Mary Lou wasn’t certain. He didn’t smell right. She glanced at Jacques-Paul’s hands to see if they were sure enough to bear a wild girl’s weight. She guessed it was hard to tell just by looking. Mary Lou closed one eye and tried to imagine Annie singing from the passenger seat of that Impala as they traveled the asphalt arteries of the nation. Behind them, the circus wagons were loaded up and ready to roll. All those traps in the back of the bear wagon made Mary Lou nervous.
“You better write,” Mary Lou said at last.
The first postcard arrived on a Thursday. It had pictures like an old Technicolor movie and was from somewhere called Peoria, Illinois. Other postcards followed: Topeka, Kansas. St. Cloud, Minnesota. Marfa, Texas. Norman, Oklahoma. Sometimes, pictures arrived in long, flat brown envelopes. Annie posing with a whip beside the striped circus tent. A bear in a fez on a unicycle. Moss-laden trees you’d never find in Nebraska. The world’s largest pile of shoes. No note would accompany these. Annie would simply write a caption on the back. “Miss Novak admonishes the tent for its fashion faux pas.” “Bear on Unicycle, Series 12.” “World’s largest pile of air fresheners next stop.” For a time, there were no pictures or postcards. And then there was a strip from a photo booth. In these stacked blocks of portraiture, Annie stared at the camera, unchanged from frame to frame. Her face was pale and her eyes, haunted. She’d written nothing on the back.
Annie returned to them in the fall with a belly too swollen for flying in the big tent. Jacques-Paul sulked about the house, sullen and cramped, till even his shadow grew small. Sometimes Annie stood at the back screen door listening to the night howl, her hands pressed against the metal webbing that left indentations in the pads of her fingers. One afternoon, Mary Lou heard raised voices and crying and door slamming. She came out to see Jacques-Paul packing his tights, harnesses, and yo-yo into the trunk.
“I am a performer,” he croaked. “You knew that when you met me.”
“You’re some performer, all right!” Annie screamed and hurled the rattle she’d gotten at the baby shower given by the Lutheran Ladies’ Auxiliary. The rattle was made of pure silver and had come wrapped in tissue paper from a store in Kearney. It landed with a thud near Jacques-Paul’s feet.
He looked down at the toy and his shoulders sagged under some invisible, impossible weight. “You’ll figure it out. You always do,” he said, climbing into the car. The Impala kicked up dust as it squealed out.
“He didn’t smell right. Even Mary Lou could tell,” Annie cried, her eyes red-lined.
“Cursed,” her mother nearly spat. “Cursed,” she said, softer this time.
Mary Lou rescued the rattle. In the kitchen sink, she washed off the dirt and wrapped it again in the crumpled tissue paper. It didn’t look the same, so she put it in her mother’s closet among the handbags and summer blankets.
Mary Lou found the pictures of her mother in an old shoe box on the high shelf. In the photos, her mother was young, a girl of seventeen or so, and her face was not so tired. She wore a red dress with big brass buttons down the front. The photographer had caught her midlaugh, and the defiance of her bared teeth and wide lips gave her face a hint of mischief and forthrightness. The girl in this photograph bet the house. Mary Lou could sense the wildness beneath her mother’s skin.
Mary Lou marched in and slapped the picture down by her mother’s knitting. She folded her arms and waited for a response. Her mother squinted at the girl in the photo as if she were a distant relation whose name she struggled to remember. Without dropping a stitch, she nodded at the day’s paper. “There’s a pageant tryout in Omaha this weekend. Thought we could go see what all the fuss is about.”
Mary Lou had never been to Omaha.
This was the reason, then, that she had entered the pageants. Her mother wasn’t having Mary Lou turn out like Annie. The pageants got Mary Lou out of town, plus they were closely chaperoned and the girls were kept constantly busy. Far from any influence that might whisper unwanted thoughts and feelings to her too-weak soul, she was safe from the change. But here on the island, with the warm breeze tickling its fingers over her bare skin, the ever-present threat to survival keeping her body in a state of fight-or-flight, without the chaperones and routines and control — without the ring! — she was at the mercy of her body.
Closing her eyes tightly, she tried to head it off by thinking of terrible things. This is what her mother and the nuns had said to do when the curse came on. But she was too tired to fight it tonight. Her teeth grew sharper; her senses heightened; her skin tickled and warmed till she was forced to shuck her clothes. The wind caressed her na**dness, and she gasped at the unwelcome, but not unwanted, joy of it. Under the moon’s besotted gaze, she ran deep into the jungle, her body strong, her every sense heightened. That was the shameful part — how good it felt to command her body in this way. How erotic the thrill of it! Like a caged beast finally allowed to hunt. Her mother called it a curse, and she understood that it was, that she had to control her urges. But somewhere deep down, she loved the sheer heady freedom of it. In this state, she was not afraid of the jungle, but part of it.
