Eating the Cheshire Cat

by Helen Ellis

  Principal Jessup shook his head. “When will you kids learn that things are never as bad as they seem?”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, she didn’t try to kill herself!” Mrs. Hicks jerked her daughter’s arm higher, bringing the scars closer to Principal Jessup and Nicole two inches out of her seat. “Isn’t obvious? They’re initials. It’s that Summers girl.”

  “S. S.,” muttered Principal Jessup.

  “Is there another?”

  “Stewart Steptoe.”

  “Nicole’s not interested in boys.” Mrs. Hicks released her daughter’s arm. “That’s the problem. It’s all about that Summers girl. Nicole is completely obsessed.”

  “I’m not obsessed.”

  “Sure you’re not. What’d she do, dare you to flunk out?”

  “Mrs. Hicks,” Principal Jessup interrupted, “Miss Summers has spent two years in my school. I’ve been here for nearly twenty. I’ve known a lot of kids, Mrs. Hicks. I’ve seen the worst of them. But the one thing I know is that no teenage girl is going to convince another one to ruin her permanent record.”

  “Are you kidding me? People are killed every day. Don’t you watch the news? There’s devil worship and Dungeons and Dragons!”

  “Miss Summers is a cheerleader.”

  “Miss Summers is a grade-grubbing—”

  “Mrs. Hicks, you need to calm down.”

  “Calm down? The only reason that girl’s still in school is ’cause I help her study. I help Nicole and the only way Nicole will be helped is if I help her stupid cheerleader friend.”

  Nicole said, “I’m a cheerleader.”

  Mrs. Hicks said, “You’re anything she wants you to be.”

  “Miss Hicks,” said Principal Jessup, “is there any truth to this?”

  Nicole watched her mother’s face take on the Warrior pose from her yoga videotape. At that moment, Nicole knew that her mother was ready to inhale peace and exhale any demons necessary to convince Principal Jessup that her daughter deserved a second chance. But she didn’t want a second chance. She wanted this meeting, this conversation, this moment to be over. So she said, “There’s some truth.”

  Mrs. Hicks let out a sigh of relief so strong Nicole wondered if her mother might finally fit into that size four dress she’d bought at Talbot’s semiannual sale.

  “So this was all a hoax,” said Principal Jessup.

  “She’ll retake her exams,” said Mrs. Hicks.

  “This won’t go without repercussions.”

  “Fine, fine. But you’ll have to call that Summers girl.” Mrs. Hicks’s face took on the yoga tape’s Prayer to Sun pose. “My vote is expulsion. I’ll be happy to tell her mother. We live across the street.”

  “I have a perfectly good phone right here.” Principal Jessup patted the receiver.

  “You don’t understand.” Nicole stood up and, channeling all of her mother’s mean spirit, laid both hands over the principal’s. She wondered if her wounds would open and her blood ooze out over the principal’s knuckles. Her mother would be appalled. Nicole squeezed. She squeezed hard. She’d turn this around. She’d turn it. She’d turn. “You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We’re friends, but Sarina had absolutely nothing to do with it. It was me.” She let go of his hand and picked up his nameplate. She clenched and pointed it like the last lottery ticket. “And her,” she said. “My mother made me do it.”

  Nicole spouted half-truths as soon as they came to her. She told Principal Jessup that her mother didn’t help her study, but still did her homework for her. She hardly ever cracked a book. As soon as she got home, her mother took her assignments and finished them before her father got home. She wanted to see if she could pass by herself. So she flushed her cheat sheets. Call Roto-Rooter, they’d attest. “And I flunked,” Nicole insisted. “She’s been pushing me so hard, I haven’t learned anything.”

  “Lies!” Mrs. Hicks circled the principal’s desk. “Can’t you see that? It’s that Summers girl.”

