"Well, I'm not showing you the penis--not here," Flor said to the Iowan. She was unbuttoning her blouse and untucking it from her skirt. Children on their own make abrupt decisions.
"Don't you see?" Lupe said to Juan Diego. "She's the one--the one for him! Flor and Senor Eduardo--they're the ones who adopt you. They can take you away with them only if they're together!"
Flor had taken her blouse completely off. It was not necessary for her to remove her bra. She had small breasts--what she would later describe as "the best the hormones could do"; Flor said she was "not a surgery person." But, just to be sure, Flor took off her bra, too; small as they were, she wanted Edward Bonshaw to have no doubt that she indeed had breasts.
"Not rattlesnake rattles, are they?" Flor asked Lupe, when everyone in the dogs' troupe tent could see her breasts and the nipples.
"It's a leave-or-die-here situation," Lupe repeated. "Senor Eduardo and Flor are your ride out," the little girl told Juan Diego.
"For now, you'll just have to believe me about the penis," Flor was saying to the Iowan; she'd put her bra back on and was buttoning her blouse when Ignacio walked in. Tent or no tent, the dump kids got the feeling that the lion tamer would never knock before entering.
"Come meet the lions," Ignacio said to Lupe. "I guess you have to come, too," the lion tamer said to the cripple--to the would-be Boy Wonder.
There was no question that the dump kids understood the terms: the mind-reading job was all about the lions. And whether the lions changed their minds or not, it would also be Lupe's job to make the lion tamer believe the lions might change their minds.
But what must the barefoot, bitten, and pissed-on missionary have been thinking? Edward Bonshaw's vows were unhinged; Flor's breasts-and-penis combination had made him reconsider celibacy in ways no amount of whipping would dispel.
"One of Christ's soldiers," Senor Eduardo had called himself and his Jesuit brethren, but his certainty was shaken. And the two old priests clearly didn't want the dump kids to stay at Lost Children; their halfhearted questioning about the safety of the circus had been more a matter of priestly protocol than of genuine concern or conviction.
"Those children are so wild--I suppose they could be eaten by wild animals!" Father Alfonso had said, throwing up his hands--as if such a fate would be fitting for dump kids.
"They do lack restraint--they could fall off those swinging things!" Father Octavio had chimed in.
"Trapezes," Pepe had said helpfully.
"Yes! Trapezes!" Father Octavio had cried, almost as if the idea appealed to him.
"The boy won't be swinging from anything," Edward Bonshaw had assured the priests. "He'll be a translator--at least he won't be a dump-scrounger!"
"And the girl will be reading minds, telling fortunes--no swinging from anything for her. At least she won't end up a prostitute," Brother Pepe had told the two priests; Pepe knew the priests so well--the prostitute word was the clincher.
"Better to be eaten by wild animals," Father Alfonso had said.
"Better to fall off the trapezes," Father Octavio had of course concurred.
"I knew you would understand," Senor Eduardo had told the two old priests. Yet, even then, the Iowan looked uncertain about which side he should be on. He looked like he wondered what he'd been arguing for. Why was the circus ever such a good idea?
And now--once more navigating the avenue of troupe tents, on the lookout for elephant shit--Edward Bonshaw hobbled uncertainly on his tender bare feet. The Iowan was slumped against Flor, clinging to the bigger, stronger transvestite for support; the short distance to the lions' cages, only two minutes away, must have seemed an eternity for Edward Bonshaw--meeting Flor, and merely thinking about her breasts and her penis, had altered the trajectory of his life.
That walk to the lions' cages was a skywalk for Senor Eduardo; to the missionary, this short distance amounted to his walk at eighty feet without a net--however much the Iowan hobbled, these were his life-changing steps.
Senor Eduardo slipped his small hand into Flor's much bigger palm; the missionary almost fell when she squeezed his hand in hers. "The truth is," the Iowan struggled to say, "I am falling for you." Tears were streaming down his face; the life he had long sought, the one he'd flagellated himself for, was over.
"You don't sound too happy about it," Flor pointed out to him.
"No, no--I am, I'm truly very happy!" Edward Bonshaw told her; he began telling Flor how Saint Ignatius Loyola had founded an asylum for fallen women. "It was in Rome, where the saint announced he would sacrifice his life if he could prevent the sins of a single prostitute on a single night," Senor Eduardo was blubbering.
