“Yes,” Levi said.
She could tell by his grim tone that they were thinking of the same incident. When Amelia fell into the tank (and it was falling, really, there was hardly enough room to dive) a man in the audience had started hooting and shouting about the “naked lady.” He’d continued even after Amelia changed into her sea form, making ribald remarks about her fish tail and her bare chest. Several people had hushed him, and plenty were so mesmerized by Amelia’s appearance that they hadn’t noticed him at all.
But Amelia couldn’t help noticing him, and the wagon was so small and there was much less water in it, which meant it was easier to hear what he said. His words were so crude that she wanted to hide away, but there was no room to do so.
When the man wouldn’t cease, Levi had spoken to two of the traveling show laborers and they’d happily escorted the man out of the tent. Amelia didn’t know what happened to him after that, but the man had not returned.
“That never happened in New York,” she said. “Not once. Yes, there were the people who claimed I was immoral, but that’s not the same.”
“It is, er, much more rural here,” Levi said.
“I spent many years of my life in a rural place,” Amelia said. “I’ve heard Barnum refer to it as Middle of Nowhere, Maine, when he thought I wasn’t listening. But I promise you that no matter how countrified we were, no one would ever have had the bad manners to behave in such a way.”
“The man had too much whiskey,” Levi said. “I don’t believe you’ll need to worry about that happening at every performance.”
“And everyone else—the way they stared at me. It was different, Levi, different from how it was in New York,” Amelia said.
“I don’t think it was as different as you do,” Levi said. “The trouble is that in the wagon you don’t have any way to turn away from the way they stare.”
“And in the museum the crowd was constantly moving,” Amelia said. “They didn’t stay in place and point.”
“They did at the Concert Hall,” Levi pointed out.
“But I was on the stage then. I was above the crowd, not at their eye level,” Amelia said. She felt that she wasn’t explaining properly. He didn’t understand how much more exposed she felt in the wagon.
“I suppose if it makes you that uncomfortable we can find a way to raise the wagon. Put it on a little stage. We would have to build it at each stop on the tour, though,” Levi said.
She saw him calculating the cost, the trouble, and the need for explaining both of those things to Barnum.
“I can become accustomed to it,” she said. She didn’t really care about Barnum’s expenses or grievances, but she didn’t like Levi bearing the brunt of them. “It’s only that it’s new, I suppose.”
He took her in his arms then, and it was a long time before either of them thought of anything but each other.
“Let’s find a bookshop tomorrow, or a library,” Amelia said, her cheek pressed into Levi’s chest. She liked listening to his heart beat and hearing the deep rumble of his voice rising out of his lungs. “I want to know all about the orangutan and where it comes from. And all about Fiji, too.”
“Fiji?” Levi asked. “Why, after so many months?”
“I’d like to know more about where I am supposed to be from,” Amelia said. “But you’ll need to read it to me. I still can only read a little.”
Amelia had been trying to learn more, simply because there were words everywhere, and most folk relied on the newspaper. She felt she was at a disadvantage when everyone talked about things they read in the news.
“I can teach you anything you don’t know. Then you’ll be able to read it yourself,” Levi said.
They were not able to find a book that contained any information about orangutans, but Levi discovered a missionary’s journal from the South Pacific. This contained descriptions not only of Fiji but of many other islands where the missionary had traveled in hopes of spreading the word of God.
Amelia scowled at this bit when Levi read it aloud.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Why does he want to go about interfering with other people?” Amelia said. “I’m sure the people on those islands were perfectly happy without missionaries.”
Levi shifted uncomfortably at this. Like almost every American he’d been raised with the Bible, and while he wasn’t as fervent as some, he still believed in the basic rightness of the Christian word. Amelia, having been raised in no such manner, did not think it good or right that Christians plowed over everyone who did not think as they did.
“Well, Amelia, they are savages,” Levi said.
“What’s a savage?” Amelia said. “Someone who doesn’t live as you do? Someone who doesn’t have gaslight and shoes and cobblestoned streets?”
Levi took a breath and tried again. “These are simple people who haven’t been exposed to—”
“And why is simple something that needs to be fixed? Why must all people everywhere be cast in the same mold?” Amelia said.
She felt unreasonably angry with Levi for not understanding the basic wrongness of this idea. These people had their own lives, their own gods, their own ways. A missionary traveled across the ocean and told them that everything they believed and lived by was incorrect. It was the same as if a human came to her people under the ocean and told them that they could no longer be merpeople.
Amelia was surprised, too, for Levi was always kind and it seemed out of character for him to think of himself as above anyone, especially an island dweller who lived thousands of miles away.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t read this book right now,” Levi said, closing it and putting it aside.
“No,” Amelia said, snatching it from his hand. “You’re not to do that. You’re not to treat me like a child because you don’t want to have a disagreement.”
