Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [77]
It seemed like we arrived in Mexico within minutes. The green-and-yellow scrub turned to clay, and the sun seemed to burn right into the ground, set the entire world to flame. I sat with my face pressed to the window, on the bed in Lollie’s compartment, and watched the landscape go by in a dull red haze.
We arrived in Mexico City in the late afternoon. Mrs. Ramirez met us at the train station. Lollie and her brothers filled her car to bursting before hiring several more to transport the rest of their trunks and suitcases home. I liked Mrs. Ramirez right away. She was petite and elegant, yet formidable as she stepped out of the car and came marching toward us. I could almost look her eye to eye, and she didn’t flinch. She just leaned in, grabbed my hand firmly, and said, “Welcome to the family, niña.” The brothers all seemed to compete for her attention, and she directed the procession as if she’d been running a circus for years herself. She was quite a businesswoman, Mauro explained to me, as the two of us bumped through the countryside to the villa in one of the rented cars. “She inherited the savvy of our ancestors. Everyone here loves the circus. Our children don’t have swings but long pieces of wire their parents stretch from tree to tree in the backyard. Mi madre bakes cookies in the shapes of lions and giraffes, paints huge canvases of circus scenes, and makes shirts with the Vadala horses silkscreened on the back. She is a very rich woman, Tessa.”
I listened to him raptly, though he was so handsome I could barely look him in the eye. Instead I stared out at the hills and countryside as we passed out of the city, at the sun as it set over the hilltops, sinking into them until it disappeared. The lush, heavy scent of jasmine filled the air, which was warm and thick despite the fact that it was December. It seemed crazy to me that the world was not coated in snow.
“You will like it here, Tessita,” Mauro said, smiling at me, and I smiled back at him, blushing. His eyelashes curled over his eyes and gave his whole face a sweetness that I was sure had broken many a girl’s heart. He seemed exactly like the kind of man I’d read about, the kind a woman would light a candle for and not move until it had burned all the way down. I thought of Mary in Mercy Library, all the women who’d come to see her, suffering from love, and vowed to stock up on cranberry bark. I could brew some up for Lollie, too, I thought.
When we pulled up to the villa, sprawling down the side of a hill, I was bouncing with excitement. Inside, it was exactly what I’d pictured: all fresh flowers, white stucco walls and black iron railings, chattering parrots, and embroidered pillows. It was tiled and open, the kind of place you could walk around barefoot and wrapped in a towel, and the scent of jacaranda and jasmine wafted from room to room through the open arched doorways. The others had already arrived, and the house was full of voices and the smell of dinner on the stove. Lollie led me to my own room with a window that took up most of one wall and looked out over the pool, and a bed with crisp white sun-drenched sheets. I couldn’t believe it. I loved everything about it: the walls indented in places and filled with figures of saints