I felt, for the first time, that I belonged somewhere. Carlos, Mauro, Luis, José, and Paulo were like brothers to me, kissing my cheeks in the morning and at night, making sure I had enough to eat and was never by myself in the city or on the roads surrounding the villa. Victoria taught me to make flan and her special mole, laughing with me in the kitchen over the huge industrial stove.
But despite everything, Mary was often there, around the edges—not the woman I had known and loved but a reminder, a sense that I had left something undone. Like everyone else in my life, she was split off, between the woman I had known and the woman who stayed with me. And she was separate from everything. As close as I became to Lollie or Luis, I could not tell them about the way Mary haunted me or what it had felt like to spend those long days with her in the library, listening to her voice or watching her brew tea on the stove. I could not tell them about the opal ring that I kept hidden in my room, sewn back up in a skirt, or what it had felt like to come upon her in the river.
And no matter how happy I was, how in love I was with Mexico and the circus, I still dreamt of rain. Some nights I woke with my heart pounding in my chest, longing to leave Mexico and to find Rain Village, which must have been a million miles from the house and the pool and the trees that dropped lemons to the ground. I heard Mary’s voice in my ear, thought of the riverboat that snaked up the thin river, how the sky must turn black as the riverboat neared. I saw the thousand colors of the opal ring sparkling up from her neck. I felt a darkness swooping over me, threatening to pull me to the river’s bottom, threatening to fill my lungs and drown me.
I would hear her voice in my ear, wrapping around me the way her scent had once.
“There’s a secret there,” she would say. “I want you to find it.”
It was late February when Lollie announced that we had to begin preparing my costume for the new season. We were sipping coffee at the big table in the early morning, getting ready for another long day of rehearsal. All of us were there. It was a normal morning: the sky was hung over a bit with rain, we were quiet and tired, and Victoria had set out a large bowl of mangoes and oranges with a pot of steaming coffee. I was slathering my toast with butter when Lollie said, “I think we should make you a costume covered with rhinestones, Tessa, so that you’ll look like a diamond in the air.”
I looked up at her. I had almost forgotten that our time in Mexico was a rest stop for the winter and that the day was approaching for us to gather up the circus and head north, where we would pick up the rest of the acts and start the new season.
“You’re ready,” Lollie said, smiling over the table at me. “Maybe not for the flying trapeze, but your solo act is more than ready.”
I looked to Paulo, who agreed.
“We want your solo act to be part of our main act,” Lollie said. “We can work it out with Jorge, your pay and your sleeping arrangements.”
I nodded, speechless.
“We can negotiate more then,” Carlos said. He turned to me. “We can probably get you twenty dollars a week for now. Jorge, Mr. Velasquez, pays me one lump sum for all of us in the Ramirez acts, and I divvy it up. That should be fair for you and increase profit for all of us. We’re a strong act already—the two star acts of the show—but you’ll make us even stronger.”
“Does that sound fair to you, Tessa?” Lollie asked.
“Yes,” I said, overcome. This was more money than I’d ever thought I’d make, anywhere. I would have traveled with the Ramirezes for free.
“We need a name for you, then,” Carlos said, clapping his hands and looking around the table.
“What’s wrong with Tessa?” I asked.
Mauro shook his head. “Something more.”
“Tiny Tessa!” Luis said suddenly. He sat at the head of the table, his wheelchair pulled up to it. “How about that?”
I giggled, clapping my hand over my mouth.
“Bueno!” Lollie laughed, nodding vigorously and spreading her hands out dramatically in the air. “You will be the tiny trapeze girl who glitters like a perfect diamond in the air, a gem in the center of our act.”
I looked at all of them. “Thank you,” was all I could manage, and I looked down at my coffee.
Luis leaned toward me. “You are going to be magnificent,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
I looked up at Luis, and at Mauro’s sweet face and Lollie’s open one, the pride beaming through it, and was almost heartbroken. It was too much, all of this—how could I trust any of it? I had thought that Mary had loved me once, too.
