Rain Village

  And then the world opened itself to me like a mouth.

  The next day, as soon as the dishes were washed and dried, I sneaked out into the early afternoon and set off running, as if I couldn’t get to the library fast enough. I didn’t even look at the landscape around me or slow down for breath when a gaggle of teenaged girls laughed as I ran past.

  “Weirdo!” they called. “Freak!”

  I didn’t pay attention. Everything in the world that mattered to me was reduced down to that library across town.

  But the moment I burst in the doors of Mercy Library, I became shy, and nervous. I stood by the door, unsure what to do next.

  “Tessa,” Mary said, looking up from the front desk. Her eyes immediately dropped to my arms and legs. “Your parents weren’t too mad? You’re okay?” She walked over and put her hand on my shoulder, looked at my neck and face.

  “No, it was fine. I’m fine,” I said. I smiled up at her.

  She breathed out. “Good,” she said, laughing. “You look like you could use some relaxing. Why don’t we make some tea? They’ll be lining up any second, so we have to hurry.”

  She rushed through the stacks, pulling me after her, back to an old stove tucked in the corner. I was so excited I was practically skipping. When we came to the makeshift kitchen, I laughed out loud. Everything with Mary was a great adventure. I loved the little stove, the jars of dried herbs lined above it. I loved the elaborate locked box made of ivory sitting on a table to the side.

  “What’s in here?” I asked.

  “More herbs,” Mary said, “for every kind of ailment. Powders and vials.” She leaned in to me, put her face next to mine. “You can cure most anything with these herbs, you know. Sprinkle them into tea and soup. Bite down on a clove for a toothache, brew up mixtures of mint and nettle and fireweed to soothe a broken heart.” She held up a small bag and let me peer into it: the herbs glimmered and shifted inside, and a faint whiff of smoke drifted into the air.

  “You are a witch!” I said.

  “I’m gonna get you and make you ride my broomstick!” She reached out for me and I screamed and laughed. “Here, we’ll need a stool for you, won’t we?” she said then, standing up. “So you can make tea, too.”

  I beamed up at her, unable to imagine anything more exciting.

  Mary pulled up a stool from one of the stacks and set it in front of the stove, then pointed out all the various herbs on the shelves above. I could just reach them from the stool, my belly pressed into the front of the stove. We set a pot of water to boiling. As we waited, we wrapped two small piles of herbs in two cheesecloth pouches and dropped them into two mugs. “Now you just pour the water over and let it brew,” Mary said, ruffling my hair.

  Tea in hand, we made our way back to the front desk. I couldn’t take my eyes off my cup and walked slowly, deliberately. With relief, I set it down on the desk and breathed in the hot herb scent.

  Suddenly the door slammed open. I turned to see a woman walking hesitantly into the room, someone I didn’t recognize from the farm or square.

  “Hi,” she whispered, approaching Mary and eyeing me nervously. “Can you help me? They say you can see the future.” She walked in small steps toward the desk.

  Mary set down her tea and laughed, a warm, rich laugh that made me think of honey. “I used to know a woman who could see the future—visions, she called it—but I’ve never had that gift, my friend.”

  The woman just stood there. “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said. “I’m being eaten alive, and there’s nothing I can do. Please help me.” Her face was flushed red. Her breath labored and quick. There was a yearning so strong in her I could almost reach out and stroke it there beside her.

  “What is it?” I asked, surprising myself. I had never seen anyone so raw before, just laid bare.

  Mary turned and looked at the woman then. “She’s in love,” she whispered. She rose from her chair and walked toward the woman, staring right at her.

  The woman shut her eyes. Faint lines stretched out from her eyes and mouth and faded into her hair. You could see all her days in the field, all the harvesting she’d done. Her cow-milking hands were red and chapped.

  “She’s burning up,” Mary said softly, pressing the back of her hand against the woman’s forehead. “Tessa, could you make up a batch of tea, black leaves with cranberry bark crushed in, maybe?” She winked at me. “The last jar on the left and second from the right.”

