Dolores--The Wonder herself--sat apart from the less-accomplished girl acrobats. She stared out the window of the bus, or she slept with her forehead pressed against the window glass, verifying for Lupe the skywalker's status as a "spoiled cunt"--this appellation in tandem with the "mouse-tits" slur. Even Dolores's ankle chimes had earned her Lupe's condemnation as a "noise-making, attention-seeking slut," though Dolores's aloofness--from everyone, at least on the bus--made the skywalker strike Juan Diego as the opposite of "attention-seeking."
To Juan Diego, Dolores looked sad, even doomed; the boy didn't imagine it was falling from the skywalk that threatened her. It was Ignacio, the lion tamer, who clouded Dolores's future, as Lupe had forewarned--"let the lion tamer knock her up!" Lupe had cried. "Die in childbirth, monkey twat!" It may have been something Lupe had said in passing anger, but--in Juan Diego's mind--this amounted to an unbreakable curse.
The boy not only desired Dolores; he admired her courage as a skywalker--he'd practiced the skywalk enough to know that the prospect of trying it at eighty feet was truly terrifying.
Ignacio wasn't on the bus with the dump kids; he was in the truck transporting the big cats. (Soledad said Ignacio always traveled with his lions.) Hombre, whom Lupe had called "the last dog, the last one," had his own cage. Las senoritas--the young ladies, named for their most expressive body parts--were caged together. (As Flor had observed, the lionesses got along with one another.)
The circus site, in northern Mexico City--not far from Cerro Tepeyac, the hill where Juan Diego's Aztec namesake had reported seeing la virgen morena in 1531--was some distance from downtown Mexico City, but near to the Basilica de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe. Yet the bus carrying the dump kids and Edward Bonshaw broke free from the circus caravan of vehicles, and took an impromptu detour into downtown Mexico City, inspired by the two dwarf clowns.
Paco and Beer Belly wanted their fellow performers in La Maravilla to see the dwarfs' old neighborhood--the two clowns were from Mexico City. When the bus was slowed in city traffic, near the busy intersection of the Calle Anillo de Circunvalacion and the Calle San Pablo, Senor Eduardo woke up.
Perro Mestizo, a.k.a. Mongrel, the baby-stealer--"the biter," Juan Diego now called him--had been sleeping in Lupe's lap, but the little dog had managed to pee on Senor Eduardo's thigh. This made the Iowan imagine he'd peed in his own pants.
This time, Lupe had managed to read Edward Bonshaw's mind--hence she understood his confusion upon waking up.
"Tell the parrot man Perro Mestizo peed on him," Lupe told Juan Diego, but by that point the Iowan had seen the elephant measles on the dump kids' faces.
"You've broken out--you've caught something dreadful!" Senor Eduardo cried.
Beer Belly and Paco were trying to organize a walking tour of the Calle San Pablo--the bus was now stopped--but Edward Bonshaw saw more elephant measles on the faces of the dwarf clowns. "It's an epidemic!" the Iowan cried. (Lupe later said he was imagining that incontinence was an early symptom of the disease.)
Paco handed the soon-to-be-former scholastic a small mirror (on the inside lid of his rouge compact), which the cross-dresser carried in his purse. "You have it, too--it's elephant measles. There are outbreaks in every circus--it's not usually fatal," the transvestite said.
"Elephant measles!" Senor Eduardo cried. "Not usually fatal--" he was saying, when Juan Diego whispered in his ear.
"They're clowns--it's a trick. It's some kind of makeup," the dump reader told the distraught missionary.
"It's my burgundy rouge, Eduardo," Paco said, pointing to the makeup in the little compact with the mirror.
"It made me piss my pants!" Edward Bonshaw indignantly told the transvestite dwarf, but Juan Diego was the only one who understood the Iowan's excited English.
"The mongrel pissed on your pants--the same dumb dog who bit you," Juan Diego said to Senor Eduardo.
"This doesn't look like a circus site," Edward Bonshaw was saying, as he and the dump kids followed the performers who were getting off the bus. Not everyone was interested in the walking tour of Paco and Beer Belly's old neighborhood, but it was the one look Juan Diego and Lupe would get of downtown Mexico City--the dump kids wanted to see the throngs of people.
"Vendors, protestors, whores, revolutionaries, tourists, thieves, bicycle salesmen--" Beer Belly was reciting as he led the way. Indeed, there was a bicycle shop near the corner of the Calle San Pablo and the Calle Roldan. There were prostitutes on the sidewalk in front of the bikes for sale, and more prostitutes in the courtyard of a whore hotel on the Calle Topacio, where the girls loitering in the courtyard looked only a little older than Lupe.
