Rain Village (27 page)

I decided not to even question it. I would just take it in the way I took in big mouthfuls of the
flan
Victoria made us for dessert.

As we neared the train station the next morning, it was as if someone had opened a jewel box and scattered its contents over the dusty ground. I spotted Lollie’s car right away, with the flying woman on the side, then saw the five Flying Ramirez Brothers’ cars strung in a row just past it. People were milling around everywhere, loaded down with suitcases and boxes, boarding the train and coming down off it. I caught a glimpse of the Vadala horses being led past. Roustabouts lugged carts and carts of water and vats of vegetables and meat into the cookhouse, which was just in front of the line of gilded wagons that gleamed from the flatcars. You could feel the excitement of a new season like a tangible thing hovering over us.

Carlos rolled down the window and started yelling to friends on the lot. We parked the cars and moved into the horde. I saw Ana, playing with a group of children on the steps leading to the platform. Geraldo and Lollie had left earlier than the rest of us, and Geraldo held court outside the manager’s car with Lollie next to him, gesturing to one of the Kriminov Twins and an elephant girl I recognized, who had flamered hair falling in one thick wave after another.

It was hard to believe we were still in Mexico City.

“Relax,” Mauro whispered, leaning toward me. Paulo looked back at us and winked, then ran into the crowd.

We walked into the mass of people, dragging two huge suitcases, my small knapsack, and my finished costume, which Mrs. Ramirez had carefully wrapped in paper. Right away I noticed all the stares in my direction, the way people greeted Mauro
and
me as we walked past. I craned my head looking for Clementine, Mauro’s former love. I didn’t realize the sideshow wouldn’t join us until later.

Ana leapt up when she saw us. “Tessa!” she screamed. “You are so different!” She ran around and around me like a puppy dog, yelping her delight. “You’re beautiful! I heard you will be in the show.” She leaned into me and grabbed my hand. “Everyone is talking about it! Have you seen the posters yet?” She pointed to a poster draped on the side of one of the walls of the train station.

I looked, focused in, and could not believe my eyes: there I was, right in front and center. “Tiny Tessa!” the poster proclaimed, and showed me zooming toward a bar, my starfish hands reaching forward as my body swept behind. My face was shown relaxed, with thick starry lashes and bright red lips spread into a smile. In the background tigers leapt forward, mimicking the movement of my body, while four tiny figures stalked over the wire in silhouette. “The Velasquez Circus!” screamed over the top, in glittering block letters arching above everything. It did not look like me. The girl in the poster seemed different, beautiful.

Mauro smiled, set down the bags, and pulled me to him. “So what do you think?” he asked.

“How . . .?”

“Paulo took a photograph of you when you weren’t paying attention. The artist painted you from it.”

I was completely speechless. My face would be splashed across the world for everyone to see, my image stamped on the paper, my face painted in vivid hues. I imagined my father coming upon it, or my mother, or Geraldine.

Everyone rushed around to congratulate me. “I can’t wait to see your act,” I heard again and again. Mr. Velasquez stepped from the manager’s car and walked over at one point, glaring at me.

“You’ve got a lot to live up to, girl,” he said. “Now that your face is going to be splashed from here to fucking Canada.”

We had to wait three days before the first show. We settled into our cars as the train clattered through northern Mexico, where we would meet up with the rest of the performers and workers, then cross the border into Texas. I loved having my own car on the train, loved falling asleep with the wheels rumbling under me, seeing my clothes hanging in my own tiny closet. I hung my costume from a hook on the wall and spent part of one night just watching the moon bounce off the rhinestones. Lollie often came by to visit, lying back on the bed with me and telling all kinds of stories. Sometimes we just sat cross-legged on the bed and played gin rummy for hours at a time. Every night Mauro walked me back to my car after we all had dinner in the cookhouse and kissed me at the door.

The cookhouse was the real gathering place in the train; other than that, people met in each other’s rooms or just slept until we reached the next town, where groups of us descended upon the local pubs or just sat around outside by a bonfire, talking about everything: the shows, the crowds, the other circuses hitting the same towns on the same routes. It was a small world, I would discover, with many performers moving between the circuses and sideshows of the various companies. Staying with the Velasquez Circus year after year, the Vadalas and Ramirezes were more the exception than the rule.

