Wonder Show

by Hannah Barnaby

  I would rather go to hell with Pippa than be in heaven without her. I wonder if we could go in two different directions when we’re dead.

  Pippa was the one who got us started dancing for the blowoff. Before that we were on the stage with everybody else, and I liked that fine, but Pippa wanted to make more money so we could save up for a house someday. She talks a lot about our house and how it’ll have a huge room full of books so she can read all the time.

  I don’t know what I’ll do then.

  Lots more knitting, I guess.

  Pippa

  I don’t know if Polly and I would be friends in other circumstances. I don’t know if we’re friends now. I take care of her and I take care of myself, and that would probably be true if we were just regular sisters. Maybe it seems funny to talk about it that way when we’re up on stage, dancing like loose women do, but that is how I see it. One does what is necessary to survive.

  Mr. Charles Darwin wrote about survival and the ways in which creatures evolve to keep their places in the world. I certainly do not think Polly and I are a good example of evolution—if every person was born with another person attached to them, many scientific and technical advances would be rendered useless. The airplane, for example, would have to be completely redesigned. Think if the Wright brothers had been like us. Or Cain and Abel. Human history could have changed direction at so many crossroads.

  As an example of survival, however, Polly and I have done admirably. And we have been in good company here. What is a man with alligator skin going to do besides make a performer of himself? For most of us, it is this life or one spent hiding in a dark corner somewhere. An institution or an alley, it makes no difference.

  But I am not content to settle for mere survival. I require a greater measure of success. I believe I have made this clear to Polly (as clear as I am able) and, in another way, to Mosco. He was reluctant to allow us to dance, but I promised him that we would have no trouble finding another home and reminded him that his previous exhibit of Siamese twins was lacking in authenticity, being merely two girls who looked alike wearing a pair of dresses that had been sewn together. Mosco is a savvy businessman. He came around to my way of thinking.

  Polly does not enjoy the dancing and neither do I, but I talk the both of us onto the stage every night. I talk about the money we are saving from our ticket sales, about the house we will buy, about the bookshelves that will line the walls and the fireplace that will keep us warm on winter nights. And I promise Polly as much yarn as she could ever want.

  The Blowoff

  Extra canvas was layered over the gaps in this part of the tent, to help the rubes forget the midway and the eyes that would judge them silently for paying the extra dollar, for what they were about to watch. A single spotlight exhaled a dim beam onto the stage. The rows of chairs sat in almost total darkness, and the men stumbled as they walked in. Mosco liked this arrangement, liked how it made the rubes less confident, less likely to put on a show of their own by jumping the stage or shouting lewd suggestions. Just the same, he took his place at the stage corner, set his stance, and crossed his arms. The men were silent.

  Portia and Violet made their way to a pair of seats in the back and tried to stay out of sight. The shadowed heads in front of them were, Portia thought, like the shadows she saw filling the trucks at night when the show pulled up stakes and moved on to the next town. The comparison wouldn’t sit still in her brain, though she knew there was a difference. Her friends were not like these men. They were the spectacle, not the spectators. They had done nothing wrong. Only what they had to do, to survive.

  But if that was the case, Polly and Pippa could have been on the stage with the others instead of singled out for the blowoff. Couldn’t they?

  They danced to Fred Astaire singing “Cheek to Cheek,” touching their faces and then pivoting so their backs were to the audience. Then they each lifted a side of their skirt to reveal the band of flesh that joined them at their shapely hips. When Fred sang, “I want my arms about you,” the twins embraced and grinned lasciviously, hinting at other, less innocent embraces. And at the last chorus, they reached across each other’s bodies and tore away the tops of their costumes, and the men howled and barked, and Portia finally looked away.

  Impressions

  I’ll tell you a secret,” Violet said.

  Portia wasn’t sure she wanted another secret to carry, but she nodded anyway.

  “Doula’s not really a gypsy. Or a fortuneteller. She’s just some old woman from Greece.”

  “How do you know she can’t tell fortunes?”

  “I took her some tea leaves to read once, and she didn’t know how to do it. I showed her the cup and asked her what it meant, and she said”—Violet hunched herself over and spoke in Doula’s deep graveled voice—“‘Means you need more tea.’”

  Portia laughed. “Well, she wasn’t exactly wrong.”

  Violet hopped forward in a perfect imitation of Doula’s lurching walk and hollered, “I am Doula! I tell you the future if you give me the vodka!”

  “Violet,” Portia hissed. “She’ll hear you.”

  “I can imitate anyone here. Watch.” Violet made herself squat and bowlegged and waved an invisible hat around. “Goddammit!”

  “Jimmy!”

  “Right. I can do everyone, I’m telling you.”

  “Do Gideon.”

  Violet looked at her blankly. “Gideon?”

  “You said you can imitate anyone.”

  “I can. But Gideon’s not . . .”

  “What?”

  “He’s just normal.”

  “I thought you liked normal.”

  “I do. But normal doesn’t make for much of a show.” Violet sighed and climbed back into her lost-and-found chair. “Not around here, anyway.”

