Circus in a Shot Glass

by Beth Overmyer

  At the office, I was told to behave and read the outdated issue of a children’s magazine. Of course, my reading skills weren’t what they should be, so I stared at the third-page cartoon and traced through the paper maze with my over-large fingers.

  Mama’s red heeled shoes kept up a steady rhythm on the orange shag carpet. Pluff-pluff-pluff, pluff-pluff-pluff. Over and over and over. Thank goodness the waiting room didn’t have wood or linoleum flooring. Mama’s fake crimson nails grabbed my shoulder one time in a tight squeeze, and when I looked up at her, she was white and sweaty. “He couldn’t even come for this?” she said, eyes unfocused like she’d been knocking down gulps of cooking sherry again.

  I shook her hand off my shoulder; she was making my poor arm fall asleep. And of course, as soon as I got to the picture scavenger hunt at the back of the magazine, a man with a knee-length lab coat called my mom to the back.

  Mama put her own magazine aside and eased herself to her feet with a grunt. “Come on, Skip; put that away and come with me.”

  With a sigh, I threw down the magazine and followed her. “I don’t gotta get a shot, do I?”

  Though distracted, Mama took my hand and whispered, “Don’t you worry; we’re not here for you.”

  “Oh.” Well, that was kind of a relief. A disappointment, to be sure—no shot, no lollipop—but also a relief.

  The nurse weighed my mother on a large scale, took some notes, and led her into a private room. There, the technician had her pull up her shirt, and slathered some clear jelly on her tummy. I watched him run a piece of equipment over her stomach while staring at a small TV screen. “Can I get one of those, Mama?” That would be beyond cool! I could play doctor with all my friends, and they would think I was so cool for being the only kid in the play group with real honest-to-goodness medical equipment.

  Mama, she shushed me. “Not now, Skip.”

  “All right,” the technician said, turning the screen towards us. “There’s the head.”

  Mama nodded and stopped chewing her bottom lip. “Is it healthy?”

  The technician nodded and began cleaning off his machinery. “Nothing looks abnormal, and the heartbeat is good. Do you want to know what you’re having?”

  Mama glanced at me. “Should we find out, Skip?”

  I shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

  “We’d like to know.”

  The technician turned off the humming machine and helped my mother clean the gel off her belly with a few paper towels. “Congratulations. You’re going to have a girl.”

  “Oh?” Mama asked, shooting me a nervous glance.

  “Oh,” I said. And it hit me: I didn’t care.

  On the way home from the office, Mama bought me another birthday present—some game with robots—for “being such a brave boy about everything.” “It’ll be fun having a little sister,” she said, stopping to buy me ice cream from a roadside stand. She’d discovered the lipstick on her teeth and no longer looked like the shark in the big picture book she kept on the high shelf. “You can do all sorts of things with her.”

  Ah. “Do stuff with her? Like what?”

  That brought her up short fast. “Well, um…” She was quiet about it until we’d both ordered chocolate crunch cones from a lady who looked like she’d love to be anywhere else. Mama, she thought for a few minutes more before coming up with an answer. “You can teach her how to be brave.”

  “How to be brave? About what?” I stood on the tips of my toes, trying to catch sight of the ice cream lady who was taking a long time putting our orders together.

  Mama ran her tongue over her teeth again and grabbed a wad of napkins from the napkin dispenser. “Well, if your sister gets afraid of the dark, you can tell her there’s nothing to be scared of. Remember how I taught you that?”

  I stood up straighter and snatched my cone out of the ice cream lady’s hand. “I’m not scared of the dark!”

  Mama tapped me on the tip of my nose with a cold finger, and I backed away a step. “Exactly. She’ll follow your example, you know. The baby will admire you and want to be like you.”

  I was quiet for a moment, taking all this in as I licked away at my ice cream and followed her to the red picnic table out front. It was a cool March afternoon, and not many people were out getting frozen treats from Betsy’s ice cream stand. We sat in silence for a moment, both shivering as a breeze licked at our jackets. It was nice, sitting alone with my favorite person in the world.

  After a short time, a funny thought occurred to me, an idea I’d entertained when Mama had mentioned quitting alcohol. “Is the baby eating ice cream?”

