Rain Village

by Carolyn Turgeon

  “But how can I make him stay faithful?” I heard her whisper, her voice all twisted up from any way I’d ever heard it.

  “I have no mind for vision or prophecies,” Mary whispered then. “I just know what the cards say. But if I were you I would wear a yellow skirt and toss yarrow root in his tea before bed. It will keep him close to home when he wants to wander.” She reached down and held up a handful of something green and glittering, then quickly wrapped it in a kerchief and slid it to Mrs. Adams.

  “Thank you,” the woman whispered, wiping her face. Mary looked up then, straight at me, through the books. Her eyes like cat’s eyes, blue as sapphires. I ducked. A moment later I heard Mrs. Adams shuffling away, and prayed Mary was following her.

  My heart pounded.

  “What are you doing, little girl?” I heard Mary’s smoky, low voice over me and looked up. The scent of gingerbread wafted down the aisle.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, but she just smiled and beckoned for me to come toward her.

  “Have you come to visit me?” she asked. “These women, they always want my advice. They think I’m some kind of witch.” She made a spooky face and I laughed without thinking. “Then they ignore me on the streets, pretend they haven’t come by to tell me their heartbreaks and woes. They’re embarrassed that they have hearts at all, I think.”

  I smiled. “I sneaked out of my house. I’ve never been here before.”

  “Come,” she said. “There’s probably a line out the door by now.”

  I began following her through the stacks to the front of the library, staring at her multicolored swirling skirt.

  “Have you come for some books, too?” she asked, looking back.

  I blushed. “I can’t read,” I said.

  She looked at me with surprise just as we came to her desk, where three people stood waiting for her return. All old farmers, I realized, with their hands full of books. I expected them to be angry, having been made to wait like that, but they all lit up and practically shone as Mary came near them.

  “Well, we’ll have to fix that,” she said, winking at me, before taking her seat behind the desk. “Why don’t you sit next to me while I help these gentlemen?” She smiled up at the first man in line as I sat on a stool nearby.

  “Shakespeare, I see,” Mary said to the man. “The sonnets. They’ll make a romantic of you yet, Joe.”

  I swear that old farmer blushed all the way down to his collarbone. “I liked Troilus and Cressida,” he said. “You were right about that’un.”

  Mary smiled, then picked up another book and put it in with the one he was holding. “You’ll like this even better.”

  I watched Mary check out books for at least half an hour before the library began emptying out. I stared at her mass of hair, so black it seemed to glint blue in parts, and her brown shoulders. My sister had brought home a movie magazine once and I had felt the same way then, looking at the women with pale hair and dark lips, their eyebrows like swooping lines across their foreheads. I touched my hair with my hands, imagined my body stretching up and filling out, covered with swishing fabrics like the ones Mary wore. This is what it means to be a woman, I thought. She picked up each book and thumbed to the cards in the back, and I watched her strong, sure hands.

  I sat on the stool, praying she wouldn’t tell me to leave.

  After a while, when the library had cleared out, Mary turned to me. “It’s busiest in the mornings and evenings,” she said. “Mostly I have the afternoons to myself.” She smiled. “So tell me, why don’t you know how to read? Aren’t you in school?”

  “No,” I said softly. “My folks don’t believe in schooling. I’m supposed to work in the fields with the rest of them, but they don’t want me on account of my smallness.” I could feel my face growing red and lifted up my hands to cover it.

  “Don’t believe in schooling?” she said. “What do they have you do all day, then?”

  I looked up at her, nervous, but saw she wasn’t laughing. “I used to have to do chores but my house is so big, I couldn’t do much. I can’t do anything right is what my mama says. Sometimes I sneak out and hide in the fields or come to town to watch people. My mama wants me to eat potatoes and stretch my body in the window so I’ll get bigger. Then I can make my contributions, she says.”

  “Well, you should have visited me sooner because that doesn’t sound like much fun at all.” She laughed. “That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, in fact.”

  I took my hands slowly from my face and rested them in my lap. I looked up at her and smiled.

  “You know,” she said, leaning in closer, “I didn’t get along with my family either.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” she said. “My father was not a nice man. I left home as soon as I was able.”

  “Oh, one day I would like to do that.” All of a sudden it seemed possible that I could leave Oakley some day, just like that.

  “You will,” she said. “There’s a big place for you in the world, no matter what you think now. You’re like I was when I was your age, back when I thought I had no place at all.”

  I just looked to the floor, my heart beating wildly.

  “What do you love to do, Tessa?”

  I looked up at her, afraid she was making fun of me. “Me?” I asked.

  “Of course.”

  I scrunched up my mind and thought hard about her question. I could barely think of anything I liked, let alone loved. I knew I didn’t like farming or shucking corn. I knew I didn’t like Oakley, or my giant, ravenous family, or the vegetables that spilled from the counter and sink and onto the floor. I knew I didn’t like the way I felt all the time, so freakish and small, so scared of everything.

  “I don’t know,” I said, finally, watching the light streaming in from the windows and slanting through the air. “This is the only thing I’ve ever loved, being here right now.” It came up on me just like that, the realization that there was nowhere I’d rather be, that this was as close to happiness as I’d ever been.

