The Weight of Feathers

by Anna-Marie McLemore

  “My grandmother was a mermaid in Florida,” Lace said. “They swim with manatees and sea turtles there.”

  “Sure they do.”

  “It’s true.” She turned onto her stomach. The ends of her hair brushed the bank. The mud darkened the back of her tail. “I’m gonna get there one day. Be one of their mermaids.”

  If Florida was anything like his family’s show, they’d throw her out by the time she turned thirty. Thirty-five if she was really good.

  “Is that what you want?” he asked.

  “It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

  “Then you should do it. But you should know it’s not all you can do.”

  “Sure.” She turned over again. “I’ll just get a job with my rocket science degree.”

  “I mean it,” he said. “There aren’t a lot of people I know for sure are smarter than I am.” It didn’t matter how bad or how ugly he was. Pépère, always asking for the wingspan of the snowy owl, or when cobalt chloride was pink and when it was blue, had made sure Cluck didn’t grow up stupid. “My grandfather’s one of them. You’re one of them.”

  She squinted into the sun. “How do you know?”

  “You fooled all of us, didn’t you?” he asked. “You could do anything you want.”

  “I want to do something I’m good at,” she said. “I was getting good at this.”

  “You’re good at a lot of things.”

  She reached over for a black-red feather that had stuck to his collarbone.

  Her fingers skimmed his chest, and he flinched.

  Maybe this was how the peacocks felt at molting season, having him come around to pick up what they’d shed.

  “Can’t you collect somebody else’s?” he asked.

  “I like yours.”

  “But they grow in red.” The reason sounded as weak as the idea that he would hate white birds. It sounded like a superstition with no more weight than les contes de bonne femme, the old wives’ tales. He’d never needed to give it words. His family had always understood better than he had, and they did not tell strangers.

  Lace held the feather up to the light and blew on it, fluffing the barbs. A slick of river water still shone on her mouth. He wondered if it would taste more like her or more like the river.

  “Cuervo,” she said, soft as breathing out.

  “What?” he asked.

  “My last name should have been Cuervo,” she said. “It’s my father’s last name. But my grandmother made him change it to marry my mother.”

  “Why?”

  “It means ‘crow.’”

  Cuervo. Corbeau.

  Cluck knew what Lace meant, that they weren’t so different, that the space between them was made only of names and colors. But the bitterness went into Cluck like the slip of a paring knife. He would have wanted the choice not to be a red-streaked thing among all his family’s perfect black.

  Now her father took aim at the black birds in the woods, shooting his own name.

  Lace propped herself up on her elbows. A thin layer of silt coated her breasts.

  The scales on her back caught the light. He counted five, each perfect, like the adhesive rain hadn’t touched them. The reaction between the cyanoacrylate and the cotton of her dress should have burned them as much as the rest of her, hiding them. Instead they arced across the small of her back, smooth as coins of scar tissue, iridescent like the leucistic peacock’s eyespots. She moved her hips, and a handful of colors showed.

  The blade of that paring knife pulled back, the wound mending shut.

  She moved, and the waist of her tail slipped down an inch.

  He counted a sixth, a seventh, each iridescent as a blue mussel shell.

  “There’s something I want to show you,” he said, counting them again, this constellation of moons glowing under her skin.

  Árbol que nace torcido, jamás su tronco endereza.

  A twisted tree will not grow straight.

  Cluck took her right ankle in his hand. “It won’t hurt. I promise.”

  His hair was still wet with river water. It dampened his shirt collar, graying the white cloth.

  Lace’s soaked the back of her dress, turning the thin fabric cold. Her dress was a little like the one the adhesive rain ruined, off-white, saffron-colored flowers instead of blue. She was already forgetting the lost one. The details were falling away. How many petals the blue flowers had. Whether the agua de jamaica stain that stayed, stubborn, through so many washes was on the right sleeve or the left.

  Tía Lora had made them both. Missing her clutched at Lace.

