"The boy's right, Ignacio," Soledad said to her husband. "The skywalk is half as hard for Juan Diego to learn. This foot is a hook--this foot already knows how to skywalk."
"Only girls can be skywalkers," the lion tamer said. "La Maravilla is always a girl." (The man was a male machine, a penile robot.)
"The dirty pig isn't interested in your puberty," Lupe explained to Juan Diego, but she was angrier with Juan Diego than she was disgusted by Ignacio. "You can't be The Wonder--you'll die skywalking! You're supposed to leave Mexico with Senor Eduardo," Lupe said to her brother. "You don't stay at the circus. La Maravilla isn't permanent--not for you!" Lupe said to him. "You're not an acrobat, you're no athlete--you can't even walk without a limp!" Lupe cried.
"No limp upside down--I can walk fine up there," Juan Diego told her; he pointed to the horizontal ladder on the ceiling of the troupe tent.
"Maybe the cripple should have a look at the ladder in the big tent," Dolores said, to no one in particular. "It takes balls to be The Wonder on that ladder," the superior girl said to Juan Diego. "Anyone can be a skywalker in the practice tent."
"I have balls," the boy told her. The girl acrobats laughed at this, not only Dolores. Ignacio laughed, too, but not his wife.
Soledad had kept her hand on the cripple's bad foot. "We'll see if he has the balls for it," Soledad said. "This foot gives him an advantage--that's all the boy and I are saying."
"No boy can be La Maravilla," Ignacio said; he was coiling and uncoiling his whip--more in a nervous than a threatening fashion.
"Why not?" his wife asked. "I'm the one who trains the skywalkers, aren't I?" (Not all the lionesses were tamed, either.)
"I don't like the sound of this," Edward Bonshaw said to Flor. "They're not serious about Juan Diego going anywhere near that ladder trick, are they? The boy isn't serious, is he?" the Iowan asked Flor.
"The kid has balls, doesn't he?" Flor asked the missionary.
"No, no--no skywalking!" Lupe cried. "You have another future!" the girl told her brother. "We should go back to Lost Children. No more circus!" Lupe cried. "Too much mind reading," the girl said. She was suddenly looking at how the lion tamer was looking at her; Juan Diego saw Ignacio looking at Lupe, too.
"What?" Juan Diego asked his little sister. "What's the pig thinking now?" he whispered to her.
Lupe couldn't look at the lion tamer. "He's thinking he would like to fuck me, when I'm ready," Lupe told Juan Diego. "He's wondering what it would be like to fuck a retarded girl--a girl who can be understood only by her crippled brother."
"You know what I've been thinking?" Ignacio suddenly said. The lion tamer was looking at an undesignated location, perfectly between Lupe and Juan Diego, and Juan Diego wondered if this was a tactic Ignacio used with the lions--namely, not to make eye contact with an individual lion but to make the lions think he was looking at all of them. Definitely, too many things were happening at once.
"Lupe knows what you've been thinking," Juan Diego told the lion tamer. "She's not retarded."
"What I was going to say," Ignacio said, still looking at neither Juan Diego nor Lupe, but at a spot somewhere between them, "is that most mind readers or fortune-tellers, or whatever they call themselves, are fakes. The ones who can do it on demand are definitely fakes. The real ones can read some people's minds, but not everyone's. The real ones find most people's minds uninteresting. The real ones pick up from people's minds only the stuff that stands out."
"Mostly terrible stuff," Lupe said.
"She says the stuff that stands out is mostly terrible," Juan Diego told the lion tamer. Things were definitely going too fast.
"She must be one of the real ones," Ignacio said; he looked at Lupe then--only at her, at no one else. "Have you ever read an animal's mind?" the lion tamer asked her. "I'm wondering if you could tell what a lion was thinking."
"It depends on the individual lion, or lioness," Lupe said. Juan Diego repeated this exactly as Lupe had said it. The way the girl acrobats retreated from Ignacio, upon hearing the lioness word, let the dump kids know that the lion tamer was sensitive about being thought of as a lioness tamer.
"But you might be able to pick up the stuff that an individual lion, or lioness, was thinking?" Ignacio asked; his eyes were unfocused again, darting about in the general area between the clairvoyant girl and her brother.
"Mostly terrible stuff," Lupe repeated; this time, Juan Diego translated her literally.
