Clown Girl

by Monica Drake

  Herman straightened up, rubbed his face. He said, “Hey, I’m not trying to bust up your monogamy, just being friendly. You look shot, I give you support and there you go reading into it.”

  “Read into this—Rex is what I need. That’s it.”

  “OK, OK. Keep up the Mary Tyler Moore act, all the way, huh?”

  “Whatever that means.” I shifted on the couch and reached for my hat.

  “It means, you should watch yourself. You might appreciate a little generosity now and then.” He nodded toward the banging sounds in the kitchen. “She’s ready to put you on the street, but it’s my place. I say you can stay until Galore gets back. It’s a favor, because I like you, and you could recognize it. But bottom line, Nita, if you bring cops around, you’re out.”

  Out?

  “The favors wear thin,” he said.

  Like Crack, Herman was ready to cut me loose that easily: Practice the pratfalls, or I’m out. Stay away from cops, or I’m out. I needed the clown work for cash to move from Herman’s house, and needed Herman’s cheap rent to save money until then.

  I needed to stay away from the cop, for all reasons.

  I was only a name cut in Herman’s arm, a needy tenant, a friend who kept coming back. I was four letters of straight lines. Nita, that meaningless blur of tattoo. Italia-Natalia-Nadia, banging pans in the kitchen, had a better answer with the mystery of her ever-shifting name, the way she disappeared sometimes. When she was gone, Herman always wanted her to come back.

  I’d rather she disappeared.

  “Thin ice,” Herman said. “Skating on cracks.”

  “So’s your brain,” I said. “That cop has his own beat. I didn’t bring him around.”

  And then there was a knock on the door. Herman and I, we both jumped. Italia clattered pans in the kitchen. Herman looked at the door like he’d never seen the door before. I didn’t move. Italia didn’t come out.

  Herman asked, “Who is it?”

  Like I could see through walls. I whispered, “Maybe it’s for you.”

  The knock sounded again.

  God help me if it was Jerrod. Thin ice, thin ice, thin ice.

  Herman inched closer, looked through the peephole. He took his time. I stood behind him, afraid to breathe. He opened the door.

  A high, scratchy voice said, “We gots your rubber chicken.” I couldn’t see past Herman’s shoulders. “Pluu-ucky?” the voice said. “We gots Plucky here.”

  Plucky! How my heart leapt at the name!

  Herman said, “I don’t know what you’re peddling, but we don’t need any plucky shit, and we don’t want any rubber chickens.” He started to close the door. I ducked in and put a hand out to keep the door open. A short woman in worn sweatpants held a faded rubber chicken by the neck. She shook the chicken as though tantalizing. Her tongue showed at the side of her smile. Half her teeth were gone. One rubber foot was gone from the chicken too. The other rubber chicken foot was pale, a bleached and weathered pink.

  “Ree-ward?” she said. Then she hacked, turned away, coughed again, and stomped a foot. The chicken in her outstretched hand danced a gimpy jig to the rhythm of her cough. “Where’s the ree-ward?” she choked out again.

  I said, “That’s not my chicken.”

  I tried to close the door. The woman threw herself in the way. She said, “What do you mean? It’s a rubber chicken, just like in the pitcher. Reward, it says, right here.” She shoved the chicken between her knees and used both hands to check the front pocket on her hoodie. When she pulled it out, the flyer was matted and stained with something I’d like to think was a spilled decaf soy double latte, but probably not. Probably it was blood. She held the flyer toward us with one hand and retrieved the chicken from between her knees. She was barely four feet tall.

  “I know what it says, but you’ve got the wrong bird.” I tried to close the door. Herman stopped me this round.

  “You know about this?” He took the flyer. I wouldn’t’ve touched it.

  The woman said, “This here’s your Plucky. This Plucky bird’s jus’ been out in the alley for a while. Maybe you don’t recognize your Plucky, hmm? Maybe your Plucky hit some rough times, and now you won’t take her back in.”

  I said, “I’d know my own rubber chicken.”

  Herman squinted at the flyer. He said, “What the hell?”

  “Maybe your Plucky jus’ fell in with the wrong crowd, maybe she was looking for love and thought she’d found it…but you can’t trust nobody round here, that’s what Plucky knows now. Uh huh.” The woman’s eyes were flat and dull. She’d quit looking at me. “Plucky maybe learned a few things, and you say, ‘No way, no second chances,’ and jus’ like that, man, turn her ass back out on the street.”

