Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [68]
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