"Interesting," was all the lion tamer said, but everyone in the troupe tent could tell that he knew Lupe was one of the real ones, and that she'd read his mind accurately. "The cripple can try skywalking--we'll see if he has the balls for it," Ignacio said, as he was leaving. He'd allowed his whip to completely uncoil, and he dragged it, at full length, behind him, as he left the troupe tent. The whip trailed after him as if it were a pet snake, following its master. The girl acrobats were all looking at Lupe; even Dolores, the superstar skywalker, was looking at Lupe.
"They all want to know what Ignacio thinks about fucking them--if he thinks they're ready," Lupe told Juan Diego. The lion tamer's wife (and everyone else, even the missionary) had heard the Ignacio word.
"What about Ignacio?" Soledad asked; she didn't bother to ask Lupe--she spoke directly to Juan Diego.
"Yes, Ignacio thinks about fucking all of us--with every young woman, he thinks about doing it," Lupe said. "But you know that already--you don't need me to tell you," Lupe said, straight to Soledad. "All of you know that already," Lupe told them; she looked at each of the girl acrobats when she said it--at Dolores the longest.
No one was surprised by Juan Diego's verbatim translation of what his sister said. Flor looked the least surprised. Not even Edward Bonshaw was surprised, but of course he hadn't understood most of the conversation--including Juan Diego's translation.
"There's an evening performance," Soledad was explaining to the newcomers. "The girls have to put on their costumes."
Soledad showed the dump kids to the troupe tent where they would be living. It was the dogs' troupe tent, as promised; there were two collapsible cots for the kids, who also had their own wardrobe closet, and there was a tall standing mirror.
The dog beds and water bowls were arranged in an orderly fashion, and the coat rack for the dogs' costumes was small and not in the way. The dog trainer was happy to meet the dump kids; she was an old woman who dressed as if she were still young, and still pretty. She was dressing the dogs for the evening performance when the dump kids got to the tent. Her name was Estrella, the word for "star." She told the ninos she needed a break from sleeping with the dogs, though it was clear to the kids, as they watched Estrella dress the dogs, that the old woman genuinely loved the dogs, and that she took good care of them.
Estrella's refusal to dress or behave her age made her more of a child than the dump kids; both Lupe and Juan Diego liked her, as did the dogs. Lupe had always disapproved of her mother's sluttish appearance, but the low-cut blouses Estrella wore were more comical than tawdry; her withered breasts often slipped into view, but they were small and shrunken--there was nothing of a come-on in Estrella's revealing them. And her once-tight skirts were clownish now; Estrella was a scarecrow--her clothes didn't cling to her, not the way they once had (or as she may have imagined they still did).
Estrella was bald; she hadn't liked the way her hair had thinned, or how it had lost its crow-black luster. She shaved her head--or she persuaded someone else to shave it for her, because she was prone to cutting herself--and she wore wigs (she had more wigs than dogs). The wigs were way too young for her.
At night, Estrella slept in a baseball cap; she complained that the visor forced her to sleep on her back. It was not her fault that she snored--she blamed the baseball cap. And the headband of the cap left a permanent indentation on her forehead, below where she wore her wigs.
When Estrella was tired, there would be days when she failed to exchange the baseball cap for one wig or another. If La Maravilla
wasn't performing, Estrella dressed like a bald stick figure of a prostitute in a baseball cap.
She was a generous person; Estrella was not possessive about her wigs. She would let Lupe try them on, and both Estrella and Lupe liked trying one wig or another on the dogs. Today Estrella wasn't having one of her baseball-cap days; she wore the "flaming-redhead" wig, which arguably would have looked better on one of the dogs--it definitely would have looked better on Lupe.
Anyone could see why the dump kids and the dogs adored Estrella. But her generosity notwithstanding, she was not as welcoming to Flor and Senor Eduardo as she was to the ninos de la basura. Estrella wasn't a sexual bigot; she was not hostile to having a transvestite prostitute in the dogs' troupe tent. But the dog trainer had made a point of scolding the dogs if they ever crapped in the troupe tent. Estrella didn't want the beshitted Iowan to give the dogs any bad ideas, so she wasn't welcoming to the Jesuit.
Near the outdoor showers, which were behind the men's latrine tent, there was a faucet with a long hose; now Flor took Edward Bonshaw there to do something about the elephant shit that had hardened on the missionary's sandals--and, more uncomfortably, between the toes of his bare feet.
