Wonder Show

by Hannah Barnaby

  “Why not?” asked Portia.

  “It’s because of Mosco. He hates clowns. His wife left him for Greggo the Great,” Violet said. “He’s this famous clown that dresses like a magician and does tricks that go all wrong. Like he goes to pull a rabbit out of his hat, and the rabbit hops out from behind him instead. People can’t get enough, for some reason.”

  “So clowns make Mosco . . . upset?”

  “Mosco sees a clown, he goes berserk,” Violet said. “’Specially one that looks like Greggo. I’ve seen him come near to taking a man’s head off ’cause he showed up in a top hat.”

  “So they all know to stay away?”

  “They know. He’s famous for it. Plus he puts it in the contract with the circus.”

  Violet knew all about Mosco’s arrangements because she worked in the office for him. She said it was tedious work but far better than talking on the bally or serving in the meal tent. There wasn’t much for normal girls to do on the lot.

  “Huh,” said Portia.

  Violet kept talking, and Portia kept thinking. About Caroline. About Delilah, left behind in Mister’s house. About Mister and what his face might have looked like when he found out she was gone. About whether he would try to get her back, or whether he would let her go.

  More than one girl had tried to run away since Portia had been living there. Every single one got brought back, one way or another.

  Not me, Portia thought. The carnival was a good place to hide out, seemed like, and she needed to stay only long enough to find out if Max was here or if anyone knew him. There was just one thing she needed to do to buy herself that time.

  “Hey, Violet?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know how to make chicken-fried steak?”

  There was a pause in the sound of Violet’s knife, and then it picked up again. “Nope. But Doula might. She’s got a bunch of old cookbooks in her trailer, and I think they’re mostly Russian or something, but maybe there’s one or two that’re in English. She’d probably let you look at them.”

  “Who’s Doula?”

  “She’s the gypsy fortuneteller, y’know, with the crystal ball and everything. She tells futures for a dollar. Two dollars if you want to know how you’re going to die.” Violet laughed. “Apparently I’m going to live to a ripe old age and die in my sleep. If you believe what Doula’s got to say about it.”

  “Do you?”

  “Believe her? Not really. I mean, she’s been right about some things, like last year one of the tigers got out of its cage and almost killed a trainer, and Doula knew about it two or three weeks beforehand. But it’s a circus, y’know? Stuff like that always happens.”

  Portia hadn’t considered the possibility of getting mauled by a tiger. Maybe she should pay the two dollars to make sure that wasn’t how she’d be passing to the next world.

  “Anyway,” Violet said, “she’s a nice old lady. A little weird, usually a little drunk. But she’s nice. We’ll see her at breakfast—I’ll ask her if we can stop by later.”

  When the potatoes and carrots were sufficiently boiled, Violet wrapped her hands with dishtowels and hoisted the huge pot off the stove and emptied the whole thing straight into the sink. She waited until the water had drained and then picked up handfuls of vegetables, threw them back into the pot, unwrapped her hands, and said, “Breakfast is served. Or is it lunch? Hard to keep track when you’ve been on the road all night.”

  “That’s it?” Portia asked.

  “Pretty much,” Violet said. “There’s some cold chicken in the refrigerator. We’ll throw that on a plate, too. Nothing fancy. We eat better, sometimes, when we’re closer to town and we can . . . er . . . borrow from people’s gardens.”

  “You have to steal food?”

  “Not always. But money’s not coming in like it used to. And fresh-grown tastes better than store-bought, anyway.” Violet smiled. “Especially when it’s free.”

  “Have you ever gotten caught?”

  Violet shrugged. “Once or twice. Mosco or Jackal can usually talk us out of trouble, though. Give the rubes some free tickets and a special tour, they forget about their missing turnips pretty fast. Especially after they see the freaks.”

  The thing Violet had said about having another “normal” around was still buzzing around Portia’s brain. So far she hadn’t seen anyone but Gideon and Mosco, and they looked plenty normal to her. She recalled the odd man playing the accordion, The Pinhead—he had been quite irregular, and she hadn’t been bothered by him, even though she was only a child then.

