Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [113]
“For over seventeen years I lived in the center of Turkey with no one but my father for company,” he said. “When I turned eighteen, he decided to introduce me to the world. We threw our clothes in a bag and walked out together, farther and farther, and everything changed as we walked. We came upon roads and wagon tracks; the trees changed color; and I began to see little houses and then a girl I might have dreamt of, if I’d known to dream of such things before.”
“The girl with red toenails and black hair down to her knees?” I asked, unable to sit still.
“Yes,” he said, laughing. “Yes. Poppy. I married her, and we have a son.”
“Oh,” I said, wincing a little. “It is a story Mary told many times. I would ask her to tell it to me when I was most sad, and imagined what it must have been like, seeing those girls with jewels in their hair. I always felt hidden away, like you were.”
“It was wonderful,” he said. “Everything opening up, like all the flowers blooming at once.”
“And you have a son with Poppy?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said. “A boy. Four years old. And you are married to the tightrope walker?”
“Yes,” I said, blushing and looking down. “What happened then?”
“We moved to Greece,” he said, “and broke my father’s heart. We were happy for a few years, until I started thinking about the past. And started this journey. First to find Mary, and now the youngest sister, who is still there. In Rain Village.”
I remembered them from Mary’s stories—Katerina, the older sister who’d left when Mary was a child, and Isabel, the young one Mary had left behind.
“Isabel,” I said. “The youngest.”
“Yes,” he said, looking straight into me. “I’ve left my wife and son to seek out my own past and history. My aunt, my family. To find what beats in my blood. Do you understand that?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
I looked at him, unconsciously tracing Mary through his features and gestures. I watched his face as if it could explain to me why it was so important for us to find out who we are and where we come from. Why we think that history can fill the holes that nothing else can reach.
“I dream of it, you know,” I said. “Rain Village. All the time.”
“So come with me.”
I felt his gaze in every part of my body. I felt as if I had found a crucial part of myself, like my whole life had led me to that moment.
“I don’t know why it’s so important,” I said. “To go there.”
“Is it?”
I looked at him. “Yes,” I said, and then the feelings rushed over me, the thoughts crystallizing even as I said them. “Without her, I never knew anything good. She gave me my life. And I never even knew her, what made her so sad. What made her walk into the river. I hate that I don’t know that. I have to know that. Is that crazy?” I almost couldn’t look at him. It seemed insane that I could even think to tell him these things.
He leaned forward. “No,” he said, gently. “It’s your past. Who you are. I was happy, too, but never whole, never. There was always something missing.”
“They don’t understand,” I said, swallowing back tears. “Not really. She changed my life. I mean, she gave me my life.”
He stretched out his hand, placed it over mine. “Is that really true?” he asked. “Sometimes people just spark things in us that are already there, don’t you think?”
“No,” I said. And then, more emphatically, “No.”
He watched me, waiting.
“She taught me how to read,” I said. “How to see things. She taught all of us that. Everyone in Oakley took to books and reading, because of her. Except my family.” I thought of Geraldine sneaking under my mattress to find my books. “She gave me words,” I said, “and vision. She taught me how to see the world differently. Do you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” he said.
“It’s like when you walked into the world after all those years of being hidden away. That’s how I imagined myself, as like you. Except with me it happened on the floor of that library. She’d tell me stories and read poems to me, and it was like the entire world just cracked open and was different. Because