  “Yes, Skip. She eats whatever I eat.”

  For some reason, this struck me as funny. “Does she eat sprouts?”

  Mama laughed. “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Asparagus?” I made fake gagging noises.

  “Even asparagus. Whatever goes in my tummy goes to the baby.”

  I chuckled through a mouthful of ice cream. I was getting to the bottom of the cone when a fire-red convertible pulled in next to our mini-van. “Daddy!” I said, my cone dropped and forgotten. I ran to give my old man a hug around the knees but stopped. Something felt off.

  Daddy, normally smiling and laughing about something, slammed his door and brushed past me after giving a small pat to my head. “Skip, son, why don’t you go play in the car? I need to have a word with your mother.”

  My lower lip quivered. “But it’s my—”

  “Whatever you have to say,” Mama said, her eyes like two hot coals, “you can say in front of my son.”

  “Oh, so that’s how it is, is it?” He pulled off his white cowboy hat and pounded it down onto the picnic bench, where it almost blew away. “Why didn’t you tell me it was today? I went home, saw the calendar and—I’ve been driving everywhere, looking for you.”

  I tugged on Daddy’s suit sleeve. “You missed my party. There was cake and ice cream and presents, and I’m six now, so—”

  Mama’s laugh interrupted my sentence, but it didn’t sound happy. “Told you? I told your mother. Didn’t the old bat get the message to you, or were you busy with your mistress?”

  Daddy shot me a nervous glance. “Don’t say that word in front of our son.”

  “Oh, so now he’s your son, too?”

  “Hanna, I swear—”

  “Don’t swear anything to me, Jimmy; I won’t believe a word of it.”

  Daddy’s anger seemed to melt a little and he stopped trying to argue. Maybe he felt bad for running away from home. He placed the hat back on top of his blond hair and tried to sit next to Mama.

  Mama crossed her legs and folded her arms as best she could over her growing middle. “No, this spot’s taken.”

  “Please, honey. I’m sorry I flew off the handle just now, but I would’ve liked to have been there to find out what it was.”

  “Don’t know why I even bothered telling you I was having another one. It’s not like you even care.” She sniffed, and I wondered if she was going to start crying.

  “Hanna, baby, I said I was sorry. Isn’t that enough?” He sat down across from her on the other side of the picnic table, but she kept turned away from him.

  Bored and confused, I went back to the car. Some lousy birthday this had become. Why couldn’t grown-ups choose better times to fight?

  I watched them from the backseat window as I pulled my new game from its box. Mom had promised to take it out and play with me later, but the more I watched her not talk to and then talk to my father, the more I realized he was coming home and Mama wouldn’t be playing with me again any time soon.

  “How about naming her after your mother?” Daddy said. For the past five months he’d been treading water. Not whistling too loud in the morning, rinsing his shaving foam out of the sink, and paying Mama compliments out of compulsion. Now, since he’d made it this far, I guess he wasn’t as worried about Mama kicking him out. His suitcase was unpacked, he didn’t sleep on the green couch in th
e living room anymore, and the compliments were becoming fewer and farther between. I wouldn’t have observed this on my own; the new maid—Jessica—made sure she kept a running commentary about household business . . . when my mother wasn’t there, of course.

  “I’m not naming her Gertrude,” Mama said as she scratched away at her ever-growing list of girl names. “The poor thing would be ostracized.”

  “I want an ostrich,” I said, not looking up from the TV.

  Daddy groaned. “How about my mother? We could name the baby after her.”

  Mama laughed, no humor in her voice. “Alice would love that.”

  “And that’s why we’re not naming her Alice, I guess.” Dad’s paper sure made a lot of rustling sounds, like he was irritated. Hey, as long as he wasn’t yelling at me to leave, all was well in the universe. The best part of my cartoon, I knew, was coming up.

  Mama sniffed. “Your mother—”

  I tried to tune the rest out. It wasn’t every day of the week I got to watch Saturday morning cartoons. This one was at an exciting part, too, with two robots facing off against each other. “Pow!” I imagined I was the red one, blasting a spray of bullets at my enemy. “If I was a robot,” I said when the network went to commercials, “I would never brush my teeth or eat my veggies.”

