On the first morning that the lethargic group of Frank Uffer’s little people woke up in Philadelphia, Lucía’s energy level soared high like the flying birdmen of Paplanta. While all the other performers sat in a sullen stupor, as sour as the milk and hard bread Mrs. Uffner offered for breakfast, and as glum as the quiescent General Mite, Lucía twirled around Zoila’s ample skirt and sang at the top of her lungs. Frank Uffner glared at Zoila and said, “Better tame that wee monkey or I will, you hear me, big girl?”
Before Zoila could reprimand Lucía, the little sprite hopped onto Zoila’s arms. She pinched Zoila’s cheeks and asked, “Aren’t you happy that we’re finally in Philadelphia?”
Lucía didn’t wait for a reply. “Zoila,” she chattered on, “is this the day I will be the star of the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition?”
Frank overheard the question, and although he didn’t quite understand all the Spanish words, he beat Zoila to the answer. He shouted back to Lucía, “You’ll be the star of the show only if I let you be the star. First, you gotta smile real pretty at the folks coming to see you, can you do that?’
Lucía ignored him, but Zoila understood Frank’s bigger point. He was making it clear that he was the one who was in command here. So Zoila smiled wide at Frank and, fortunately, Lucía followed suit.
Frank squatted at Lucía’s eye level and smiled back at her.
“And don’t you forget to let my missus sell them photograph cards of you first,” he said. “Them cartes de visite or whatever fancy name they call’em. The people gotta buy your photograph first, before you start your entertaining. Do you understand me?”
Frank rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.
“Mucho dinero,” he said, standing up, and laughed uproariously at his deft display of the international gesture for money.
His wife spoke under her breath. “I’d be real careful about spending the money you ain’t yet got, Frank. We haven’t even paid for the cartes de visite. And there’s quite a few we have to sell.”
Frank swatted his wife’s derriere—a typically crude and rough gesture, Zoila thought, though she was still pretending to smile.
“Don’t go about correcting me,” he barked at his wife. “Even if it’s only in front of the midgets and the big Mexican. I’m the one who decides what happens to this troupe. I only see my name here.”
He pointed to a handbill resting on a side table and read it aloud so that everyone could hear him. “I guess your reading ain’t too good, is it missus?”
The handbill read: Frank Uffner’s Marvelous American Midgets.
His wife didn’t miss a beat nor did she look particularly threatened by her domineering husband.
“You’re the boss, Frank,” she said. “Now, are we heading to the stage we rented or not? It’s already plenty crowded out on the streets.”
Lucía stood on her tippy-toes and pointed to her photograph on the handbill. “Me big star, Mister Frank!”
“Don’t you be gettin’ no big ideas, girlie.” Frank shoved Lucía away from the table. Zoila jumped up to grab her, determined to protect her from Frank’s roughness.
“I done told you to keep this here monkey under control,” he hissed at Zoila, tapping a forefinger on the crown of Lucía’s delicate head. “If you can’t do that, what the hell good are you?”
Frank moved around to slap Zoila on her rear end and cackled.
“In a pinch,” he said, leaning in to whisper in her ear, “you’ll have to do if my missus is too tired.”
He winked at Zoila and walked away with a loud snort.
Zoila wanted to strike back, but she knew better than to pounce. Although she would have loved to pummel him for making his threats and insinuations, visions of the abused corpse of Julia Pastrana and the shriveled body of the Sicilian Fairy danced before her eyes. Their supposed managers, agents, and promoters had mistreated them savagely, and now Frank Uffner had bared his venomous fangs at her. He’d just demonstrated that he could hit Zoila or Lucía whenever he liked—and though Zoila could put up with it, an attack could prove fatal for Lucía.
Zoila had seen Julia Pastrana’s hopeful gaze in the early photographs at Eisenman’s studio. Based on the dates of the photographs, Julia’s starry-eyed look of optimism, suggesting love for her manager-husband, had turned into empty eye-sockets of defeat. Life moved at such an accelerated pace outside of Mexico, and Zoila felt off-balance, unable to react rationally and confidently.
