The Radical Element

by Jessica Spotswood

  “We all got our own plans, Roo. Marrying Frankie might not be as grand as running off to join the circus, but he makes me laugh. Once he finishes school, he’ll have a job working in his daddy’s drugstore. He’ll take good care of me. And he’s a real good kisser.”

  I blush and Pearl giggles again. Maybe she ain’t such a priss after all.

  We dart inside the sideshow tent the moment it opens and hurry to Miss Lula’s stage. She winks and holds Edgar up in my direction. “You want to hold him, missy? Don’t be scared — step right up!”

  Much as I want to prove her wrong, I shudder back like she knew I would, and she wheezes with laughter. If there’s anything at the circus I’m still afraid of, it’s Edgar. I know he’s already well fed and sleepy, so he won’t actually squeeze her to death, but I never have liked snakes.

  Next we pop into the menagerie tent, where Pearl wrinkles her nose at the rank smell of manure. We steer well clear of the black-and-white-striped zebras, swishing their tails lazily to keep the flies off. Harvey told us that they bite, and the tawny camels from the Arabian Desert will spit at people if they get mad. The bears and lions are all off getting ready for the show, but people crowd around the elephants’ pen to watch them shuffle and stomp, clouds of dust rising with every step. They are real majestic, but their eyes always look sort of sad.

  Then the ringmaster, Cal, in his black suit and black top hat, starts calling people in with his big deep voice. “Step right up!” he hollers from the entrance of the big top, and people throng toward the opening. “Step right up!”

  There’s nothing else on earth like it.

  I watch, rapt, clapping till my hands hurt. Part of me is sad, knowing this might be the last time I ever watch the circus with Pearl. After today — if it all goes well — I’ll never be a spectator again. But for today, part of me still feels like that little wide-eyed five-year-old girl, bouncing in her seat, hooting with laughter as the clowns perform between acts, chewing salty roasted peanuts and washing them down with sweet, tart pink lemonade from the candy butchers, surrounded by the smells of grass and sawdust and sweat.

  The audience giggles at the dogs that leap through rings and do other funny tricks, then roars with laughter at the bears that walk on two legs and play catch. We all gasp as Evangeline stands in a cage surrounded by sleek powerful lions, a whip in her hand. It’s not as dangerous as people think — I happen to know that whip’s just for effect — but it’s not easy, either. Beneath her lacy yellow dress, her arms and legs are covered with thick white scars.

  After the animal acts comes the aerial ballet. The Antonellis fly from one trapeze to another, leaping through the air so graceful, I half believe they’d keep soaring even without the bars.

  Pearl leans forward when the equestrians ride in on their high-stepping white horses. They’re still her favorite after all these years. When Miss Jo stands on her horse’s back, then does a somersault, I can’t help but grip my skirt nervously in my fist. She looks as dainty as Pearl. One time her horse shied and threw her, and she got trampled by its hooves and broke her ribs. Another time she busted her arm. But she always gets back up.

  We watch the jugglers and the acrobats on their rings, but I’m eager for the lights to dim on the two side rings and Miss Etta to take the center stage. Even the parade of elephants, walking on their hind legs, can’t hold a candle to Miss Etta.

  She’s last, like the star she is. I hold my breath while she climbs up to the high wire. She looks impossibly tiny up there. If she falls —

  Well, that doesn’t bear thinking about. The circus is dangerous. The artists are always trying to better their acts, do something more impossible and wondrous, something to make our jaws drop and our hands sore from clapping.

  The crowd hushes as Miss Etta begins a pirouette, then releases a noisy breath when she’s facing front again. She keeps moving, always, and when she’s only got a third of the way to go, she does a few dance steps, as though she’s waltzing with an imaginary partner. The crowd roars and I flush, their approval and excitement coursing through me like it was me up there.

  After — after Miss Etta has climbed back down to earth, after the Roman chariot races on the hippodrome track — we wait for the crowd to disperse some.

  “The bareback riders are still my favorites,” Pearl admits, as if I don’t know.

  “They were good this year.” There was a new rider — a tall, graceful girl with dark curls and long, shapely legs beneath her short red skirt. She didn’t look much older than me.

  “What’re you thinking about?” Pearl elbows me. “You’re blushing!”