  I said, “Who are we talking about here?”

  The woman swayed on the porch. She said, “Plucky don’t look so good now, but she’s got the same old heart she had back when you held her close.”

  Herman slammed the door. Muffled, the woman’s voice came back. “Maybe spare some change? At least.”

  “How many of these are out there?” Herman said. He shook the wrinkled flyer. A cigarette butt fell from one creased corner.

  I gave a shrug. “It’s not like it’s got any big information.”

  He said, “Cops and drug addicts. Do I need that combo at the door? You’re offering a friggin’ cash reward.” He snapped a finger against the paper.

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said, though I wasn’t the only one bringing around drug users. The difference was, Herman’s were customers.

  “Thin ice,” he said again. “This is about the breaker.”

  “I’ll pull the flyers down.”

  “Sheesh.” Herman fell back against the couch.

  I limped into the kitchen. My cane tapped against the chipped linoleum.

  “Injured in the line of duty?” Italia asked. She sucked ice cream from a spoon, with a carton in her hand, her knuckles big. “They must a treated you pretty bad down there. You look like crap.”

  I shifted the bag on my shoulder. “Down where?”

  She stuck her spoon in the ice cream again. “At the station, like? Am I wrong, or didn’t you just get arrested?”

  My face was reflected in patches of glowing gray-white in the window over the kitchen sink. An overgrown laurel hedge kept that window dark all day. In the blurred shadows of the hedge, my eyes looked big and sunken like a skeleton head, holes in a mask. I set my pink bag and sunglasses on the counter, ran warm tap water, and cupped my hands to rinse the dust of the Ruins from my face.

  Chance’s dish, on the kitchen floor, was still half full of kibble. She never left her dish half full. I called her name. She didn’t answer. Nadia-Italia put her palms on the counter and hoisted herself up backward to sit.

  “Chance?” I called again. I opened the mudroom door. The room was empty, no dog. I tossed my bag and cane on the bed. “Where’s my dog?” I said.

  “Lost your only Chance?” Italia smiled. I swear she smiled.

  I said, “It’s not funny. She was here when I left. What’d you do with her?” I opened the basement door and called Chance, down the dark stairs.

  “You lost your Chance and you’re trying to blame it on others.” Italia sat on her hands, her big knuckles under her thighs, on the counter. She shook her head at me. “Maybe the little yapper joined the circus.”

  I said, “Tell me—where’s Chance? No joking.” My heart picked up its pace again. My hands felt weak.

  “No clowning, Clown Girl?” Italia still smiled. “I’m not your dog’s keeper. It’s not our job to watch that rat terrier.”

  “She’s a schipperke, not a terrier. Herman!” I called. My voice cracked with panic. I looked in the backyard, stood on the back steps, and called for Chance again. Nothing. I called Herman’s name again. Then Chance’s. Then Herman’s, until finally Herman came out behind me.

  He said, “What up with the noise?” He pulled a pouch of tobacco from his p
ocket.

  I said, “Where’s Chance?”

  Herman took rolling papers from the side of his tobacco pouch.

  “She was here when I left,” I said. “At the window.” I went into the yard and called her again. Herman followed. I kicked at the weeds.

  First Rex, then the chicken, and now Chance was gone? First my folks, and ever since then, my life. Nothing came together. I picked up an empty clay planter and threw it into the grass. The planter broke into pieces. I couldn’t take it anymore. I called for Chance and kicked my way through the broken shards.

  “Hey, easy, easy,” Herman said. He sat on the back stairs. “Listen—the dog was going insane. Barking at the windows, scratching at the door. We opened the door, that’s all. She’s a dog, right? She’ll be back.”

  He balanced his tobacco on one leg, sprinkled a line in the paper, and rolled it between his fingers. I called for my dog, and my voice sailed out into the neighborhood.

  “You want a chance with me, girl?” somebody called back.

  Herman said, “Remember when you were a kid? Maybe you had a family dog, you let it out, and it came back.”

  “Chance is not that kind of a dog,” I said. “She’s a puppy. She’s a schipperke. She’s high-strung.”