Mrs. Ramirez and Victoria worked on my costume for a week straight. They sat in the main den downstairs with a bowl of rhinestones set on the table between them. They sewed each one onto the soft white fabric by hand, then stuck me through with pins in the evenings as they molded the fabric to my skin.
“More rhinestones!” Mrs. Ramirez cried, then plucked the fabric off my body and got back to work.
At night I would go look at my costume, pure white and sparkling in the moonlight, like snow and ice and frost, and I’d close my eyes and think of the spinning girl in my vision. Gleaming, rotating around and around until you could no longer see the lines of her body, just pure light moving through space.
Two nights before we left Mexico for the new season, Mauro knocked on my door. He was dressed in a black suit and hat and held a bouquet of geraniums he’d plucked from the walls surrounding the villa.
“Tessa,” he said, before I could speak, “would you go to dinner with me tonight?”
I looked at him, confused. “But I always have dinner with you, Mauro,” I said.
“No, no,” he said, pushing the geraniums into my hand, “Not here. Outside. In the city.”
“Oh,” I said, blushing. “You mean . . .?” I didn’t know what to say.
“I want to take you to dinner, Tessa,” he said.
“Okay,” I said.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” he said, looking at me from under his thick lashes. He was so handsome in his white shirt and dark suit, his hair slicked back with grease. In one quick movement he kissed my cheek, then left me there in the doorway.
I stood there for a full minute before it hit me that Mauro Ramirez had just asked me, Tessa Riley, out on a date. I touched my cheek where he had kissed me, my face burning, my hands trembling. This was not supposed to happen, I thought. This was not ever supposed to happen for a girl like me.
I dropped the flowers on my bed and raced to the shower. My heart pounded as I slicked shampoo through my hair and slapped scented soap over my skin, and I shook when I stepped in front of the mirror, glaring at my flat body. I rubbed my hair with a towel, leaned into the glass and stared right into my own eyes, blue and wild with fear and excitement.
What to wear seemed like the biggest decision of my life. I yanked out shirt after shirt from my closet—old ragged ones I’d worn in the factory, sweet embroidered ones sewn by Mrs. Ramirez—but everything seemed wrong, dull. Finally I pulled out the rhinestone-lined skirt Mary had made for me for my thirteenth birthday, and slipped it on with a tight white top. The effect was not too bad, I thought, staring into the mirror. My skin looked tan against the white, and I looked summery, like I should be sipping lemonade. Still, I cursed my ridiculous body, my pinched face. I wanted to weep and cry out with excitement, all at once.
I looked at the clock. I had fifteen more minutes—just enough time to get Lollie’s opinion. I ran through the bathroom to the other side and knocked on her door, which swung open almost immediately.
“Tessa!” she said, pulling me inside.
“Can you lend me some makeup?” I asked. “Mauro is taking me out tonight, and I want to look nice.”
“That’s wonderful!” she exclaimed, a little too happy. I realized I hadn’t seen Geraldo around for several days, though Lollie had seemed fine at practice that morning.
“That skirt is muy bonita,” she said. “Why don’t you see how this necklace looks with it?” She led m
e over to the sweeping bureau covered in jars and bottles. Her eyes were red and slightly swollen.
“Are you okay, Lollie?”
“Of course,” she said, smiling as she clasped a thick silver band around my neck and let it nestle into my collarbone.
In the mirror, I was surprised at how it glinted. I never wore jewelry. Behind me Lollie looked transformed, glowing. For a moment my mind went to the ring wrapped in a sack at the bottom of my suitcase, and I imagined placing it on my finger, dazzling everyone we passed. I pushed the thought away immediately.
“Thank you,” I said, turning to her. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Sí, sí,” she said. “Now let’s get a little makeup on you, princesa.”
She reached for a tube of lip gloss, then coated my lips with a series of small dabs. Next she poured powder over my skin, rubbing it in with a large puff.