  “Nothing!” I say quickly. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Pearl and I climb over the ropes and get waved past the NO ADMITTANCE signs into the yard.

  “Ruby, honey!” Miss Jo cries, catching me by the shoulders and hugging me tight. She smells faintly of lavender water. “There you are. We missed you this morning. Pearl here said you weren’t feeling well?”

  “You were amazing,” I say, evading the question as she hugs Pearl. Miss Jo just laughs and pulls off the long black Cleopatra wig she wore for the chariot races.

  “Isn’t she, though?” Harvey already scrubbed off his greasepaint and took off his high-collared, ruffled clown costume. Now he’s just a bald man in his shirtsleeves and suspenders and trousers.

  “That our Ruby?” Miss Lula smothers me in another hug. “You look so pretty, sugar. How come you ain’t married yet?”

  “What’s that I hear? My protégée’s not getting married?” Miss Etta strolls out of the dressing tent. She’s shed her ruffled pink gown for a simple ivory dress, but she’s still wearing her red lipstick.

  “Never,” I say stoutly, my heart singing. She called me her protégée!

  “Oh, sugar, don’t say never. You never know when you might meet an Italian acrobat who’ll sweep you right off your feet,” Miss Lula says, and sure enough, Alberto scoops her up into his arms. She’s taller and broader than him, but he dances a few light steps before he puts her down, leaves a loud kiss on her cheek, and wanders off.

  “I’ll leave the marrying to Pearl,” I say, and they cluck over her like a bunch of mother hens, asking about her beau while she giggles and tosses her hair.

  I don’t get stage fright, never have, but I’m nervous now. I’ve never been good at asking permission for things, but I need their help. If I go to the manager with the support of the circus’s best performers behind me, he might just take a chance on me.

  “What’s wrong, sugar? You look like you’re about to faint, and you’re not the fainting type,” Miss Lula says finally, squinting at me.

  “Tonight —” The words strangle in my throat, and I cough. “Tonight, when the circus train leaves, I want to be on it. I want to join Archer Brothers.”

  I don’t know what kind of reaction I expected, but it’s not this — a terrible silence, and then an explosion of questions.

  “You want to run away from home?” Harvey asks, thumbs hooked under his suspenders. There’s a stray swipe of white greasepaint by one of his ears. “What about your family?”

  Miss Etta gives a tiny shake of her head, chestnut curls bobbing. “You’re not ready for the high wire yet.”

  “I can learn.” My voice comes out high, desperate. It doesn’t sound like me. “I just need a chance.”

  “What about your family?” Harvey asks again. “What about your sister, here?”

  “She’s got to go.” Pearl’s voice is firm. “Uncle Jack — he and Ruby are like oil and water. They don’t mix. He hits her.”

  “Just her? What about you?” Harvey asks.

  Pearl shrugs. “I got my own plans. And I can bide my time.”

  They’re silent again. They’ve never seen the bruises. Those usually come after the circus leaves town.

  “No.” My voice is stronger now, even as I’m searching for the right words. I need to say this right. “I’m not just running away from Uncle Jack. It nev
er has been about running away. It’s about running toward. This —” I throw my arms wide, encompassing the backyard and the big top and the menagerie tent and the sideshow tent. “It’s some kind of magic. That feeling, when they all watch and hold their breath and then clap” — I turn to Harvey — “or laugh — or, Miss Lula, when you and Edgar make ’em squirm — there’s nothing else like it. And I just feel like — like my whole life here would be wasted. If I got married and had babies and never walked the church roof again, maybe I could go on living, but it’d be some pale ghost version of me.”

  I feel the sudden, horrible urge to cry. My throat knots and my eyes fill with tears. Pearl takes my hand. For a moment, there’s just silence.

  “You walked the church roof?” Miss Etta asks. “Which one?”

  “First Presbyterian. But the wind caught my parasol and I fell. I was almost across, though.”

  She laughs and it sounds like church bells ringing. Like hope.

  “I’d better keep teaching you,” she says. “Or you’re going to get yourself killed.”

  “Really?” I launch myself at her, hugging her so tight she makes a little choking noise.

  “We’ll have to find something else for you to do in the meantime. A low-wire act, maybe. You ever ride a bicycle?” Miss Jo asks, and I nod.

