“You don’t know the sort of trouble you can get into. You take a step too far, and you’ll find there’s no coming back. Promise me you’ll stop sneaking around.”
I was surprised by the worry in Maureen’s expression. We could hear my father in the museum, making the last announcements before he closed the doors for the day. There were very few people in attendance. The crowds were already waning, and evening shows had been canceled. We knew autumn not from the change of color in the foliage but by the empty streets and the thinning crowds, who would not return until the following season.
“All right,” I agreed. “I’ll stop.”
Maureen did not appear convinced. “I’ll be the one keeping a watch on you now.” She studied me carefully, lifting my chin so she could stare into my eyes. “Have you had your monthly bleeding?”
I admitted I had.
“I thought as much! And you never said a word.” She was clearly disappointed to find I hadn’t confided in her. “Then you’re a woman and must act like one.” Our heads were close together, but she lowered her voice further due to the intimate nature of our discussion. “When you leave here against the Professor’s wishes, you’d better do so with no thought of returning. We’re not like other people, Cora. They would never understand us.”
As evening fell I sat alone in my room, gazing out my window, thinking over Maureen’s advice. I saw Malia the Butterfly Girl making her way down Surf Avenue, her mother’s arm drawn protectively around her. They passed by the tintype photo gallery on the corner, where an individual could be photographed against cardboard cutouts of the seashore. Malia had left behind her orange costume. Her face was no longer decorated with makeup. The kohl eyeliner and rouge painted into the pattern of a monarch’s wing had been washed off at the pump in our yard, and her face was pretty and plump. She wore a plaid cloak that hid the fact that she’d been born without arms. From my vantage point, both mother and daughter looked ordinary as they disappeared into the crowd.
I could not have been more envious.
One night the door to my bedroom opened. There was my father. He’d been at a tavern, and he carried the smell of rum, which reminded me of formaldehyde. It was not a pleasant odor, and afterward I could never drink rum, even when it was disguised as buttered toddy in the holiday season. I had been reading by candlelight, and I quickly hid the volume under my quilt when I heard his footfall upon the stairs. I couldn’t trick my father however. He reached beneath the bedcovers and brought forth the book. Fortunately it wasn’t Poe or Brontë but the tragedies of Shakespeare, great literature of which my father approved. That is not to say he wasn’t angry with me. He told me he had been walking down the street and had seen a light in my room. He’d run the rest of the way. He quickly snuffed out the flame of the candle between his fingers. When he told me I must never burn a candle while in bed, I thought and hoped his speed in coming home was because he feared for my safety. But that wasn’t his worry. He scolded me terribly, telling me I would burn down the museum if I weren’t careful. I could destroy everything just by being a selfish, thoughtless girl. I needed to pull my weight, to work harder, otherwise the museum would not survive the onslaught of newer, more modern entertainments. He took my wrists in his hands as he berated me. I couldn’t help but think of the trick for which he was most famous. In my thoughts I gave thanks to Maureen for her warning to stay at home. I was grateful it was not a bundle of clothes my father had discovered in my bed. As it was, there were bruises on my wrists the next morning.
I stopped going to Dreamland. It was the end of the season anyway, and the crowds at the hotels and the parks were beginning to disappear, leaving behind the local residents to get through the dreary autumn and the winter, isolated from the rest of the world. But at night I still dreamed I was walking along Surf Avenue. I walked through the gate of that wondrous park my father feared would make us poor, and once I did the whole world was before me, strung with a thousand lights. In my dreams I took off my black shawl and my gloves. I stood in the center of the ballroom and listened to music. There was no one to tell me everything I did was wrong. When I woke from these dreams I lay in bed in the dark. I told myself only foolish girls cried. Sometimes I crept downstairs, hoping to catch the night-blooming cactus in our parlor in flower. I thought I would then believe in miracles and find some sort of faith. I sat in the dark in an overstuffed chair, but nothing marvelous happened. There was nothing but sticks before me.
I had already begun to doubt the truth of my father’s tales.