  Herman licked the edge of the rolling papers. He said, “The whole world’s high-strung, clowns included, it seems. Chill. The dog’ll come home.”

  The thought of searching the neighborhood on my bum leg made me feel weak. I had no help. Where was Rex? If Rex were home, Rex would get Chance back. Rex would stand up to Italia, and Chance wouldn’t be gone in the first place.

  I sat on the steps and folded my hands over my calves. I put my forehead on my knees. I had to shut down before I exploded.

  Herman ran a hand over my back. He rubbed my shoulder. He said, “Remember how it was back when you had plans, and ambition? The whole art thing.”

  I half-turned to look at him from the corner of my eye, his hand still rubbing my back. “I have ambition now. More than ever. I’m working on a plan.” I had Kafka, a vision, a message and a massage. The muscles at the back of my neck gave in to the warmth of his hand.

  He said, “I mean artistic ambition, not just financial.”

  “I have artistic ambition. I won’t stay a corporate clown for long.”

  Herman rubbed my left shoulder. “You sure? Money sucks in the best of the best.”

  The best of the best. That was Rex, in my book. And money hadn’t gotten to him yet. Not at all! In fact, he didn’t earn enough to cover the cost of his own face paints. The door clattered open behind us. Herman’s hand fell away from my back fast.

  Italia said, “What’re you doing?”

  I sat up. Herman looked at me. I looked at Italia. She looked from him to me.

  I smiled, put a hand on Herman’s thigh, and said, “Like old times.” Easy buttons to push, I couldn’t resist. OK, it was a bitter moment—I was bitter. I was a bitter clown on the precipice of corporate wasteland. I baited Italia because she let my dog out when that dog was all I had. In a soft voice I murmured, “You’ve always had such strong hands.”

  Herman said, “Drop it, Nita.”

  Italia said, “Herman?”

  He said, “Look, don’t worry. What do you need?”

  She ran her nails over the screen of the screen door, with a sharp scritch of sound. “There’s like, some kind of family at the front door, with a rubber chicken…” she said, and made the scritch again.

  Herman flicked loose tobacco from his tongue. “Christ.” He nodded his head at me. “They’re yours. Get rid of the bounty hunters, I’m serious, or you’re out on your ear.”

  10.

  Our Kodak Moment; or, Rexless Behavior

  ALL NIGHT I LIMPED THROUGH BALONEYTOWN. I CHECKED every piece of worn tire rubber, pile of old clothes, and cascade of trash, anything that looked like a possible curled dog-body in the dark. As the sun rose I sat on the sagging couch on Herman’s front porch and made a sign: Find My Lost Chance! No tail, no collar. All Black. Knows Tricks. Left-handed, half-trained, full-blooded schipperke. Reward: $$. I drew a picture of Chance sitting up and begging, her two paws in a prayer pose, as though she prayed to come home.

  I was stretched out on the porch couch when Herman opened the front door. He rubbed his head, his sleepy hair. “You’re up early. What gives?”

  I flipped the poster over to hide it. “Work. Clown gig.”

  “Crying doesn’t become you. Makes your eyes puffy.” He ran the end of his thumb along the side of my face. I knocked his hand away. Unruffled, he asked, “Where you working today?”

  “Photo shoot. Publicity.”

  Herman laughed. “Oh shit. Bad day for that one, ’cause you’re looking like hell. But that old paint and spackle covers pretty well?”

  I tucked the flyer close to my hip and went back to the mudroom, where I stood on the mattress Rex and I called our bed and checked out my face in the shard of green-tinted mirror duct-taped to the wall. Herman was right. My nose was sunburned and my skin was a map of red patches. My eyes were bloodshot, puffy, and shadowed. My lips were cracked. Every mirror asked the old existential clown question: If that’s me in the mirror, then who am I? I was a wreck. I could still hear Crack issue her order: Go all out. Show up looking good. Photos cost a lot of cabbage; we’ll do it once, that’s it. You read me?

  Ah! Bless St. Julian for whiteface and war paint. I faced the mirror again and got to work. The room was quiet without Chance’s rapid, summer-hot panting, her sudden fits of scratching her toenails against the wooden floor. My stomach was an empty pit, my heart a pounding fist.