Her heart began to pound with a perilous warning from Felipe. During his short life he had learned to weave in and out of the vanilla trade like a quivering shadow. As an indigenous Totonac, Felipe knew he had to tread gently in order not to offend the Italian and Spanish traders who had the resources to turn his vanilla vines into a vanilla goldmine. Felipe relied on his knowledge of the temperamental vanilla vines and the Melipona bees that pollinated it—and, more significantly, he kept the locations of the vines a secret. Although gentle by nature, Felipe could dispose of an intruder among his vanilla beans in an efficient —and lethal—manner. Often, when he performed the ancient aerial ritual at 120 feet above the ground, he allowed a few teardrops of remorse to wet the soil below, to pay tribute to the men he had buried deep underground. But when Felipe whirled to the four cardinal directions, which he and the other flyers represented the four elements, he also accepted his role in his universe: to protect his people’s fragrant goldmine at all costs.
Zoila gulped with trepidation, acknowledging her own role as Lucía’s protector. She attempted to lift Lucía in a protective gesture, as if her wide hug could shield both of them from an impending gloom, a dark, vaporous miasma of misery, but Lucía stood her ground. Zoila knelt down.
“Ignore Frank when he’s rough,” she whispered to Lucía. “He just wants you to entertain the crowds and—”
Lucía put her soft hand on Zoila’s cheek and sighed.
“I’m almost thirteen-years-old, you know. I know that Mister Frank just wants to show the world what an incredible treasure he discovered.” Lucía giggled and tapped her chest. “And that treasure is me!”
“But you have to follow his commands or he might get angry with you and send you back to Mexico and—”
Now it was Lucía’s turn to snort. “He’s not sending me back to Mexico. He’s going to make so much money showing me to all these gringos.” She performed her own hand gesture imitating the exchange of money. “You and I are going to take all my money and live like princesses back in Mexico.”
She punctuated her financial forecast with a giggle as high-pitched as the reed flute notes of the flying birdmen of Paplanta.
Zoila held her breath with a new awareness. Since leaving Mexico, clearly Lucía had undergone a rapid metamorphosis, as if nature had bestowed upon her intuition and wisdom in inverse quantity to her diminutive size. The Lucía who cowered on the boat as it swayed towards New Orleans, the same girl who shook with fear at the sight of the brujo, the sorcerer who had slithered onboard, was growing into a confident teen willing to go toe-to toe with Frank Uffner’s commands.
Zoila had underestimated Lucía completely. True, her actions revealed a contradictory temperament: at times she was impetuous as a toddler only to quickly surrender to docility, But now she was transforming into a butterfly unafraid to flap her own unique colors knowing full-well that she was the marvelous star attraction in Frank Uffner’s gaudy troupe.
Zoila admired Lucía’s bravado; such confidence would be helpful on the stage. But back in Papantla, Zoila had once been sure of her own negotiating and linguistic skills, only to discover that the vanilla traders in town considered her an inferior girl, dismissing her soundly after her father died. From across the room, Zoila watched Lucía try to befriend General Mite. She even wondered if Lucía was flirting unsuccessfully with him. Zoila realized she would have to keep a close eye out for Frank Uffner’s ulterior motives, and an equally close eye on Lucía’s amorous intentions towards General Mite.
Zoila’s heart quivered and she felt apprehensive, as if Felipe wasn’t quite done with his warning. She felt inadequate maneuvering this strange business world in the United States. Would she be able to fend off Frank Uffner’s advances? Would she be able to keep Lucía innocent and teach her how to charm audiences? Would she ever collect the money she was promised for taking charge of Lucía?
Frank Uffner interrupted her musings with a sharp elbow to her side. He handed her two heavy boxes.
“You go with the missus to the stage and help her set up,” he commanded. “Then you come right back and carry Lucía out there in her fancy basket. Cover her up real well so no one sees her for free, you hear? We aim to make these folks in Philadelphia pay big—real big—to see this wee monkey.”