Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [66]
“We don’t spend too much time around here,” she said, “but you might as well see it. There’s a tattooed man who hates the sight of his skin so much he covered himself with images of ships and sailors. He has whole cityscapes spreading across his broad back and sweeping down his arms. See?” She pointed to a hulk of a man emerging from a tent right then. From where I was, he seemed to be covered in bruises.
“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