  Now that she thought of her great-aunt, the act of showing herself to Cluck Corbeau in nothing but her tail felt like a betrayal. With her costume top gone, Lace hadn’t known what to wear on top—a bra? The camisole she slept in? So she’d just worn the tail, and the way Cluck looked at her made her feel brave and sure, like his stare was covering her so no one else could see her.

  Cluck soaked a brush in a dish of iodine. It smelled like nail polish remover, salt, balsamic vinegar left out too long. Lace’s stomach tightened. Smells like that no longer reminded her of painting her nails, but of the solvents they used on her in the hospital, the morphine holding her under. The smell wrapped around her throat.

  He ran the brush along the bottom of her foot. The feeling of bristles on her arch made her twitch.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You’re ticklish, aren’t you?”

  The iodine soaked into her foot, darkening the sole so it was almost as brown as her hair. “What’s this for?”

  “It’s good for climbing trees.” He held her other ankle and painted the sole of her left foot. “It seals your skin. Keeps things from getting in, makes you less sensitive to the grain of the bark.”

  The night she found him in his tree, the soles of his feet had been pale as his palms, shades lighter than the rest of him. They stood out like the moon. “You don’t use it.”

  “I’ve been climbing trees barefoot long enough I don’t need to.” He rinsed off the brush, twisted the iodine bottle shut. “My cousins all do it. It helps with the show.”

  The iodine dried, leaving the soles of her feet tight and leathery.

  He pulled her to standing. “Close your eyes.”

  She did. “Why?”

  His fingers brushed her shoulders and set a ribbon against her rib cage. The heel of his hand grazed her right breast, a band of thin satin following after.

  Weight pulled on her back. A feather skimmed her neck.

  She stopped his hands with hers. “Forget it. I’m not one of your fairies.”

  “Trust me, okay?”

  “Are you trying to convert me?” She reached back and slapped at him, her hand hitting the thigh of his pants.

  He gathered her hair and moved it to her left shoulder. “No.” He fastened the ribbon between her shoulder blades, his fingers warm on her dress. He tied the bow and knotted it. He moved her, turning her waist to lead her. “You can open.”

  Even down, the wings filled the mirror’s age-speckled glass. Her sudden breath in felt like taking air after surfacing.

  At first the wings looked white as flour-covered feathers. Then the eyespots showed their colors, like the tints of a rainbow. Those after-storm skies were never as bright as children painted them. The light washes, so watered down, didn’t live in crayon boxes. This was where to find them, on the eyes of white peacocks.

  A wire wing frame leaned up against the corner of the mirror, clean and bare as a winter tree. This was what Cluck did, making these winter branches, filling them in like there was summer in his hands.

  But he always covered them in bronze and blue and green, not the white of frost and the glint of color when the sun hit wet ice.

  “Those things on your back are a lot like these feathers, you know,” he said.

  “How?” she asked.

  “Iridescence.” He kept his hands on her waist. “The way the colors look like they’re changing depending on the angl
e. It’s all directionality. Polarization of light.” He moved her left hip a little forward, then her right, and the pale colors flashed like light through a prism. “Same as with the blue peacocks. Morpho butterflies, hummingbirds, fish.”

  His breath fell on the back of her neck. “The structures are hard to describe optically, because little adjustments to the angle of illumination change what you see.” The wood and water scent he picked up from swimming displaced the vinegar smell of the iodine. “It’s a pain in the ass to study, but it’s the best thing about them.”

  She shut her eyes, and listened, her pulse clinging to the spot where his breath heated her neck. Her father’s lessons never would’ve covered anything like this. To him, it wasn’t worth the time. Smart girls didn’t need to know what made some birds shimmer like soap bubbles.

  Her father had taken her to the shore at night to look for sea sparkle, those algae blooms glowing like moonstones, but that was different. Noctiluca scintillans lived in the water. Her father taught her about sea sparkle for the same reason he taught her about undertows and wasp jellyfish. Noctiluca scintillans shimmered with its own light, but with the right depth and nutrients, it flared into red tide. She was una sirena, and she should know the water was full of beautiful things that were one moon phase from turning poisonous.