  I nodded and scurried off my stool as if an army were beating at the door.

  My hands shook as I pushed a stool up to the side of the stove and climbed up and stared at the jars. Mary’s words jumbled in my head. Last on the right or left? Second from the left? I squinted at the black markings scribbled on tape stuck to the jars but couldn’t make them out. The herbs inside looked reddish black on either side. I panicked, then reached out and grabbed the last jar on the left and the second from the right. This is wrong, I thought, close to tears, as I sprinkled a bit of herb from each jar onto a piece of cheesecloth and folded it into a pouch.

  By the time I was done, I could hear sobbing from the front of the room. I raced back, holding up the cup so it wouldn’t spill. The tea made me a part of this, and I felt necessary in a way I never had before.

  The woman was hunched over Mary’s desk, weeping.

  I set down the tea in front of the woman. “Here you go,” I said, my heart pounding.

  “She’s in love with her neighbor’s husband,” Mary whispered.

  The woman jolted up then. “I can’t help it,” she said. “I feel so dirty, like a criminal. I feel it in every vein of my body.”

  “I know,” Mary soothed. “I know. My friend Tessa here made you some tea; why don’t you try it?”

  “Yes,” the woman said, picking up the cup. “Oh, yes, I’m sorry, thank you. My name is Beatrice, by the way. I come from outside Spring-field. I’m sorry for this, for being this way.”

  Mary leaned over and put her hand on Beatrice’s shoulder. Her hair fell forward as she peered in Beatrice’s face. I watched Beatrice take a sip of tea and was relieved when she didn’t collapse afterward.

  “I’ve been in love like that, too,” Mary said.

  I was confused. “But isn’t that good?” I asked. Not that I knew anything about it.

  “Sometimes,” Mary said. “If you’re loved back.”

  At that, the woman began crying again. “I keep looking for him everywhere. I stand at my window so I can see him tending his crops outside. I dream his face when I go to bed and then when I wake up in the morning.”

  “It’s like a sickness,” Mary said, nodding. “It is.”

  “I’ve gone to meet him in the barn. He doesn’t love me, doesn’t want me, but I’ve let him do things to me that I’ve never even let my husband do. He uses me up and then zips up his pants and leaves me lying there, like some whore. And I go back and back. I whisper I love you to him, but he never even looks me in the eye.”

  “Keep drinking your tea,” Mary said. “It’ll help. Cranberry root always soothes an unrequited love. I’ll give you a handful before you leave, from my garden in back.”

  Beatrice smiled slightly and downed the rest of her tea. I watched, fascinated, as she wiped bits of root from her lips.

  “Thank you,” she said, looking at me. I looked down, blushing straight to my toes.

  “You need to boil cranberry root every day,” Mary said, “and drink it with your meals, and whenever you are feeling like you really need it. Put a black curtain over that window you watch him from, and hang garlic across the top. You can also sip honey water mixed with cinnamon to make your sleep more dreamless. If you want to dream, just not of him, boil cranberry root, too, and use that water with the honey.”

  “Yes,” Beatrice said, sitting up straight. “Yes, I’ll do that. I want to be free from this.” Already her cheeks were becoming less flushed. Her face seemed to soften, as if we’d sprayed it with mist.

 
“Wait here,” Mary said. “We’ll get you some herbs to take home.”

  We went back to the kitchen. Mary reached for the second jar on the right, lifted out some of the cranberry root, and dropped it in a small paper bag.

  I breathed out in relief. “I was so scared,” I said. “I thought I’d picked the wrong one. I couldn’t remember.” I cringed then, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.

  “It doesn’t really matter,” Mary said, lowering her voice. “When you’re foolish about love, herbs can only help so much.” I looked up at her, shocked. Mary tied up the bag and winked down at me.

  When we came back, Beatrice seemed a different woman from the one who’d skulked through the door a half hour before. She clutched her bag of herbs and radiantly offered Mary a small stack of bills.

