Juan Diego began: “I’ll tell you what she says you’re thinking.” He told Vargas what Lupe had said, pausing dramatically to explain everything in English to Edward Bonshaw.
Vargas spoke to Brother Pepe as if the two men were alone: “Your dump kid is bilingual and his sister is a mind reader. They could do better for themselves in the circus, Pepe. They don’t have to live in Guerrero and work in the basurero.”
“Circus?” Edward Bonshaw said. “Did he say circus, Pepe? They’re children! They’re not animals! Surely Lost Children will care for them? A crippled boy! A girl who can’t speak!”
“Lupe speaks a lot! She says too much,” Juan Diego said.
“They’re not animals!” Señor Eduardo repeated; perhaps it was the animals word (even in English) that made Lupe look more closely at the parrot man.
Uh-oh, Brother Pepe was thinking. God help us if the crazy girl reads his mind!
“The circus takes care of its kids, usually,” Dr. Vargas said in English to the Iowan, giving a passing look at the guilt-stricken Rivera. “These kids could be a sideshow—”
“A sideshow!” Señor Eduardo cried, wringing his hands; maybe the way he was wringing his hands gave Lupe a vision of Edward Bonshaw as a seven-year-old boy. The girl began to cry.
“Oh, no!” Lupe blubbered; she covered her eyes with both hands.
“More mind reading?” Vargas asked, with seeming indifference.
“Is the girl really a mind reader, Pepe?” Edward asked.
Oh, I hope not now, Pepe was thinking, but all he said was: “The boy has taught himself to read in two languages. We can help the boy — think about him, Edward. We can’t help the girl,” Pepe added softly in English, though Lupe wouldn’t have heard him if he’d said it en español. The girl was screaming again.
“Oh, no! They shot his dog! His father and his uncle — they killed the parrot man’s poor dog!” Lupe wailed in her husky falsetto. Juan Diego knew how much his sister loved dogs; she either couldn’t or wouldn’t say more — she was sobbing inconsolably.
“What is it now?” the Iowan asked Juan Diego.
“You had a dog?” the boy asked Señor Eduardo.
Edward Bonshaw fell to his knees. “Merciful Mary, Mother of Christ — thank you for bringing me where I belong!” the new missionary cried.
“I guess he did have a dog,” Dr. Vargas said in Spanish to Juan Diego.
“The dog died — someone shot it,” the boy told Vargas, as quietly as possible. The way Lupe was weeping, and with the Iowan’s exclamatory praise of the Virgin Mary, it’s unlikely that anyone heard this brief doctor-patient exchange — or what followed between them.
“Do you know someone in the circus?” Juan Diego asked Dr. Vargas.
“I know the person you should know, when the time comes,” Vargas told the boy. “We’ll need to get your mother involved—” Here Vargas saw Juan Diego instinctively shut his eyes. “Or Pepe, perhaps — we’ll need Pepe’s approval, in lieu of your mom’s being sympathetic to the idea.”
“El hombre papagayo—” Juan Diego started to say.
“I’m not the best choice for a constructive conversation with the parrot man,” Dr. Vargas interrupted his patient.
“His dog! They shot his dog! Poor Beatrice!” Lupe was blubbering.
Notwithstanding the strained and unintelligible way Lupe spoke, Edward Bonshaw could make out the Beatrice word.
“Clairvoyance is a gift from God, Pepe,” Edward said to his colleague. “Is the girl truly prescient? You said that word.”
“Forget about the girl, Señor Eduardo,” Brother Pepe quietly said — again, in English. “Think about the boy — we can save him, or help him to save himself. The boy is salvageable.”
“But the girl knows things—” the Iowan started to say.
“Not things that will help her,” Pepe quickly said.
“The orphanage will take these kids, won’t they?” Señor Eduardo asked Brother Pepe.
Pepe was worried about the nuns at Lost Children; it was not necessarily the dump kids the nuns didn’t like — the preexisting problem was Esperanza, their cleaning-lady-with-a-night-job mother. But all Pepe said to the Iowan was: “Sí—Niños Perdidos will take the kids.” And here Pepe paused; he was wondering what to say next, and if he should say it — he had doubts.
None of them had noticed when Lupe stopped crying. “El circo,” the clairvoyant girl said, pointing at Brother Pepe. “The circus.”
“What about the circus?” Juan Diego asked his sister.
“Brother Pepe thinks it’s a good idea,” Lupe told him.
“Pepe thinks the circus is a good idea,” Juan Diego told them all, in English and in Spanish. But Pepe didn’t look so sure.
That ended their conversation for a while. The X-rays took a lot of time, mostly the part when they were waiting for the radiologist’s opinion; as it turned out, the waiting went on so long that there was little doubt among them concerning what they would hear. (Vargas had already thought it, and Lupe had already told them his thoughts.)
While they were waiting to hear from the radiologist, Juan Diego decided that he actually liked Dr. Vargas. Lupe had come to a slightly different conclusion: the girl adored Señor Eduardo — chiefly, but not only, because of what had happened to the seven-year-old’s dog. The girl had fallen asleep with her head in Edward Bonshaw’s lap. That the all-seeing child had bonded with him gave the new teacher added zeal; the Iowan kept looking at Brother Pepe, as if to say: And you believe we can’t save her? Of course we can!
Oh, Lord, Pepe prayed — what a perilous road lies ahead of us, in both lunatic and unknown hands! Please guide us!
It was then that Dr. Vargas sat beside Edward Bonshaw and Brother Pepe. Vargas lightly touched the sleeping girl’s head. “I want a look at her throat,” the young doctor reminded them. He told them he’d asked his nurse to contact a colleague whose office was also in the Cruz Roja hospital. Dr. Gomez was an ear, nose, and throat specialist — it would be ideal if she were available to have a look at Lupe’s larynx. But if Dr. Gomez couldn’t have a look for herself, Vargas knew she would at least lend him the necessary instruments. There was a special light, and a little mirror that you held at the back of the throat.
“Nuestra madre,” Lupe said in her sleep. “Our mother. Let them look in her throat.”
“She’s not awake — Lupe always talks in her sleep,” Rivera said.
“What is she saying, Juan Diego?” Brother Pepe asked the boy.
“It’s about our mother,” Juan Diego said. “Lupe can read your mind while she’s asleep,” the boy warned Vargas.
“Tell me more about Lupe’s mother, Pepe,” Vargas said.
“Her mother sounds the same but different — no one can understand her when she gets excited, or when she’s praying. But Esperanza is older, of course,” Pepe tried to explain — without really saying what he meant. He was struggling to express himself, both in English and in Spanish. “Esperanza can make herself comprehensible — she’s not always impossible to understand. Esperanza is, from time to time, a prostitute!” Pepe blurted out, after checking to be sure that Lupe was still asleep. “Whereas this child, this innocent girl — well, she can’t manage to communicate what she means, except to her brother.”