OUR FORTUNES continued to fade. Last summer was the worst any of us could remember. Some days we had only eight or ten customers, some days no one appeared at the museum. My father had not yet come up with his plan for a monster that would galvanize New York, but he was planning all the same. That fall was cold and dark. The leaves in November clung to the trees, then shivered into the streets. One evening after supper, after Maureen had left for the day, everything changed. Perhaps I lost my faith that night. Certainly I lost my innocence. The Professor told me to bathe, not in the tub upstairs where I usually took my baths, but in my tank.
We were forced to close two weeks early, for we couldn’t afford to pay the living wonders. They needed to retreat to their off-season lives. Some would travel with circuses in Florida, others moved in with family members in Queens County or New Jersey, some remained in their cramped quarters in Coney Island, where they did their best to survive the winter. Once the season was officially over and our windows were shuttered, we only went past the velvet curtains that divided our home from the museum in order to feed the animals and birds in their cages. At the time we had a small baby goat with two faces that was billed as the Devil’s Pet. We kept him outside tied with a rope to the pear tree until there was ice on his hooves. Then we brought him inside, tied to the kitchen sink during the day, in the cellar in the evenings. But he lasted only a few weeks, and the liveryman buried him out in the yard.
My father’s demand on this evening was so strange that I faced him, and, with all the courage I had, I asked why he wanted me to go to my tank. He ignored me and told me to hurry. As always, I did as he requested. That is not to say I did not hesitate. When the museum was closed to the public, there was an eerie cast to the rooms. I made my way through the curtains into the chilly exhibition hall. The tank where I was displayed had been uncovered, and in the gloom the water appeared murky. When my father came to check on me, I was standing in my long muslin undergarments, shivering, so puzzled by his request I had not yet obeyed. I could hear the tortoise slowly pacing in its pen, as well as the chatter of parrots and cooing doves. There was the soft fluttering sound of the wings of the many tropical birds we kept. Some would die of the cold in the winter months, and the most delicate ones would be taken into the parlor, their cages set near the fireplace so that they might manage to survive. Maureen always complained there were too many feathers to sweep up, but when no one was looking she fed the birds nuts and seeds that she bought at the market with her own shopping money.
My father told me I must quickly remove every stitch and get into the tank. I noticed he had recently poured a few thimbles of India ink into the water so that it might look fresh, and that my breathing tube, usually packed in cotton batting for the winter, had been reinserted.
“Do you understand all we do is theater?” he said. “What is real to our audience is mere show for us, and what is done here is no different than what actors do upon a stage. Remember that tonight.”
When he left the room, I did as I was told, dropping into the water.
I had an inkling that the events about to unfold would change my current outlook and my life, and yet I would have to pretend as if they had never happened. I had a fleeting thought that because of our failing finances my father might wish to drown me and be rid of me. As it turned out, that was not the case.
When my father returned he had three gentlemen with him, alt
hough gentlemen was clearly not the correct term. These three wore bowler hats and black coats, and one of them carried a cane. I dove to the bottom of the tank and wrapped my arms around myself to hide my nakedness. I was so mortified I thought I might pass out. I nearly forgot to take a gulp of air from the breathing tube and was close to fainting, but my father tapped on the glass and gestured for me to swim and pose. I told myself I was in a dream, and the men in the room were figments of my imagination. They began to cheer when I moved through the water, exposing myself, and soon enough they grew rowdy. I heard the echo of their delight, and I could see one of them make a rude motion to me. The men were drinking, and my father pulled up chairs so they could make themselves comfortable during their viewing. They were so close to the glass I imagined I could feel the heat of their cravings. I hadn’t known it was possible to cry while underwater, but it was. Still, it was a dream. The men in the room weren’t real to me.