“This is just something you don’t understand, Amelia,” Levi said, the first sparks of anger in his eyes. “Missionaries have a duty to save others from damnation.”
“That’s what Elijah Hunt thought he was doing when he shot me,” Amelia said. “I can’t believe you would think the same as someone like that.”
“It’s not the same thing,” Levi said, his face showing his exasperation. “Elijah Hunt had an extreme view.”
“A view that was shared with all those people who wrote to Barnum about me, and the crowds that demonstrated day after day outside the museum,” Amelia said. “How is Elijah Hunt different from a missionary? Their intention is salvation at any cost. Maybe it’s you who doesn’t understand.”
Levi didn’t say anything else. He quietly put on his coat and left their hotel room. This infuriated Amelia, who felt it deeply unfair that he was able to leave if he was angry and she was not (it being unsafe for her to walk about on her own—this was truer now than it had been in New York, since the crowds they’d encountered were more unpredictable). She was also angry that he would rather leave than listen to her.
She threw the stupid missionary book across the room. It was the first time they’d ever really disagreed, and since he wouldn’t stay and let her convince him she was right, she didn’t know what to do with herself except pace and argue with him in her head instead of in person.
She paced until she was exhausted, and then she lay on the bed and cried, because she had all this energy and nowhere to put it.
A while after that he returned bearing dinner on a tray and said he was sorry he’d left her. But he didn’t apologize for believing he was right, and Amelia didn’t apologize either, and they were very careful with each other for several days after.
And in the meantime, they went from town to town, moving ever farther south. It was terribly hot no matter where they went, and Amelia grew resentful of the humidity that sapped her energy and the mosquitoes that plagued them constantly and the eternal press of t
he sunlight.
She’d come from a cold clime, where the air was crisp nearly year-round and the ocean was even colder. The poor orangutan suffered, too, particularly since her handler didn’t see fit to give her water frequently enough.
One afternoon they stopped in a small town in North Carolina. As the men began to raise the large white tent Amelia caught sight of the orangutan’s handler, whose name was Stephen White, whipping the ape for moving too slowly out of her cage in the wagon to the ground.
She didn’t think. She left Levi, who’d been saying something about finding suitable lodging for the night, and crossed the grounds to White.
As White raised the whip to hit the cowering animal again, Amelia tore it from his hand. She nearly dropped it, for it was an ugly thing and it felt ugly and mean in her hand, but she was so very angry.
“What the—” he said.
As he turned toward her, Amelia lashed him across the face with the whip. White screamed, both hands coming up to cover his left cheek. A large welt raised there almost instantly, and it ran from his mouth to his ear.
“You goddamned bitch,” White snarled, stepping toward her.
Amelia raised the whip again. White paused, looking not at her but at the weapon in her hand. She felt that ugliness against her palm, the hate that White bore for anything he thought lesser than him, and how it had seeped into the whip. It made her want to throw it away and wash her hands until they were pink and clean and she was certain that none of his meanness had seeped inside and infected her.
“You are not to use this on that creature again,” Amelia said, holding on to the whip. She had to hold on so he would know she was a threat. He was the kind of man who only understood violence. “You are not to hit her, or pull her on a rope, or let her go hours without water or food. If you do any of those things I will see to it that you are not paid for your services here.”
“Mr. Barnum hired me, not you,” White said. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. You’re not even human.”
“And I am grateful for that, if you’re an example of humanity,” Amelia said. “I’d rather be a mermaid, or even an orangutan, than one of your tribe.”
“I’ll do what I please,” White spat. “It’s nothing but a dumb animal, and so are you.”
“You’ll do what you please elsewhere,” Amelia said. She was not surprised to discover that White thought this way. She imagined that many of the other laborers did as well. Barnum had said there was no difference between her and a tiger in a cage, and Amelia knew that most people thought the same. They didn’t think of her as one of them. “Take your things and leave.”
“I signed an agreement with Mr. Barnum,” White said. “I told you, you don’t get to tell me what to do or where to go or end that agreement.”
“But I do. I am the executor of that agreement,” Levi said from behind Amelia. “Mr. Barnum invested his authority in me, and I say you are no longer employed by this institution.”
White looked astonished. He had expected, Amelia thought, that Levi would support him if it came down to it—perhaps because Levi was also a man and Amelia only a woman with no power. “Because I only treated a dumb beast as it deserved to be treated?”
Levi looked at the man steadily. “You insulted my wife.”
“Your wife,” White spat. “Does she wrap you in her tail at night? Does she sleep in a tank? What kind of babies are you going to have with a fish, Levi Lyman? Your wife is an abomination. I can’t insult an abomination. They’re supposed to be destroyed.”
“If you don’t leave now I’ll call the local police and have you jailed,” Levi said. He didn’t physically threaten White, or tighten his hands into fists, or do anything besides let the other man see in his eyes that he meant it.
