Rain Village by Carolyn Turgeon

Author:Carolyn Turgeon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781932961249
Publisher: Unbridled Books
Published: 2006-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Soon we could hear the talkers calling out that night’s ballies over the din of the clanging pots and pans, using every trick of voice and turn of phrase to lure the townies into the tents where the moss-haired girl flipped her head back for the thousandth time, the fat lady tilted back and forth, letting the ripples of her body spill out behind her, and the reptile boy removed his shirt and let the people sigh or swoon or spit in disgust. You could feel the difference in the air, the way the excitement rode through it like a giant wave, and soon everyone began scattering to prepare for that night’s show.

The same electricity crackled through the air as the night before: the groan of the Ferris wheel gearing up, townspeople meeting up with their friends and heading toward the field in groups, coins jangling in their pockets. But I was not part of it that night. I was silent as Lollie and I walked back to the train, and I do not think she minded, herself lost in memory and regret.

“I’m going to lie down and rest,” I said, when we reached the car.

“Yes,” she said. Then, after a pause, “I know you miss her, Tessa,” she said. “I can see her in you.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling the tears beating against my heart.

Inside, I spread myself over the mattress. I tried to focus on Lollie’s creams and perfumes that lined the little dresser, but her voice curled around me, filling my vision with images of Mary roasting vegetables with Lollie or following Juan Galindo in the snow. She too must have felt comforted once, a long time before, knowing Lollie was close by. I shook the image off me. I saw the opal ring shimmering against Mary’s breast, with its thousands of colors. No! I thought quickly of Mauro’s curving eyelashes, his black eyes looking out at me through them, but then blinked the image away, furious.

It had been one year since I’d found Mary in the river, I realized then, and I had never, in all the time I’d been away, shared her with anyone else, never heard anyone else even speak her name.

Now stories of her colored the air, drifted across the camps that spread over the field, behind the midway and big top. She was part of the air we breathed. They had all held her name on their lips, had all whispered it in their sleep, just as I had.

Tears slipped over my face. I gulped for air.

I had not spoken of Mary either, not to anyone. I had not spoken of her in the factory, or as I’d passed through the city streets, clamping my hands over my ears to muffle the clanging of the trucks and streetcars, or as I’d waited by the train tracks, dreaming of a new life. The times I’d tried with Geraldine had been miserable failures. To speak of her now, with people who had known her

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