  “Miss Summers finished with a strong B average.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” Mrs. Hicks slapped her palms against the cherry wood. “She’s got a hold on my baby! Please.” The tears were coming full force along her Cover Girl. “Don’t let my child do this to herself!”

  Nicole swiftly brought the nameplate to the principal’s throat. Ah ha! she thought, Mother. What’ll ya do about this! She shoved the nameplate against the principal’s Adam’s apple. Once from pure instinct. Twice for good looks.

  “Miss Hicks,” mouthed the principal, his weight behind him on his hands. “Calm,” he choked his words out. “You need to calm down.”

  “I am calm!” Nicole shouted, her eyes fixated on her mother, who was rocking heels to toes, Nicole imagined, primed to pounce. You’re not going anywhere, Nicole warned her in her brain. Sit, Mother. Stay. Or we’ll never get away.

  “Keep me back,” she told the principal. “I deserve to be held back.” If true confessions didn’t work, she would flunk out for attacking a well-respected school official.

  Mrs. Hicks was hysterical. Rocking, rocking, teeth clenched and bared. She lurched forward in what Nicole thought was a faint. Her stomach hit the desk blotter, but then she scrambled and grabbed Nicole’s short sleeve. She tugged and she tugged, but Nicole would not be ceased and arrested.

  Suddenly, Principal Jessup took hold of Nicole’s dissected wrist. He let her keep the nameplate in place, but held her firmly enough to let her know that this was a threat that would not go any further. He said, “Name Alabama’s four Indian tribes.”

  Nicole said, “I can’t.”

  “What’s the Pythagorean theorem?”

  “E equals MC squared?”

  “NO!” Mrs. Hicks scrambled across the desk and rammed her body in between them.

  The nameplate hit the floor and Nicole took a nosedive. She tried to snatch the nameplate from underneath her chair, but behind her, she could hear her mother talking gibberish, interfering, begging “Please!”

  Mrs. Hicks had her fingers around the principal’s lapels. “Let us come back next week and you’ll see! I swear, you’ll see! You can ask her anything! She can go to summer school! There must be something! Be reasonable! Please!”

  Principal Jessup looked over Mrs. Hicks’s shoulder at his once apt pupil now down on all fours. “Nicole,” he asked, touching his throat gingerly, “tell me, will you, what is our fiftieth state?”

  In her head, Nicole knew the answer just like she had known Choctaw, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Creek and c2 = a2 + b2. But she did not say Hawaii. She said Nebraska and, for the third year in a row, reserved a spot in Central West’s yearbook.

  Bitty Jack

  ON THE NIGHT that Sarina took Stewart to the Alabama State Fair, Bitty Jack Carlson was temporarily stationed at the Pick a Duck Pond. She was sixteen and, in order to spend a summer away from Camp Chickasaw, had taken a job in one of the freak tents. The fair would tour three Southern states and wind up back in Summons County by the end of August. Fair folks appreciated the Chickasaw field trips. So, the fair made two stops: one in May to pick up summer help; one in August to pick up the tab. Home-schooled, Bitty Jack was allowed to cut out early to take the job. The Carlsons saw it as Bitty’s shot to see the world. Bitty Jack was put in charge of hosing down Johnny Iguana.

  Johnny Iguana was eighteen years old and not nearly as cool as his name made him sound. His real name was Mason Potts. He was six-foot-four, with a slight slump to his shoulders. The Freak Boss made him wear a helmet-hard black wig and cutoffs to pay homage to John Travolta in the beach scene from Grease. But that “Chang, chang, chang-e-tee, chang shoo-bob” riled up the crowd, so the Bee Gees were played when Johnny took the stage. He always went shirtless to show off his skin. On tour, four years earlier, the Freak Boss had found him busing tables in a Yazoo City Denny’s.

  “The poor kid was sweating up a storm,” the Freak Boss told Bitty Jack on the day she arrived. �
��That pot-bellied, chain-smoking manager had him in pants and polyester. Had him in a bow tie. The kid was clearing my table and I took a good look. He was all red faced and working with his eyes halfway shut.

