Orphans of the Carnival

by Carol Birch

  “Can I get past, please?”

  A boy with a snub-nosed baby face stepped in from the side, ripped her veil off and tipped the umbrella from her grip so that it landed upside down in the mud. They all ran back.

  She went cold. No. Please, no.

  “Give it back!” she shouted.

  “Oh God, that’s horrible!”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “What is it?”

  All aghast, delighted. She was more than anything they’d imagined or dreamed of. The baby screamed in baby terror, wild and pure, and the girl scooped him up into her arms, hugging him to her. He threw back his head and shrieked himself into a fit. The girl ran backward, picking up his fear and shouting, “Get away! Get away!”

  The cry was taken up.

  “Get away! Get away!”

  Julia was stricken by the baby. Always hated that, upsetting some child who doesn’t know anything and means no harm, just scared. Can’t help it. Just is.

  “Get away!”

  She shrank. Her great naked head was all wrong.

  “Get it away!”

  “Horrible thing!”

  “I’m sorry,” she said to the infant, “I won’t hurt you. I’m so sorry.” She started to cry, distorting her face. She could no more control it than the rain could stop itself falling. It made things worse, and the rain came harder, bedraggling her hair. “Go back!” ordered the pale puffy-cheeked boy as if she were the devil, and the boy with the knife stepped toward her with his arms made into a cross. “Back!” he said.

  “I just want to get past,” she said, mustering what she could of her dignity, trying to look the boy in the eye, say, me to you, please, just let me through. His eyes were gray and perplexed. Something sharp bit her cheek. A stone.

  “Go back!” he said.

  “Let me through.”

  He uncrossed his arm and made a kind of calligraphy in the air with the tip of his knife, then sheathed and unsheathed it very quickly several times. It was a good sturdy hunting knife about six inches long, and he handled it like a pet ferret.

  “It’s got tits,” someone said.

  They giggled. The child was still screaming, choking on himself. His big sister or whatever she was slapped his back.

  “Tits!”

  They circled slowly, cracking up with laughter.

  “You are horrible,” said the boy with the bulbous face. “Did you know that? You are the most horrible thing in the whole wide world.”

  “Stop it,” she said.

  “Filthy!”

  She was faint. The tops of the trees swooped down toward her.

  “Stop it,” she said.

  Another stone hit her shoulder.

  The round boy, his face bobbing in front of her, strutting with his old man’s pot belly thrust before him; faces, manlike boys, the screaming baby, the girl on the gate, the knife draining the world into its thin shine. The boy with big teeth came close, his lips thick and winsome. She met his eyes, tried to say, boy, please boy, be good, but his eyes were cold and angry. Fear of the knife stopped her throat.

  “Get back, filth,” he said.

  She turned to run back but everything looked different, just dark leaves and shadows in her way. Something hit the middle of her back. They were on all sides. Faintness came up in a big white cloud and covered her head, dragging her down on her knees in the mud. No one was coming to her rescue. The wet grass in front of her was flecked with drowned fragments of something feathery and pollenish.

  She got up, turned and faced them, dirt on her dress. “I have to go into the field,” she said.

  “Why?” asked a boy with elf ears and a hungry face.

  “I have a show.”

  “A show!” said the round boy. “You’re disgusting.”

  “It’s crying,” said someone.

  The scrawny girl began to laugh uncontrollably.

  “Shouldn’t be out scaring people,” said the babyface boy seriously.

  “I just want to pass,” she said. “I’m not hurting anyone.”

  “Can’t you shut that brat up?” The boy with the knife turned his head and Julia tried to go ’round him.

  “Shut up, John,” said the gawky girl, still laughing.

  Then they were all at it, cackling away like jackals.

  The baby screamed louder than ever.

  “Take him home, Alice,” said a redheaded boy at the back. “Take him home.”

  The girl shushed the baby, never taking her eyes off Julia. “I’m not going anywhere,” she said.

