by Amanda Davis
Charlie squinted at me as though trying to see if I was lying and ran fingers through his spiky hair. I shook my head to try and clear it of the image of his hand in the talker’s pants behind Marco’s back, but it didn’t work.
“Yael…” he began, then stopped and licked his lips. “Let’s sit down.”
He settled himself in the tall grass and motioned for me to do the same. We were surrounded then. Hidden. The world disappeared in a sea of stripey greens and browns.
“She’s back.”
“Yael’s back?”
“That’s what I heard,” he said. “You didn’t know?”
I shook my head. “Well, you’re not going to like this, then,” he said. “But I heard she’s coming back to work with the bulls.”
If it is possible to die for a second, to have every bodily function cease operation for a second, then that is what happened to me. “Annabelle?” Charlie said.
I gasped for air and blood began to flow through my body again, but I was cold all over. That was it. I knew it. I was getting canned, wasn’t I? Cast out after so many months.
“Faith?”
I looked up. “Jesus,” I said. “I’m fucked.”
Elaine was waiting.
I walked slowly, relieved with each step that didn’t reveal a string of flashing lights. At four-thirty exactly I stood outside the long silver trailer and tried to relax. There were no cop cars, no sirens or handcuffs in sight. Just the dilapidated makeshift porch that Elaine set up in each town, and the familiar mountain of half-smoked cigarettes in a can on an overturned milk crate by her rocking chair.
I smoothed my shirt. Knocked the hay off my jeans. If she was going to fire me I might as well look decent. I ran my fingers through my hair and then I knocked.
“Come on in,” she called. She was sitting at her desk with a pen tucked behind one ear. The long delicate ash of a burning cigarette poked from between her fingers. “Ah, Annabelle,” she said, like I was a cool breeze or an ice cream, and not a wanted criminal.
“Hi there.” I took a deep breath and laughed nervously. “So what’s up?”
Elaine smiled and motioned for me to sit. Something in me had hardened. I was frozen solid inside and out. Go ahead and hit me with it, I thought, as I sank onto that familiar bench. Get it over with. Come on.
“Let me tell you a story,” Elaine said, and paused to light a cigarette. “Once upon a time there was a young girl in a whole lot of trouble who came to me and asked for work. She seemed to be made of good, solid, hardworking stuff and I liked her right off, so I hired her. I turned out to be right about her: she worked her ass off for me. She was faithful and determined, an all-around good egg.
“And I asked a lot of her. I asked her to work with animals she’d never been around. I asked her to help out a costume director who is a real piece of work, and at the same time stay out of her way. I asked her to be truthful and honest, even though I knew she was in trouble.”
Elaine paused and swept ash off the desk and into her cupped palm, then delivered it into the trash can by her feet. My mouth had gone dry. I was beginning to sweat. I tried to smile. Elaine stretched and put both hands behind her head and continued.
“She didn’t let me down, this girl: she did all of these things. But then something awful happened to her. She fell in love with a smooth character, a member of our sideshow.”
I shook my head. “Listen,” I said. “You’ve got it all wrong—”
But Elaine silenced me with a wave of her hand and continued. “She fell in love with a sideshow fellow who wasn’t so bad—he was a sweet guy in some ways, I guess. But what nobody knew about this guy was that he also loved another guy. And that the particular man he loved also loved drugs.
“He wasn’t a nasty fellow, and lord knows he wasn’t the first or last member of this show to have interests in both sexes, so who can blame him for that? But he knew this young girl loved him. Yael. It’s Yael I’m talking about. He knew Yael loved him and he seemed to care for her, but somehow it slipped his mind to tell her about this boyfriend of his, this damn junkie boyfriend. Then one day this junkie joined our show…”
“Charlie.” I was cold inside.
Elaine took a cigarette and tapped it thoughtfully on the desk. “Yes,” she said. “Charlie Yates. He showed up and he threw a wrench into the lives of these two people. He showed Marco the pleasures of heroin and he drove this poor girl so mad that she tried to burn him alive.”