  “I said, ‘What’s wrong, boy?’

  “He said, ‘Nothing.’

  “I said, ‘Don’t lie to me, boy.’

  “He said, ‘I itch, that’s all.’

  “I told him to have at it. Have himself a good scratch. What’s stopping him? Or was it the crabs that had him? That I’d understand. That kind of business, you got to take care of in private, you know what I’m saying?”

  Bitty Jack nodded and made a mental note to look up crabs in the dictionary. It had to be slang for something.

  The Freak Boss said, “So, I said, ‘Is that it, boy? Crabs got you your first time out of the gate?’

  “The kid said, ‘No sir, I got it all over.’

  “I said, ‘Whazzat?’

  “He said he didn’t know. So I said, ‘Let’s see.’

  “I could tell the kid was nervous that his boss would toss him out on his ear for any old reason, so I told him to give me a signal when he took his fifteen. I tell you, I haven’t been back to Denny’s since then. That cross-eyed manager worked him for most of the night. I sat there and sucked down Grand Slams and coffee and Coke till I thought I would bust. The waitress thought I was flirting with her, but I can tell you, I was not. Once you find a woman like my wife, everyone else pales in comparison.”

  Bitty Jack blushed. She thought of the Freak Boss’s wife. She imagined him on top of her in bed. All six breasts supporting his weight, moving him in and out of her like a factory conveyer belt.

  The Freak Boss said, “So, around quarter to one, the kid gives me the signal. I leave my money on the table and follow him out to the parking lot.

  “The poor kid rolls up his sleeve. It was awful to watch. The kid didn’t know what was wrong with him, so he’d all but bathed in calamine lotion. The lotion made his shirt stick to his skin and I told him to pull it up quick like a Band-Aid. He did and I thought the kid was gonna cry. Hell, I’ll be honest. I thought I’d cry myself. The kid had scales. Patches on his forearms and, turns out, his back and his butt.

  “I said, ‘It must be a bitch to take a dump.’

  “And the kid just shook his head. The whole thing was so pitiful. I took a good look at his skin and I knew what it was. A good old practical joke of nature.

  “So, I told him I could get him out of this stinking job. I said, ‘Son, I’m a businessman. I run a very profitable organization. I sponsor unfortunate cases such as yourself. You get to travel. You get three squares a day. You get friends for life. A family. In return, you let the public take a peek. You become a performer, an oddity of nature that people will pay top dollar to see.’ I told him I wasn’t going to cushion the job. ‘I run a freak show,’ I said. ‘And you can come with me and be a star, or you can take cold baths and try to fix the unfixable and remain a nobody in this godforsaken town.’

  “The kid said, ‘Yazoo.’

  “I said, ‘Who knew?’ ”

  Bitty Jack laughed like she knew that she should.

  “So, I said, ‘What’ll it be, son?’ And the kid said what all of them say.

  “ ‘Take me away.’

  “And I did. He’s been with me for four years. He’s still one of the new ones. Tambourine Man and Little Miss Horse and Pony joined last July, and there’s a guy who wants to try out when we reach Mobile. Says he can eat whatever you give him. Says he ate a bicycle once. I’ll see him when we get there, but I doubt he’ll outdo my night at Denny’s. Besides, my freaks are special. Everybody’s seen a bearded lady. Everybody’s seen the guy shove nails up his nose. Albinos. Two-headed babies. Been done.

  “Johnny’s a nice kid. Real cooperative. Never given me a minute of trouble. He’ll be a good one to break you in. You just hose him off between acts. Don’t get his hair wet, but his jean shorts are okay. Pardon my French, but he’s got quite a bulge and the ladies like that, scales or no scales.”

  Bitty Jack said, “Shorts are okay, but not on the wig.”

  The Freak Boss said, “You’ll get along fine with him. I can tell. You wouldn’t be here unless you was an ugly duckling once yourself.”