Because Estrella was telling Lupe the names of the dogs and how much to feed each one, Soledad seized this moment of privacy; in a life lived in troupe tents, Juan Diego would soon realize, there were not many private moments--not unlike life at the orphanage.
"Your sister is very special," Soledad began quietly. "But why doesn't she want you to try to become The Wonder? The skywalkers are the stars of this circus." The concept of being a star stunned him.
"Lupe believes I have a different future--not skywalking," Juan Diego said. He felt caught off-guard.
"Lupe knows the future, too?" Soledad asked the crippled boy.
"Only some of it," Juan Diego answered her; in truth, he didn't know how much (or how little) Lupe knew. "Because Lupe doesn't see skywalking in my future, she thinks I'll die trying it--if I try it."
"And what do you think, Juan Diego?" the lion tamer's wife asked him. She was an unfamiliar kind of adult to a dump kid.
"I just know I wouldn't limp if I were skywalking," the boy told her. He saw the decision, looming ahead of him.
"The dachshund is a male called Baby," he heard Lupe repeating to herself; Juan Diego knew this was the way she memorized things. He could see the dachshund: the little dog was wearing a baby bonnet tied under his chin and was sitting up straight in a child's stroller.
"Ignacio wanted a mind reader for the lions," Soledad said suddenly to Juan Diego. "What kind of sideshow is a mind reader at a circus? You said yourself that your sister isn't a fortune-teller," Soledad continued softly. This wasn't going as expected.
"The sheepdog is a female called Pastora," Juan Diego heard Lupe saying. (The noun pastora means "shepherdess.") Pastora was a sheepdog of the border-collie type; she was wearing a girl's dress. When the dog walked on all fours, she tripped on the dress, but when she stood on her hind legs, pushing the child's stroller with Baby (the dachshund) in it, the dress fit her correctly.
"What would Lupe tell people in a sideshow? What woman wants to hear someone say what her husband is thinking? What guy is going to be happy hearing what's on his wife's mind?" Soledad was asking Juan Diego. "Won't kids be embarrassed if their friends know what they're thinking? Just think about it," Soledad said. "All Ignacio cares about is what that old lion and those lionesses are thinking. If your sister can't read the lions' minds, she's of no use to Ignacio. And once she has read what's on the lions' minds--then she's no longer of use, is she? Or do lions change their minds?" Soledad asked Juan Diego.
"I don't know," the boy admitted. He felt frightened.
"I don't know, either," Soledad told him. "I just know you've got better odds of staying at the circus if you're a skywalker--especially if you're a boy skywalker. You understand what I'm saying, Boy Wonder?" Soledad asked him. It all felt too abrupt.
"Yes, I do," he told her, but the abruptness scared him. It was hard for him to imagine that she'd ever been pretty, but Juan Diego knew Soledad was a clear thinker; she understood her husband, perhaps well enough to survive him. Soledad understood that the lion tamer was a man who made mostly selfish decisions--his interest in Lupe as a mind reader was a matter of self-preservation. One thing was obvious about Soledad: she was a strong woman.
There'd been stress on her joints, no doubt, as Dr. Vargas had observed of the former trapeze artist. Damage to her fingers, her wrists, her elbows--these joint injuries notwithstanding, Soledad was still strong. As a flyer, she'd ended her career as a catcher. In trapeze work, men are usually the catchers, but Soledad had strong enough arms, and a strong enough grip, to be a catcher.
"The mongrel is male. I don't think it's fair that he's called Perro Mestizo--'Mongrel' shouldn't be the poor dog's name!" Lupe was saying. The mongrel, poor Perro Mestizo, wasn't wearing a costume. In the act for the dogs, Mongrel was a baby-stealer. Perro Mestizo tries to run off with the stroller with Baby in it--with the dachshund in the baby bonnet barking like a lunatic, of course. "Perro Mestizo is always the bad guy," Lupe was saying. "That's not fair, either!" (Juan Diego knew what Lupe was going to say next because it was an oft-repeated theme with his sister.) "Perro Mestizo didn't ask to be born a mongrel," Lupe said. (Naturally, Estrella, the dog trainer, hadn't the slightest idea what Lupe was saying.)
"I guess Ignacio is a little afraid of the lions," Juan Diego said cautiously to Soledad. It wasn't a question; he was stalling.
"Ignacio should be afraid of the lions--he should be a lot afraid," the lion tamer's wife said.