“What about my pay?” White said. “I earned money on this venture, and I want it.”
Levi crossed his arms and stared at the animal handler.
White swore and stormed off. Amelia lowered the whip to the ground, dropping it. She rubbed her palm with her other hand, trying to take off the taint of the weapon.
The other workers had gathered around to watch the exchange. When White left the spell was broken, and they all hastily rushed to their tasks before they, too, were summarily dismissed without pay.
Amelia walked slowly to the orangutan’s side. Her legs were shaking, but she thought nobody had noticed and if she moved carefully they wouldn’t.
There were stripes across the creature’s neck and shoulders, and she lay on one side with her eyes closed. Levi called two of the other workers to carry her inside the tent and give her food and water.
Amelia started after them, but Levi put his hand on her shoulder. “Let them be,” he said. “I’ll make certain that the animal isn’t mistreated.”
“What you mean,” Amelia said bitterly, “is that they won’t listen if I tell them what to do. Just as Mr. White wouldn’t leave until you said so.”
“Men generally don’t recognize the authority of women,” Levi said very gently. “It’s the way of the world, Amelia. I’m sorry it distresses you.”
“The world,” Amelia said, “is wrong about so many things.”
She couldn’t miss the sideways glances many of the workers gave her for the rest of the day, and for many days after. White had only said aloud something many of them thought—that she was unnatural, that she should not be.
That was the look that was in the eyes of many of the people in the audience as well, the elusive thing she hadn’t been able to pin down. Some of them thought she was a miracle, but a great many of them seemed horrified by her existence.
It is not a comforting thing to realize that many people think the world a better place without you in it, Amelia thought.
With each passing day she felt more restless, and more angry. She couldn’t explain exactly what had put her in that state. There were so many slights and discontents that added up to more than the sum of the whole.
Maybe it was the feeling that there was a wall between her and Levi, that there were more subjects on which they disagreed rather than agreed. He still loved her, and she him, but they turned away from each other in frustration as often as they fell into each other’s arms.
She hadn’t forgotten the way he’d walked away from their first disagreement about the island people he called savages, and they returned to the subject time and again to the benefit of neither. They could not agree, but Amelia continued to try to convince him.
He would not be convinced. Amelia finally realized it was because he himself did not understand what it meant to be different and to have people expect you to change for their sake. She realized that no man could understand this, really, though they expected their wives to do so every day.
After that she stopped pressing him on the subject, but the kernel of her disappointment lay inside her and festered until it was an eternal ache at the bottom of her stomach.
Perhaps her anger and restlessness was because of the exhaustion of touring or the horrible wagon she was supposed to confine herself in night after night. Perhaps it was because she was tired of being a creature with no voice, who was supposed to pretend to be unable to speak, and thus was not able to defend herself from the men who leered at her through the glass.
Perhaps it was because the more she saw of humanity, the less she liked it. She realized that even though the people of her village hadn’t always been the kindest or most welcoming, they did at least leave well enough alone. She rarely saw outright cruelty, and once you belonged to them, they would defend you as if you were their own child. She’d felt this, especially after Jack’s death.
Everywhere she traveled in the south she saw what the evil men did, an evil that had simply not been present in her hometown. They passed field after field of black men and women in chains, toiling for white men in shaded hats who sat on horses and bore wh
ips like the one Amelia had used on Stephen White.
She could feel the hate that radiated from these men, the contempt, the smug superiority, and she never passed by one without wishing to knock him from the back of the horse and hope the animal kicked him to death.
When they went by these places she felt, very profoundly, her helplessness, her inability to free the people from their pain, the need to fix this and knowing she could not. She had not even been able to fire an animal handler who abused his animal without the authority of her husband. None of these men on horses would listen to her. They’d probably tell Levi to take her back inside where she belonged. That was what that sort of man did.
And maybe it was because inside her there was a little mermaid growing (Amelia could feel her daughter swimming in her belly, like little bubbles swirling under her skin) and she wanted, very badly, to return to the sea where her child belonged. She wanted her daughter to know the ocean, to know its dangers and its beauties.
The ocean was a violent place, yes, but it was violence without malice. When a shark ate a sea lion, it did not hate the sea lion. It only wanted to live.
The human world was not so marvelous as it had seemed from the water. And her reasons for staying in New York, for going on this tour, for being a part of Barnum’s performance machine, now seemed both shallow and foolish. Money? She’d wanted money to travel and see all the wonders of man? What was there to see besides the misery people inflicted on one another?
The castles of Europe and the mountains of the west were nothing to her now. She wanted only the comfort of the ocean, to feel its embrace all around her and know that was her place. That was where she belonged. She did not belong in a tank with dead water around her, humans treating her like something that did tricks only for their amusement.
But she could not simply run to the water and leave as she might have months before. She couldn’t because she loved Levi, even with the space between them, and because she bore his child.
The Mermaid Page 21