  She smiled. “It’s a good place, this library. Like entering another world. You can open up any of these books and just forget about the fields and rivers outside, the farms and horses. The past.”

  “It’s so different here,” I said. “You’re so different.”

  She peered into me and shook out a cigarette from a pouch beside her. The tobacco and paper crackled as she lit up. “Tell me about yourself, Tessa Riley,” she said.

  I stared at the crazy-quilt skirt my mother had sewn for me, fingering the hem. I felt paralyzed, convinced I could never speak of my own life out loud, but I still felt the stories beating at my throat and lips.

  “I have a sister named Geraldine,” I began, “and two brothers, Matthew and Connor. Geraldine and I share a room and the ceiling is as high as the stars. My mom’s name is Roberta, and my dad’s name is Lucas. They don’t notice me much, though. They’re always busy in the fields.”

  “Really?” Mary asked.

  I nodded solemnly. I’m not sure what possessed me then, but for the first time in my life my mouth just opened and everything came rushing out. I told Mary about the wooden house and the fields, and the rows of gem-hard corn we based our livelihood on. I told her about my favorite log and my father’s terrifying hands. I told her about how my mother made all my clothes out of the scraps of my sisters’ and brothers’ jumpers and dresses and pants. And I told her about how my mother laughed at me as she stitched my skirts and blouses, how she called them “clothes for a baby’s doll.”

  Mary leaned toward me and touched my arm. “They just have their own vision,” she said. “For people like you and me, the world is different.”

  I thought of the world outside my window, and the one I dreamt about when I was out in the fields alone. Not knowing what to say, I just looked up at her and smiled.

  She stood and stretched. “I’m making some tea. Want a cup?”

  “Yes, please,” I said, though I wa
sn’t quite sure. She winked at me and started walking to the open space beyond the stacks, on the left side of the room. Her sandals clacked dully on the floorboards. Alone, I stared at her desk, trying to memorize everything on it before she got back—the glossy cards and scattered notebooks, the rumpled papers for her cigarettes, a discarded silver bracelet, a tiny clown figurine painted red and yellow. I wanted things like that someday, I decided. Things of my very own.

  Soon the whole place smelled like herbs. When Mary reemerged with two steaming cups of tea a few minutes later, it seemed like the most exotic thing in the world. I peered into my cup, staring at the greenish water with the herbs floating at the top.

  “It’s my special recipe,” Mary whispered. “It will make you irresistible.”

  When I took a sip it was like drinking grass and sage.

  “I have an idea,” she said, setting down her cup. “Why don’t we write out your name? It’s such a good name; it’s a shame not to set it down somewhere.”

  We grabbed our tea and she led me out the door, over to a pile of wood stacked against the building. The sun, low in the sky now, made the landscape blaring and golden. I shielded my face with my hands and stared into it: the mountains hovering in the distance, the sun seeping through them like melting butter.

  “Here we go,” Mary said, pulling a long twig from the pile. And she did the most amazing thing. She knelt close to the ground and began drawing shapes into the dirt.

  “That,” she said, pointing, “is a T. For Tessa. Do you hear that? Ta.” Her mouth moved slowly over the sound, then spat it from the roof of her mouth.

  “Ta,” I said.

  As the sun dipped lower and lower into the horizon, Mary carved into the ground and broke my name into a stream of sounds and shapes: the crossing lines of a T and an E, the two snake shapes spinning out next to them, the shape of a swing set when you see it from the side. The letters seemed to swarm through the dirt, sparkling as if they had a life of their own.

  “Your turn,” she said. I grabbed the twig and Mary guided me through each letter, slowly, until my name lay across the dirt twice—once in her elegant hand, and once in my own scrawl. When I was done putting my name there, I don’t think I had ever seen anything so astonishing.

  “I did it! I can do that!” I cried.

  “By the end of this month, little girl, you’ll be able to read words straight from the page. Why don’t you come back tomorrow and I’ll show you some new letters? In the afternoon?”

  “There are more?” I asked, and then I thought about our name at Riley Farm, set out for the world to see. It was all so overwhelming to me, but Mary just laughed.

  “I’m not sure what my parents will say,” I said. My heart began to sink then. I had no doubt this would be my first and last visit to Mercy Library, and that I would pay for it as soon as I got home.

  “I know they don’t believe in schooling, but wouldn’t they like you to learn to read and write?”

  “My father doesn’t believe in it. And my mother wouldn’t want me to learn here, from you.” I clapped my hand over my mouth. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You know, Tessa,” Mary said, bending down to me. Her earrings swung back and forth and made a tinkling sound. “There have been more popular women than me in the world—among the womenfolk, that is. It’s all right. But it’d be a real shame for you to go through life without any words. You’re a smart girl.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered, wondering why I felt like crying. I was so afraid I would never see her again, that I would wake up and realize I had only dreamt this. Fear clenched my chest as I imagined endless days surrounded by giant corn, the smell of earth on my hands, my family towering over me and stomping through the fields. It was like flying through the clouds one minute and dropping back to earth the next. I looked down at my name carved in the dirt, and I leaned down, snatched it from the earth, and dumped it in my pocket.