  “Thank you,” Mary said, taking the bills and hugging Beatrice as if she’d known her forever. When Beatrice leaned down to hug me as well, I found myself hoping she would always be the way she was right then.

  The moment the door closed, Mary turned to me and rolled her eyes, letting out a deep breath. She handed me two of the bills in her hand, then rolled up the rest and thrust them in her skirt pocket.

  I looked toward the door, and at Beatrice’s empty cup of tea, and at the two bills in my palm. “But is it wrong?” I asked, a pang of guilt sweeping through me. “To take this?” I clutched the bills in my hand. “It feels weird. She was so sad.”

  “We didn’t ask Beatrice to come here,” Mary said. “If she wants to give us her money, let her.” She shrugged. “And of course she’s sad. Who isn’t?”

  “Oh,” I said. I looked at the ground, confused.

  “A cup of tea can’t change someone’s heart, no matter how powerful the herbs in it are. The herbs have a mind of their own, you know.” She laughed. “But you make people believe in extraordinary things, and extraordinary things will happen. The rest is up to her. It’s the same as in the circus.”

  “The circus?”

  She grinned at me. “Well, you know,” she said, raising her eyebrows and leaning toward me, “I was in one before I came here. I performed on the trapeze. I wore glitter all along my cheeks and down my arms, and turned circles in the air.” She drew out the words, filling them with flourishes. I forgot all about Beatrice.

  “Trapeze?” I repeated.

  “A long bar and two pieces of rope,” she said, “hanging from the sky. Like a swing. You can sit on it or swing from your shoulders or ankles or knees. You can even hang on it from your chin.”

  My eyes were enormous as I stared at her. “What was it like?” I breathed. “What did you do?” I pictured Mary in the air then, like a bird. Her chin resting on a bar the way she rested it in her hands and peered down at me, sitting behind her desk.

  “It was like flying,” she said, smiling and widening her cat’s eyes. “Like having no weight to you, no bones, no skin. It was like melting right into air. And I did flying-trapeze acts, too, with a catcher.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You swing out, holding the bar with your palms, and just let go.” She stretched her arms in front of her, pushing away the air. “You just fly, Tessa, and in those moments you can twist or do somersaults or just keep your body pressed into one straight line until the catcher catches you. But in those moments, time stops completely.”

  I laughed. “Time can’t stop!”

  “Of course it can,” she said, pretending to be offended. Then she leaned down and whispered in my ear: “Because it’s magic. Up there, that high, there are no rules!”

  I was still giddy that night at the dinner table, bursting with it. I was so desperate to share my news and excitement that I actually looked around the table—at my mother’s worn face, my brothers’ smirking mouths, Geraldine’s hulk on the other side of the table. I imagined telling them all about Mary and the circus, releasing the words and letting them explode over that table like fireworks. For a minute I imagined that we would all laugh together. Then my father glanced up and met my eyes, and the words died in my throat.

  Later, in the quiet of the bedroom, I looked over at Geraldine. Her bed was parallel to mine, on the other side of the room. A faint bit of moonlight streamed in the window, illuminating the squares on the quilt that covered her. Her dull brown hair spread over her pillow.

  “Guess what?” I whispered.

  “What?” I heard, a second later.

  “I know a secret.”

  Geraldine threw off her quilt and sat up. She glared at me. “Tell me.”

  “You have to promise you won’t tell Mom and Dad,” I said. I wanted so badly to tell someone. The words were bubbling out of me; I could practically see them floating in the air.

  “I don’t have to do anything, munchkin. Tell me now!”

  I sat back on the bed and crossed my arms. After a moment, she sighed loudly. “Fine,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said, my pulse racing, my heart in my stomach. I lowered my voice. “Did you know that Mary Finn was in the circus?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I squinted in the dim light, focusing on her face. “No, really,” I said. “She flew on the trapeze. She said she knew people who could eat fire!”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

  “No, no,” I said. “She knew boys covered in fish scales, girls with wings! She said she knew men with bodies as tall as skyscrapers or as short as daffodils.” The words spilled out on top of each other.