  Go all out, see? In my book that meant call on High Clown style: big hair in a cloud of fried red plastic curls fluffed with a pick, two waxed spit curls tight over my ears. I’d wear a river of blue tinsel clipped in my wig. Big red lips, black arched brows, and of course I’d break out my best red rubber nose: classic.

  I snapped the seal on the acupuncturist’s amber jar of Chinese pills, pulled the cork, and shook half a dozen of the white pills, smaller than BBs, into my palm. I swallowed three with a drink from a dusty glass of dog hair linted water beside the bed. I took another pill and let it rest on my tongue, where it melted fast as candy. When I didn’t feel anything, I popped three more. They rattled against my teeth. I bit down without breaking them, like biting on ball bearings, and rolled the pills under my tongue, where they melted into nothing.

  A naked Rex watched from a scratchy ink drawing on the wall, with his ever-present secret smile. He peered in miniature as a sculpture on top of the bookshelf. He turned his back in a pencil sketch, showed an ear in oil paint, and held a hand open to the sky. I sat on the bed, the phone on my pillow.

  I slid another pill on my tongue.

  Rex was everywhere, but I couldn’t get him on the phone. I called one more time, and said into the clown hostel answering machine, “Rex? It’s Nita. There’s some trouble with Chance…she’s gone, Rex. She disappeared. Rex? Are you there?”

  I slid on a pair of his striped pants, to keep Rex with me through the clown shoot. I needed the luck. They were Lycra acrobat pants, snug on Rex but loose on me and brushed my thighs in a band of wide stripes. I rolled a fat cuff at the hem and tied a pink scarf at the waist. Ta da! I put on my best ruffled collar with blue piping at the edges, over a striped satin shirt.

  Stripes are key to clowning. That was a line from our edifying routine, Clowns in the Schools. The Clowns in the Schools shtick started in black leotards and plain face. Then Rex and I, we’d dress in front of the kids. Rex would pull on his skintight pants and say, “Stripes are the cloth of the outcast, the proud flag of clowns, prisoners, and artists.” He’d give a toothy smile.

  “The dress of scalawags, rapscallions, and reprobates,” I’d chime in, as I stepped into a big striped tent of a dress. We’d rehearsed a hundred times.

  We’d team juggle disks of face paint as Rex recited, “The best clown gear finds
its place in tradition. History. It’s sacred in some communities, prized in many cultures. Should a clown wear whiteface or go natural? Be a German country bumpkin, the Auguste clown, or a Native American ethereal spirit?”

  “Jester, juggler, acrobat, Pierrot, or Harlequin,” I’d say, and cock an eyebrow. Clowns in the Schools was government-sponsored for about ten minutes. Then we lost our funding. Still, we practiced.

  “Getting dressed is all about calling on the other world—the underworld—to find a spiritual patron, an inspiration,” I said out loud, to myself now.

  Rex Galore was my inspiration.

  Maybe he wasn’t in the underworld, but he was a long ways away, even as his spirit surrounded me. I kissed the tip of my index finger and touched my finger to the lips of the red clay head, where it hovered in the closet. My bank, my love, my heart. My future.

  There was only one detail left: my nose.

  I lifted a barrel-shaped wooden clown doll from a shelf. With a twist, the clown fell in two halves, and a smaller clown fell out. I gave the second clown a twist and an even smaller clown fell out. When I turned the third, one more appeared. A final twist, and there it was. My prized red rubber nose, lovingly made at the Red Rubber Nose Factory.

  Those Clowns Sans Frontières ran the factory. So noble! Every penny of income from the Nose Factory went to kids in war-ravaged countries. Kids without limbs, without homes, without rubber noses. Once, Rex and I talked about starting up a chapter of Clowns Without Borders right in Baloneytown, a neighborhood bad as any other.

  Bottom line, though—I wasn’t a red nose clown. For the photos, my rubber nose was a talisman.

  I slid on my big-frame, squirting, daisy-rimmed sunglasses, dropped the jar of Chinese pills in my bag, chose my best hand-painted Keds, and grabbed the staple gun.

  My orange hospital jug was a glowing harvest moon that looked down from the top of the bookshelf. Harvest, the moon of a jug said. Harvest that urine!

  I still had no urine in the urine bank. I had no urine funnel.

  Now, after a night of looking for Chance, I was completely confused. When was the first piss of the morning in a night without sleep? When was the last piss of the night?