  She had heard about so-called human curiosities, seen pictures in the magazines Mister arranged in perfect stacks on his desk, but she was not prepared for them to appear as they did. As real as she was.

  They seemed to come out of the ground itself, moving silently toward the meal tent, where the picnic tables and benches waited like an empty church. A tribe of misfits. Portia wanted to look away, to run, to make them stand still, but she could only watch as they drew closer. She could only try, desperately, to make sense of what she was seeing.

  A man tall as a tree, bent at the waist like a sapling, curling over a child-size man who walked in front of him with stiff, hopping steps.

  An enormous, sweating creature in a massive calico dress, rolling to the tent like a wave of flesh and fabric.

  Two girls in one silk dress, arms wrapped around each other, manicured hands resting gently on smooth white shoulders.

  A slim, delicate woman whose face was covered with dark, wiry hair.

  A girl with no arms.

  Just when Portia had begun to feel that the ground was solid under her feet, the world seemed to tip and slide once more. Her night in the graveyard, her bicycle flight, her sudden immersion in the sideshow—they all crashed together like an avalanche, and Portia could not hold them back any longer.

  She fainted.

  Practical Matters

  Doula’s face was a fierce collection of deep creases and steep bones under her papery skin. Her nose was straight from the front, but when she turned to the side, she had a profile like a woman on an ancient coin. The skin under her chin gathered like pleated fabric and swayed when she spoke.

  “You got money?”

  Violet swiftly grabbed Portia’s hand and held it up as if it were a prize she’d found on the midway. “This is Portia,” she said. “She’s working with me in the pie car.” Violet made no mention of Portia’s humiliating fainting episode. Everyone, it seemed, had seen such reactions before.

  “Congratulations. You want a prize or something?”

  Doula’s voice was gravelly and very deep. Portia would have thought she was a man, if she could only hear the voice and not see the impressive display of cleavage below Doula’s craggy face. The rest of her body was swathed in yards of dark silk, enough to conceal whatever form was underneath, and in the dim light it seemed that Doula was, in fact, a disembodied head. With cleavage.

  Violet rolled her eyes. “No, thank you. Portia’s got to make dinner tonight, and it’s got to be good or Mosco’s leaving her here. Can we look at your cookbooks?”

  Doula stepped back just enough to let them in.

  Her trailer was packed with things: piles of dusty books, half-dead plants in cracked ceramic pots, silver spoons, scarves and strings of beads hanging from open drawers, shoeboxes full of playing cards, rows of hand-size dolls peering out of the darkness with their glassy eyes. Every flat surface was covered with objects, so it seemed as though there actually were no flat surfaces at all, just a landscape of mismatched belongings.

  “Cookbooks are over there,” Doula said, waving a limp hand in the general direction of the back of her home. “I stay outside.”

  “She doesn’t like to be in small spaces with anyone else,” Violet explained. “She says it’s bad for her aura to absorb too much energy from other people.”

  Portia stumbled over something with blunt edges and scraped her shin.

  “Careful,
” Violet said. “God only knows what she’s got hidden in here.”

  “Probably not even God,” said Portia.

  “Probably not. I don’t think Doula would let him in.”

  Doula’s cookbooks turned out to be no help at all, being mostly compendiums of recipes for Greek delicacies that involved ingredients Portia would never be able to find (or want to handle, even if she had them).

  “What are you going to do?” asked Violet. “Mosco said—”

  “I’ll just have to improvise,” Portia replied.

  She strode back to the pie car as fast as she could, hoping that Violet would fall behind so she’d have time to think. But Violet was a fast walker.

  “How’re you gonna do that?”

  Portia shrugged. “Make something that tastes good and tell a good story about it. Most people will eat what you give them.”

  “Mosco isn’t most people.”

  “No one is,” Portia replied.

  “Especially not around here,” Violet said.

  Portia looked up. There was a cloud shaped like her apple tree. “Not anywhere,” she said.

