"And this is Lupe's brother, Juan Diego--he's the only one who can understand what she says," Soledad continued.
Juan Diego was in a tent full of girls close to his age; a few were as young as (or younger than) Lupe, only ten or twelve, and there were a couple of fifteen-or sixteen-year-olds, but most of the girl acrobats were thirteen or fourteen. Juan Diego had never felt as self-conscious. He was not used to being around athletic girls.
A young woman hung upside down from the skywalking ladder at the apex of the troupe tent; the tops of her raw-looking bare feet, inserted in the first two rope rungs, were flexed at rigidly held right angles to her bare shins. She swung back and forth, her forward momentum never changing, as she stepped out of one rope rung, rhythmically moving ahead to the next--and, never losing her rhythm, to the next. There were sixteen steps in the skywalk, start to finish; at eighty feet, without a net, one of those sixteen steps could be your last. But the skywalker in the acrobats' troupe tent seemed unconcerned; an insouciance attended her--she looked as relaxed as her untucked T-shirt, which she held to her chest (her wrists were crossed on her small breasts). "And this," Soledad was saying, as she pointed to the upside-down skywalker, "is Dolores." Juan Diego stared at her.
Dolores was La Maravilla of the moment; she was The Wonder in Circus of The Wonder, if only for a fleeting half-second--Dolores would not be prepubescent for long. Juan Diego held his breath.
The young woman, who was named for "pain" and "suffering," just kept skywalking. Her loose gym shorts revealed her long legs; her bare belly was wet with sweat. Juan Diego adored her.
"Dolores is fourteen," Soledad said. (Fourteen going on twenty-one, as Juan Diego would long remember her.) Dolores was beautiful but bored; she seemed indifferent to the risk she was taking, or to--more dangerously--any risk. Lupe already hated her.
But the lion tamer's thoughts were what Lupe was reciting. "The pig thinks Dolores should be fucking, not skywalking," Lupe babbled.
"Who should she be--" Juan Diego started to ask, but Lupe wouldn't stop babbling. She stared at Ignacio.
"Him. The pig wants her to fuck him--he thinks she's done with skywalking. There's just no other girl who's good enough to replace her--not yet," Lupe said. She went on to say that Ignacio believed it was a conflict if The Wonder gave him a hard-on; the lion tamer found it impossible to fear for a girl's life if he also wanted to fuck her.
"Ideally, as soon as a girl gets her period, she shouldn't be a skywalker," Lupe elaborated. Ignacio had told all the girls that the lions knew when the girls got their periods. (Whether this was true or not, the girl acrobats believed it.) Ignacio knew when the girls had their periods because they became anxious around the lions or avoided the lions altogether.
"The pig can't wait to fuck this girl--he thinks she's ready," Lupe said, nodding to the serene, upside-down Dolores.
"What does the skywalker think?" Juan Diego whispered to Lupe.
"I'm not reading her mind--La Maravilla has no thoughts right now," Lupe said dismissively. "But you're wishing you could have sex with her, too--aren't you?" Lupe asked her brother. "Sick!" she said, before Juan Diego could answer her.
"What does the lion tamer's wife--" Juan Diego whispered.
"Soledad knows the pig fucks the girl acrobats, when they're 'old enough'--she's just sad about it," Lupe told him.
When Dolores got to the end of the skywalk, she reached up for the ladder with both hands and allowed her long legs to hang down; her scarred bare feet were not many inches above the ground when she let go of the ladder and dropped to the dirt floor of the tent.
"Remind me," Dolores said to Soledad. "What does the cripple do? Something not with his feet, probably," the superior young woman said--a goddess of bitchery, Juan Diego thought.
"Mouse tits, spoiled cunt--let the lion tamer knock her up! That's her only future!" Lupe said. Vulgarity to this extreme was uncharacteristic of Lupe, but she was reading the minds of the other girl acrobats; Lupe's language would coarsen at the circus. (Juan Diego didn't translate this outburst, of course--he was smitten by Dolores.)
"Juan Diego is a translator--the brother is his sister's interpreter," Soledad told the proud girl. Dolores shrugged.
"Die in childbirth, monkey twat!" Lupe said to Dolores. (More mind reading--the other girl acrobats hated Dolores.)
"What did she say?" Dolores asked Juan Diego.
"Lupe was wondering if the rope rungs hurt the tops of your feet," Juan Diego said haltingly to the skywalker. (The raw-looking scars on the tops of Dolores's feet were obvious to anyone.)
"At first," Dolores answered, "but you get used to it."
"It's good that they're talking to each other, isn't it?" Edward Bonshaw asked Flor. No one in the troupe tent wanted to stand next to Flor. Ignacio stood as far away from Flor as he could get--the transvestite was a lot taller and broader in the shoulders than the lion tamer.
"I guess so," Flor said to the missionary. No one wanted to stand next to Senor Eduardo, either, but that was only because of the elephant shit on his sandals.
Flor said something to the lion tamer, and received the shortest possible reply; this
brief exchange happened so quickly that Edward Bonshaw didn't understand.
"What?" the Iowan asked Flor.
"I was asking where we might find a hose," Flor told him.
"Senor Eduardo is still thinking about Flor having a penis," Lupe said to Juan Diego. "He can't stop thinking about her penis."