“I’m weightless, Annie,” she whispered into the syrup-thick air.
At the cliff’s top she saw the small campfire and the man in the sleeping bag. He was sheltered by the ledge. Her breath caught. He was gorgeous. She crept closer. Firelight sent shadow fingers to caress his tattooed face as Mary Lou wished she could. Nobody looked like that in Nebraska. Nearby was a backpack with his name: Tane Ngata. Department of Ornithology.
She wanted to wake him and ask if he knew a way off the island, but she couldn’t let him see her like this. She was no patient princess waiting to be plucked and taken off to a castle. No. She was na**d. Exposed. Her body full of want and need. Desire. He was like the sleeping prince in a fairy tale, and she had the urge to kiss him. But the prince would never want a cursed girl like her. Still, in her wild-girl state, she could not resist the smell of him, and so she inched carefully forward, put her face to his neck and inhaled.
The prince startled awake. Frightened, Mary Lou scampered back into the jungle. Her foot came down on a rope. With a sharp jerk, the net trap scooped her up and slammed her against the side of a tree. Her shoulder burned with pain and she cried out.
“Hello?” someone called. The prince with the backpack approached. He carried a kerosene lamp.
Mary Lou tried to remain silent, but her shoulder hurt and a small hiss escaped. The prince looked up to see her still swinging from the tree.
“Got yourself caught up there, eh?”
She said nothing in response.
“No worries. I’ll get you down.”
He put the lamp on the ground, and with a knife in his teeth, he shimmied up the tree till he was just above her. Another acrobat. What was it with her family and flying men? She shivered a bit at the sight of the knife.
“Give me your hand,” he said. She was too afraid to touch him. “All right. That’s cool. Try to relax everything in case I drop the rope.”
Mary Lou felt a surge of panic. She thrust her hand at him. He held on to her, and with his other hand, he cut through the rope. There was a drop and Mary Lou dangled above the ground.
“It’s all right, mate. I’ve got you,” the prince said.
His hand was sure, but Mary Lou was afraid. With a thump, she dropped to the ground, wincing in pain, then scurried to hide her na**dness behind a bush.
The prince climbed down. He looked worried. “You okay?” He waited for a response. “Don’t suppose you’ve seen a big bird, wing-span of a small plane, likes shiny things?”
Mary Lou held her breath and counted her heartbeats.
“Yeah, me neither. That’s a taro plant, that big, elephant-eared thing you’re crouching behind. If you cook it, it’s delicious. If you eat it raw, it’ll kill you. Kind of a dodgy plant when you think about it, yeah?”
He laughed, and it warmed her. “By the way, it’s about three o’clock. If you were wondering.” Pause. “Probably not. I like these hours. Feels like you could live inside your dreams, have a walkabout. You know?” Pause. “Yeah. All right, mate. I’m gonna get some sleep. Big day tomorrow. Taking my boat round the north side —”
“You have a boat? Are you a pirate?” Mary Lou started to step out, remembered her state, and ducked back behind the taro plant.
“Yeah. I mean, no. I mean, yeah, got a boat — well, it’s a dinghy, light craft. And no, I’m not a pirate. I’m an ornithologist. Student, really. At university, second year. I’m looking for a rare bird, the Venusian raptorus. Are you a pirate?”
“I might be,” Mary Lou said. A new confidence surged in her. She liked this funny prince.
“Cool. Say something piratey.”
“Like what?”
“Don’t know. You’re the possible pirate, aren’t you, mate?”
Back at the swimming hole in Nebraska, Mary Lou had pretended that she was a pirate queen. Now, she wished she were one. She wished she were anything but a cursed wild girl, a beast. How she wanted to thank this prince with a kiss. But he would see the way she was, her carnality and need, and he would shrink back in disgust like Billy. It would never work out.
“You sure you’re okay?”
She didn’t answer him, and he looked disappointed. Mary Lou bit her lip. “Be safe. Be good,” her mother had said. But she didn’t want to follow her mother’s advice and sleepwalk through the days. Was it really so terrible to be a wild girl? Could it be any worse than lying about yourself?
She peeked her head above the top of the plant. “I’m not a pirate. I’m a wild girl from a cursed line of women. I paw at the ground and run under the moon. I like the feel of my own body. I’m not a slut or a nympho or someone who’s just asking for it. And if I talk too loud it’s just that I’m trying to be heard.”
She stood panting. Her nose ran. She wiped it on her arm.