  Now they were stooping, scooping up dirt and stones.

  “Let her go past, Bo.” A voice, daring himself to speak, she couldn’t tell who.

  “Shall I?” said Bo, sheathing the knife and standing with his hands on his hips. He wasn’t that big. “Shall I let you pass?” He terrified her. He was mad, he might do anything.

  “Yes, please, let me pass.” Her voice was shaky.

  A stone, badly lobbed, hit her just below the knee. The biggest yet, almost a rock.

  “Stop it!”

  It throbbed. She wouldn’t be able to dance. She felt sick. Her eyes overflowed. They were behind her now too, circling, staring, daring one another closer and closer with their movements.

  “Don’t hurt me,” she said, putting her hands over her face.

  More stones, a shower.

  She took her hands from her face. “Stop it!” she yelled.

  “You stop it!” they shouted.

  “Stop it!”

  “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” they chanted back.

  She ran through them to the gate. The gate wouldn’t budge. She shook it.

  “Look, it’s mad!” someone shouted, and someone else screamed loudly. Then someone else. Then they were all at it, trying to outdo each other, and she turned and the knife was in front of her face. She screamed one pure scream of absolute horror and went down on her knees with her back in the corner of the gate, throwing her arms over her head and waiting for them to kill her.

  The power of that scream from that face silenced everything but the baby, whose screams soared to new heights.

  “Get him out of here!” snarled Bo.

  “Let it go,” someone said.

  “No!”

  Then a man’s voice, stern. “Bring that child over here!”

  A gathering crowd.

  “What’s going on?”

  Mud on her skirt.

  “What is it?”

  “One of the freaks.”

  “Escaped.”

  “Where?”

  Then Beach, his face red to bursting. “For God’s sake! You! There! I see you!” Gripping her elbow, pulling her up. He draped a shawl over her head, putting one arm around her and guiding her through the crowd. “Out of the way, please! Nothing to see, ladies and gentlemen!” She trembled as he pulled her along, couldn’t stop it. “Just a few young hooligans of the locality preparing themselves for their criminal careers,” he announced. “And I know every one of their names.” She kept her eyes closed under the blanket and sobbed.

  Back in her wagon, she sat down on the bank, covered her face with her hands and rocked. Beach stood gaping.

  “What the hell, Julia! What have I told you? If some old peddler hadn’t come and found me…”

  “Not now, not now,” she said, “I have to lie down.”

  “I’ve been up and down the midway three times, I thought you’d run away.”

  “I went to see Cato,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Zeo the Wild Man.”

  “For God’s sake! You’re bleeding.”

  “Where?”

  “Can’t you feel it? There, on your cheek.” He gave her his handkerchief. “Thank Christ, it’ll hardly show under the hair. You can black it up a bit.”

  “I thought they were going to kill me,” she said.

  Blood on the handkerchief.

  “How many times have I told you?”

  “I kn
ow.”

  “Don’t go off on your own. You know that. Anything could happen. What did I say?”

  “I know.”

  “There have to be certain rules.” He leaned toward her, scowling, the skin across the bridge of his nose tight and shiny. “There has to be trust.”

  “I thought I’d die,” she said.

  She was trembling. He looked at his watch. “Lucky it didn’t get nasty,” he said, patting her shoulder roughly. “Get yourself rested up. Get yourself clean. You won’t be so silly again.”

  “I hurt my knee,” she said.

  “Can you dance?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  She walked a few paces. “I think so. I feel terrible.”

  “Rest.”

  “I don’t want to go on. What if they’re out front?”

  “You kidding? They won’t get anywhere near the place.”

  “I’m not sure I can,” she said.

  “Of course you can. You don’t let those savages stop you.” He turned at the door. “You have an hour and a half,” he said.

  The rain was really coming down now, hammering on the roof. She took off the red boots and flung them away from her, lay down and cried for half an hour. I was careful, she thought. I wore my veil and gloves. I’ll go home, should never have left. Horrible. Deceived myself. Why bother? All that hate. To just walk down a street one time. Be the same. Not look up, look up all the time, saying why?