“Cierra tus ojos.” I closed my eyes, and she pulled a pencil across the lids. I pointed to the pot of glitter, laughing, and she sprinkled a few specks on my lids.
“I used to spend hours getting ready for my big dates,” Lollie said. “The boys used to beat down our door to get to me, once upon a time, in the last century.”
I squeezed her hand and kissed her. When I looked in the mirror I was still myself, but shimmery, better.
Mauro drove and I sat beside him. He told me stories about his family and the villa, but I was so nervous that I only heard every few words.
We drove out of the valley and into the city. I had only seen Mexico City in the daytime; at night it was another world completely, with lights draped everywhere and music filling the streets. I loved the little bands of mariachis, squat and bird-like, with their silver-spangled pants and sombreros. They seemed to be everywhere as we pulled the car into the center of the city, near one of the huge plazas lined with restaurants and bars and elaborate buildings.
Mauro looked at me. His eyes glimmered in the dark car.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, smiling up at him, thankful that the nighttime masked the redness of my face, the sweat gathering at my neck. I forced myself to swallow.
He stepped out of the car, then moved around to pull open my door and extend his hand, shutting the door behind me after guiding me to his side. We strolled through the plaza. My skirt swished around my legs. The mariachis gathered around us as we walked.
“Care for a song?” they asked. “Una serenata?”
“Señor Ramirez!” one cried, and began tiptoeing along the ground in a straight line, mimicking Mauro walking over the wire. “A song for your novia?”
Mauro laughed as a small crowd gathered around us. The plaza was full of people: young and old, children and drunks and young lovers and old people singing along to the music. Lights splashed on the stone, and the Mexican flag waved above us. The cathedral bordering the plaza on one side was as elaborate as a wedding cake.
“Por favor,” Mauro said, bowing and laughing to the old mariachi in front of us. The mariachis were all over the place, playing song after song to small groups of listeners. There must have been fifty songs playing at the same time, and the effect was blissful, like a dozen fireworks going off at once.
The old mariachi bowed and stepped back, lifting up his violin. A group huddled around him with their own instruments and suddenly the sweetest, saddest song in the world burst out of them. Mauro pulled me in to him, wrapped his arm around my waist, bending down.
“Dance with me,” he smiled, and I let my body press into his as he guided me in a slow circle.
“Mauro!” some of them shouted. Or, like the mariachi: “Señor Ramirez! I want to join the ceer-kus, too!”
We laughed and laughed and I was dizzy with it.
Later, at the restaurant, everyone knew who we were. The Ramirez family was legendary in Mexico City, and the other patrons kept walking by to look at us, see what we were eating, how we were dressed.
We ordered heaping plates of carne asada and turkey mole, and the waiters kept bringing out beans and rice and guacamole. Mauro ordered us each a tequila cocktail, and I laughed and protested as I drank it down.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” I asked, flirting, surprising myself. I took a sip of tequila, and the salt stuck to my lips. Mauro reached over and wiped it off, then licked his fingertips, gentle as a cat. He stared right into me. The blush that came up on me must have started at my toes.
The horns and violins and guitarrones and vihuelas enveloped us.
“So, Tessa,” Mauro said, “what do you think of Mexico now?”
“Oh,” I said, “it’s perfect. I love everything about it.”
He smiled. “Dime. Make me see it the way you do.”
I mashed down the beans on my plate. The waiter brought over two new drinks for us in icy cocktail glasses.
“It’s always sunny,” I said. “And the air has perfume in it, with all the flowers. They drape over everything like necklaces, and it makes me think of a fancy woman at a big dance. I love all the buildings and crosses. The music.”
“Sí,” he said. “It suits you here. You look healthy and dark, almost like a mexicana.”
I giggled. “Oh, and everyone is so peaceful and relaxed, not like at home. There it was always worry and looking to the sky for rain. You know, the farm and everyone not getting along. Telling secrets. Hating things. The world.”
“What about your family?” He reached for a piece of meat on my plate, popped it into his mouth.
“They weren’t at all like your family. Not one bit. You are so lucky, having the brothers and sisters you do. Such a beautiful mother.”