When they had gone, my father rapped again on the glass to indicate that he was leaving the room as well. It was a signal that I would now have privacy so that I might exit the tank and cover myself once more. After such a violation, I did not know how to proceed with my modest life. I thought for a moment of not rising to the surface. It occurred to me that it might be best to leave my existence, and all the woes to come. But I learned it was not so easy to drown oneself. My spirit revealed its desire to live. I came up gasping, wanting air. I climbed out of the tank, my breathing ragged. I was still sopping as I pulled on my undergarments. I felt so alone that I went to the tortoise’s enclosure and stepped over the low wall to sit in the sand beside my old friend. I was no different than this beast, a captive. I wondered if on cold nights in Brooklyn the tortoise wept and hungered for another world, if it didn’t view its long life as a curse.
After the events of that night, I did not dare to look for the keys to my father’s workroom again. I was afraid to know any more of his past or his intentions for the future. At every turn, I held my breath. I knew I was on a precipice, and sooner or later I would have to make a leap. I did not tell Maureen about the nights when the Professor brought in men, and I certainly never confided any of the disgusting things they did while they watched me, nor did I disclose that several of them offered my father cash for me. In the echo of the water I had overheard nasty snippets of conversation, and I was aware of what they wished to do to me, how they would like to take me by force if need be, dragging me onto the couch my father had recently brought in so that they might be even more comfortable during their viewing.
None of what they did or said mattered; their boasts and vile notions turned to air, for these men did not exist. I always entered a dream when I was submerged in the tank. My dream was blue and I was alone in it. Still I did as my father said on those nights. When he left me a list of how he wished me to behave underwater, touching myself so that the men might become even more excited, acting in a variety of coarse, immodest ways, I did this as well. I continued to follow his directions.
Soon after, he hatched his new plan and I began to swim in the Hudson. It was there that I had the freedom to be truly alone. I fell in love with the Hudson; because of the nights I swam there, I no longer was forced to perform, and so I began to think of the river as my savior. I longed for it, as I soon longed for the man I had spied in the woods. I thought of him as a sort of savior as well, someone to whom I might reveal my truest self. I had felt the first pangs of love, and because of this I found my faith in the world, despite my current situation.
This changed after my last swim in the Hudson. The river that had always offered me solace had brought me grief in the form of the drowned girl. As we traveled back across the bridge to the museum, I thought again of the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre. The imprisoned Mrs. Rochester had burned to death before she could manage to flee. Wait too long, and you might be tethered forever, leaping when it was too late. On the night we returned to Brooklyn with the body of the young woman in the carriage, I was told to go directly to my room, and I did so. I looked out the window into the yard. I was shivering in my sodden clothes, my damp hair hanging down my back. But inside, my blood felt hot. I was burning up. It wasn’t fever but a slow-burning hatred. I saw my father and the liveryman carry the body down the cellar steps. In the morning the floor would still be wet with pools of dank river water that I would mop up without a word of complaint. All the same, on that night I was able to see the truth about my future and my fate.
I was born to disobey him.
APRIL 1911
THE QUIET of the off-season persisted, despite the emerging bloom of lilacs and the haze of green in the gardens of Brooklyn. Small leaves had begun to unfold on the plane trees, but the truest sign of spring was the mud seeping in between the slats of the wooden sidewalks. Even the wild area known as the Gut was quieter than usual, for all racetracks on the island had been closed down and gambling had been outlawed in the hope of lessening crime and vice, though certainly there were still illegal races along Ocean Parkway, often held by lantern light.
Fleets of fishing ships filled Gravesend and Sheepshead Bay, and before long wooden docks were strewn with catches of mussels from Coney Island Creek, along with bass and clams from the bays. The air was blue enough to glimpse the approach of warmer weather, yet the Museum of Extraordinary Things remained closed. A heron circled and considered nesting in the chimney, but when the wind blew cold from the sea, the ungainly creature was frightened off by the slap of a loose shutter banging against a window frame, and it heaved itself into the air. In any other year, carpenters would have been hired to unclasp the shutters, nailed closed in the winter to protect the exhibitions from light. They would have been at work repairing the broken stairs, and begun installing the wooden signs that invited customers to step inside. This spring the Professor had no time to order renovations. He locked himself in the cellar as soon as he awoke and rarely emerged. He refused proper meals and hadn’t bothered to change his clothes in days, though the fabric reeked of chemicals. When the stench was impossible to ignore, Maureen presented him with a clean, starched white shirt, which he grudgingly pulled on. He was distracted, and his gaze was fiery, as though he saw something beyond the confines of their house.
