The Weight of Feathers by Anna-Marie McLemore Read Free Book Online

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.
    An hour before the show, Lace layered on pink eye shadow, added a last coat of red lipstick, rubbed in more cream blush. At the sound of