cheeks were becoming less flushed. Her face seemed to soften, as if we’d sprayed it with mist.
“Wait here,” Mary said. “We’ll get you some herbs to take home.”
We went back to the kitchen. Mary reached for the second jar on the right, lifted out some of the cranberry root, and dropped it in a small paper bag.
I breathed out in relief. “I was so scared,” I said. “I thought I’d picked the wrong one. I couldn’t remember.” I cringed then, wishing I’d kept my mouth shut.
“It doesn’t really matter,” Mary said, lowering her voice. “When you’re foolish about love, herbs can only help so much.” I looked up at her, shocked. Mary tied up the bag and winked down at me.
When we came back, Beatrice seemed a different woman from the one who’d skulked through the door a half hour before. She clutched her bag of herbs and radiantly offered Mary a small stack of bills.
“Thank you,” Mary said, taking the bills and hugging Beatrice as if she’d known her forever. When Beatrice leaned down to hug me as well, I found myself hoping she would always be the way she was right then.
The moment the door closed, Mary turned to me and rolled her eyes, letting out a deep breath. She handed me two of the bills in her hand, then rolled up the rest and thrust them in her skirt pocket.
I looked toward the door, and at Beatrice’s empty cup of tea, and at the two bills in my palm. “But is it wrong?” I asked, a pang of guilt sweeping through me. “To take this?” I clutched the bills in my hand. “It feels weird. She was so sad.”
“We didn’t ask Beatrice to come here,” Mary said. “If she wants to give us her money, let her.” She shrugged. “And of course she’s sad. Who isn’t?”
“Oh,” I said. I looked at the ground, confused.
“A cup of tea can’t change someone’s heart, no matter how powerful the herbs in it are. The herbs have a mind of their own, you know.” She laughed. “But you make people believe in extraordinary things, and extraordinary things will happen. The rest is up to her. It’s the same as in the circus.”
“The circus?”
She grinned at me. “Well, you know,” she said, raising her eyebrows and leaning toward me, “I was in one before I came here. I performed on the trapeze. I wore glitter all along my cheeks and down my arms, and turned circles in the air.” She drew out the words, filling them with flourishes. I forgot all about Beatrice.
“Trapeze?” I repeated.
“A long bar and two pieces of rope,” she said, “hanging from the sky. Like a swing. You can sit on it or swing from your shoulders or ankles or knees. You can even hang on it from your chin.”
My eyes were enormous as I stared at her. “What was it like?” I breathed. “What did you do?” I pictured Mary in the air then, like a bird. Her chin resting on a bar the way she rested it in her hands and peered down at me, sitting behind her desk.
“It was like flying,” she said, smiling and widening her cat’s eyes. “Like having no weight to you, no bones, no skin. It was like melting right into air. And I did flying-trapeze acts, too, with a catcher.”
“What’s that?”
“You swing out, holding the bar with your palms, and just let go.” She stretched her arms in front of her, pushing away the air. “You just fly, Tessa, and in those moments you can twist or do somersaults or just keep your body pressed into one straight line until the catcher catches you. But in those moments, time stops completely.”
I laughed. “Time can’t stop!”
“Of course it can,” she said, pretending to be offended. Then she leaned down and whispered in my ear: “Because it’s magic. Up there, that high, there are no rules!”
I was still giddy that night at the dinner table, bursting with it. I was so desperate to share my news and excitement that I actually looked around the table—at my mother’s worn face, my brothers’ smirking mouths, Geraldine’s hulk on the other side of the table. I imagined telling them all about Mary and the circus, releasing the words and letting them explode over that table like fireworks. For a minute I imagined that we would all laugh together. Then my father glanced up and met my eyes, and the words died in my throat.
Later, in the quiet of the bedroom, I looked over at Geraldine. Her bed was parallel to mine, on the other side of the room. A faint bit of moonlight streamed in the window, illuminating the squares on the quilt that covered her. Her dull brown hair spread over her pillow.
“Guess what?” I whispered.
“What?” I heard, a second later.
“I know a secret.”
Geraldine threw off her quilt and sat up. She glared at me. “Tell me.”
“You have to promise you won’t tell Mom and Dad,” I said. I wanted so badly to tell someone. The words were bubbling out of me; I could practically see them floating in the air.
“I don’t have to do anything, munchkin. Tell me now!”
I sat back on the bed and crossed my arms. After a moment, she sighed loudly. “Fine,” she said.
“Okay,” I said, my pulse racing, my heart in my stomach. I lowered my voice. “Did you know that Mary Finn was in the circus?”
“What are you talking about?”
I squinted in the dim light, focusing on her face. “No, really,” I said. “She flew on the trapeze. She said she knew people who could eat fire!”
She looked at me suspiciously. “That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”
“No, no,” I said. “She knew boys covered in fish scales, girls with wings! She said she knew men with bodies as tall as skyscrapers or as short as daffodils.” The words spilled out on top of each other.
“How do you know?”
“I met her!” I said. “I went to her library.”
Geraldine sat still for a minute, then said, “What’s she like?” She looked at me with wide eyes, waiting. For a second, she seemed almost shy.
“Oh, she’s wonderful,” I breathed. “She’s so beautiful and she smells like cinnamon and she tells the best stories and can tell fortunes, too.”
“And she was really in the circus?”
“The Velasquez Circus, the famous one from Mexico.”
“I know them!” she said. “They came to Kansas City last year.”
I spent the next half hour talking about Mary—the library and jars of herbs, the men who lined up to check out books from her. Geraldine listened, rapt.
“I know Mom and Dad don’t like her,” she said, hugging her knees, “but I think she looks like a princess.”
“Me