  The Chicken-Fried Steak Trial

  This doesn’t look like chicken-fried steak to me,” Mosco said.

  “That’s because it’s not,” said Portia.

  “Deal was you make chicken-fried steak and you get to stay. Good chicken-fried steak.”

  “That’s true,” said Portia.

  “So what are you trying to pull?”

  “Well, sir, my Aunt Sophia was the greatest chef ever to leave the coast of Italy for the shores of America. All she brought to this great land was a recipe book and a pocket full of basil, and when she arrived at Ellis Island, she asked the guard, she said, ‘Escuse me, sir, but where will I find best Italian cooking in city?’ And the guard told her where to go, and she went, and that very day they hired her to cook for them.” Portia leaned in. “And this is what she made for them.”

  Mosco looked at his plate. “You expect me to believe that the best Italian restaurant in New York hired your aunt because she made macaroni with meat sauce?”

  Portia put her hands on her hips and tried to look outraged and good-natured at once. “That’s pasta con la salsa della carne!” Of course, Aunt Sophia would have been aghast to hear Portia crediting her for this dish. After searching the pie car unsuccessfully for anything resembling pasta or tomatoes, Violet had suggested sending Gideon into town for a case of canned spaghetti, which was paid for from Portia’s meager and precious savings.

  “Which means what?” asked Mosco.

  “Which means,” said a man as he sidled up to the table, “pasta with meat sauce. Subtle difference.”

  He wore suspenders over his undershirt and dust from the cuffs of his pants to the brim of his bowler hat. Even his arms were coated with dust. Only his face was clean, and maybe his hands, which Portia couldn’t see because they were in his pockets. He was leaning against one of the tent poles and chewing on an unlit cigar.

  “Didn’t know you spoke Italian, Jackal,” Mosco said.

  “I’m willing to wager there’s a great deal you don’t know about me, dear fellow.” Jackal stood up straight and stepped to the table. “Aren’t you going to eat your dinner?”

  “This isn’t my dinner. I asked for chicken-fried steak, and this one”—Mosco waved his fork at Portia—“is trying to back out of the deal.”

  “Is that true?” Jackal asked her.

  “No, sir,” she said. “I’m simply offering him something better.”

  “Well, then, the next step seems obvious. Mosco?”

  “Agh,” Mosco grunted. He dug his fork into the pile of broken noodles and oversweet tomato sauce and grudgingly shoved it into his mouth. Chewed. Chewed some more. Swallowed. Looked at Portia and said, “That’s pretty good.”

  Sometimes a small victory is the best kind. And sometimes it’s simply short-lived.

  “But it ain’t chicken-fried steak. And a deal’s a deal. We leave tomorrow. Without you.”

  Portia’s head began to itch. “Please, give me another chance. I can’t—”

  “No second chances,” Mosco said.

  Jackal snorted. “No second chances. What else is the carnival here for but to give us our second chances? Who among us has not come to this traveling festival of misfortune for want of a second chance?”

  Mosco rolled his eyes. “Save it for the bally, Jackal.”

  “I will not! You hired me because I’m the best talker in the game, and I respect your opinion on that matter, but I am here to tell you that I can no longer run the bally alone.” He put his arm around Portia’s shoulders. “And I would like this young lady to be my new assistant.”

  Mosco put his fork down. “What are you trying to pull? You hadn’t even laid eyes on her until a minute ago.”

  “Nevertheless, I know a good talker when I hear one, and if this girl can tell you that ridiculous story about her Italian aunt with a straight face, then I say she belongs with me on the bally line.”

  “Oh, for Pete’s sake.”

  Portia had no idea what was being discussed, but at the moment the only thing keeping her upright was Jackal’s arm around her shoulder. It was dusty (all the way down to the fingertips), and it was strange, but it was also real, and she didn’t have much more to count on. She certainly couldn’t afford to faint a second time.

  “Please, sir,” she said. “I won’t let you down again.”