"I don't want you to sacrifice your life, you idiot," the transvestite prostitute told him. "I don't want you to save me," she said. "I think you should start by fucking me," Flor told the Iowan. "Let's just start with that, and see what happens," Flor told him.
"Okay," Edward Bonshaw said, almost falling again; he was staggering, but lust has a way.
The girl acrobats ran by them in the avenue of troupe tents; the green and blue spangles on their singlets glimmered in the lantern lights. Also passing them, but not running, was Dolores; she was walking fast, but she saved her running for the training beneficial to a superstar skywalker. The spangles on her singlet were silver and gold, and her anklets had silver chimes; as Dolores walked past them, her anklets were chiming. "Noise-making, attention-seeking slut!" Lupe called after the pretty skywalker. "Not your future--forget about it," was all Lupe said to Juan Diego.
Ahead of them were the lion cages. The lions were awake now--all four of them. The eyes of the three lionesses were alertly following the pedestrian traffic in the avenue of troupe tents. The sullen male, Hombre, had his narrowed eyes fixed on the approaching lion tamer.
To the passersby in the busy avenue, it might have seemed that the crippled boy stumbled, and that his little sister caught hold of his arm before he could fall; someone watching the dump kids more closely might have imagined that the limping boy simply bent over to kiss his sister in the area of one of her temples.
What actually happened was that Juan Diego whispered in Lupe's ear. "If you really can tell what the lions are thinking, Lupe--" Juan Diego started to say.
"I can tell what you're thinking," Lupe interrupted him.
"For Christ's sake, just be careful what you say the lions are thinking!" Juan Diego whispered to her harshly.
"You're the one who has to be careful," Lupe told him. "Nobody knows what I'm saying unless you tell them," she reminded him.
"Just remember this: I'm not your rescue project," Flor was telling the Iowan, who was dissolved in tears--tears of happiness, conflicted tears, or just plain tears. Inconsolable crying, in other words--sometimes lust has a way of doing that to you, too.
Their small entourage had stopped in front of the lion cages.
"Hola, Hombre," Lupe said to the lion. There was no question that the big male cat was looking at Lupe--only at Lupe, not at Ignacio.
Maybe Juan Diego was summoning the necessary courage to be a skywalker; perhaps this was the moment when he believed he had the balls for it. Actually being a Boy Wonder seemed possible.
"Any lingering thoughts on your mind about her being retarded?" the crippled boy asked the lion tamer. "You can see that Hombre knows she's a mind reader, can't you?" Juan Diego asked Ignacio. "A real one," the boy added. He wasn't half as confident as he sounded.
"Just don't try to fuck with me, ceiling-walker," Ignacio told Juan Diego. "Don't ever lie to me about what your sister says. I'll know if you're lying, practice-tent-walker. I can read what's on your mind--a little," the lion tamer said.
When Juan Diego looked at Lupe, she made no comment--she didn't even shrug. The girl was concentrating on the lion. To even the most casual passerby in the avenue of troupe tents, Lupe and Hombre were completely attuned to each other's thoughts. The old male lion and the girl weren't paying attention to anyone else.
&n
bsp; * 20 *
Casa Vargas
In Juan Diego's dream, it was impossible to tell where the music came from. It did not have the hard-sell sound of a mariachi band, working its way among the outdoor cafe tables at the Marques del Valle--one of those annoying bands that might have been playing anywhere in the zocalo. And although the circus band at La Maravilla had its own brass-and-drum version of "Streets of Laredo," this was not their moribund and dirgelike distortion of the cowboy's lament.
For one thing, Juan Diego heard a voice singing; in his dream, he heard the lyrics--if not as sweetly as the good gringo used to sing them. Oh, how el gringo bueno had loved "Streets of Laredo"--the dear boy could sing that ballad in his sleep! Even Lupe sang that song sweetly. Though her voice was strained and difficult to understand, Lupe did have a girl's voice--an innocent-sounding voice.
The amateur vocalizing from the beach club had ceased, so it couldn't have been the shopworn karaoke music that Juan Diego heard; the New Year's Eve celebrants at the Panglao Island beach club had gone to bed, or they'd drowned taking a night swim. And no one was still ringing in the New Year at the Encantador--even the Nocturnal Monkeys were mercifully silent.