“He’s up to something,” Maureen worried. Though she knew nothing of her employer’s plans, she recognized the fever that marked an obsession. Clearly, some dark dream had taken hold of him. “The next thing you know we’ll have a bear sitting at the dining room table or a giant in one of our best chairs. I only hope there won’t be a snake in the kitchen sink.”
While Maureen went to hang laundry on the line, Coralie crept on her hands and knees, pressing her ear to the wide planks of pine flooring in an attempt to eavesdrop. Her thoughts were consumed by the drowned girl, but there were no telltale sounds rising from the cellar. Still, she knew her father’s urgency to present a monster to the world. He’d insisted this was the only way he could turn their fortunes around. “Do you think I’d have you swim for those fools if we weren’t desperate for the money?” he’d said to her, as if that explained the dreadful things he’d had her do. “We need a real success!”
Coralie would have preferred to live like a mouse, on crumbs and crusts, rather than be subjected to those evenings. “Is there nothing else we might do to change our fortune?” she pleaded.
“There’s worse,” he said darkly, and left it at that.
They had grown poorer, left with only soup and bread for their meals. Maureen complained she could hardly buy groceries with her slim allowance. Coralie wished she could tell the housekeeper about her father’s intentions, but it was as if those wicked evenings in the museum had left her bewitched and mute. She made certain to dispose of liquor bottles and cigar stubs in the mornings that followed her humiliations, tossing bits of evidence into the trash pile. Once a week, it was set on fire. Maureen always encouraged Coralie to come inside on these occasions, for bright cinders snapp
ed up into the branches of the pear tree and smoke swooped above them. But Coralie sat on the porch steps, unmoving. She watched it all burn.
IN TIME, Coralie had come to wonder if the housekeeper had just as many secrets as she did. A house of secrets is like a house of cards, falling in on itself. The more you knew, the more you had to know, and Maureen’s private life nagged at Coralie. The housekeeper had never spoken of where she came from, nor had she mentioned a family.
One day Coralie blundered upon a hint that her suspicions had been correct. She spied Maureen on Neptune Avenue, on the other side of the trolley tracks. It was Sunday, the housekeeper’s day off. The air was bracing due to the spring fog that hadn’t yet lifted. The haze turned the world into a mist, and within that mist Maureen appeared beautiful, her long auburn hair wound up with tortoiseshell combs. Shrouded in the hazy air, her damaged face seemed perfect, as it must have been before she’d been assaulted by her jealous lover. She had no photographs of herself in her earlier years; she insisted that photographs were for the rich. But trust me, she was always quick to say with a grin, I made heads turn.
On this quiet Sunday, Coralie followed the housekeeper to a building where many seasonal workers boarded. She trailed her inside, up to the third floor. When Maureen turned, as if she’d heard footfalls, Coralie darted into the stairwell. At last she dared to glance out, only to find she’d lost sight of Maureen. She went along the hallway, listening in at the doors, her ear pressed close. At one set of rooms she thought she heard the rise of Maureen’s voice, but she couldn’t be sure.
Nearby, a door opened and an old woman peered into the corridor. Coralie had no choice but to pass by on her way back to the stairwell. The hallway was poorly lit, but Coralie could tell the woman gazing out had worked at a carnival or a sideshow, for she was covered with tattoos. Living wonders looked down upon those whose attributes weren’t natural, and the old woman may have felt she was an outcast. Her expression was coarse and bitter. She wore a heavy wool cloak, a hood over her head. When Coralie drew near, it was possible for her to see a mask of flowers and vines on the woman’s aging face, a scrim of blue and red inked around her narrowed eyes.
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