"The German shepherd, who is female, is called Alemania," Lupe was babbling. Juan Diego thought it was a cop-out to name a German shepherd "Germany"; it was also a stereotype to dress a German shepherd in a police uniform. But Alemania was supposed to be a policia--a policewoman. Naturally, Lupe was babbling about how "humiliating" it was for Perro Mestizo, who was male, to be apprehended by a female German shepherd. In the circus act, Perro Mestizo is caught stealing the baby in the stroller; the undressed mongrel is dragged out of the ring by the scruff of his neck by Alemania in her police uniform. Baby (the dachshund) and his mother (Pastora, the sheepdog) are reunited.
It was at this moment of realization--the dump kids' slim chances of success at Circo de La Maravilla, the fate of a crippled skywalker juxtaposed with the unlikelihood of Lupe becoming a mind reader of lions--when the barefoot Edward Bonshaw hobbled into the dogs' troupe tent. The tender-footed way the Iowan was walking must have set off the dogs, or perhaps it was the sheer ungainliness of the smaller Senor Eduardo clinging to the bigger transvestite for support.
Baby barked first; the little dachshund in the baby bonnet leapt out of the stroller. This was so off-script, so not the circus act, that poor Perro Mestizo became agitated and bit one of Edward Bonshaw's bare feet. Baby quickly lifted one leg, as most male dogs do, and peed on Senor Eduardo's other bare foot--the unbitten one. Flor kicked the dachshund and the mongrel.
Alemania, the police dog, disapproved of kicking; there was a tense standoff between the German shepherd and the transvestite--growls from the big dog, a no-retreat policy from Flor, who would never back down from a fight. Estrella, her flaming-redhead wig askew, tried to calm the dogs down.
Lupe was so upset to read (in an instant) what was on Juan Diego's mind that she paid no attention to the dogs. "I'm a mind reader for lions? That's it?" the girl asked her brother.
"I trust Soledad--don't you?" was all Juan Diego said.
"We're indispensable if you're a skywalker--otherwise, we're dispensable. That's it?" Lupe asked Juan Diego again. "Oh, I get it--you like the sound of being a Boy Wonder, don't you?"
"Soledad and I don't know if lions change their minds--assuming you can read what the lions are thinking," Juan Diego said; he was trying to be dignified, but the Boy Wonder idea had tempted him.
"I know what's on Hombre's mind," was all L
upe would tell him.
"I say we just try it," Juan Diego said. "We give it a week, just see how it goes--"
"A week!" Lupe cried. "You're no Boy Wonder--believe me."
"Okay, okay--we'll give it just a couple of days," Juan Diego pleaded. "Let's just try it, Lupe--you don't know everything," he added. What cripple doesn't dream of walking without a limp? And what if a cripple could walk spectacularly? Skywalkers were applauded, admired, even adored--just for walking, only sixteen steps.
"It's a leave-or-die-here situation," Lupe said. "A couple of days or a week won't matter." It all felt too abrupt--to Lupe, too.
"You're so dramatic!" Juan Diego told her.
"Who wants to be The Wonder? Who's being dramatic?" Lupe asked him. "Boy Wonder."
Where were the responsible adults?
It was hard to imagine anything more happening to Edward Bonshaw's feet, but the barefoot Iowan was thinking about something else; the dogs had failed to distract him from his thoughts, and Senor Eduardo could not have been expected to understand the dump kids' plight. Not even Flor, in her continuing flirtation with the Iowan, should be blamed for missing the leave-or-die-here decision the dump kids faced. The available adults were thinking about themselves.
"Do you really have breasts and a penis?" Edward Bonshaw blurted out in English to Flor, whose unspoken Houston experience had given her a good grasp of the language. Senor Eduardo had counted on Flor's understanding him, of course; he just hadn't realized that Juan Diego and Lupe, who'd been arguing with each other, would hear and understand him. And no one in the dogs' troupe tent could have guessed that Estrella, the old dog trainer--not to mention Soledad, the lion tamer's wife--also understood English.
Naturally, when Senor Eduardo asked Flor if she had breasts and a penis, the crazy dogs had stopped barking. Truly everyone in the dogs' troupe tent heard and appeared to understand the question. The dump kids were not the subject of this question.
"Jesus," Juan Diego said. The kids were on their own.
Lupe had clutched her Coatlicue totem to her too-small-to-notice breasts. The terrifying goddess with the rattlesnake rattles for nipples seemed to understand the breasts-and-penis question.