Wonder Show

by Hannah Barnaby

  Finally her fist against the glass was too much for him. He rolled down the window—a process that seemed to take the better part of an hour.

  “What?!”

  “Don’t you yell at me,” Portia hollered. “You started this.”

  “And I’m finishing it.” He sneered and started to roll the window back up. Portia stuck her hand through the gradually shrinking gap.

  “You think I won’t crush your hand like a walnut?” Jimmy inquired. “Because I will. I’ll do it.”

  She left her hand where it was, hovering between glass and frame.

  It was a proper standoff.

  And Portia was victorious.

  “Bah,” he muttered, and slapped both hands against the steering wheel. “Ain’t even worth the effort.”

  She tried not to smile when she asked, “You done now?”

  He didn’t answer, just leaned over the empty space where the passenger seat used to be, opened the glove compartment, and extracted a crushed pack of cigarettes. He pushed the lighter button on the dashboard and thrust the pack at Portia through the half-open window. She shook her head.

  “Good for you,” said Jimmy. “These things’ll stunt your growth.” He laughed, a burst of noise. “I should know.”

  Portia waited until he’d lit his cigarette before she asked, “What did you mean back there? About me never begging for anything?” The smoke was going right into her eyes, but she didn’t move to wave it away.

  “I seen girls like you before. Every year they show up on the lot, looking for work, looking for something different than what they come from. They never last long.”

  Rain clouds were beginning to roll across the sky. Portia crossed her arms against the sudden breeze. “I’m no First o’May.”

  If he was surprised by her easy use of the phrase, he didn’t show it. “Like I said”—Jimmy exhaled a lungful of smoke in her direction—“I seen it before.”

  She wasn’t going to win him over here and now, and it was getting chilly. She could smell the rain on the air. Can’t afford to catch cold, she thought. Might lose my voice. Jackal would kill me.

  “You’re probably right,” said Portia.

  “I usually am,” said Jimmy.

  “So I guess we should say our goodbyes now. Get it out of the way.”

  He raised a thick eyebrow.

  “It’s been real nice working with you, Jimmy.” She put her hand through the window again, in handshake position.

  He regarded her hand as if it were a venomous snake. Then, slowly, he switched his cigarette from his right hand to his left and put his palm against hers. It was surprisingly warm, and soft. Not a hand that’s done a lot of work. Not like Mosco’s, or Gideon’s.

  She gripped Jimmy’s hand for a moment—a moment just long enough to seal a secret, or a promise—and then she let go and walked back to the midway, leaving him alone, the way he always said he wanted to be.

  Jimmy

  First time I heard her name, sounded like Gideon said, “Portion,” and I thought, What the hell kinda name is that?

  She’s probably just like everybody else from the outside. Thinks I should be happy and cute because I’m small. Goddamned cartoon movie about that girl and the seven dwarfs practically ruined my life. You’d think everybody in America saw that damned movie. Maybe they did. All I know is people see me now and they want me to sing that goddamned “heigh-ho” song, and no way in hell am I gonna do that. Humiliating enough having Jim carry me around like some kinda baby.

  He means well, Jim does. And I do hate slogging through the mud. Takes me forever to get anywhere when the mud’s up.

  I like summer on the open road ’cause there ain’t a lotta mud to deal with. Seems like it’s always dry out here and I can walk across a field like anybody else. Grass gets tall on the prairie, taller than me by far, and I just tie a scarf around my face and put some sunglasses on so the weeds don’t whack me in the eyes, and then I can walk as far as I want.

  Anyway, I still think Portia’s a weird name. And she can go to hell if she thinks I’m singin’ that song for her.

  Jim

  Sometimes it feels like I’ve always been this tall. I can’t remember ever being shorter than anyone else, having to tilt my head back to see a face or stand on my tiptoes to reach something. I can reach everything. I hate going to the grocery store the most because there’s always some smart-mouthed fellow who wants to give his friends a laugh so he asks me if I can get something off the top shelf for him. Of course I can. The top shelf isn’t even as high as my chest. Anyone can see that.