Once we settled into the first lot, I tried to keep myself busy every second. I pitched in with everyone else to raise the big top, toss sawdust over the ground, and assemble the tangle of wires and ropes and hooks and poles that would fuel the show. I wandered through the lot as the sideshow hucksters set up their own tents and the cookhouse workers set pots of soups and stew to boiling. All the while I just heard the beating
of my heart, the pounding that counted down the seconds and minutes and hours before I would perform for the first time.

The day before the show Lollie insisted on running me through my routine for hours to make sure I hadn’t lost momentum with the traveling and setup, all the new people milling around, curious to catch sight of me in the big top.

“I’m okay,” I kept telling her. “I know the routine. I want to do the flying trapeze.”

“You’re not ready,” she said.

“Next season maybe,” Paulo said, and my heart swelled with disappointment.

I ran through my Roman rings act and practiced the swing-overs. To my surprise, more and more of a crowd gathered in the bleachers just to watch me. It hadn’t really hit me yet, I suppose, that anyone outside my small circle would even care, despite the posters, despite the twenty-dollar-a-week salary Mr. Velasquez had agreed to after some hard negotiations with Carlos.

That first morning on the lot, I ran through my swing-over act, then sidled down to the floor, only to see the entire Vadala family staring at me and clapping from the bleachers.

“Brava!”
Gregorio, the family patriarch, called out.
“Bellissima!”

“She’s something else,
no?
” Lollie called out, laughing.

I was delighted and overwhelmed by the attention. As Mauro continually told me, I would get used to it over time.

Later that afternoon I was flipping around on the rings and then steadied myself into an iron cross. Suddenly I caught sight of something glinting from the bleachers, and looked down to see Clementine, the bird girl, staring up at me. I faltered for a second, then dropped to a hanging position.

“What’s wrong?” Lollie asked immediately, rushing up to me.

“Nothing,” I said, trying to lift myself back up but unable to. My heart pounded and I could feel my whole body flushing. It took so little to bring the old shame back.

Lollie glanced over and saw immediately what had affected me.

“Come on, sweetheart,” she laughed, under her breath. “Don’t let
that
get to you. It was so long ago.”

But Clementine sat there like a beautiful movie goddess, like one of those stars with pale skin and pale hair, bright red lips, and a full, languorous body. I dropped to the ground, out of breath.

“Tessa,” Lollie said, putting her arm around me, placing a hand on my horrified, cringing face. “Tessa!”

“Don’t let them see me,” I whispered, burying my face in her. “Please take me out of here.”

I don’t know how long Clementine ended up sitting there, or if she even had any idea what had happened. Lollie sighed and walked out of the big top with me, into the afternoon.

“What the hell is going on?” Paulo demanded, striding out after us. “What the hell just happened?”

“Let it rest,” Lollie said.

“What if this happens during the show, what then?”

“Don’t worry,” Lollie said, more firmly. “It’s all under control.”

I kept my face covered until I heard him leave, cursing under his breath.

“Love is very hard,” she said, touching my hair. “Believe me, I know. You always feel like someone’s going to snatch it away.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon stretching in the train. I didn’t see Mauro until dinner that night, when we all gathered in the cookhouse.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing,” I said, smiling quickly at him. He slipped his arm around my waist, and I shrugged out of it.

“Don’t.”

He looked confused but let me go.

Sometimes it felt like I had become a different person in the Velasquez Circus, in the ring and under Mauro’s touch. I could look back at my old self and laugh at the girl who had hung in the kitchen window. Other times it felt like I would never be anything but Tessa Riley from Oakley, Kansas. A freak. The girl everyone laughed at except one woman, who had drowned herself in the river and left me all alone.

It was like a sickness. Something I had to let wash over me, then slip away. Eventually I would learn to accept it, like a headache that just had to pass.