  “I can teach her how to do some tricks,” Harvey says. I’ve seen him ride a bicycle in his act, swerving all over the place, being chased by a yappy little terrier.

  “You’ll have to work hard. Alberto and his brothers, they’ve been training since they were children,” Miss Lula says.

  “I’m not afraid of hard work,” I promise.

  Miss Lula smirks and pets Edgar, who’s lying like a mink stole around her shoulders. “Only snakes, huh?”

  There is a commotion back by the ropes and the NO ADMITTANCE sign. Some drunk trying to get in and look at the elephants, maybe. We all turn to look.

  It’s not a drunk; it’s Uncle Jack shoving his way past two clowns. The town sheriff is following him.

  My stomach sinks. Am I being arrested for running away?

  I can’t be. This is my family. This strange group of people of all shapes and sizes and abilities, this is the family I chose for myself when I was just a little girl.

  I glance toward Pearl, but she’s done some magic of her own and melted into the crowd. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the flap of the mess tent swinging shut.

  “Ruby Leigh Porter, what in blazes are you doing here?” Uncle Jack lunges for me, but Harvey steps between us. “Get out of my way. That girl is a thief and a runaway. I’ve brought the sheriff here to arrest her.”

  “A thief?” Harvey looks at me.

  “She stole those pearl earrings she’s got on,” Sheriff Moore says. “They belong to her momma.”

  I pull them out of my ears and hand them to the sheriff. “Here. Take them.”

  “Well, there. That’s settled now. You her father?” Harvey asks Uncle Jack. He knows better; he’s making a point. “This your father, Ruby?”

  I raise my chin. “No.”

  “I’m her uncle. My brother — half-brother — ran off. Always had his head in the clouds, that one, always thought he was better’n everybody else, and she takes after him. I been raising this girl since she was five years old, so I think I got as much authority as any father. I’m taking her home. Come with me now, Ruby. Don’t make a fuss.”

  “I will make a fuss,” I say. “I will make the biggest fuss you ever saw. You’ll have to drag me back through town, kicking and screaming. You know I’ll do it.”

  “She’s my niece. My property,” Uncle Jack says, turning to the sheriff. “Arrest her!”

  “For what?” Sheriff Moore says. “She ain’t broken any laws. She gave the earrings back, and Marianne didn’t want her arrested for that in the first place. This seems like a family matter, not a law matter.”

  “Maybe you should let us take her off your hands,” Harvey says. “Seeing as how she’s so much trouble for you.”

  “I will be,” I vow. “I’ll be so much trouble, you’ll never get to be mayor.”

  I can tell that hits him hard. His chances are far better without me around. “You’ll regret this, Ruby. Leaving your family? What kind of girl does a thing like that?”

  “Our girl,” Miss Etta says, flashing him a smile. Alberto saunters over, flanked by his brothers. They’re short but stocky, and real strong. “And we take care of our own here, so don’t you even think about coming back tonight to bother her.”

  Like most bullies, Uncle Jack backs down when confronted by somebody his own size.

  “Yeah. Leave, and don’t come back!” I add.

  Miss Jo wraps an arm around me. “You won this round, honey,” she whispers. “Best be quiet now.”

  “Let’s go, Jack,” Sheriff Moore says, and they walk back toward the big top, the Flying Antonellis shadowing them as far as the rope.

  “I’m staying,” I say dumbly. “I’m really staying?”

  “You really are.” Miss Etta grins, and Miss Lula cackles.

  “Step right up! Step right up! See the amazing Ruby Leigh Porter, modern woman, riding a bicycle!” Harvey calls, grinning. “We’ll have to get you some of them bloomers.”

  “Harvey! Don’t talk to the girl about her undergarments on her first day,” Miss Jo says.

  “I ain’t easily shocked,” I promise them.

  “’Course you’re not. You’re one of us now, sugar,” Miss Lula says.

  I laugh. Bloomers. Next year when Pearl comes to see me, she’ll have a conniption.

  I can hardly wait.

  I have always been fascinated by families — both those we are born into and those we create. As a teen, I found a second family in theater, which — like the circus — tends to accept those who are outsiders and outcasts in need of refuge.