  I see mothers on the midway, holding their little boys and girls, and I wonder what it would be like to have somebody hold me like that. I asked Jimmy what it feels like when I hold him, but he told me I was being strange again. I guess I understand—I mean, Jimmy doesn’t want to think of himself being like a baby.

  Sometimes I wish there was a magician who really could saw people in half. But I wouldn’t really want to give up half of myself. (It’d have to be the bottom half, I guess, because I couldn’t likely go on living without a head.) What I really wish is that someone could melt me and Jimmy together and make us into two normal-size people. I’d even settle for being attached to each other like Pippa and Polly are. I wouldn’t mind.

  But I don’t think Jimmy wants to talk about being melted down with me or attached so we’d have to always be in the same place. I think Jimmy kind of likes being small, sometimes. I don’t mind carrying him around when the mud gets bad, and he ties my shoes for me.

  It’s too hard for me to bend over anymore, so I can’t do it myself.

  How’s that for irony? I can reach just about anything, except the ground.

  Life sure is strange.

  The Secret Lives of Ladies

  Do me a favor,” Violet said. “Take this plate to Mrs. Collington. She didn’t show up to dinner.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t hungry,” said Portia.

  “Yeah, right,” Violet retorted. “Anyway, Mosco doesn’t like her to skip meals. She loses any weight, and he loses money.”

  Mrs. Collington didn’t appear to be in any danger of losing her Fat Lady title, even if she skipped dinner for a week, but Portia took the plate (which really was more of a platter, loaded with fried chicken and biscuits) and headed for the trailer.

  Unlike some of the freaks, Mrs. Collington didn’t have a trailer with her name and image painted on the outside in garish colors. The Lucasie trailer, for instance, was visible from miles away—larger-than-life portraits of Rudolph and Antoinette and Joseph under huge red print that said THE WILD ALBINOS OF BORA BORA and slightly smaller print (but only slightly) that said THE AMAZING LUCASIE FAMILY. Next to Joseph was a curiously solid swatch of red, as if he were being overlapped by an enormous curtain.

  “That used to be me,” Violet had told Portia when she asked about it. “I made them paint over it.”

  Mrs. Collington’s trailer, though, was a plain silver Airstream with a plain silver door with a small rectangle painted on it, which simply said COLLINGTON. No one passing by would have known who lived there. Probably, Portia thought, that was the point.

  She knocked gently and nearly dropped the platter when Mrs. Murphy threw the door open and thrust her bearded face into the cool evening air.

  “Hello, dear! Gosh, it’s nice out, isn’t it? Is that for us? Come in!”

  Mrs. Murphy held the door, and Portia felt the woman’s beard tickle her neck as she stepped inside. Mrs. Collington was spread across the couches at the far end.

  “Violet sent me with your dinner,” Portia said.

  “Look at all this,” Mrs. Murphy said, shaking her head. “They always send too much.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Mrs. Collington called. “You eat it.”

  Mrs. Murphy leaned close to Portia and whispered, “She gets depressed sometimes, and then she gets stubborn. Decides she’s going to quit the business. It happens every year around this time.”
<
br />   “Why?” Portia whispered.

  “Her wedding anniversary.”

  “Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Mrs. Collington snapped. “You can’t keep secrets in a trailer this size. And I’m not depressed.”

  “You’re not? Well, good, then. Let’s all have some dinner.”

  “Oh,” said Portia, “I’ve already eaten.”

  “Nonsense,” Mrs. Murphy said. She took the platter and went to join Mrs. Collington in the living room. “Come on,” she called, and patted the seat next to her. “Come tell us about yourself.”

  Portia froze. She had grown accustomed to keeping her secrets—no one but Gideon knew anything about her past, and even he didn’t know the most important part. Caroline. Portia shook her head.

  “I’m sure you have much more interesting stories than I do,” she ventured.

