Anna-Marie McLemore - The Weight of Feathers

The fish . Dax didn’t like saying the name Paloma any more than Cluck did.

Cluck pulled on the hem of his shirt to smooth it. “It was some guys from around here.”

“You’re sure?”

“Another local told them off.” The girl in the red lipstick knew the man at the liquor store enough to give him the finger and get a laugh. And Cluck would have known a pack of Palomas. He would have seen la tromperie in their eyes. His mother called the Paloma girls les sorcières . They must have been, she said, to draw an audience when all they did was swim.

“What are they doing here this early?” Cluck asked.

“They know our schedule,” Dax said.

“We should’ve canceled the stop.”

The words drew their mother’s shadow toward the trailer. The idea must have summoned her, called her like a spirit.

She stood with arms crossed, thin elbows resting in her palms. “This family hasn’t canceled a stop since we came to this country.” She’d starched her linen shift dress so well the breeze didn’t move it. Her eyelashes looked sharp as chestnut spines. “Not for rain. Not for the earthquakes. Not even for snow, not that either of you would remember that year.”

It was what set them apart from the Palomas, who had to cancel their shows every time it rained. The drops disturbed the water too much to let the audience see them.

“Not another word about canceling shows, understood?” his mother asked.

Dax’s “ Compris ” and Cluck’s one nod satisfied her. She went back inside, slamming the kitchen door.

“Don’t go near them,” Dax told Cluck.

“I never have,” Cluck said under the screen door’s rattle.

“But you’re thinking about it.”

Every Corbeau thought about it. Cluck never did anything though. Dax and his cousins were the ones who used to place nets where the Palomas swam. They’d only stopped when Dax and Cluck’s mother ordered them to. “Only cowards set traps for little girls in costumes,” she told them; true men did not go after women. Cluck had tried telling them before that someone would drown, and all he’d done was earn a few more bruises from his brother. Dax only listened to their mother.

But Dax throwing out the nets hadn’t kept the Palomas from slicking the tree branches with petroleum jelly last year. The Palomas had even been smart enough to pick branches shadowed by leaves, so the performers wouldn’t see the light shining off them. They were lucky Aunt Camille had broken her leg and not her neck.

Pain throbbed through the roots of Cluck’s hair. “I won’t do anything,” he said, though God knew he wanted to sometimes. Fighting was the only safe way to touch a Paloma. Half this family believed if they ever let a Paloma brush their arm or bump their shoulder, they’d wither and die like wildflowers in July sun. But fighting was safe. The rage made it true and good. The anger and honor of defending this family shielded them like a saint’s prayer. Hitting and kicking were safe. Anything else could bring sickness.

“You better not.” Dax followed their mother, his slam of the door as fast and loud as hers.

Cluck set a hand on the trailer door frame and pulled himself up the step.

Eugenie sat on the trailer’s built-in, her skirt rippling over the threadbare mattress.

There were only two reasons Eugenie showed up in the costume trailer. Cluck only had to check her hands to know which. Sometimes it was a torn dress, usually one of Mémère ’s chiffons or silks, skirts she had danced in at Eugenie’s age. Eugenie would hold the fabric out to him, and he stitched up the tear.

This time his cousin’s palms cupped not one of their grandmother’s dresses, but a plastic bag of freezer-tray ice cubes. She said nothing, just held it out to him the same way she offered a ripped dress.

He took it, his nod as much of a thank you as he had in him.

She got up from the built-in and hopped down from the trailer door, the hem of her dress dragging after her bare feet.

The bag wet his palms. He didn’t know where she meant him to use it. His temple, the back of his neck, where his ribs hit the trailer siding.

Cluck made out the sharp, far-off call of red-winged blackbirds. Pépère always meant for the sight of them to make Cluck feel better about his own feathers. Cluck could never bring himself to remind his grandfather how easily crows killed them.

Una oveja que arrea a los lobos vale más que la lana.

A sheep that herds wolves is worth more than her wool.

Lace’s uncles stood at the picnic tables in silence, half-juiced fruit filling their hands.

They were never this quiet when they made the aguas frescas . Every afternoon, their laughing carried all the way to the motel with the scent of limes and oranges.

Had they just killed a crow? Last summer, Lace had seen a black-feathered bird peck the heart from a halved passion fruit. Her uncle loaded the Winchester 1912 her father used for scaring off bears and coyotes, and shot it. Lace could still remember its eyes, shining like mercury drops.

Lace searched for the crow or the shotgun. Instead she found Abuela, standing between wooden picnic tables, her presence hushing the men.

“ Rosa ,” Abuela said. The wrinkles in her face thinned to cracks.

Rosa . Pink, the color of Lace’s tail. Her name to her grandmother.

Tía Lora caught up, her eyes tight. Worry pulled at her mouth.

“After the show, you stay,” Abuela told Lace.

This was it. Tonight Abuela would tell Lace off for throwing ice on Justin. He and Matías, los soldados . Abuela blessed the work of their hands. It didn’t matter that Justin knew Lace was right. To Abuela, it would never be Lace’s business to correct him.

Lace nodded.

“After the show you make yourself pretty and show your tail,” her grandmother said. “Let them take pictures of you.”

“What?” Lace asked. Only Abuela ’s favorite mermaids draped themselves on rocks after the show. “Why?”

Abuela put her hands on Lace’s shoulders and pressed down, like she did to bless her when she was sick. “ Una oveja que arrea a los lobos vale más que la lana, ” she said.

The sound didn’t break the squish of fruit under the men’s hands.

A sheep that herds wolves is worth more than her wool .

This was a reward. This was for Justin and the bucket of hotel ice, for telling him to keep Rey and Oscar out of fights.

Abuela understood. She knew even better than Lace did that if Justin and Rey and Oscar hit whoever they wanted, soon the Palomas would get run out of town. Abuela treated as sacred the fights with the Corbeaus, all those bruises and the broken arms. But Abuela would not bless sending a local home with a black eye.

Lace would never have Martha’s shape, thin and jeweled as a violet eel, or Emilia’s wide, pageant-queen smile. But she had thick hair that fell to her waist, mermaid’s hair, and she was una niña buena . A good girl.

Her grandmother had decided this was enough.

“ Gracias, Abuela, ” Lace said, accepting the blessing.

Her grandmother crossed the afternoon shadows, the crepe myrtles and salt cedars casting the shapes of their leaves.

Lace’s great-aunt squeezed her shoulders, laughing like she’d remembered a joke. Each of her uncles picked her up and spun her once, for luck, “ Para que nada cambie tu rumbo .” So nothing will turn you around. It was always their blessing to las sirenas, because the river’s depth was so dark a mermaid could forget which way to the surface.