  “Now give me a hug and get out of here,” she said, and leaned in and gathered me up. For a second the strong spice scent was everywhere. “I hope I’ll see you again soon, Tessa Riley. Come visit me anytime at all.”

  Walking back through town, past the fields and farmhouses, I felt like a completely new person. I grasped the dirt in my pocket with my fist, felt it tingle in my palm, and stared up at the black star-speckled sky. The dirt crunched under my feet. I closed my eyes, listening to the rhythm of my walking, the lusty sounds of crickets and frogs in the distance. It was August, and the nighttime just made the heat seem thicker and more wet, like a substance I had to wade through. My heart pounded. The world was bursting with life. I took my time getting home, breathing the night air in and out, stretching out my arms to take it all in. Even if my father beats me black and blue, I thought, this day will have been worth it. No matter how bad things get, I will have this day.

  When Riley Farm appeared ahead of me, I squashed the dirt in my hands, steeling myself, preparing for anything. I crept across the front lawn, deafened by the sounds of the crickets and cicadas, and pushed through the front door as quietly as possible. The house felt so stark and prim against the lush night. I felt a knot form in my throat and stay there. I stood for a moment in the dark, empty hallway, barely breathing, then heard the clattering of silverware coming from the kitchen. I stood for a few minutes longer, suspended between two worlds, before I tiptoed into the kitchen, to the round oak table we all crowded around.

  My father and brothers shoveled bread and stew into their mouths, not even looking up. I took my seat next to my sister, and my mother handed me a bowl without saying a word.

  “Where have you been, child?” my father asked.

  I froze. “I’m sorry, sir,” I said, staring into my stew. “I was doing my stretches outside.”

  I felt his eyes on me and winced.

  Tessa, I thought, squeezing my eyes shut and focusing on the dirt, the shapes, the sounds pulsing from Mary’s tongue. Ta.

  “Eat your stew,” he said, in a voice so tight I thought it might whip out and lash me. Later, I knew, he would make up for whatever he was holding back now.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I came from a long line of farmers whose lives were controlled by seasons and whose skin was hard against the wind. My family had been on that Kansas land longer than anyone could remember, and our name was Riley, a name marked on our front gate and on the windowsills, we were so proud of it. The Rileys were a strong clan, my mother always told us. We came from the earth and our arms hung heavy at our sides.

  When I was born the midwife lifted me into the air and screamed; she thought my mother had birthed some kind of rodent, I was so small. Once they’d finally cleaned me off enough to see that I was a normal baby—though I was about a third of the size of the usual kind—my mother decided not to call me Geraldine after her sister, as she’d planned to do. “Geraldine is no name for a munchkin,” she said. “Geraldine is a name that’d stretch two city blocks.” So my mother plucked a name out of the sky and called me Tessa, and I got a Geraldine for a sister two years later—a baby sister as big as a tree stump.

  I don’t think it’s any stretch to say that my mother hated having such a strange creature emerge from her body, but she tried her hardest to challenge fate and whatever devil had played such a trick on her. She taught me to do backbends and headstands and cartwheels, and made me do stretches every day in the kitchen window, but while Geraldine grew and grew till her head bumped the ceilings of the shops in town, I remained what I was: a terrible mistake. Please, I whispered into air every night, holding the word on my tongue like sugar, but when I got to four feet, time stopped for me and the world went on and left me behind.

  Probably my mother tried loving me as long as she did out of disappointment, pure and simple. Geraldine, despite her gift for growing, was an ill-tempered, dumb child at best, one who snorted and cried when she didn’t get enough to eat, and my brothers were not good for much besides hauling in our crops and trampling down everyone el
se’s. Of course, when it came down to it, my siblings were far better children than I and kept that farm running and food on our plates, but I think my mother could have used someone to talk to sometimes, someone with a bit of soul in them. I guess it’s an easy thing for me to say now, when seeing my mother again is about as likely for me as sprouting fins, but I think my mother could have found a friend in me back then if I hadn’t shamed her so much. Some things aren’t ever meant to be, I guess. All I know is that it’s a terrible thing to be born someone’s failure in this world.

  When all is said and done, though, maybe that was what saved me. I was so light my feet barely made dents in the moist earth outside. Sometimes I passed a mirror and wasn’t sure whether I was reflected back in it. And little by little I just slipped away; people have a habit of doing that sometimes—just falling away, out of some lives and into other ones, out of one world and into the next. I ate dinner with my family every night, and I slept in the bed my father had carved for me when I was less than a year old, but little by little they just stopped seeing me is all. By the time I was twelve, plenty of times my parents didn’t even notice whether I was in a room or out of it, and more than once my mother ran right into me because she didn’t know I was there.

  Once I stopped staring out the windows and longing to feel the ceilings of buildings with my head, the world took on a different shape. I stopped even pretending to do chores. The days became silent and mine, and I began to think that maybe there were other things besides rows and rows of corn and radishes, and I began listening to the silence in the house, wondering at what lay beyond the fields and the trees that marked out our land.