and then I’d have to convince Mary to pay me a dollar a week. I steeled myself for whatever was coming. Then another thought came: How could I help in a library if I couldn’t even read? I thought of all those books and marks and tea labels and felt faint. I ran outside, in those moments before dinner, and tried to remember the letters Mary had shown me when we had written my name in the dirt. I remembered the T and the beautiful S shapes, and I traced them again and again, burning them into my memory.
At the dinner table my mother told my father about my new job.
“I know she will be working for that woman, Lucas, but a dollar a week would be a nice contribution.”
“Tessa has a job!” My brothers laughed, and I glared at them.
My father leaned back in his chair and looked at me. He had a long, drooping face with a large cleft in his chin, and he almost never looked at me directly. His stare seared into me, made me feel exposed and unclean. I dropped my eyes immediately. “Well let’s just make one thing clear,” my father said, finally. “I never want to hear about that woman or see a book from that library in this house. You got it?”
“Yes, sir,” I said, staring into my stew.
“You see to that, girl.” He slammed his fist on the table, and I jumped in my seat, tried to control the shudder that ran through my body.
My voice dropped to a whisper. “Yes, sir,” I repeated.
His eyes bored into me. “Okay, then,” he said, turning from me and looking around the table, satisfied. “Now we can all make our contributions.”
“Is she really a big slut?” Connor asked, after a moment, laughing with his mouth full.
“I think she’s pretty,” Geraldine said softly.
At that, my father reached his huge hand over and smacked her right on the face. Geraldine just sat there, her face like a beet. As usual, I dared not say a word.
Mary?” I asked the next day, as she showed me how to organize the books by number.
She stopped what she was doing, turned to me right away. “What?”
“I did something terrible,” I said. I was so ashamed I wanted to disappear into the floorboards. I didn’t look at her, knowing that the want was written on my face in glaring letters. “I told my parents that you were going to give me a dollar a week. That woman you saw me with yesterday talked to them, so I told them that, and they said it was okay. I’m sorry.”
“Tessa!” she said then, releasing all the tension in her body and letting out a low laugh. “You’re going to be working with me. You think I’m not going to pay you?”
“Do you really want me to work for you?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said. “Aren’t we a team?”
“I wasn’t sure,” I said, even more embarrassed, cursing myself for getting into this situation in the first place. “Is a dollar okay?”
Mary laughed and bent down till we were face to face.
“And that dollar goes straight to them, right?”
I nodded.
“Shit,” she said. For a minute she just stared at me, but like she was looking at something past me. Then she said, “Okay, listen: I’m going to pay you a dollar fifty a week, or six dollars a month. You keep those two dollars. You do not tell your parents about them and you do not even touch them, okay?”
I nodded, afraid to speak.
“Your being here will help me a lot,” she said. She dropped her voice to a whisper, though there were only a few people in the library. “I was thinking about getting help before this, but these people? I couldn’t stand being around any of them that long. With you here, I can do more of my other work, you know?”
I nodded again, though I had no idea what she meant.
“Fortunes,” she whispered, laughing. “The library gets money from the county and late fines, but there’s real money in fortune-telling, if people believe in you. I learned that much before I came here. Maybe I can even give you a raise after a while.”
But I couldn’t imagine anything better than that two dollars. I had never even had a penny of my very own. “Thank you,” I said. And then, blushing, “Why are you so nice to me?”
“Why? We’re friends, Tessa. And you’re not like the others around here. There’s something different waiting for you, out in the world. You remind me of me when I was your age.”
“Really?”
“I was so much like you,” she said. “So scared, with no idea of what I could do, how big the world was. When I got to the circus, everyone was so different, and it was the first time I felt at home, anywhere. Do you know what I mean?”
I looked at her, and the stacks of books behind her. “Maybe,” I said.
“You will know. I guarantee it. This is not all there is, by any stretch.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. I breathed in her spice scent and looked at the bracelets dangling from her wrist, which made a slight tink-tink noise as she moved. “Why did you come here, though,” I asked, “when you had the circus?”
“That is a long story, little girl,” she said, and I saw a wave of something pass over her. Something bad, I thought, but did not know what to say.
“Where did you live before?”
“A place called Rain Village,” she said. “A sad place, sadder than a willow weeping over a country pond. It’s where I was born and raised.”
“Rain Village?”
“It was strange there, Tessa.” She seemed far away from me then. “A place where rain shimmered onto the river and water never reflected the sky above it. A place where leaves and pine needles fell into your hair and stuck to the bottom of your feet, and everyone had a secret. It rained all the time, hiding us away from the world.”
I stared at her, transfixed. “Why did you leave?”
“I just did,” she said. “You can always leave. Always. That’s why you should save your pennies, little girl. You know what I used to do to hide money from my parents? And then, later, from everyone else?”
I shook my head.
“I sewed it into my skirts and shirts,” she said. “In the hems. But in your case we can just keep a box here, okay? So whenever you’re ready to get the hell out of here, you’ll have your money with you. In the meantime, why don’t we celebrate with a glass of champagne?”
“Okay,” I said, though I was sure she was joking. When she disappeared and came back a moment later with a bubbling glass in each hand and a big silver box tucked under one arm, I just drank it all in and laughed.
Rain Village, I thought later, and imagined leaves clinging to my hair, soaked through with rain.
CHAPTER FOUR
I immersed myself in Mary and that library, and the books surrounding me. During the day I learned to shelve and check out and check in, and I soaked in the stories Mary read to me, listened carefully as she recommended books to the farmers who lined up at the library doors each morning. Though I couldn’t read very well yet, soon I, too, could recommend books to people based on the way they moved through the room, the way they looked at me as they approached the front desk. I gave my mother a dollar every Friday, and my own two dollars a month piled up, along with the money Mary gave me from what she earned telling fortunes and selling herbs. I was always conscious of the money I had sitting in that silver box: it seemed to chain me to a mysterious but thrilling future, one far away from Oakley, Kansas.
I worked every day from morning till evening,