Rain Village - Carolyn Turgeon [93]
“Let it rest,” Lollie said.
“What if this happens during the show, what then?”
“Don’t worry,” Lollie said, more firmly. “It’s all under control.”
I kept my face covered until I heard him leave, cursing under his breath.
“Love is very hard,” she said, touching my hair. “Believe me, I know. You always feel like someone’s going to snatch it away.”
I spent the rest of the afternoon stretching in the train. I didn’t see Mauro until dinner that night, when we all gathered in the cookhouse.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said, smiling quickly at him. He slipped his arm around my waist, and I shrugged out of it.
“Don’t.”
He looked confused but let me go.
Sometimes it felt like I had become a different person in the Velasquez Circus, in the ring and under Mauro’s touch. I could look back at my old self and laugh at the girl who had hung in the kitchen window. Other times it felt like I would never be anything but Tessa Riley from Oakley, Kansas. A freak. The girl everyone laughed at except one woman, who had drowned herself in the river and left me all alone.
It was like a sickness. Something I had to let wash over me, then slip away. Eventually I would learn to accept it, like a headache that just had to pass.
The day of the show, I was worried about whether I’d be able to function under the lights and over the crowds, whether people would boo and laugh me out of the ring. I was afraid I’d turn to ice when the moment came.
We practiced for a few hours in the morning, and after lunch I stretched in my compartment, played solitaire with the cards spread over the bedspread. I lay back in the bed and visualized myself in the air. As the sky began to dim, Mauro and I ate hamburgers in the grass near the train, watching the crowds gather in the midway as all the lights flashed on, one by one. I could eat only a few bites, I was so nervous. The Ferris wheel shone with pink lights, and the scents of hot dogs and popcorn mixed with the smells of animals and dust, as the talkers began to lure the crowds in.
Time seemed to speed up, and the whole world felt bigger and more electric, and then, before I knew it, it was time to prepare for the show. I started shaking, I was so nervous. I could barely see straight as I kissed Mauro good-bye and walked into Lollie’s car.
In her dressing room, surrounded by vials of creams and powders, she caked makeup over my face and spread glitter all along my cheekbones and eyelids, then down my neck and arms. She lined my eyes with kohl, brushed powder across my skin, and painted my lips dark red. Then she twisted my hair into a small cap and held it in place with crystal-studded pins.
“Hermosa,” she said, when my makeup was done, smiling down at me and clasping my trembling hands in her own. “Beautiful. Don’t worry. No matter how nervous you are, your body knows exactly what to do.”
Her face was next to mine. I could see the line of red tracing her bow-shaped lips. I could only nod, gulping for air.
“The people will see you tonight, and they’ll dream about you after they go home,” she said. “They’ll look at you up there and feel trapped by their own bodies pushing them into the seats.”
She pointed to the mirror and said, “Look.”
I turned and did not recognize myself. I looked just like the girl in the posters, with my face sparkling with light and my lips drawn in ruby red and shining. My eyes were luminous in my pale face, like jewels. Behind me I saw Lollie smiling, then turning around to smooth the leotard that dipped over her breasts and flattened her stomach. “It’s time to get dressed,” she whispered, reaching for my leotard with the thousands of rhinestones glinting off it. When I slipped into it, the fabric rubbed against my skin like silk.
I turned back to the mirror and thought, I will never take this off.
I wanted time to sit and think, to let my body adapt itself to the makeup and the glitter, but then we were walking through the dark lot, crunching over gravel and discarded candy wrappers, the night air cool on our skin. We could hear