  “That’s nice, son,” Daddy said as hamburgers began to dance and sing on the flickering screen. “Hanna, what exactly is wrong with my aunt Edna?”

  Mama groaned. “We are not naming my daughter after a crazy old cat lady.”

  Jessica, the maid, walked through with her giant blue vacuum cleaner, which she’d been running in the upstairs bedrooms. “Mrs. Ford, you want me to vacuum down here now?”

  I watched Mama glare at Daddy. “No, Jessica. Why don’t you finish the laundry?”

  The plump young woman nodded. “Very good, ma’am.” She pushed the vacuum into a corner and ran off to do her next chore, like it was a treat or something. Maybe she didn’t want to hear any more of the argument. More like she was hoping to find loose change in my dad’s pockets.

  “We could name the baby Jessica,” I said and turned back to the TV. Commercials were over, and it was back to the great showdown between the red robot and the blue robot. “Pow!”

  Daddy’s newspaper crinkled again and he chuckled. “We could name her Jessica.”

  Mama laughed again. For someone laughing so much she sure wasn’t happy. “Figures you would want to name our child after the help.”

  Daddy growled, and for a second, I thought the sound was coming out of the TV. “It was an honest suggestion. You don’t have to take it, for Pete’s sake.”

  But Mama wasn’t through with him. “Just imagine what my friends would say. We’d be the hot topic at every dinner party from here to Beverly Hills.”

  “Honey, we’re not that popular.”

  I tried putting my fingers in my ears, but then I couldn’t hear the sound effects when my favorite robot got shot down. “No!” Why did my guys never win? When I pulled my fingers out, I couldn’t hear the TV, anyway; Mama and Daddy were having a yelling match.

  “I am not running away with the help. Do you think so little of me?” Daddy was so mad, he sat on the edge of his seat now. His face wrinkled up like five pounds of raw ground chuck.

  “You ran away before. Ouch!” Mama grabbed her stomach and swore. “Stupid hamburgers and fries; can’t the girl cook anything that’s not pure grease?”

  “I like hamburgers,” I said. “And fries. Jessica makes them almost as good as that one burger joint.”

  Daddy’s face was tomato-red. “Quit picking on every girl we bring in here. You might drive them away, and then you’d be forced to do your own work.”

  “Oh, so that’s what you think?” Mama groaned, kicking me in the back with her bare foot when she readjusted how she was sitting.

  “Ouch!” I said, startled more than anything. Why do grownups have to fight all the time, I wondered. It was like a sport or something. “Mama, you kicked me.”

  She ignored me. “You think I sit around and do nothing all day?”

  With a sigh, I shut off the TV. There was no point in asking them to move their fight to another room; I might get yelled at, too. So I picked up my coloring book and crayons and went to work. The first picture was a clown. I shuddered and turned to the page of half-colored elephants.

  “I didn’t say you didn’t do anything,” Daddy said. “I’m just saying . . .”

  He was screwed and he knew it. I was six and even I knew he’d painted himself into a corner. “Mares eat oats, and does eat oats,” I sang under my breath. “What’s a doe, Mama?”

  Dad scowled at me. “Hush, Skip. Honey, what I meant was—”

  “You’re just saying I’m lazy.” Now she was crying real big tears. “You leave me for a few months and—hic!—come back and tell me—hic!—how pathetic I am? Nice one, Jimmy.”

  “Is a doe like a pizza?” I picked out the darkest blue crayon and colored in the sky above a caged chimp. “Like pizza dough?”

  Dad swatted at me with his newspaper. “Shut up, Skip.”

  “Don’t tell my son to shut up. Ouch!”

  “He’s my son, too, you know.”

  I started humming a song about Jesus, trying to block out their loud voices. I’d learned it from a lady who left a Bible at our door. “Mama, who is Jesus?”

  “Skip, I swear—” Whatever Daddy was going to swear, he never got the chance; Mama beat him to it, and boy did she let out a long string of expletives. Daddy jumped to his feet. “I think we’d better get you to the hospital.”

