Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [65]
“She taught me the trapeze,” I said suddenly, turning back to Lollie. “That’s why I’ve come here.”
“You look so tired, niña,” Lollie said, placing her hand on mine and sending that same strange tingling feeling over my skin. “Why don’t you take a nap and I’ll wake you for lunch? I have an extra compartment.”
I realized suddenly how exhausted I was from all the waiting and longing and sleeping on the ground, all the days pricking my fingers with needles in the factory, all the sadness that had sunk into my bones.
“Thank you,” I said, nodding. When I stood up my head spun, and I was woozy with relief.
Lollie made us a pot of rose-petal tea and prepared a bed for me then. I fell back onto the mattress and felt I could never leave it.
Still, I did not fall asleep right away. I lay in the bed watching Lollie’s costumes shimmer in the dim sunlight creeping through the curtains—from the bed I could see some of the bright banners that decorated and lined the midway. I could hear voices and all kinds of activity just outside the metal of the train car: people dumping pails of water, dragging equipment over the ground, roasting meat over crackling fires, walking in groups under my window.
I lay with my face toward the ceiling, and I stretched my body out in the soft bed. Sleep descended on me in black clouds, but my eyes stayed open. It was too much for me. I was at the circus. It was like falling in love for the first time with something you believe is in your grasp and can change everything.
I woke to the sound of a man yelling. For a moment I thought I was in my parents’ house again, in the bed my father had carved for me. I thought I’d dreamt everything until a man stormed through the small door and into my room.
I jumped up.
The noon sun streamed in through the train-car windows. Before I could even register where I was, Geraldo pressed into the room.
“What is this girl?” he yelled, in a thick Spanish accent, turning to look behind him. Lollie appeared in the doorway then. She looked different than she had the night before—less haughty, less dreamy, more afraid.
I sat up in bed and looked up into his flashing black eyes.
“What are you? Why did you come here?” he said.
Lollie raced in behind him and pulled him from the doorway. She slammed the door between our compartments shut, and I could hear the two of them shouting.
“She knew Marionetta,” I heard her say. “Leave her alone.”
“When were you going to tell me about this? What, she just suddenly appears one night and is in your car the next morning?”
“Just for a day or two.”
His voice spilled over the doorway and invaded every corner of my little room. It traveled along the back of my neck, making the hairs stand on end, making me want to bury myself in the earth.
“Get out of here!” I heard her scream. “Back to your putanas!”
His voice was like a tree falling. And then I heard tears, and more tears.
“I’m sorry, Tessa,” Lollie said later. “Don’t mind Geraldo. He is a great, passionate man, an artist. You’ll see.”
I just looked at her, with a clenched heart. Geraldo could do anything, I thought then, as long as he didn’t make me leave the circus. I had to stay. I had to find a way to show them what I could do.
“Come,” she said. “I’ll show you around the lot.”
We left the train car and headed toward the big top. Lollie waved at the performers spread out on the grass but kept walking. “Many of us practice there during the day,” she said, tilting her head at the canvas. A man walked by us with a sack full of garbage and a stick. We neared the smaller menagerie tent, and Lollie led me inside. I gasped at the tigers in their gilded wagon cages, the elephants tied to poles, the horses in their pens.
“That’s Julia,” Lollie said, pointing toward a sleek tiger that was sprawled across the floor of her cage. She reached in her hand and petted the tiger, as if it were a kitten. When I did the same, I was surprised at the warmth seeping into my skin, the softness of it.
We stayed for a few minutes with the animals,