  “See?” Mrs. Murphy elbowed Mrs. Collington. “I told you. She’s just like Gideon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He changes the subject whenever you ask him anything personal. Tries to get you talking about yourself instead of him. Fortunately for you”—Mrs. Murphy winked at Portia—“I am always delighted to talk about myself. And so is Mrs. Collington. Usually.”

  “Knock it off and pass the chicken, Emmeline.”

  “Breast or drumstick, Fern?”

  “Both,” said Mrs. Collington. “Thank you, dear.”

  “You’re welcome, darling.”

  They sounded like sisters, teasing each other with niggling pet names and exaggerated good manners. Manners layered over a pair of roughened hearts that loved each other.

  “So,” Mrs. Murphy said, “where shall I begin?”

  “At the beginning,” Portia told her, and accepted a biscuit from the plate Mrs. Collington had extended across the table.

  The two women proceeded to speak for what felt like hours. Portia’s entire childhood had been just like this, letting her ears fill with the sounds of familiar voices speaking remembrances of past lives and long-gone people, the smell of food heavy in the air, the words flying like insects, buzzing, swarming, dancing. She found herself lulled into a strange kind of trance, her body relaxing for the first time since she could remember.

  She felt safe.

  But then the chicken and the biscuits were gone, and a new silence fell over the women at the table. Suddenly, Mrs. Murphy’s hands flew to her chest, clasping her splendid beard. “Oh!” she cried. “The dress!”

  Mrs. Collington leaned back on the couch, which groaned deeply. “What dress?” she inquired in a contented voice.

  “The dress for Portia! Stand up, dear. Let me measure you. Now, where did I put that sewing box?” She bustled around the tiny room, digging through drawers and various piles of objects until she found her quarry: a rusty silver lunch box. Max had had one just like it. Portia swallowed.

  “You don’t have to—” she started, but Mrs. Murphy waved her objections away.

  “Of course I do, dear,” she said. “It’s my great pleasure! Arms up.”

  If it had been years since Portia had sat and listened to so many stories, it had been an entire lifetime since she’d been made to stand still for so long, and even longer, it seemed, since anyone had sought any kind of physical contact. Mrs. Murphy’s tape measure gently recorded every bit of Portia’s body—Mrs. Collington wrote its findings down on a slip of paper as Mrs. Murphy reported each number. Portia could not have felt more exposed than if she’d confessed every sin she’d ever committed, and yet the experience was far from unpleasant. She liked the sight of the numbers on the paper, when she looked at them later. They were, she thought, a kind of proof of her residence in the world.

  It was nice to know that this was not all just a dream.

  “Tell Jackal I’ll have it ready in a week or so,” Mrs. Murphy called as Portia departed, empty platter in hand. “You’ll look just lovely, dear!”

  Portia smiled, waved, and let the midway carry her off.

  Mrs. Collington

  Been billed as everything from a giant baby to a dancing girl. Had my hair blond, black, red, long, short, gone. You name it. Mosco don’t go for gimmicks like the others. He’s smarter than that. He only lets the twins do their dancing ’cause they’re so spoiled. The rest of us mostly just stay in one place and don’t make too much eye contact. Rubes wanna get a good look at you but they don’t always want you looking back.

  I usually got a big smile on my face, and I wave like I’m a beauty queen on a parade float so they get the whole jolly-and-fat combination. But I ain’t really looking at anybody. I fix my eyes on a spot a couple inches over all their heads and pretend.

  They did love the giant baby routine, once upon a time. I was just a kid then, six or seven years old. I already weighed over a hundred pounds. My giant baby diaper was the size of a curtain, and my giant baby bonnet had extra-long ribbons so I could tie it in a bow under my chins. And this other girl, Mamie or Millie or something, played my mama and fed me and burped me, and I sat on her lap and she acted like I was crushing her.

  Only, a couple times I really did give her bruises on her legs. And it was near impossible to drink outta that giant baby bottle without getting milk all over us.

  I can’t stand milk anymore. Haven’t had it in years.