  Mama had gone as white as my coloring paper. I frowned. “You look funny. Are you okay?”

  “Uh huh,” she said, giving me a strained smile. “Pull the car around, Jimmy.” Daddy was already on the way out the door. “Skip, honey, you’re going to stay here with Jessica, all right?”

  It was my turn to groan. “Aw, Mom! Do I gotta?”

  “Yes, sweetie. You have to stay here with the help.” Trembling, she eased herself to her feet and started doing the funny breathing I’d overheard her practicing the day before. She clutched her lower back and used the furniture to pull herself toward the door. “Mama’s going to get your baby sister out of her tummy. Remember how we talked about that?”

  I could hear Jessica knocking things around.

  “Can’t I come?”

  She gave me a sad smile. “It’ll take a few hours. Do you want to miss all of your shows?”

  That brought me up short. “No, I guess not.”

  “Good boy. Now, go find Jessica and—Oh, my back!”

  Daddy returned at this point; he looked as pale as Mama. “Come on, darling. Car’s pulled right up to the door.”

  “Everything all right?” Jessica asked from the next room. It was obvious she’d been listening to the whole conversation, but Jessica wouldn’t let you know she liked to listen through keyholes.

  “Jessica, can you watch Skip?” Mama grabbed onto Daddy’s arm, and it was his turn to cry out in pain. “Jessica?”

  Jessica stomped in and made a face that said “I knew I’d regret coming into work early,” the same glare she gave me any time I gave her lip. The devil-woman, she hemmed and hawed and came out with, “Well, I did have plans tonight . . .”

  Mama picked up her wallet, which she always kept on her person when the help was around, and leafed through some pretty large bills. “You’ll be compensated.”

  Jessica stared at the open wallet and licked her bubble-gum pink lips. “Yeah, but—”

  Daddy took Mama’s wallet and started helping her to the side door. “We’ll pay you an extra ten dollars an hour.”

  Jessica hesitated, her eyes still on the prize. “Oh, I don’t know . . .”

  “Twenty more an hour!” Mama shouted as Daddy helped her out the door. And they were gone.

  Jessica looked at me.

  I cracked a grin. “Hi.”

  “Just stay out of my hai
r while I clean, all right?”

  My stomach sank. I knew she didn’t like kids; I had a feeling I was about to find out how much she didn’t like them. “Yes, ma’am.”

  She rolled her eyes and left the room, kicking a side table as she went. “Like I don’t have a life. Sheesh!”

  I ran to the window and watched my parents pull out of our long drive. Daddy honked his horn once, and then they were gone.

  Chapter Four

  Skip

  1988

  “—Happy birthday, dear Julianna! Happy birthday to you.” Our latest housekeeper and resident babysitter held the cake out for my kid sister to blow her spit all over. Couldn’t she let me have a slice first? But no, it was the kid’s birthday, and it had to be special. Pink streamers were strung around the room along with several clusters of green balloons, the last to be found at the dirt-cheap store. Mama would shudder if she found out her housekeeper was decorating with thrift store decorations . . . even if they did come out of the help’s own thin pockets. Wax was starting to drip from the big number four candle. “Make a wish, sweetie.”

  My sister, she closed her eyes tight and said, “I wish—Hmm. I wish—”

  “You don’t say the wish out loud,” I said, eyeing the chocolate frosting, my favorite.

  She frowned over at me. “Why?”

  “Because wishes don’t come true if you say them out loud.”

  “Who told you that?” the housekeeper asked.

  “The last person Mom fired.” I smirked as she gave me a disapproving look.

  Julianna opened her eye a crack. “I wish…we live happy ever after!” Again her eyes slammed shut and she took all the flames out with three huffs. “Yay!”

  “Now it won’t come true,” I said in mock horror, putting the back of my hand to my brow. “We’re all cursed and doomed for eternity.”

  Our housekeeper shook the cake slicer at me. “Shush; you’re making the birthday girl cry.” The pudgy woman set the cake on the kitchen table and began hacking it into pieces. Her cakes—as I had learned on my tenth birthday a few months prior—were leathery and hard. But her frosting was to die for.