"I want to go back to the bus," Lupe said. "I want to go back to Lost Children, even if we--" The way she stopped herself from saying more made Juan Diego wonder if Lupe had changed her mind--or if she'd suddenly seen something in the future, something that made it unlikely (at least in Lupe's mind) that the dump kids would go back to Lost Children.
Whether Edward Bonshaw understood her, before Juan Diego could translate his sister's request--or if Lupe, who suddenly seized the Iowan's hand, made it sufficiently clear to Senor Eduardo what she wanted, without words--the girl and the Jesuit went back to the bus. (The moment had not been sufficiently clear to Juan Diego.)
"Is there something hereditary--something in their blood--that makes them prostitutes?" Juan Diego asked Beer Belly. (The boy must have been thinking of his late mother, Esperanza.)
"You don't want to think about what's in their blood," Beer Belly told the boy.
"Whose blood? What about blood?" Paco asked them; her wig was askew, and the stubble on her face contrasted strangely with the mauve lipstick and matching eye shadow--not to mention the elephant measles.
Juan Diego wanted to go back to the bus, too; going back to Lost Children was surely also on the boy's mind. "Trouble isn't geographical, honey," he'd heard Flor say to Senor Eduardo--apropos of what, Juan Diego wasn't sure. (Hadn't Flor's trouble in Houston been geographical?)
Maybe it was the comfort of the coffee can, and its mixed contents, that Juan Diego wanted; he and Lupe had left the coffee can on the bus. As for going back to Lost Children, did Juan Diego feel this would be a defeat? (At the very least, it must have felt to him like a form of retreat.)
"I look at you with envy," Juan Diego had heard Edward Bonshaw say to Dr. Vargas. "Your ability to heal, to change lives--" Senor Eduardo was saying, when Vargas cut him off.
"An envious Jesuit sounds like a Jesuit in trouble. Don't tell me you have doubts, parrot man," Vargas had said.
"Doubt is part of faith, Vargas--certainty is for you scientists who have closed the other door," Edward Bonshaw told him.
"The other door!" Vargas had cried.
Back on the bus, Juan Diego saw who'd skipped the walking tour. Not only the sullen Dolores--The Wonder herself had not left her window seat--but the other girl acrobats as well. What was the matter with Mexico City, or this part of downtown, was at least a little bit troubling to them--namely, the prostitutes. Maybe the circus had saved the girl acrobats from difficult choices; La Maravilla might have thrust Ignacio into their future decision-making moments, but the life of those girls selling themselves on San Pablo and Topacio was not the life of the girl acrobats at Circus of The Wonder--not yet.
The Argentinian aerialists had not left the bus, either; they were cuddled together, as if frozen in the act of fondling--their overt sex life seemed to protect them from falling, as surely as the guy wires they scrupulously attached to each other's safety harnesses. The contortionist, Pajama Man, was stretching in the aisle between the seats--his flexibility was nothing he wanted to expose to laughter out in public. (No one laughed at him in the circus.) And Estrella, of course, had stayed on the bus with her dear dogs.
Lupe was asleep in two seats, her head in Edward Bonshaw's lap. Lupe didn't mind that Perro Mestizo had peed on the Iowan's thigh. "I think Lupe is frightened. I think you should both be back at Lost Chil
dren--" Senor Eduardo started to say, when he saw Juan Diego.
"But you're leaving, aren't you?" the fourteen-year-old asked him.
"Yes--with Flor," the Iowan said softly.
"I heard your conversation with Vargas--the one about the pony on the postcard," Juan Diego said to Edward Bonshaw.
"You shouldn't have heard that conversation, Juan Diego--I sometimes forget how good your English is," Senor Eduardo said.
"I know what pornography is," Juan Diego told him. "It was a pornographic photograph, right? A postcard with a picture of a pony--a young woman has the pony's penis in her mouth. Right?" the fourteen-year-old asked the missionary. Edward Bonshaw guiltily nodded.
"I was your age when I saw it," the Iowan said.
"I understand why it upset you," the boy said. "I'm sure it would upset me, too. But why does it still upset you?" Juan Diego asked Senor Eduardo. "Don't grown-ups ever get over things?"
Edward Bonshaw had been at a county fair. "County fairs weren't so appropriate, in those days," Juan Diego had heard the Iowan say to Dr. Vargas.
"Yeah, yeah--horses with five legs, a cow with an extra head. Freak animals--mutants, right?" Vargas had asked him.
"And girlie shows, girls stripping in tents--peep shows, they were called," Senor Eduardo had continued.
"In Iowa!" Vargas had exclaimed, laughing.