The day of the show, I was worried about whether I’d be able to function under the lights and over the crowds, whether people would boo and laugh me out of the ring. I was afraid I’d turn to ice when the moment came.

We practiced for a few hours in the morning, and after lunch I stretched in my compartment, played solitaire with the cards spread over the bedspread. I lay back in the bed and visualized myself in the air. As the sky began to dim, Mauro and I ate hamburgers in the grass near the train, watching the crowds gather in the midway as all the lights flashed on, one by one. I could eat only a few bites, I was so nervous. The Ferris wheel shone with pink lights, and the scents of hot dogs and popcorn mixed with the smells of animals and dust, as the talkers began to lure the crowds in.

Time seemed to speed up, and the whole world felt bigger and more electric, and then, before I knew it, it was time to prepare for the show.
I started shaking, I was so nervous. I could barely see straight as I kissed Mauro good-bye and walked into Lollie’s car.

In her dressing room, surrounded by vials of creams and powders, she caked makeup over my face and spread glitter all along my cheekbones and eyelids, then down my neck and arms. She lined my eyes with kohl, brushed powder across my skin, and painted my lips dark red. Then she twisted my hair into a small cap and held it in place with crystal-studded pins.

“Hermosa,”
she said, when my makeup was done, smiling down at me and clasping my trembling hands in her own. “Beautiful. Don’t worry. No matter how nervous you are, your body knows exactly what to do.”

Her face was next to mine. I could see the line of red tracing her bow-shaped lips. I could only nod, gulping for air.

“The people will see you tonight, and they’ll dream about you after they go home,” she said. “They’ll look at you up there and feel trapped by their own bodies pushing them into the seats.”

She pointed to the mirror and said, “Look.”

I turned and did not recognize myself. I looked just like the girl in the posters, with my face sparkling with light and my lips drawn in ruby red and shining. My eyes were luminous in my pale face, like jewels. Behind me I saw Lollie smiling, then turning around to smooth the leotard that dipped over her breasts and flattened her stomach. “It’s time to get dressed,” she whispered, reaching for my leotard with the thousands of rhinestones glinting off it. When I slipped into it, the fabric rubbed against my skin like silk.

I turned back to the mirror and thought,
I will never take this off.

I wanted time to sit and think, to let my body adapt itself to the makeup and the glitter, but then we were walking through the dark lot, crunching over gravel and discarded candy wrappers, the night air cool
on our skin. We could hear the muffled sounds of the crowd, the pounding of horses’ hooves.

We entered through the back flap of the big top and stood behind the starry curtain, where Mauro was waiting.

“Tessita,” he breathed, when he saw me, “you look so beautiful.”

If I hadn’t been so terrified already, I might have been nervous next to him. It was the first time I’d seen him in his full costume since the night he’d taken me into Mexico City. His pale costume curved smoothly against his skin, showing every rounded muscle. The kohl under his eyes made them smolder like two small piles of ash.

I clutched his hand and stood stock-still, waiting.

Lollie left us to head into the ring with Geraldo. We watched them perform through a slit in the curtain. Then I noticed the audience for the first time, and it was like looking from the sky to the earth. The sawdust-coated ground seemed to drop out from under me.

It was right then, at that moment, that Mauro leaned down and said, “Tessita, it is time.”

The feel of the crowd, the din of moving feet, of breath being pulled in and boxes of caramel corn being rattled and dropping to the ground—none of that had been present when I’d rehearsed with Lollie and Paulo in the ring, not in the final days of the last season or in the winter space down in Mexico. While Lollie and Geraldo took their bows, I hurried into the ring, in the shadows, and sidled up the rope ladder to the platform.

I looked down to see my two glittering slippered feet resting on the platform and, far below them, the sawdust-covered ground.

I stood and waited.

When the ringmaster announced my name, my heart thumped in my chest so loudly it drowned out everything else. I was shrouded in darkness, clutching the bar in my hand, waiting for the lights to flare on
and send me hurling into space. “Tiny Tessa,” he blared out, to cheers and applause, “now in the center ring.”

I could not even breathe.