  The faces of the children appeared and reappeared.

  I’ll be honest with you, Solana had said. You can be as good as anyone, and you can be proud and always stick up for yourself and get respect, but there’s one thing you won’t get, nena, and that’s a man. Not with your face so far gone. Don’t expect it. Love? With a face that frightens children? What a joke!

  Horrible thing! Filth! Back! She didn’t hate them, that was the truly terrible thing. She wanted to, she tried, but instead of hate there was just depthless sadness and a great hurting.

  Crying? That’s not the way, Solana would have said, with a slap to the back of the head. That’s never the way! Santy Anna took my boys. Do you see me crying?

  She sat up.

  “No,” she said out loud, and her heart sank at the enormity of carrying on. I can’t do it, said her head. You can, said that other that always pushed her on. Go home, go home, admit defeat. There was nothing out here, never had been. She stood up, dried her eyes, walked to the mirror, cleaned herself up briskly. Nothing’s safe. Not even life. Santy Anna takes boys. Mothers have pigtails. Knives cut, and children are cruel. And I’ll go my own way and make my own money and no one’ll ever stop me.

  A small flap of skin had come loose in the middle of her cheek. It wasn’t bleeding much anymore, but the whole area around it was thickening up and darkening. They will not stop me. Her eyes watered again but she stopped them, pressing the displaced skin back into place. She remembered that stone. It hadn’t hurt that much at the time, but now the wound throbbed and ached. “As if I wasn’t ugly enough,” she said and laughed. God loves you, Solana said, her conviction firm. And that’s all that matters. And don’t you forget it.

  “Here’s why you will never be free,” said her face in the mirror.

  Back!

  No.

  Let them try.

  She set about camouflaging the fierce little wound.

  That night when she stepped out in front of the crowd, she couldn’t shake a funny feeling that she was also out there in the audience, staring at herself. There was a little girl at the front, holding on to her mother’s hand. She stared very gravely and thoughtfully at Julia and her eyes never wavered. Some people said you shouldn’t bring a child to a show like this. She might be the little girl at the window last night, the light in the square. Last night when everything was peaceful. Maybe she’d come with her mother and that was her out there, looking at the monster.

  The monster, smiling, stared straight back at her.

  Maud Sparrow and her fiancé jumped ship at Boston. Zeo the Wild Human headed out for Albany with Ezra and Berniece, who were talking of going to Europe, and after that, she was on her own again. She thought about giving it all up, going home, but then—suppose she did and they said, oh, no, we replaced you, Julia. You were ungrateful. So much of the past had been tied up with Solana, so much that she’d balked at, the old woman moaning and groaning all the time, propped high on her pillows, pillowlike herself, breathing loudly and dribbling chucaca tea, smelling of piss, dying far from home and talking constantly of her little house with the pictures on the wall, and the arroyo out back where the gazelle came down to drink. No. No going back, not now. Not for Solana, not for her.

  In Providence one night, Beach said they were through with the circus. Enough of these sideshows. From now on she would only play solo performances. “We’ll sell you as a cut above,” he explained, “not for the hoi polloi. Quality performer. Soirée. You know? These little folk songs, they’re nice enough, but what about these classical things you do? Say we get you some pearls for the front of that dress you’ve been working on for so long? How’s that coming along, by the way?”

  “Nearly finished,” she said. “Pearls would be nice.”

  “Pearls it is.”

  “And I can sing arias,” she said. “I like singing arias.”

  “That sort of thing.”

  “I can still sing my old songs too though, can’t I?”

  “If it seems to be the thing. But I think you should go for a kind of—you know. Go like a lady.”