"Someone in a girlie tent sold me a pornographic postcard--it cost a dollar," Edward Bonshaw confessed.
"The girl sucking off the pony?" Vargas had asked the Iowan.
Senor Eduardo looked shocked. "You know that postcard?" the missionary asked.
"Everyone saw that postcard. It was made in Texas, wasn't it?" Vargas asked. "Everyone here knew it because the girl looked Mexican--"
But Edward Bonshaw had interrupted the doctor. "There was a man in the foreground of the postcard--you couldn't see his face, but he wore cowboy boots and he had a whip. It looked as if he had forced the girl--"
It was Vargas's turn to interrupt. "Of course someone forced her. You didn't think it was the girl's idea, did you? Or the pony's," Vargas added.
"That postcard haunted me. I couldn't stop looking at it--I loved that poor girl!" the Iowan said.
"Isn't that what pornography does?" Vargas asked Edward Bonshaw. "You're not supposed to be able to stop looking at it!"
"The whip bothered me, especially," Senor Eduardo said.
"Pepe has told me you have a thing for whips--" Vargas started to say.
"One day I took the postcard to confession," Edward Bonshaw continued. "I confessed my addiction to it--to the priest. He told me: 'Leave the picture with me.' Naturally, I thought he wanted it for the same reasons I'd wanted it, but the priest said: 'I can destroy this, if you're strong enough to let it go. It's time that poor girl was left in peace,' the priest said."
"I doubt that poor girl ever knew peace," Vargas had said.
"That's when I first wanted to be a priest," Edward Bonshaw said. "I wanted to do for other people what that priest did for me--he rescued me. Who knows?" Senor Eduardo said. "Maybe that postcard destroyed that priest."
"I presume the experience was worse for the girl," was all Vargas said. Edward Bonshaw had stopped talking. But what Juan Diego didn't understand was why the postcard still bothered Senor Eduardo.
"Don't you think Dr. Vargas was right?" Juan Diego asked the Iowan on the circus bus. "Don't you think that pornographic photo was worse for the poor girl?"
"That poor girl wasn't a girl," Senor Eduardo said; he'd glanced once at Lupe, asleep in his lap, just to be sure she was still sleeping. "That poor girl was Flor," the Iowan said; he was whispering now. "That's what happened to Flor in Houston. The poor girl met a pony."
HE'D CRIED FOR FLOR and Senor Eduardo before; Juan Diego could not stop crying for them. But Juan Diego was some distance from shore--no one could see he was crying. And didn't the salt water bring tears to everyone's eyes? You could float forever in salt water, Juan Diego was thinking; it was so easy to tread water in the calm and tepid sea.
"Hi, Mister!" Consuelo was calling. From the beach, Juan Diego could see the little girl in pigtails--she was waving to him, and he waved back.
It took almost no effort to stay afloat; he seemed to be barely moving. Juan Diego cried as effortlessly as he swam. The tears just came.
"You see, I always loved her--even before I knew her!" Edward Bonshaw had told Juan Diego. The Iowan hadn't recognized Flor as the girl with the pony--not at first. And when Senor Eduardo did recognize Flor--when he realized she was the girl in the pony postcard, but Flor was all grown-up now--he'd been unable to tell her that he knew the pony part of her sad Texas story.
"You should tell her," Juan Diego had told the Iowan; even at fourteen, the dump reader knew that much.
"When Flor wants to tell me about Houston, she will--it's her story, the poor girl," Edward Bonshaw would say to Juan Diego for years.
"Tell her!" Juan Diego kept saying to Senor Eduardo, as their time together marched on. Flor's Houston story would remain hers to tell.
"Tell her!" Juan Diego cried in the warm Bohol Sea. He was looking offshore; he was facing the endless horizon--wasn't Mindanao somewhere out there? (Not a soul onshore could have heard him crying.)
"Hi, Mister!" Pedro was calling to him. "Watch out for the--" (This was followed by, "Don't step on the--"; the unheard word sounded like gherkins.) But Juan Diego was in deep water; he couldn't touch the bottom--he was in no danger of stepping on pickles or sea cucumbers, or whatever weird thing Pedro was warning him about.
Juan Diego could tread water a long time, but he wasn't a good swimmer. He liked to dog-paddle--that was his preferred stroke, a slow dog paddle (not that anyone could dog-paddle fast).
The dog paddle had posed a problem for the serious swimmers in the indoor pool at the old Iowa Field House. Juan Diego swam laps very slowly; he was known as the dog-paddler in the slow lane.