“But you hired them back.”
“I hired them back.” She inhaled deeply and blew four perfect rings in my direction. Her voice had taken on an edge I didn’t recognize. She stubbed out her cigarette until it was crumpled flat in the ashtray and leaned towards me, punctuating with her index finger. “You know why? Because I believe in second chances. You might say I subscribe to them, second chances. I believe people can change and I believe that people deserve to redeem themselves. Because the opportunity was never properly extended to me, I religiously extend it to others. You see where I’m going with this?”
I shook my head.
“The boys have cleaned themselves up. I have their greatest assurances that they are no longer using drugs and they understand that a second chance is a final chance. Yael has had a lot of time to think about what she did. I understand love and I understand betrayal. Love is why I am with this show. I ran away with Mitch Fartlesworth when I was nineteen and believed the world was an elastic place. I was wrong—it betrayed me, see. But that’s part of who I am.”
She leaned back in her chair. “Yael was a member of the Fartlesworth family and would like to be again. She was an excellent groom, very good with the elephants. She’s gotten herself together and wants to rejoin the show and I think she should.”
She lit a new cigarette and studied me. So this was it. My services were no longer needed. The truth of that crashed in on me from all sides and I couldn’t breathe. It was worse than if a police car or handcuffs had been waiting for me. At least then I would know where I was headed. Tears welled up and I tried unsuccessfully to blink them back.
If the circus didn’t need me, where was I to go?
Elaine pounded the desk with a fist and I jumped. She narrowed her eyes. “A little birdie told me that you want to learn the trapeze. Is that true?”
I stared at her. I tried to swallow the enormous lump in my throat. From somewhere I found my voice. “Yes,” I said softly.
“I see.” She stared at me thoughtfully. “Well, you’ve proven yourself to me. You’ve been a real trouper and there’s plenty of grunt work to go around. I think you’ve earned a chance to try what you want. I’ve talked to Victor. In return for you being their pack horse—you know, loading them in and out, and whatever else they need—he and Juan and Carla are willing to train you.”
All I could do was blink my confusion and say the first thing that came into my head. “Not Mina?”
Elaine laughed. “Divas don’t like disciples,” she said. “You’ll learn that soon enough.”
I didn’t understand but nodded as though I did. I didn’t want to do anything to screw this up. “I’m excited,” I told her, and I was. The world seemed to swell with possibility. “I am going to work so hard. So very, very hard.”
“Oh, I’m sure of that,” Elaine said, with a wink. “I wouldn’t expect anything less of you.”
She swiped at the ash that had just tumbled down her outstretched leg. “Now Wilma’s asked to have Yael move back in, and I know Yael will want that. She’s here, right now, but she’s just visiting. She flew down to plead her case. So, you’ll keep working for Jim a few more weeks, staying with Wilma. Yael may come a little earlier, but she joins up with us officially…” Elaine began to rifle all the papers on her desk until she found a black calendar. She used her finger to find her place. “Let’s see, here…in Raleigh, North Carolina.”
Elaine closed the book. “Isn’t that your home state?”
I nodded. My throat had gon
e dry again. It was clear to me that soon I was going to have to deal with what I’d done.
“We’re going early this year. Brand-new booking with a guarantee! I revamped the whole schedule.” Elaine sounded proud of herself, but I was having trouble focusing. “What town are you from again? Lumberton?”
“Gleryton,” I said.
“Right. Well, your last show with the bulls will be Raleigh. You’ll go to Gleryton with the aerialists. Actually, from then on you’ll travel with the aerialists. Okay?”
I opened my mouth. What could I possibly say?
“Sure.” We shook on it.
I walked out of Elaine’s trailer dizzy and light. I sat in the rocking chair for a minute to catch my breath. It looked like there was a storm coming. I rocked back and forth, back and forth. In the span of an afternoon the entire world had shifted.
The fat girl strolled up and tried to look casual.
“Go away,” I said, and walked off the porch towards the animals.
