John Irving - Avenue of Mysteries

“Mostly terrible stuff,” Lupe said.

“She says the stuff that stands out is mostly terrible,” Juan Diego told the lion tamer. Things were definitely going too fast.

“She must be one of the real ones,” Ignacio said; he looked at Lupe then — only at her, at no one else. “Have you ever read an animal’s mind?” the lion tamer asked her. “I’m wondering if you could tell what a lion was thinking.”

“It depends on the individual lion, or lioness, ” Lupe said. Juan Diego repeated this exactly as Lupe had said it. The way the girl acrobats retreated from Ignacio, upon hearing the lioness word, let the dump kids know that the lion tamer was sensitive about being thought of as a lioness tamer.

“But you might be able to pick up the stuff that an individual lion, or lioness, was thinking?” Ignacio asked; his eyes were unfocused again, darting about in the general area between the clairvoyant girl and her brother.

“Mostly terrible stuff,” Lupe repeated; this time, Juan Diego translated her literally.

“Interesting,” was all the lion tamer said, but everyone in the troupe tent could tell that he knew Lupe was one of the real ones, and that she’d read his mind accurately. “The cripple can try skywalking — we’ll see if he has the balls for it,” Ignacio said, as he was leaving. He’d allowed his whip to completely uncoil, and he dragged it, at full length, behind him, as he left the troupe tent. The whip trailed after him as if it were a pet snake, following its master. The girl acrobats were all looking at Lupe; even Dolores, the superstar skywalker, was looking at Lupe.

“They all want to know what Ignacio thinks about fucking them — if he thinks they’re ready, ” Lupe told Juan Diego. The lion tamer’s wife (and everyone else, even the missionary) had heard the Ignacio word.

“What about Ignacio?” Soledad asked; she didn’t bother to ask Lupe — she spoke directly to Juan Diego.

“Yes, Ignacio thinks about fucking all of us — with every young woman, he thinks about doing it,” Lupe said. “But you know that already — you don’t need me to tell you,” Lupe said, straight to Soledad. “ All of you know that already,” Lupe told them; she looked at each of the girl acrobats when she said it — at Dolores the longest.

No one was surprised by Juan Diego’s verbatim translation of what his sister said. Flor looked the least surprised. Not even Edward Bonshaw was surprised, but of course he hadn’t understood most of the conversation — including Juan Diego’s translation.

“There’s an evening performance,” Soledad was explaining to the newcomers. “The girls have to put on their costumes.”

Soledad showed the dump kids to the troupe tent where they would be living. It was the dogs’ troupe tent, as promised; there were two collapsible cots for the kids, who also had their own wardrobe closet, and there was a tall standing mirror.

The dog beds and water bowls were arranged in an orderly fashion, and the coat rack for the dogs’ costumes was small and not in the way. The dog trainer was happy to meet the dump kids; she was an old woman who dressed as if she were still young, and still pretty. She was dressing the dogs for the evening performance when the dump kids got to the tent. Her name was Estrella, the word for “star.” She told the niños she needed a break from sleeping with the dogs, though it was clear to the kids, as they watched Estrella dress the dogs, that the old woman genuinely loved the dogs, and that she took good care of them.

Estrella’s refusal to dress or behave her age made her more of a child than the dump kids; both Lupe and Juan Diego liked her, as did the dogs. Lupe had always disapproved of her mother’s sluttish appearance, but the low-cut blouses Estrella wore were more comical than tawdry; her withered breasts often slipped into view, but they were small and shrunken — there was nothing of a come-on in Estrella’s revealing them. And her once-tight skirts were clownish now; Estrella was a scarecrow — her clothes didn’t cling to her, not the way they once had (or as she may have imagined they still did).

Estrella was bald; she hadn’t liked the way her hair had thinned, or how it had lost its crow-black luster. She shaved her head — or she persuaded someone else to shave it for her, because she was prone to cutting herself — and she wore wigs (she had more wigs than dogs). The wigs were way too young for her.

At night, Estrella slept in a baseball cap; she complained that the visor forced her to sleep on her back. It was not her fault that she snored — she blamed the baseball cap. And the headband of the cap left a permanent indentation on her forehead, below where she wore her wigs.

When Estrella was tired, there would be days when she failed to exchange the baseball cap for one wig or another. If La Maravilla wasn’t performing, Estrella dressed like a bald stick figure of a prostitute in a baseball cap.

She was a generous person; Estrella was not possessive about her wigs. She would let Lupe try them on, and both Estrella and Lupe liked trying one wig or another on the dogs. Today Estrella wasn’t having one of her baseball-cap days; she wore the “flaming-redhead” wig, which arguably would have looked better on one of the dogs — it definitely would have looked better on Lupe.

Anyone could see why the dump kids and the dogs adored Estrella. But her generosity notwithstanding, she was not as welcoming to Flor and Señor Eduardo as she was to the niños de la basura. Estrella wasn’t a sexual bigot; she was not hostile to having a transvestite prostitute in the dogs’ troupe tent. But the dog trainer had made a point of scolding the dogs if they ever crapped in the troupe tent. Estrella didn’t want the beshitted Iowan to give the dogs any bad ideas, so she wasn’t welcoming to the Jesuit.

Near the outdoor showers, which were behind the men’s latrine tent, there was a faucet with a long hose; now Flor took Edward Bonshaw there to do something about the elephant shit that had hardened on the missionary’s sandals — and, more uncomfortably, between the toes of his bare feet.

Because Estrella was telling Lupe the names of the dogs and how much to feed each one, Soledad seized this moment of privacy; in a life lived in troupe tents, Juan Diego would soon realize, there were not many private moments — not unlike life at the orphanage.

“Your sister is very special,” Soledad began quietly. “But why doesn’t she want you to try to become The Wonder? The skywalkers are the stars of this circus.” The concept of being a star stunned him.

“Lupe believes I have a different future — not skywalking,” Juan Diego said. He felt caught off-guard.

“Lupe knows the future, too?” Soledad asked the crippled boy.

“Only some of it,” Juan Diego answered her; in truth, he didn’t know how much (or how little) Lupe knew. “Because Lupe doesn’t see skywalking in my future, she thinks I’ll die trying it —if I try it.”

“And what do you think, Juan Diego?” the lion tamer’s wife asked him. She was an unfamiliar kind of adult to a dump kid.

“I just know I wouldn’t limp if I were skywalking,” the boy told her. He saw the decision, looming ahead of him.

“The dachshund is a male called Baby,” he heard Lupe repeating to herself; Juan Diego knew this was the way she memorized things. He could see the dachshund: the little dog was wearing a baby bonnet tied under his chin and was sitting up straight in a child’s stroller.

“Ignacio wanted a mind reader for the lions, ” Soledad said suddenly to Juan Diego. “What kind of sideshow is a mind reader at a circus? You said yourself that your sister isn’t a fortune-teller,” Soledad continued softly. This wasn’t going as expected.