People were always suggesting swimming lessons for Juan Diego, but he'd had swimming lessons; the dog paddle was his choice. (The way dogs swam was good enough for Juan Diego; novels progressed slowly, too.)
"Leave the kid alone," Flor once told a lifeguard at the pool. "Have you seen this boy walk? His foot isn't just crippled--it weighs a ton. Full of metal--you try doing more than a dog paddle with an anchor attached to one leg!"
"My foot isn't full of metal," Juan Diego told Flor, when they were on their way home from the Field House.
"It's a good story, isn't it?" was all Flor said. But she wouldn't tell her story. The pony on that postcard was just a glimpse of Flor's story, the only view of what happened to her in Houston that Edward Bonshaw would ever have.
"Hi, Mister!" Consuelo kept calling from the beach. Pedro had waded into the shallow water; the boy was being extra cautious. Pedro seemed to be pointing at potentially deadly things on the bottom of the sea.
"Here's one!" Pedro shouted to Consuelo. "There's a whole bunch!" The little girl in the pigtails wouldn't venture into the water.
The Bohol Sea did not seem menacing to Juan Diego, who was slowly dog-paddling his way to shore. He wasn't worried about the killer gherkins, or whatever Pedro was worried about. Juan Diego was tired from treading water, which was the same as swimming to him, but he'd waited to come ashore until he could stop crying.
In truth, he hadn't really stopped--he was just tired of how long he'd waited for the crying to end. In the shallow water, as soon as Juan Diego could touch the bottom, he decided to walk ashore the rest of the way--even though this meant he would resume limping.
"Be careful, Mister--they're everywhere," Pedro said, but Juan Diego didn't see the first sea urchin he stepped on (or the next one, or the one after that). The hard-shelled, spine-covered spheres were no fun to step on, even if you didn't limp.
"Too bad about the sea urchins, Mister," Consuelo was saying, as Juan Diego came ashore on his hands and knees--both his feet were tingling from the painful spines.
Pedro had run off to fetch Dr. Quintana. "It's okay to cry, Mister--the sea urchins really hurt," Consuelo was saying; she sat beside him on the beach. His tears, maybe exacerbated by such a long time in the salt water, just kept coming. He could see Josefa and Pedro running toward him along the beach; Clark French lagged behind--he ran like a freight train, slow to start but steadily gaining speed.
Juan Diego's shoulders were shaking--too much treading water, perhaps; the dog paddle is a lot of work for your arms and shoulders. The little girl in pigtails put her small, thin arms around him.
"It's okay, Mister," Consuelo tried to comfort him. "Here comes the doctor--you're going to be okay."
What is it with me and women doctors? Juan Diego was wondering. (He should have married one, he knew.)
"Mister has been stepping on sea urchins," Consuelo explained to Dr. Quintana, who knelt in the sand beside Juan Diego. "Of course, he's got other things to cry about," the little girl in the pigtails said.
"He misses stuff--geckos, the dump," Pedro began to enumerate to Josefa.
"Don't forget his sister," Consuelo said to Pedro. "A lion killed Mister's sister," Consuelo explained to Dr. Quintana, in case the doctor hadn't heard the litany of woes Juan Diego was suffering--and now, on top of everything, he'd stepped on sea urchins!
Dr. Quintana was gently touching Juan Diego's feet. "The trouble with sea urchins is their spines are movable--they don't get you just once," the doctor was saying.
"It's not my feet--it's not the sea urchins," Juan Diego tried to tell her quietly.
"What?" Josefa asked; she bent her head closer, to hear him.
"I should have married a woman doctor," he whispered to Josefa; Clark and the children couldn't hear him.
"Why didn't you?" Dr. Quintana asked, smiling at him.
"I didn't ask her soon enough--she said yes to someone else," Juan Diego said softly.
How could he have told Dr. Quintana more? It was impossible to tell Clark French's wife why he'd never married--why a lifetime partner, a companion till the end, was a friend he'd never made. Not even if Clark and the children hadn't been there on the beach could Juan Diego have told Josefa why he'd not dared to emulate the match Edward Bonshaw had made with Flor.
Casual acquaintances, even colleagues and close friends--including those students he'd befriended, and had seen a bit of socially (not only in class or in teacher-writer conferences)--all presumed that Juan Diego's adoptive parents had been a couple no one would have (or could have) sought to emulate. They'd been so queer--in every sense of the word! Surely, this was the commonplace version of why Juan Diego had never married anyone, why he'd not even made an effort to find that companion for life, the one so many people believed they wanted. (Surely, Juan Diego knew, this was the story Clark French would have imparted to his wife about his former teacher--an obdurate bachelor, in Clark's eyes, and a godless secular humanist.)