She followed me. “You’re going back to Gleryton.”
“I said go away.”
“And I said make me.”
I whirled around and we held each other back with our eyes. What I needed right now was a friend, someone to talk to. Someone I could trust. Not this.
“You can trust me,” the fat girl said, and smiled.
“You know what? I can’t,” I said. “I can’t trust anyone. I can barely even trust myself.”
I walked off towards the paddock. The sky had darkened and the wind was picking up. I buried my head in Billy’s neck and stroked Dos on the nose. Then I left the horses and walked away from the paddock, past Olivia and Bluebell and away from the big top. I walked until I found a good tree and then I sat with my back to it and looked out at this small, intense world where I lived and let it all wash over me:
Charlie, Marco with needles in their arms.
Charlie fooling around with the barker boy.
Wilma rolling away from me because she knew. Of course she knew.
Who was what they seemed?
Even me. I lifted the hem of my pants and untied my boots so I could see my tattoo. How did it all add up?
I picked at a rock buried in the grass beside me and looked up at the leafy roof overhead. It smelled wonderful where I was. Fresh and alive. From far off I heard someone singing and thought of Starling.
She used to sing in her sleep. She sang in a thin voice, different from her waking voice, and I didn’t know the songs, but the tunes were lilting, mournful. I knew, when I lay awake listening to Starling in the night, that this was how she must have sounded as a small child.
“Do you know you sing in your sleep?” I asked her once, and she was fascinated, though I think she believed I invented it. She listened attentively as I tried to re-create her songs, but my voice was too strong, my pitch was off, the melody escaped as soon as I tried to pin it down.
“I don’t know any songs,” Starling told me. “I’ve never been able to keep tunes in my head.”
“You don’t even know what you know,” I’d told her.
And it was true of me as well. I didn’t even know what I’d known in my bones: that the fat girl was right about Charlie in some ways, as she’d been right about Tony Giobambera. My bones had known what I could and couldn’t trust Charlie with all along. That Wilma didn’t want to be my friend. I’d understood instinctively not to show my hand, but I still felt betrayed by them.
The wind was whipping up. It looked like we were in for a rowdy summer storm.
I leaned my head back against the tree and closed my eyes. If I was honest with myself, the only person who hadn’t yet turned out to be something other than he seemed was Rod.
“And me,” the fat girl said.
I began to cry. “Goddammit,” I said without opening my eyes. “Goddammit, you do not count!”
“Why?” she said.
I opened my eyes, but I was heaving now. Real heavy dry sobs, from way down where they’d been waiting. “Because,” I said. “You are not real. No one can see you. You don’t exist.”
“I do,” she said. “You see me. That’s all I need.”
I pushed open the door of the costume trailer, without knowing what I was going to say, and found Wilma sitting at the makeup mirror staring at herself. She didn’t look up.
“You knew,” I said.
Wilma traced a finger along her eyebrow and watched her reflection. “It’s always surprised me to see myself in a mirror,” she said, and ran the same finger along the outline of her lips. “I look so much plainer than I feel.”
I saw myself reflected behind her, but after so many months and so many miles, I was no longer surprised by how I looked. I just looked like me.
I climbed up on my bunk. Tucked into the tiny space by my bed I had taped a few Polaroids. Jim had taken some of me with Bluebell and Olivia. In one I was in costume, in another I was getting hay dumped on my head when Bluebell was fooling around. Another was of me dirty and surprised, dark streaks on my cheeks and a shovel full of poo in my hands. The last was of Rod, his head thrown back, laughing by the edge of the big top, its red stripe bold against his white shirt.
One by one I pulled each of them down. This was not my home. Wilma wanted me gone, would rather live with someone else.
And I had nothing left to say to Wilma, who had traded me in after all this time together. I climbed down and stepped out into the night and didn’t say good-bye. The screen door slammed behind me.