  The circus is problematic. It has been exploitative to some of its performers, particularly those in the sideshows, and its animal practices have not been without cruelty. But as I read about the golden age of the American circus, particularly the women who became famous worldwide for their feats of daring, I was fascinated by the microcosm of circus life, so separate from the traditional mores of the day. And I was curious about exactly what kind of girl might run away to join the circus.

  For further reading, I recommend Wild, Weird, and Wonderful: The American Circus 1901 – 1927: As Seen by F. W. Glasier, Photographer, by Mark Sloan, and The Circus, 1870s – 1950s, edited by Noel Daniel.

  Special thanks to Gwenda Bond for her notes on the circus, and to Lindsay Smith for her notes on early Tulsa.

  The first time Grace saw the cover of Photoplay, she knew. It had been Clara Kimball Young on the front, pink roses and sage-green leaves crowning her braided hair. Her eyes looked out, glinting but bored, like she knew everyone in the world loved her, but she barely cared.

  Every issue Grace could save the twenty-five cents for, every cover girl staring out from the front, just made her more certain. Lila Lee carrying a basket of lilacs, the wind swirling her hair and the blue ribbons on her cream dress. Constance Talmadge holding a strand of peach pearls, two parakeets fluttering above her. Katherine MacDonald gazing off the page, her painted blue eyes catching the candlelight.

  What Grace wanted was to be one of those girls, pin-curled and dripping with ribbons. What she wanted was to be a star.

  That was before she’d gotten cast as one. Star No. 7 — she didn’t get a name in this picture — out of twenty stars in all, in A Night in the Heavens. The director wasn’t even trying to pretend it wasn’t a flat-out copy of Le Voyage dans la Lune. He had such ideas about being the new Georges Méliès, he even thought he could get the studio to pay for coloring the film, thousands of frames painted by hand.

  Grace and the other star girls were little more than living, sparkling set decoration, a backdrop for the lead actress. Costumers pinned and basting-stitched them into dresses that shimmered with co
pper beads, glittering and heavy as new pennies.

  Grace’s Hollywood wasn’t quite the chandelier-lit parties of the magazine pages. Not yet. Hers was more cold-water flat and five-cent Hershey bar dinners. She was a long way off from the starlets who sprinkled themselves with Guerlain perfume every morning. Grace had saved for months for two tiny bottles of l’Heure Bleue, one for her and one for her mother. She’d tried it out at Macy’s, and that scent, the swirl of jasmine and heavy vanilla, was the smell of Hollywood.

  Even this early in the morning, Grace’s breasts ached. When she got her first part, the other girls had shown her how to flatten them down so the strands of beads on her costume would drop straight. That was one of Grace’s first lessons about Hollywood. Lines ruled over curves, so she’d have to straighten hers out.

  A scene painter walked by, carrying a white moon. The crisp, sharp smell of the paint reminded Grace of her father and brother coating the almond trees.

  Up close like this, the moon looked no more real than a child’s crayon drawing. But by now Grace knew that so much of what was dazzling on film looked a little bit off in real life, the way things looked in dreams. The chandeliers were made of cut paper. Blossoms on trees were the same kind of tissue that came in dress boxes. Mansions and pillars that seemed like honest-to-God brick and marble were plywood painted trompe l’oeil, which as far as Grace knew was French for fake.

  Before that moon got its second coat of paint, Grace and Star No. 12 had tried, laughing, to lift it. Drunk on a flask Star No. 12 kept tucked into her garter, they’d been aiming to get it up to the overhead grid. It’d be a riot, everyone coming in the next day and seeing that crescent over their heads, stuck in the grid above the pulleys and cables. Thank goodness the same flask that gave them the bright idea left them too sloppy to carry it out. They both would’ve been replaced faster than the click of a clapperboard.

  The quicker that scene painter went, the more Grace noticed his gait, like the off-kilter rhythm of rain dripping off a roof. He had a limp. The middle of the inner crescent sat against the boy’s shoulder, his fingers splayed over the outer edge. Grace couldn’t see his face or hair. But the shape of him clawed at her. His hands, his walk. He was short, the same height as a boy she’d kissed a few months ago. In trousers, suspenders, and cuffed-up sleeves, he seemed fourteen or fifteen instead of the eighteen or nineteen he probably was.