  Trouble Inside

  She was getting used to it, working on the inside. It wasn’t like Jackal had said it would be. The show he described had existed once, maybe, but now it was different. Rubes weren’t rubes anymore. They didn’t believe in what they saw, they all thought they knew the truth, and they weren’t shy about theorizing how the tricks were pulled. Loudly.

  “No way that fella’s eight feet tall!”

  “Beard’s fake. You can see the glue!”

  “No such thing as albinos, everyone knows that. Buncha coloreds in white makeup, all that is.”

  And so on. Portia did her best to preserve order in the tent, not wanting to get Jackal involved, not wanting to ask for a rescue. Mrs. Collington and the others did their best, too, to maintain their composure and their distance. But sometimes the temptation to shout back was too much to resist, and then Mosco would appear to silently escort the offending parties from the show. Refunds sometimes had to be provided, to avoid further trouble. None of it was good for business.

  Today’s crowd, Portia was relieved to see, looked remarkably well behaved. It was brutally hot, which made people cranky but also meant they lacked the energy to get themselves really riled up. The air coated everyone like an extra skin. Portia’s white dress stuck to her legs when she walked into the tent, leading her small group of expectant spectators like ducklings across a road. There were a handful of folks from town, an older man in a suit who kept whispering to a group of five young men as they scribbled in small notebooks, and a quartet of soldiers, stiff and silent in their uniforms. One of them had his left cuff pinned up to his shoulder, the empty sleeve creased where his elbow had once resided. Portia had seen him watching Marie as she threw her knives, his face somber, his posture perfectly straight.

  As the group made its way into the tent, Portia took her place at the far end of the stage and was just about to begin her bally when the older gentleman began to speak. He looked only at his companions, but everyone had become his audience.

  “Here,” he said, “we find a classic assortment of so-called freaks, who display a range of medical issues.” He waved a hand casually toward Mrs. Collington. “Thyroid!” he cro
wed.

  The young men nodded and wrote furiously in their notebooks.

  The older man jabbed a finger at the Lucasies. “Garden variety albinism!”

  “I beg your pardon,” Mr. Lucasie started to say, but his accuser had already moved on to Jim.

  “Here we have a clear case of acromegalic gigantism,” the man declared. “Most often caused by a benign tumor on the pituitary gland. Problem is, the internal organs grow right along with the skeletal frame. That’s probably what will kill him, in the end.”

  Jim looked stricken. Portia felt she should say something, but suddenly felt ridiculous in her lily white dress and her braids tied with ribbons. She felt like a little girl playing dress-up. She hoped Mosco could hear them—she wondered if she should fetch him, but she was afraid to leave, to call attention to herself.

  “How old are you, son?” the man asked Jim.

  Jim stammered, “Nineteen, sir.”

  “Don’t tell him that!” Jimmy snapped. “None of his damned business how old you are, or anything else. Sonofabitch.”

  The man ignored Jimmy completely. “How tall are you?”

  “I’m not sure, sir,” Jim confessed. “It’s been a long time since anyone measured me.”

  “But you’re still growing?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  Jimmy slammed his foot into Jim’s shin. “Shut the hell up, would you?” he howled. “What does this guy know, anyway?”

  “I happen to be a medical doctor and an expert on glandular disorders,” the man replied calmly. “And I can tell you that your friend’s condition could be easily remedied with surgical means.”

  “You mean,” said Jim, “I could be normal?”

  The word ricocheted like a bullet around the tent, hitting everyone at once. Jim immediately realized what he’d said and clapped a huge hand over his mouth. But it was too late to retrieve it.

  If the doctor noticed the sudden weight of the silence that fell upon them, he did not acknowledge it. Instead, he said, “If your condition is caused by a tumor, and the tumor was removed, you would stop growing. But not right away. It could take several years for your growth to slow, and it might already be too late if your heart and your liver are grossly enlarged.”

  “Oh,” Jim said.

  The doctor’s students had stopped writing. They all looked at Jim with practiced sympathy, as if they were rehearsing a scene in a play in which a patient receives bad news.

  “I think that’s enough for one day,” the doctor said, and he led his followers out of the entrance before Portia had a chance to direct them to the back exit. She knew Polly and Pippa were waiting in the tent’s shadowy annex, but she doubted anyone in the sparse, dejected crowd would be interested in paying an extra dollar today.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “you may exit this way.”

  As they did so, the soldier with one arm stopped in front of Jim. “Doctors,” he spat. “They think they know everything.”

  “Right,” Jim replied, his deep, throaty voice barely audible.

  “Let me tell you,” the soldier said, “there ain’t nothing easy about surgery. And all doctors want to talk about is how much better your life will be after you let ’em cut you apart. Don’t you listen, son. Don’t you listen to a word of it.”

  Jim smiled weakly. “I won’t.”

  “All right then,” the soldier said, and he followed his friends back to the midway, back to the outside where the heat and the sun waited to assault them once more.