Earlier in the day, I’d seen the canvas crew checking the tent stakes and now, as I walked towards the cookhouse, I saw Sam walking around and it looked like he was checking again. Circus people are so paranoid. For a while all people could talk about was that someone had been whistling right before Rapunzel Finelli fell, and whistling backstage was considered bad luck. On the other hand they were perversely relieved, because they believed bad things happened in threes. So after the fire fiasco with Yael, Marco, and Charlie and the death of the job-in who’d tried to give Uno a blow job, Rapunzel’s death had capped off the season’s disasters so everyone could relax. Except, judging from Sam’s little kicks and the way he was squinting, he was not relaxed.
I ate quickly. Somehow amid all the chatter and camaraderie of the trainers and grooms, I managed to hear only the silence in my own head.
Outside the Genersh trailers, James was on Luke’s shoulders and Rod was supporting Hugo. They juggled bowling pins back and forth in a complicated X, and seemed unfazed by the wind. Jenny Genersh sat at a card table with her father going over something in a workbook, and was using a big jar to hold down the stray pages she’d ripped out, which ruffled in the gusty air.
I missed him. It was as simple as that. And when Rod saw me, he flushed and dropped two consecutive pins.
“What the fuck?” Luke said, and called for them to stop.
“Sorry,” Rod said. Hugo suggested they all take a break, then did a back flip off Rod’s shoulders. “Ow!” Rod massaged his clavicle.
Hugo ruffled Rod’s hair and winked at me. James and Luke had settled themselves in the shade facing me. “Is this a bad time?” I asked Rod. He shook his head. He was still pink.
I wanted to get away from all those Genersh eyes. “Can we go for a walk?”
Rod scratched his head and nodded. He followed me for a while, behind the row of trailers, towards the woods, lagging a step back. I didn’t know where to begin, or even what exactly to say, only that I needed to do something. That I couldn’t trust anyone but for some reason I trusted him.
I found a good tree to lean on and stopped. “So,” I said. “Um…”
He was staring back at the tent. I took a deep breath. “You know what?” I said. “I miss you. You know, you not coming around and all.”
He crossed his arms over his gray T-shirt and looked at his elbow, my feet. I had my back against that tree but still felt like I was falling. The sky was growing dark, and I thought I felt a drop of rain. I put my h
and out, but it was dry.
“Some weather, huh?”
He glanced at me and looked down again. “Yep.”
If I was waiting for some sign of what I’d seen before, there wasn’t even a flicker. I started to feel stupid. Maybe he’d actually stopped coming by so that he didn’t have to hang out with me anymore.
I licked my lips. “So…” I said. “I have to move out of your sister’s place.”
Rod nodded.
“I mean I’m real glad to be staying, you know? Did you hear Yael’s coming back? Did you hear what I’m going to do?”
Rod sighed, then rolled his eyes. “I’m the one who told Elaine,” he said. “I’m the one who got her to talk to Victor and those guys in the first place.”
“Oh.” My mouth had gone dry. “You sound angry. Are you angry at me?”
He didn’t answer at first. Then he turned and started walking back towards his family.
“Rod? What the fuck? Rod!”
He stopped and faced me. “What do you want?”
“Can we please not shout this conversation?”
“Aaaagh!” he said. He kicked at the ground. “I AM NOT ANGRY!”
“Okay. Can I come talk to you? Don’t you want to talk to me?” I took a step forward and he let me walk towards him. When I was about five feet away, he put up a hand to stop me.
“What the hell is your problem?” I said.
“You are my problem!” He squeezed his whole face together. “You don’t get it, do you? You don’t understand.”
“I don’t know,” I said, taking a few more steps towards him. “I mean I thought that’s what I came here about. Can’t we be friends again?”
“Fuck,” he said, and looked me right in the eyes. His were so clear and so sad that I took a step back.
“No, Annabelle, no! I don’t want to be your friend,” he said. “Fuck. I mean I want to be your friend, but I don’t want to be your friend, you know? To just be your friend. Fuck! Hugo was so right. I am no good at this at all.”