  Sitting in one place for so long, a person can start to go a little crazy. Not the kind of crazy you don’t come back from. Just a few steps in the direction of not-all-there. Once, I swear, I saw an eye through a knothole in the stage. Right at my feet. It was looking at me. It didn’t blink. Or maybe it blinked at the exact same time I blinked, so I tried not blinking, but I couldn’t help it. Then Mrs. Murphy asked me what was wrong because I was looking down instead of smiling and waving like usual, and I told her I was just tired, and when I looked at the knothole again, the eye was gone.

  I try not to think about things like that. Cooking helps. Eating, too.

  Good thing I’m in the business.

  The Meaning of “I Don’t Know”

  Between working in the pie car and trying to absorb Jackal’s vast collection of instructions on How to Get a Man’s Last Dollar, Portia was exhausted. Each day seemed like a replica of the day before. She did not even feel like riding her bicycle, which sat in the back of Gideon’s truck when the show traveled, and otherwise leaned dejectedly against Portia and Violet’s trailer. She desperately wanted to leave the pie car and never set foot into a kitchen again. The freaks were an ungrateful audience for her work. It was like cooking for a brood of cranky children, none of whom liked the same things or wanted to try anything new.

  “Mashed potatoes again?”

  “Scrambled eggs again?”

  “This looks . . . interesting.”

  “How come we never have watermelon anymore?”

  Joseph said, “I’m sick of chicken legs.”

  Jimmy said, “This is bullshit.”

  “Jimmy!” everyone hollered.

  “Well it is,” he muttered.

  Portia gritted her teeth. She made every recipe she could think of. At least the ones that were possible, given the meager ingredients she had to work with. Shopping trips were discouraged—Mosco saw every trip into town as a potential disaster, and money was scarce—so Portia and Violet were often dispatched to barter with local farmers and housewives in exchange for circus tickets. They never mentioned the sideshow.

  Portia did not complain. She thought about how she could be shoveling horse manure instead and went on peeling the seventeen-thousandth potato she had peeled that summer. She had visions of herself peeling potatoes until the end of the world, at which point she would perish alone because no one would be able to find her amid all the naked potatoes and piles of shredded skins.

  But the day after she took the platter of chicken and biscuits to Mrs. Collington’s trailer, the Fat and Bearded Ladies whirled into the kitchen and ordered Portia to leave immediately.

  “What? Why?”

  Mrs.
Collington tightened her mouth and said simply, “Out.”

  Mrs. Murphy smiled as she tied a scarf over her beard. “She’s feeling better,” she whispered to Portia. “Now hand me that peeler.”

  Mosco was outside the pie car, whittling chess pieces out of discarded stage boards.

  “Who’re those for?” Portia asked.

  Mosco muttered, “I don’t know.”

  She waited a few seconds, but he said nothing more.

  “Well . . . I guess I’ll . . . take a bath?”

  Eyes still down, he said, “You asking my opinion?”

  “Just trying to make conversation.”

  He looked up then and closed his pocketknife. “Let me give you some advice. And I’m only doing this because it looks like you might actually stick around awhile. In the carnival, when you ask a question and the answer you get is ‘I don’t know,’ it means you have crossed a line. It means, ‘None of your business.’ It means you are not entitled to know something just because you ask about it. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said. “Now leave me alone. I’ve got to finish this in time for Marie’s birthday. And if you tell anyone I told you what I just told you, you’re fired.”

  Portia wasn’t sure what he meant was the secret: the business about “I don’t know” or the fact that he was carving a chess set for Marie. But Portia had just been set free from the pie car and threatened with unemployment, all in the span of about three minutes. Her future at the Wonder Show was no more secure than a bridge made of eggshells. She wasn’t about to disagree with the boss.

  “Right,” she said. And that was that.

  The Legend of Marie

  Mosco was the strongman, the mighty fellow who nonchalantly bent iron bars to look like wishbones, let Jackal snap his wrists into shackles so he could break the chains with a satisfying pop, silently lifted a barbell with two children from the audience sitting on either end. He did not smile or grimace or try to look mean. He simply did what was necessary, finished his portion of the show, and returned to his business.