was ecstatic at the opportunity Mary presented to me. I could see past what Juan saw—and all he could see was the ice that had melted from Mary’s body as soon as he came near it. I saw it all pass before me: Mary, her waist pressed to the bar, her hands gripped around it, whirling and whirling until she was free and flying toward the ground.”

“You wouldn’t have known it to see her,” Carlos interrupted, looking across the table at me. “She seemed too wild, way too wild for the trapeze.”

“Even my own brothers didn’t believe it when I said she would be a great flyer,” Lollie continued, laughing. “But I took her in and tried everything to rid her of the smell of spices. I burned her clothes, and I ruined her hair with combs until it swept down her back like feathers. I scrubbed her face and rubbed it with lemon juice, but even the bathwater she soaked in became infused with the scents of clove and cinnamon, and we’d have to drain the water and spend hours rinsing and scrubbing the wooden tub.”

When I looked up, I saw the memories coloring all of their faces. Ana sat with her head craned toward Lollie, her face so rapt that she did not notice my gaze. Lollie was like Mary, I realized then: a storyteller. I would come to realize that all of them were.

“But the crowds of people who came to the circus did not seem to mind her scent at all. We heard stories of women who’d return home and brew up vats of hot cider steeped in cinnamon sticks, or put out bowls filled with oranges stuck through with cloves. Men stood outside our trailer for whole days, waiting to catch a glimpse of her. I became used to Mary’s scents more quickly than the others, probably because I loved
her the most. We were able to laugh with each other and talk late into the night, and we would cook long dinners, wrapping every kind of vegetable in foil and roasting them in a bonfire out back. I listened to her stories on those nights, nights when we sat under the sky watching the moon and counting our wishes on the stars.”

“She told the most wonderful stories,” I said, quietly.

“Yes,” Lollie said, smiling over at me, “she did. Mary and I became as close as sisters during those long talks by the bonfire, until the rest of the circus came to accept her, eventually, the way I had. Her scent came to seem warm and rich, like a jar of honey standing in sunlight, so much so that my trailer became a gathering place where we all met for cups of tea or games of cards spread out over blankets and across mattresses—everyone, that is, except for Juan Galindo, who would call her a devil woman and murderer to his dying day. I never did learn what happened between Juan and Mary in that long walk back to the Velasquez Circus, through the snow and ice, but Juan would have allowed himself to grow old and loveless before he’d take a step in Mary’s direction of his own free will, and that was what he did. He faded so quickly that within five years of Mary coming he had left both the Flying Ramirez Brothers and the center ring, and he took to wandering the towns we passed through, staring into shop windows at young girls with yellow hair.”

Mauro laughed. “Sometimes a local would lead him back to us,” he interrupted, “dropping him off in their cars or trucks or leading him by the hand. Sometimes one of the yellow-haired girls would pull up near the tent, and we’d learn that Juan had been following her through town all afternoon, or that he’d been singing outside her window until she could no longer bear the sound of it.”

“It was pathetic,” José said to me over the table, in low tones, “for a man who had once been great.”

“He was always pathetic,” Carlos added. “Then he just shriveled up and went away. It was like all the life had gone straight out of him.”

“Oh, but in his day, Tessa,” Lollie said, smiling at me, “just watching Juan for a moment was enough to break the world apart. When he burst upon that haystack Mary was sleeping in, Juan Galindo must have seemed like a flame.”

Lollie stopped then, her eyes glowing and wet.

“It is strange how one moment can change a life,” she said softly, after a long pause, “one moment that rears up on its hind legs to knock you to your feet.”

Mauro reached over and clasped her hand. “We never understood when she left,” he whispered to me. “She just seemed to fall apart, and then she was gone.”

He looked up at me through his curving eyelashes, and I realized he was waiting for me to speak.

Her words echoed in my mind:
I had visions of people following me, hunting me down.
But I could not speak of her.

“We are sorry, Tessa,” he said, finally.

“Yes,” I said, and wondered if I had ever really known Mary at all.

Soon we could hear the talkers calling out that night’s ballies over the din of the clanging pots and pans, using every trick of voice and turn of phrase to lure the townies into the tents where the moss-haired girl flipped her head back for the thousandth time, the fat lady tilted back and forth, letting the ripples of her body spill out behind her, and the reptile boy removed his shirt and let the people sigh or swoon or spit in disgust. You could feel the difference in the air, the way the excitement rode through it like a giant wave, and soon everyone began scattering to prepare for that night’s show.

The same electricity crackled through the air as the night before: the groan of the Ferris wheel gearing up, townspeople meeting up with their friends and heading toward the field in groups, coins jangling in their pockets. But I was not part of it that night. I was silent as Lollie and I walked back to the train, and I do not think she minded, herself lost in memory and regret.

“I’m going to lie down and rest,” I said, when we reached the car.

“Yes,” she said. Then, after a pause, “I know you miss her, Tessa,” she said. “I can see her in you.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling the tears beating against my heart.

Inside, I spread myself over the mattress. I tried to focus on Lollie’s creams and perfumes that lined the little dresser, but her voice curled around me, filling my vision with images of Mary roasting vegetables with Lollie or following Juan Galindo in the snow. She too must have felt comforted once, a long time before, knowing Lollie was close by. I shook the image off me. I saw the opal ring shimmering against Mary’s breast, with its thousands of colors. No! I thought quickly of Mauro’s curving eyelashes, his black eyes looking out at me through them, but then blinked the image away, furious.

It had been one year since I’d found Mary in the river, I realized then, and I had never, in all the time I’d been away, shared her with anyone else, never heard anyone else even speak her name.

Now stories of her colored the air, drifted across the camps that spread over the field, behind the midway and big top. She was part of the air we breathed. They had all held her name on their lips, had all whispered it in their sleep, just as I had.

Tears slipped over my face. I gulped for air.

I had not spoken of Mary either, not to anyone. I had not spoken of her in the factory, or as I’d passed through the city streets, clamping my hands over my ears to muffle the clanging of the trucks and streetcars,
or as I’d waited by the train tracks, dreaming of a new life. The times I’d tried with Geraldine had been miserable failures. To speak of her now, with people who had known her and people she herself had described for me, was too confusing, too strange, and I did not think I could do it, though I knew that the Ramirezes longed to hear of her, what her life had been like. They all did, all the people in the circus, and for the ones who hadn’t known her, like Ana, Mary was a legend that swirled through their lives and made them yearn for spice scents and coils of black hair and rivers filled with pink fish.