  Cluck traced where the ribbons crossed. She didn’t point out that he was using his left hand. If she did, he’d stop.

  “Biologically speaking, it’s more trouble than it’s worth,” he said. “Turning yourself all those colors. Especially if you don’t have a lot of pigment, like white peacocks, or your scales. And you’re more susceptible to damage afterward.” His hand stopped over her escamas.

  She opened her eyes and met his in the mirror. The sharp note of arundo reed reached across the woods, warning her that if her birthmarks were not for turistas, they were even less for a gitano boy.

  “So my question is,” Cluck said. “Why do you have them?”

  His hair smelled like the wet leaves dotting the current.

  “Why do you have your feathers?” she asked.

  He dropped his eyes from the mirror, his half-smile sad. “You got me there.”

  She didn’t mean why were his red instead of all black. She meant what had given his family their plumes, the same as his question about her family’s escamas. They were both birthmarks. His feathers marked him as a Corbeau the way her escamas marked her as a Paloma. The things they wore on their bodies made them as distinct as water and sky.

  “Come on.” He took his hands off her back. “I’ll show you how to open them.”

  He took her outside and guided her up his favorite cottonwood, holding smaller branches away so the folded wings didn’t snag.

  The coat of iodine let her feel the warmth of the ground and the bark but not the texture. When she lost her balance, the ball of her foot slid as Cluck caught her. She braced for the friction, but it didn’t hurt.

  Cluck picked a branch he liked, and they stayed. He tied a ribbon to each of her hands, slack loops around her wrists. He held her hands, guiding them away from her body, until the bent wires unfolded, and the wings opened. They cast a translucent shadow on the ground below, like a glass-winged butterfly.

  He slid one hand between her back and the wings. “Wings aren’t so different from arms.” He touched her shoulder blades. “This is where the scapula connects to the rest of the body.”

  He pressed on her back just enough to ease her forward. She took a step, farther out on the bough. Cluck followed her, staying close enough to fill the space behind her.

  The sheer silhouette of her wings crossed the lower branches. Cluck guided her so slowly she could not startle and run back toward the trunk. His touch helped her keep her balance, but he was not keeping her up. He just moved her, one slow step at a time, toward leaves and open sky.

  He ran his hand down her upper arm. “This is where the secondary feathers attach.” Then her forearm. “And the primaries.” He put his fingers over hers. “And your thumb’s a lot like the alula. It helps direct flight the same way your thumb helps you do things with your hands.”

  She turned her palms, interlocking her fingers with his. She wanted to tell him how much she liked the red in his feathers. But if she brought it up, it’d just make him quiet. He was quick to talk, and even quicker to stop, this boy who did not like water.

  She pressed his left hand into her body, keeping her palm tight over the back of it so he couldn’t pull it away. Her thumb found the hollow between his palm and his three curved-under fingers. If they would not open, she could find her way in.

  With her next step forward, the branch felt narrower under her feet than she’d expected, and she faltered. Her hands flew out, reaching for leaves or clouds.

  Cluck gripped her waist. “I’ve got you.” He held her until she was still, and then lightened his touch enough to give her back the feeling of holding herself up. But his hands still stayed.

  She turned enough to kiss him, fast enough that she felt a hitch in his throat when her mouth got to his. The sense of falling did not touch her, not as long as her body was between the hands of this boy who felt steadier in the air than on the ground.

  But he must not have felt in his palms how anchored and still he made her. He left the smallest space between their lips and whispered again, “I’ve got you,” like he thought she might not know.

  Entre dos muelas cordales nunca pongas tus pulgares.

  Don’t put your thumbs between two wisdom teeth.

  “It’s your turn to go buy fruit.” Clémentine shoved money into Lace’s hand. “Get the same kind of peaches. And another purple watermelon.”