  Going like a lady was a game that kept away the spectral children who came and laughed at her sometimes when she was trying to get to sleep. So she went like a lady in Philadelphia and Atlantic City, and after a while realized how greatly things had changed since those first days, little more than two years ago and already becoming rose-tinted. Sitting about watching Myrtle painting her eyes with her feet. She got the best quarters now, the best dressing room. Beach made sure of it. He had other artistes, other commitments, but till Christmas he’d build her up. Next, New York, he said. The Stuyvesant. By then the whole place would be agog. And then—who knows? We’ll come to that, he said, and a chill of excitement went through her. Change was constant. She saw that she would not stay with Beach. He grew bossier by the day. He wanted to tell her what to sing and how to do her hair, when to come and when to go. So she waited for Christmas and New York, when there would be change. She knew he was getting offers. If he’s getting money, I am too, she thought. I’ll make him put it in the contract like Myrtle and Delia said. The thought of those two gave her a homesick feeling. Almost like a family she’d never had. Funny, running into Cato like that. When she closed her eyes, she saw Cato in his grass skirt, grinning at the crowd. That’s how it was: bumping into people, bumping off them randomly.

  This Eastern Seaboard tour was cold and lonely, a jittery meandering filled with rooms where she hid, bored. She kept running out of things to read. He kept saying he’d bring her more and forgetting. The weather out there was foul and those children would creep into her head, evil gargoyles, fallen cherubs picking at her. A phantom knife would slit her skin, a phantom self cringe. She’d swallow hard, banishing them like demons. Begone! Away! She couldn’t go out because of them. And even if she could, what was the point in wandering about alone in every strange place you came to?

  It was a long stretch of tedium punctuated with shows, from which she bounced one to the other as if jumping from tussock to tussock over uneven ground. And in the middle of all this a special invitation came.

  “This is it!” Beach crowed, shaking it in the air, his great crooked-toothed grin ramping over his face. “Listen. Ha ha! We are cordially invited to attend the annual Grand Military Ball. In Baltimore. This is it, Julia. Recognition!”

  The dress was ready. It had pearl buttons on the bodice to match the pearl cross at her throat, a low sweep of silver lace across arms and breasts, ribbons at the waist. She wore it with long white k
id gloves, black satin slippers and a tiny silk reticule. In her hair she wore the shell comb she’d bought on Broadway. Best of all, she was not veiled. One whole night without it, from the moment she entered the building.

  The portico was stabbingly bright, full of smiling, glaring faces that swam in front of her like great balloons. A silver chandelier flew swanlike overhead. A staircase rose, wrought ironwork painted gold. She ascended on the arm of Beach, who’d had a stiff two or three for his nerves and was breathing out an air of sweaty perfume and brandy, smiling wildly.

  Double doors opened inward. A smart man in black called out their names to the assembled terrifying throng of glorious dresses and bright-buttoned and heavily medaled chests. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. The beautiful dresses, the shine of the chandeliers, the sparkle of drinks through faceted glass. Flowers hung in garlands and swags around the columns. Every eye was on her.

  The band played “Hail, Columbia.”

  She was led along a line of important men and gorgeously gowned ladies, all so clean and scrubbed, so powdered. She felt like a small child hanging on a big man’s arm. It wouldn’t do, so she let go and pretended she was tall and sophisticated. She met brigadier generals, major generals, this and that officer, and all their ladies so delighted, delighted, delighted, one after the other, so that she had to keep saying the same thing over and over again. How do you do? How do you do? I am very well, thank you. I am so pleased to be here. Delighted. Yes, this is my first time in Baltimore. And they were all eating up her face with their eyes. A smart man with slicked-back hair ushered her courteously along, and she floated away from the end of the line with Beach in her wake and was led to a table where they were to sit with a gaunt old major and his kindly rodenty little wife. The Major bowed. The wife clutched Julia’s hand in her cold white paws and stared hard, mouth clenched in a smile that was both genuine and strained.

  “I’m so glad you could come,” she said. Her plucked, eager face was overwhelmed by the tremendous froth of her costume.

  “Thank you,” Julia said. “It’s lovely to be here.”