Woman of Light (5)

Diego was popular. His snakes were large, aggressive rattlers. Their tips hissed like tin cans of pebbles and their scales were cream colored with black diamond heads. Reina was the older of the two with noticeably longer fangs. She often appeared sheepish, hiding her eyes beneath an inner lid of white. Corporal was different. His movements were precise, lingering, a flash of slit eyes. When Diego wasn’t in bed with a woman, he allowed his snakes to sleep curled above his feet, their cold ribbed bodies as heavy as several cats.

The stage brightened and a ruby curtain swept apart over the platform, revealing Diego beneath the lights. With deer-like legs, he trotted and paused center stage, holding his audience in a piercing gaze. At twenty-one, he was slender with a graceful throat, his musculature trim from his day job working as a lineman at the Gates Factory, where he churned out rubber belts against the belligerent melody of machinery and the curses of strained men. He stood onstage in a sparkling dress shirt and purple trousers, his abundant black hair blue with pomade.

Taking a step back, Diego whistled with his pinkies hooked in his mouth. He lifted the lid from his wicker basket. The audience gasped.

Diego called to them. His Reina. His Corporal. The snakes rose together in a braid, their brawny bodies held apart, creating a space where Diego’s face could be seen in the gap, calm and unflinching, his eyes highlighted in black kohl and his mouth painted red. He reached for his snakes, lifting them higher by their fangs. The crowd roared as Diego released them from his grip and the reptiles fell to the floor, playing dead at their owner’s feet. He nudged them with his wing-tipped shoes and clapped three times. The snakes blasted upward, diverging from one another in a V.

Lights dimmed. People cheered. Coins like hail clinked over the wooden stage. The entire world, even the glistening river and creek, darkened as Diego moved into his next trick.

“A reading, please.” It was a small voice, then an ashen hand clutching a dime.

Before Luz stood a young woman, a redhead who seemed to rise into the air, her figure hidden beneath the billows of an emerald coat. It was one thing to be a white woman at the chile harvest. It was another thing to be a white woman alone. And certain Anglos scared Luz, how they hung signs in their businesses and grocery stores: NO DOGS OR NEGROES OR MEXICANS ALLOWED.

“Your name?” Luz asked.

“Eleanor Anne,” said the girl quietly, as if she’d been trained to speak low. “And you’re Little Light?”

Luz focused. She poured the tea. “Only my brother calls me that.”

“I know Diego real well,” said Eleanor Anne.

“He knows lots of girls real well,” said Luz.

If Eleanor Anne thought Luz was being rude, she didn’t show it. Instead, the girl was eerily oblivious to anything outside herself. She had a smell like sugary perfume and she kept her coat buttoned clear to her throat, though the night was peacefully mild, as if the weather had offered the city a gift. Beneath her large green eyes were bruise-colored bags, and her thin lips were chapped, a scab running her center seam. Hopefulness mixed with dread beamed from every inch of the girl’s heart-shaped face. She seemed somewhat older than Luz. Maybe nineteen or twenty. She had come from Denver’s Park Hill neighborhood, near the edge of City Park. Her father owned a shipping business, she explained, and offered no further details. Luz kept her distance behind the table, edged back in her chair. She didn’t like how Eleanor Anne had the slouched posture of a dog raised in a too-small cage.

Luz asked, “You come here with someone?”

“My brothers,” said Eleanor Anne. “But they’re playing a game somewhere, one with water.” She finished her tea in slow swallows. Her teeth were square, shockingly so, and she had an air about her that was static, strangely still, as if the girl wasn’t entirely alone, like there was someone else beside her steadying her hands. Luz felt sick with worry, a feeling she’d experienced only a handful of times—like when her father left and her mother wept into the night, her tears freezing solid on their cabin floor. She wished the girl would leave.

“Done!” Eleanor Anne handed Luz the mug.

Luz thanked her. She considered the leaves, their soaking shapes.

“Who taught you,” asked Eleanor Anne, “to read tea leaves?”

“My mother,” said Luz. “She said my great-grandmother had the sight, too.”

“What was her name?”

“I don’t know. No one told me.”

“Where do you come from?” asked Eleanor Anne.

Intrusive, thought Luz. “The Lost Territory.” She looked up for a moment before returning her gaze to the tea leaves with a placid expression. “And you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, I don’t suppose you come from here.”

“Missouri,” she said, “my father brought us to Denver when I was young.”

“Long way from home. Your cup,” Luz said dryly, “is filled with a clam, an owl, a brick. It probably means two men will fight over you.”

Eleanor Anne told her she had no idea who those men could be. She was hardly seeing anyone, let alone multiple men. “How do you know it works? Your sight?”

“It doesn’t work,” said Luz, “but most of the time it goes in the right direction.”

Eleanor Anne turned away, peering over her shoulder. Diego was onstage draped in his snakes. “What do they fight about, these men?”