were in the next-door shack, which had big shutters opening out onto the yard and served as a communal parlour. The room smelled heavily of citrus and was crowded with fraying armchairs. Rates led her in by the hand through the open door. They’d been told about her and knew what to expect. There was a White Negro, a Rubber-Skinned Man, a Girl With No Arms and a Girl With No Legs. Michael sat scratching his pockmarked face on a piano stool. Seeing her for the first time, he smiled slowly.
‘Jonsy,’ Mr Rates said, gesturing at the yellow-haired paint-white Negro, whose cochineal-coloured suit matched his pink eyes. He stared at her, aghast. ‘And this—’ indicating a dark, heavy-jawed girl in a calico dress, who ended at the waist and appeared to be growing out of the florid roses on the rug ‘—this is Delia.’ Delia twitched a corner of her mouth and one eyebrow. ‘And Myrtle.’ A plump blonde woman in an orange kimono and red shawl half reclined in an uncomfortable-looking, over-stuffed green armchair, drinking from a tin cup.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said.
‘And this is Ted.’ Ted sat beside a small card table knitting a black stocking very nimbly. The Rubber-Skinned Man, she assumed, but he just looked ordinary.
‘And here,’ said Rates, grandly, ‘is Julia.’
She smiled. She was terrified.
‘Sit here, Julia, next to me,’ said Myrtle. ‘Want a drink?’ She flourished an opened bottle of brandy.
The chair was scratchy, the smell of perfume overpowering. Myrtle handed her a tin cup with brandy in the bottom. It warmed her and went straight to her head. So this is how it’s to be, she thought. No return.
After that, though she remembered talking to Myrtle about the journey, and realising that the hand raising the cup to Myrtle’s reddened lips was actually a very supple, long-toed foot rising gracefully from layers of skirt, she was so tired it all became dreamlike, and she said she really must go to bed or she’d fall asleep where she was.
*
In bed with a swimmy head from the brandy, she thought of old Solana back home. Her voice calling, high and thready. Lying there bedridden now, peevish thing worn out from nursing them all, the young men and boys, Marta, Julia too when they brought her in from the orphanage. Julia was the one in and out all day dealing with the dribble and phlegm, the smell of piss, the feeding and washing and wiping of mess. The night of the wedding she’d shown Solana the man’s card. ‘Look.’ In the process of emptying the old woman’s bedpan. ‘This man thinks I could make a lot of money on the stage.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Solana had just finished a coughing fit. Her eyes streamed and her nose ran clear water. Her face was like the picture of a brain in a book in Don Pedro’s study.
‘Why is it so ridiculous?’
Solana’s breath came in long icy shards. ‘What man anyway?’
‘I don’t know. Just a man. Sit up.’ Wiping the old woman’s nose.
Solana squinting knowingly. ‘What’s the matter with you? Someone upset you?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t know why you still let things upset you, Julia,’ she said, irritated, ‘I’ve told you enough: God loves you, that’s all you need to remember.’
‘I know.’
‘Do you know?’ – cough cough – ‘Do you? I don’t think so.’
‘I’ll fetch your broth,’ said Julia.
And later, in spite of the tiredness pinching her bones, she hadn’t been able to sleep. You have talent. She’d got up and gone down to the inner patio, drunk water from the pump and sat on the steps with her head leaning against the dusty pink wall. Indeed. You really ought to go on the stage. Her feet ached and she wanted to cry for no good reason. They were still at it in the salon, but it was peaceful here. Yes, I am a very lucky girl. I know.
And you, Julia— Solana’s voice when she was younger. You’ve done well. This lovely house. You started off in a cave and now look! You can read! That day he came for you, that day was your lucky day.
Solana came from Zacatecas and had two lost sons, one killed by Santy Ana’s soldiers, the other gone away with them to Texas and never come back. Died at the Alamo because he’d have returned if not, God knows he surely would have returned. Santy Ana was a fat little devil, Solana said. That good man Don Pedro, a great man, a kind man, took me in, and was fair from the first day. While Julia scoured pots and cleaned the sink, Solana told her how it was.
‘He took you in too with your curse, and he wouldn’t have any of us say a thing against it. Got you from the orphanage. And all I know is your mother went out walking in the dark of the moon, and that’s not your fault, and there’s no more to it than that.’
‘Why?’
‘Only God knows.’
‘There may be more people like me.’
‘Not where you came from. They wouldn’t have put you out if you’d been the same as them. You’re from the Diggers, way up there,’ pointing a finger up as if to Heaven. ‘It’s a terrible hard life up there, poor as dirt, but they’re not like you. There’s no more. You’re one of a kind, my love. Your mother wasn’t like you, no one was. Doesn’t make you worse than anyone else. You’re what you are. You’ve still got a soul. Now wash those radishes.’
The courtyard was softly shaded. There was that old iguana Federico on the vine watching her, a wily old beast who’d lived with the family for as long as anyone could remember. It had all been so pretty, the carretelas departing, the padrino escorting the bride, the horses’ manes white, threaded with scarlet. And all the lovely dresses, the orange, the pink, the blue one Marta screamed over. She should have given it to me, Julia thought. She’s got so many, she’d never have missed it. I could have altered it, it would have fitted. She stood up, the blue dress falling around her in imagination, Rates’s words in her head as she climbed to the gallery: Should you decide to make your fortune, Señorita, come and see me in New Orleans. She leaned out, pretending she was behind the footlights in a theatre. A cheering crowd threw roses. The men tossed their hats in the air. Such tiny fine feet, they said.
Yo soy como el chile verde, Llorona, picante pero sabraso . . .
Still. Not a single one of them would ever love her. Solana had made that clear. ‘I’ll be honest with you,’ she’d said, a long time ago, ‘you can be as good as anyone, and you can be proud and always stick up for yourself and get respect, but there’s one thing you won’t get, nena, and that’s a man. Not with your face so far gone. Don’t expect it.’
‘I know.’
Hadn’t she always?
‘The world’s a cruel place, and there’s nothing fair about it.’
Julia had been about nine or ten, and even then Solana had been very old. She’d taken Julia’s face between her hands and looked fiercely into her eyes and said, ‘Listen, you. It’s not your fault. None of it’s your fault. And you won’t get a man but it doesn’t matter. What’s a man? Same as a woman. Nothing. It all goes anyway.