  Lace tried to hand it back. “I don’t want anyone seeing me. Even with makeup they all stare.”

  That wasn’t the whole truth though. If her mother or aunts had stopped by for strawberries or Meyer lemons, they’d have more questions than Lace had lies. The day she left, she could’ve pretended she was on her way out of town, to stay with her cousin or Martha’s friends. But if they saw her today, they’d wonder what she was still doing in Almendro, and if word got back to Abuela, she’d know, the same way she’d known about Cluck bringing Lace to the hospital.

  Clémentine rummaged in an old trunk until she found a wide-brimmed hat, its ribbon the color of lipstick. She set it on Lace’s head. “Now no one will see your face.”

  Lace caught her reflection in a window. The hat must have made Clémentine and her cousins look like actresses sunning themselves, but it made Lace look like she’d gotten into the attic and was playing dress-up.

  Clémentine adjusted the brim. “I’d go if the flower crowns made themselves, but they never do. Don’t forget a nectarine.”

  “Just one?” Lace asked.

  “For Nicole. She’ll only eat one and nobody else likes them.”

  So Lace went and bought coral peaches, that single nectarine, a Moon-and-Stars watermelon from the woman who knew she didn’t like rain.

  Lace watched for the brown-black of her mother’s or aunts’ hair.

  The first face she recognized wasn’t a Paloma, but a Corbeau. Dax stood on the edge of the market, jaw held tight, ready to throw his fists.

  Her hat blocked her view of who he was facing. She turned her head, lifting the brim.

  Matías. Dax stood across from her cousin.

  Matías held one foot a little in front of the other, set for a fight. He’d never beat on anyone, three against one, like Justin and his brothers. But if another man set down an insult, and if the other man was his size, he’d take the fight. Once he didn’t like the way some gabacho was looking at Martha at a gas station, saying things about how she should wear a tighter dress so everyone could see her. Matías left the man a bloody nose, and came away with a black eye. His aunts called him their little Quixote, all caballero, no brains.

  Dax was bigger than Matías, broader by a little and taller by a lot. Matías always fought fair, never kicking shins
or holding shirt collars. But Dax had been a few minutes from bringing a bloody tail to her family’s motel. There was nothing Lace could count on him not doing. Matías would get out no better than that shredded, stained cola de sirena.

  Dax said something Lace couldn’t hear.

  “We got as much right to be here as you, puto,” Matías said.

  Dax moved toward him, making him back up. “You stayed because we stayed. You can’t even think for yourselves.” He shoved Matías.

  Matías shoved him back, so hard Dax almost fell into a farmer’s stand. “You want to say that again?”

  Lace dropped the bag of fruit and ran. She slipped between them and pushed on her cousin’s chest. “Stop it,” she yelled. El caballero would get himself killed.

  Before Matías could check under the hat, Dax grabbed her. He dug his hands into her upper arms, fingers pressing her sleeves into her skin, and pulled her out of the way. He moved her, quick and clean as lifting one of his cousins during a show. Then he jammed a fist into Matías’ jaw.

  Matías returned it, hitting the side of Dax’s face. His punch fell easily as a stone skipped on the lake.

  “Stop it,” Lace screamed, loud enough that even Dax and Matías felt faces turn like the heads of sunflowers. “Just stop it.”

  Now half the market watched them.

  Dax dropped his raised fist. He and Matías both lowered their stares. Matías bent his neck to see under the hat brim, looking for the interrupter’s face.

  The start of a smile tensed the corner of his mouth, like her being there was so strange he had to try not to laugh about it.

  Leave it to Matías to find all this funny. She couldn’t have laughed if Justin had shown up and done his mermaid impression, batting his eyes like he was preening on a rock. She could still feel where Dax had grabbed her and pressed his thumbs into her, that sense that she might leak blood like sugar-water off bruised fruit.

  She waited for the rage in her cousin’s face. It didn’t come. Confusion made his eyes and mouth look lopsided, a hitch unevenly weighted.