It was pitch-dark in Juan Diego's hotel room; he held his breath because he could not hear Miriam breathing--only the mournful cowboy song in a voice Juan Diego didn't recognize. Or did he? It was strange to hear "Streets of Laredo" sung by an older woman; it didn't sound right. But wasn't the voice itself borderline recognizable? It was just the wrong voice for that song.
" 'I see, by your outfit, that you are a cowboy,' " the woman was singing in a low, husky voice. " 'These words he did say as I slowly walked by.' "
Was it Miriam's voice? Juan Diego wondered. How could she be singing when he couldn't hear her breathing? In the darkness, Juan Diego wasn't sure she was really there.
"Miriam?" he whispered. Then he said her name again, a little louder.
There was no singing now--"Streets of Laredo" had stopped. There was no detectable breathing, either; Juan Diego held his breath. He was listening for the slightest sound from Miriam; maybe she'd returned to her own room. He might have been snoring, or talking in his sleep--occasionally, Juan Diego talked when he dreamed.
I should touch her--just to feel if she's there or not, Juan Diego was thinking, but he was afraid to find out. He touched his penis; he smelled his fingers. The sex smell shouldn't have startled him--surely he remembered having sex with Miriam. But he didn't, not exactly. He had definitely said something--about the way she felt, how it felt to be inside her. He'd said "silky" or "silken"; this was all he could recall, only the language.
And Miriam had said: "You're funny--you need to have a word for everything."
Then a rooster crowed--in total darkness! Were roosters crazy in the Philippines? Was this stupid rooster disoriented by the karaoke music? Had the dumb bird mistaken the Nocturnal Monkeys for nocturnal hens?
"Someone should kill that rooster," Miriam said in her low, husky voice; he felt her bare breasts touch his chest and his upper arm--the fingers of her hand closed around his penis. Maybe Miriam could see in the dark. "There you are, darling," she told him, as if he'd needed assurance that he existed--that he was really there, with her--when all the while he'd been wondering if she were real, if she actually existed. (That was what he'd been afraid to find out.)
The crazy rooster crowed again in the darkness.
"I learned to swim in Iowa," he told Miriam in the dark--a funny thing to say to someone holding your penis, but this was how time happened to Juan Diego (not only in his dreams). Time jumped ahead or back; time seemed more associative than linear, but it wasn't exclusively associative, either.
"Iowa," Miriam murmured. "Not what comes to mind when I think of swimming."
"I don't limp in the water," Juan Diego told her. Miriam was making him hard again. When he wasn't in Iowa City, Juan Diego didn't meet many people who were interested in Iowa. "You've probably never been in the Midwest," Juan Diego said to Miriam.
"Oh, I've been everywhere," Miriam demurred, in that laconic way she had.
Everywhere? Juan Diego wondered. No one's been everywhere, he thought. But in regard to a sense of place, one's individual perspective matters, doesn't it? Not every fourteen-year-old, upon encountering Iowa City for the first time, would have found the move from Mexico exhilarating; for Juan Diego, Iowa was an adventure. He was a boy who'd never emulated the young people he saw around him; suddenly there were students everywhere. Iowa City was a college town, a Big Ten town--the campus was downtown, the city and the university were one and the same. Why wouldn't a dump reader find a college town fascinating?
Granted, it would soon strike any fourteen-year-old boy that the Iowa campus heroes were its sports stars. Yet this was consistent with what Juan Diego had imagined about the United States--from a Mexican kid's perspective, movie stars and sports heroes seemed to be the zenith of American culture. As Dr. Rosemary Stein had told Juan Diego, he was either a kid from Mexico or a grown-up from Iowa all the time.
For Flor, the transition to Iowa City from Oaxaca must have been more difficult--if not the magnitude of misadventure Houston had represented for her. In a Big Ten university town, what opportunities existed for a transvestite and former prostitute? She'd already made a mistake in Houston; Flor was disinclined to take any chances in Iowa City. Meekness, keeping a low profile--well, it wasn't in Flor's nature to be tentative. Flor had always asserted herself.
When the deranged rooster crowed a third time, his crowing was cut off mid-squawk. "There, that does it," Miriam said. "No more heralding of a false dawn, no more untruthful messengers."