“Dime,” he said.
“We were nothing alike,” I told him, beginning to smile. Something I had never done while talking of my family before. “My sister and I shared a room but barely even spoke. I mean, we practically looked right through each other whenever we were unlucky enough to be awake at the same time, in the bedroom.”
He laughed. “When we were kids we just worked and worked, all the time.”
“Us too,” I said. “Well, not me, really—I was too small to help much in the fields—but my brothers and sister were always out there, breaking their backs.”
“You saved your body for other things.”
I looked up sharply, afraid he was mocking me.
His eyes were warm and liquidy. “I would hate for you to be any different than you are now,” he said.
I let out my breath, unsure of where to look, what to think.
“I think it sounds wonderful,” I said, finally, “to spend all day working in the circus.”
He laughed. “People think we are free in the circus,” he said, “but all of us, we were born into it. It is as natural for me to be on the wire as it is for me to breathe. But you can be anything you want to be, the way Mary could. You are a streak of light.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said. “It must be wonderful, knowing exactly who you are and what you are, the way you do.”
I felt like I could say anything to him. He was, I realized, just like Mary and like Lollie: someone who’d slipped through the cracks, a friend. I do not think I had ever been more myself than I became at that moment, with him.
“Maybe,” he said. “But you can cut a space for yourself in the world. Sometimes, when it’s all you know, it’s different. You want to have more than one life. You envy the people for whom everything is possible.”
His voice was as deep and warm as baking bread. His lips were full, and as I watched him talk, I could feel them on me, grazing my cheek and the sides of my mouth. His hair fell into his face. He smiled as he spoke, and I watched his lips, fascinated.
“I liked you from the first day you came to the circus,” he continued, smiling shyly. “I thought I had never seen anyone like you. You just showed up, slipping from one life into another.”
“Thank you,” I said, not knowing what else to say. I was afraid that if I said anything more, t
he moment would disappear. I didn’t trust anything, yet my life was so different now. It almost made sense for me to be here, for me to be staring at Mauro Ramirez and he back at me.
“Are you excited for the season?” he asked softly.
“Yes,” I whispered. “Excited, and scared. Scared to perform in front of everyone.”
“You will be amazing,” he said. “Enjoy these last two days, Tessita, because everything will change afterward. Everything.” He stretched his hand across the table and took mine in his palm.
“I will,” I tried to say, but the words seemed to get caught on my tongue.
We drove back to the villa in silence. When Mauro looked over at me I could feel his eyes on me as if they had weight to them, as if he were pressing on me with his fingertips. I lost every breath in my body. It was as if we weren’t even part of the world, with the way the moonlight cast shadows through the windows.
When we got back to the villa I felt like everything had changed. At the front door, Mauro looked down at me. I couldn’t even see straight. I wanted to stop time, wrap myself around this moment and keep it close. But before I could think or feel, he reached his hand out, cradled my cheek with his palm. I was shocked at the warm softness of it, so different from the skin on my own palms, ravaged by the bar. I stared up at him, unable to move.
As his face neared I saw the flash of his eyes on mine as they moved into the light. I saw the lines of his jaw and then suddenly it was as if I were underwater. His lips pressed on mine, as soft as pillows.
Afterward I stood there in shock, staring up at him. Without even thinking I turned around and ran so fast that everything around me blurred into lines of light and dark.
I rushed into my room, unsure if my legs would still carry me. When I stood in front of the mirror I barely recognized myself with my flushed cheeks and dark, shaded eyes, my body so strangely muscular and bruised from the constant training.
I fell onto the bed. My heart pounded, my whole body trembled. His kiss had crept its way under my skin, past where my father had burned his handprint, past my revulsion at what love could make of a woman like Lollie, or Mary, who had followed Juan Galindo like a dog through the ice and snow. I wrapped my head around it, what would make him do something like that, anyone do something like that, with someone like me. I moved from excitement to fear and back again, watching the stars outside my window.