  Violet

  I don’t hate my family. I’ve tried, believe me. But I always end up feeling guilty because why should I hate them when they’re the ones who have to live this way, trapped inside all day because they can’t even go out in the sun?

  That’s why they work under that extra layer of canvas—they have a tent within a tent just in case some sunlight gets through.

  They will never be part of the world.

  I’m afraid I won’t either. Even though I can be outside without dark glasses and a floppy hat like Mama’s. Even though I can walk the midway without anyone staring at me, eat a hot dog, ride an elephant. Mr. Bishop let me do that once, and I waved to all these kids who were watching and they waved back.

  Because I am normal.

  They didn’t know that after I got off the elephant, I had to go make new curtains for the trailer because the old moth- bitten ones let the sun in. They didn’t know that I had to make the stupid curtains because no one else in my family can see well enough to sew. Or clean. Or read. Or drive. Which is why Jackal used to drive our truck until I turned ten, and then I drove, sitting on Papa’s lap and telling him, “Gas. Brake. Gas. Slow down. Faster.” Until I could reach the pedals and then I drove by myself and Papa sat in the back with Mama and Joseph.

  A few months ago I gave the keys back to Jackal. Started riding in my own trailer, trying to sleep at night like regular folks.

  I will never tell Papa I missed him when I was driving.

  I will never get married in a field of wildflowers, unless it’s in the middle of the night.

  I will never be free.

  Unless I’m alone.

  Joseph

  When Mother and Father argue, which isn’t very often, it is always about me. Mother says, “Rudolph, he is only a child,” and Father says, “What does that have to do with anything?” and I agree with Father. Mother is not wrong about my age, but she is wrong about what it means.

  Which is to say, it means nothing.

  We sit on the stage all together, except for Violet because she is nothing much to look at. Plus she hates it. The first show we worked for, they tried to get Violet up there with us because they wanted everyone to see how weird it was that one person in a family could be so different than the rest. But Violet wouldn’t go and Mother and Father didn’t make her because they feel guilty about her.

  They don’t feel guilty about me, though. I am just what they always wanted.

  I have never told anyone this before, but sometimes I feel sorry for Violet. She isn’t special like us. Her hair is very black and her skin is a different color depending on what time of year it is, and she is always trying to make friends with girls from the outside. But they will never be friends with her because they have friends already, and anyway we’re never in the same place for more than a day or two. I don’t like it when Violet is sad, but I do like it when Violet plays cards with me because there’s no one else to play cards with.

  The new girl might be Violet’s friend. Violet would like that. But she probably won’t stay very long either. There are two kinds of people here: the kind that have always been here, and the kind that only stay a little while. I’m only eleven, which is to say I haven’t been remembering things for very long, but I can remember lots and lots of different faces that were here one day and gone the next. I usually don’t try to learn any of their names. I know the new girl’s name but I won’t use it, because if I do then I’ll remember it and I have better things to think about. Like learning to ride an elephant. I want to ride an elephant everywhere I go and then people will have to look up to see me and they will be impressed and want to know who I am. And if they laugh at me I can get my elephant to stomp them.

  Maybe I’ll stomp that new girl, too, so Violet will come back and play cards.

  Red Lipstick

  There were differences among the small towns they toured, even though they all looked precisely the same. Most of these differences were irrelevant to the Wonder Show. They didn’t care how many residents had telephones, whether the movie theater had new features or was still showing Gone with the Wind, or if the specials ever changed at the diner. Their stops were short. They didn’t stay long enough to get involved. As long as the townsfolk showed up at the ticket wagon with money in hand, one place was no better or worse than another.

  Portia had a different view, at first. She looked more closely at each face, because she was searching, and she made herself look. But eve
n she began to lose focus after the second week. It was exhausting, training her eyes on so many individual noses and hats and sets of hands, making note of what she saw even as the doubting part of her grew deeper, louder, stronger.

  Somewhere between the bottom edge of Ohio and the open span of Kentucky, they crossed the border into Jesusland. That’s what Jimmy called it, the part of the country where everyone believed in One Holy Savior and they were quick to crush anyone who carried the seeds of doubt in his heart.

  The towns’ faces seemed the same. Pawnshops, five-and-dimes, train tracks, churches, new-built houses, factories, more churches, feed stores. But behind the window-eyed storefronts, there was desperation, prayer, regret, blind faith, righteousness, secrets, fear.

  Taking a freak show through Jesusland was like dropping a dog into a pack of wolves. It would either be torn apart or slip through unnoticed. Mosco depended on the advance man to tell him whether a town was safe or not—he didn’t have the choice of whether to stop or move on (the route card was set and the circus called the shots), but when the advance man painted a red circle in the bottom left-hand corner of the bills he posted outside of town, Mosco told the twins, “Just dancing tonight. No blowoff.” And he wouldn’t let anyone but Gideon or Violet go into town for supplies.

  First stop in Alabama, they were greeted by the red circle, and Mosco sent Gideon and Violet to the grocery store. He grudgingly gave Portia the nod to tag along.

  “You’ve got one hour,” he said. “Don’t dawdle.”