While Juan Diego tried to comprehend exactly what Miriam had meant--she sounded so authoritative--one dog began to bark; soon other dogs were barking. "Don't hurt the dogs--nothing is their fault," Juan Diego told Miriam. It was what he imagined Lupe would have said. (Here was another New Year, and Juan Diego was still missing his dear sister.)
"No harm will come to the dogs, darling," Miriam murmured.
Now a breeze could be felt through the open seaward windows; Juan Diego thought he could smell the salt water, but he couldn't hear the waves--if there were waves. He only then realized that he could swim in Bohol; there was a beach and a pool at the Encantador. (The good gringo, the inspiration for Juan Diego's trip to the Philippines, had not inspired thoughts of swimming.)
"Tell me how you learned to swim in Iowa," Miriam whispered in his ear; she was straddling him, and he felt himself enter her again. A feeling of such smoothness surrounded him--it was almost like swimming, he thought, before it crossed his mind that Miriam had known what he was thinking.
Yes, it had been a long time ago, but, because of Lupe, Juan Diego knew what it was like to be around a mind reader.
"I swam in an indoor pool, at the University of Iowa," Juan Diego began, a little breathlessly.
"I meant who, darling--I meant who taught you, who took you to the swimming pool," Miriam said softly.
"Oh."
Juan Diego couldn't say their names, not even in the dark.
Senor Eduardo had taught him to swim--this was in the swimming pool in the old Iowa Field House, next to the university hospitals and clinics. Edward Bonshaw, who had left academia to pursue the priesthood, was welcomed back to the English Department at the University of Iowa--"from whence he'd come," Flor was fond of saying, exaggerating her Mexican accent with the whence word.
Flor wasn't a swimmer, but after Juan Diego had learned to swim, she occasionally took him to the pool--it was used by the university faculty and staff, and by their children, and also popular with townies. Senor Eduardo and Juan Diego had loved the old Field House--in the early seventies, before the Carver-Hawkeye Arena was built, most of Iowa's indoor sports took place in the Field House. In addition to swimming there, Edward Bonshaw and Juan Diego went to see the basketball games and the wrestling matches.
Flor had liked the pool but not the old Field H
ouse; there were too many jocks running around, she said. Women took their kids to the pool--women were uneasy around Flor, but they didn't stare at her. Young men couldn't help themselves, Flor always said--young men just stared. Flor was tall and broad-shouldered--six-two and 170 pounds--and although she was small-breasted, she was both very attractive (in a womanly way) and very masculine-looking.
At the pool, Flor wore a one-piece bathing suit, but she was only viewable above her waist. She always wrapped a big towel around her hips; the bottom of her bathing suit was not in view, and Flor never went in the water.
Juan Diego didn't know how Flor managed the dressing and undressing part--this would have happened in the women's locker room. Maybe she never took off the bathing suit? (It never got wet.)
"Don't worry about it," Flor had told the boy. "I'm not showing my junk to anyone but Senor Eduardo."
Not in Iowa City, anyway--as Juan Diego would one day understand. It would one day also be understandable why Flor needed to get away from Iowa--not a lot, just occasionally.
If Brother Pepe had happened to see Flor in Oaxaca, he would write to Juan Diego. "I suppose you and Edward know she's here--'just visiting,' she says. I see her in the usual places--well, I don't mean all the 'usual' places!" was how Pepe would put it.
Pepe meant he'd seen Flor at La China, that gay bar on Bustamante--the one that would become Chinampa. Pepe also saw La Loca at La Coronita, where the clientele was mostly gay and the transvestites were dressed to kill.
Pepe didn't mean that Flor showed up at the whore hotel; it wasn't the Hotel Somega, or being a prostitute, that Flor missed. But where was a person like Flor supposed to go in Iowa City? Flor was a party person--at least occasionally. There was no La China--not to mention no La Coronita--in Iowa City in the seventies and eighties. What was the harm in Flor going back to Oaxaca from time to time?
Brother Pepe wasn't judging her, and apparently, Senor Eduardo had been understanding.
When Juan Diego was leaving Oaxaca, Brother Pepe had blurted out to him: "Don't become one of those Mexicans who--"
Pepe had stopped himself.