  “How do you know?”

  “I met her!” I said. “I went to her library.”

  Geraldine sat still for a minute, then said, “What’s she like?” She looked at me with wide eyes, waiting. For a second, she seemed almost shy.

  “Oh, she’s wonderful,” I breathed. “She’s so beautiful and she smells like cinnamon and she tells the best stories and can tell fortunes, too.”

  “And she was really in the circus?”

  “The Velasquez Circus, the famous one from Mexico.”

  “I know them!” she said. “They came to Kansas City last year.”

  I spent the next half hour talking about Mary—the library and jars of herbs, the men who lined up to check out books from her. Geraldine listened, rapt.

  “I know Mom and Dad don’t like her,” she said, hugging her knees, “but I think she looks like a princess.”

  “Me too,” I whispered. “I want to be just like her.”

  At that, Geraldine let out a huge guffaw. “You? You could never be like her! You’re too ugly,” she said, the old smile creeping over her face. “And a freak!”

  She turned her back to me then and collapsed onto her bed, snorting.

  Shame shot through me, into every part of my body. I lay back in my bed and pulled the covers over me.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next morning, I woke up dreaming of the circus. Mary and I on the flying trapeze, soaring over everyone, while men breathed out fire on all sides. We took off into the air and just kept on going, past the fire and through the circus tent, up into the sky above. I looked down and saw my family, no longer gigantic but tiny specks, down below. Good-bye, I waved, grasping Mary’s hand.

  I woke up with a pounding heart, and felt disappointment wash over me as I looked around the dusty, wood-filled room, and at Geraldine’s body slumped on the bed across from me. I glared at her, wished I could will her away completely.

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes. It was only a matter of time before she told on me, I thought, but there was no use in punishing myself. I slipped out of bed and stepped into my clothes.

  “Where are you going?” Geraldine asked, sitting up.

  I ignored her, couldn’t wait to get away from her and from all of them. Today I would not even bother to wait until after lunch. I ran down the stairs and into the front yard as if a ghost were chasing me.

  Mary looked up as I burst through the door of Mercy Library. I almost stopped in my tracks, she was s
o dazzling. “I was about to close up for an hour and head into town for a few things,” she said. “You want to come?”

  She stood by the front desk, dropping her keys and some letters into her purse and then swooping it up and over her shoulder. I nodded and watched, fascinated, as she slipped a pair of wing-shaped sunglasses over her face and rubbed her forefinger into a small pot that was open on her desk, then spread a dark coral color over her lips, the same color as her toenails in her open sandals.

  “Let’s go,” she said, brushing past me and reaching for my hand behind her. She locked the door and we ran down the steps and into the grass, her skirt swishing around her ankles.

  I had to walk fast to keep up. “A beautiful day, isn’t it, Tessa?” She grinned down at me and gestured to the trees and sky. It was late summer and the air was filled with the scents of grass and flowers, the faint traces of hay and manure. The sky was bright blue and the leaves dripped and trembled against it. I could hardly believe it was the same world I had lived in before, that I’d just run through to get to the library, to her.

  Our feet crunched in the gravel as we passed the lumberyard. I was so proud. I’m not a freak, I wanted to say to everyone we passed. Look. I wished Geraldine could see me right then, see that I didn’t need her, or any of them.

  “So what do you want to do when you grow up?” Mary asked, reaching down and flipping up a lock of my hair.

  “I don’t know,” I mumbled, embarrassed.

  “Oh, come on. Surely you must love something, right? Maybe dancing? I can see you as a dancer, something like that.” She spun around.

  “I would like to work in the library someday, too,” I said. I looked at her shyly. It seemed like a bold thing to say, but she didn’t look surprised.

  “You can do that now,” she said. “I was thinking maybe I could pay you a bit to stay in the afternoons. You can help me sort the books, keep up with the paperwork. You can look after the desk while I’m talking to the folks who come in wanting fortunes and spells.” She opened her eyes wide and made a witchy face as we stepped into the street that led to the square.