  “Fine,” Mosco said. “Fine. But you two split the talker’s take of the box office. I am not paying her an extra share. We’re barely making the nut as it is.”

  Jackal patted Portia’s arm with his dirty hand. “We’ll work it out,” he said. “Good man. Enjoy your dinner.”

  He led Portia away before Mosco could change his mind.

  As they walked, Portia said, “I do have an Italian aunt, you know.”

  Jackal shook his head. “Doesn’t matter, my dear. What matters is what we say we have, and how well we say it. Remember that when you’re on the line.”

  “The what?”

  “The stage, my dear!” He dropped his arm from her shoulders and clapped his hands. “You are now in the noble business of the ballyhoo.” Then he reached for her hand, shook it, and announced, “We start in the morning.”

  Portia spent the rest of the evening dishing out bowls of food and washing the empty bowls that returned on Violet’s tray—the air in the kitchen trailer was stifling, but she was glad to be alone. Occasionally she allowed herself a look at the tables through the propped-open door, where she could view the “strange people” she would soon be selling tickets for. The shock of seeing them earlier had dulled to a tense curiosity. She knew she should not be peeking at them this way, and yet she could think of no other way to get used to them.

  And if she was going to stay, she must get used to them.

  Violet was clearly more comfortable, sweeping between tables and chatting with everyone as though she were running a five-star restaurant. One little boy, pale as milk, kept reaching out for her as she passed. A man and a woman with the same white translucence sat on either side of him. A family. It had been so long since Portia had seen one that she nearly forgot where she was.

  Immediately after dinner service was over, Portia followed Violet back to her—their—trailer, where the red bicycle was waiting like a stray dog. Portia grazed the seat with one finger as she passed, a reluctant greeting, and went inside. The trailer was hot, but she had survived her first day and would not complain of any discomfort.

  It was not so different, she told herself, than Mister’s house. She cooked for people who did not thank her, she cleaned up alone, and she slept in a strange bed.

  And now she found herself sharing a trailer with Violet, making up a tiny cot that dropped down from the wall and would have been barely wide enough for The Human Skeleton, featured on the bally line above the midway stage.

  Another stopping point on the way back to her real l
ife, she told herself. She would make herself remember before she fell asleep tonight, every night. Her ritual, to keep from forgetting.

  “So,” Violet said as she brushed out her hair, “now you know.”

  “Know what?”

  “What we are. What we do. You sure you want to stay?”

  Portia felt she was being tested. No one had asked her anything—where she had come from, why she had left, whether there was anyone looking for her—but there were questions hovering in the air like insects. “For now,” she said. “Everyone seems . . . nice.”

  Violet murmured noncommittally.

  “Who was that family?” Portia asked. “With the little boy. Are they part of the show?”

  “Yes.” Violet stopped brushing and turned away.

  “What do they do?”

  “Same thing everybody does. They sit onstage so people can stare at them.”

  “He . . . The boy was trying to get your attention. He seemed to care about you.”

  “Well, he should.” Violet slid into bed and opened a magazine, obscuring her face. “He’s my brother.”

  Exhausted as she was, Portia put off going to sleep. She dreaded the falling quiet of those first moments in bed, when she knew her mind would grow louder with its doubts and objections to what she had done. So she crept out of the trailer and stood on the steps, wondering what to do next, when Gideon appeared out of the darkness.

  “Seems like dinner went okay,” he offered. “I hear you’re along for the ride tomorrow.”

  She was relieved to have been saved from her own presence. She hoped she didn’t smell too strongly of the pie car. “I’m Jackal’s new assistant. Whatever that means.”

  Gideon smiled. “Couldn’t tell you. Jackal’s never had an assistant before.”

  “Oh.” Portia wrapped her—Caroline’s—yellow sweater around herself and sat on the top step of the trailer. “How long have you known him? I mean, how long have you been with the . . . show?” She wanted to add, And what in God’s name are you doing here? But she wouldn’t have known how to answer that herself. And given what Violet had just revealed, she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.