  Bitty Jack said, “I’m no swan.”

  “You’re not chicken shit, either. Pardon my French. Besides, around here, you’ll be the belle of the ball. Excluding my wife, of course.”

  Bitty Jack said, “Really?”

  “Sure,” said the Freak Boss. “What you got? Glasses. Skin that’ll clear up sooner or later. Freckles. You’re skinny, but you’re nothing to turn your nose up at. You’ll give Johnny the thrill of his life. You two are about the same age. Most of my freaks are older. Thirty and up. Little Miss Horse and Pony’s twelve, and you know that’s no fun for anyone. It’ll be nice for Johnny. Nice for you. You don’t mind the sight, right?”

  Bitty Jack said no and wondered if she would.

  At supper, the Freak Boss took Bitty Jack into the mess tent. Johnny Iguana waved to them from his picnic table. He smiled, stood up, and pushed the bench away with the backs of his knees.

  The Freak Boss said, “Johnny Iguana, this here’s your new partner, Miss Bitty Jack Carlson. Miss Bitty, this here’s the one and only Johnny Iguana.”

  Bitty Jack thrust her hand out as her father had told her to do.

  “Bitty,” her father had said, “you be kind to them freaks. I can’t see that it’s easy what they do. I don’t care if the guy’s name is Mr. Pus Boil, you shake his hand and make the guy feel okay.”

  Bitty Jack had said, “Yes sir, Daddy.”

  Johnny Iguana shook Bitty’s hand and looked at her like she’d kissed him full on the mouth. Beneath her fingertips, Bitty felt the smooth of his skin. He wore a T-shirt and the scales on his arms did not look as she expected. They were far from slick and slimy. They were diamond shaped. A real sweet shade of green. Bitty Jack wondered if they would sparkle in the sun.

  The Freak Boss strolled away from them toward his wife, who sat in her bathrobe, her long, black hair in a pony tail spouting off the top of her head like whale’s water. She waved to her husband with a fried chicken leg.

  Johnny said, “Show starts in ten minutes.”

  Bitty Jack started toward the tent flaps she had walked through earlier.

  Johnny caught her by the elbow. “Hold up. Not that way.”

  “How come?”

  “Only Regulars use that way.”

  “Regulars?”

  “You know, regular-looking ones like you and the Freak Boss. Summons help.”

  Bitty Jack slowly put it together.

  “I can’t just walk around like I’m you. Nobody pays to see Bitty Jack Carlson. They pay to see the ones who aren’t let out of the tents. You know,” he whispered, “freaks.”

  Bitty Jack said, “Right.”

  Johnny Iguana led Bitty Jack to the back of the mess tent, past the grinning Freak Boss, his arm around his laughing wife. He held the flap open and Bitty Jack walked through. To her left were woods, guarded by a high wire fence. To her right was a wall of ten-foot canvas draping. She could hear the deejay in the operation booth on the Matterhorn that she rode every year. The Matterhorn was a ride that was just like its name suggested: tight, fast hills surrounded by a mural of ski slopes and skiers the likes of which the riders would never see.

  The deejay boomed through a deep drum beat, “DO YOU WANNA GO FASTER?”

  She heard the riders scream, “Yeeeaaah!!!”

  “I SAID, DO YOU WANNA GO EVEN-STEVEN, MONKEY-BEATIN’, STOP-YOUR-LOVIN’-HEART-FROM-CHEATIN’ FASTER?”

  The riders screamed, “Yeeeaaah!”

  “OKAY THEN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, BACKWARDS IT IS!!!!”

  “Oh my Gaaaaawd!”

  Bitty Jack touched the canvas draping. “To keep people from seeing in?”

  Johnny said, “For free, yeah.”

  When they reac
hed the tent he performed in, Johnny showed Bitty Jack his area behind the stage. Tacked to one of the tent walls was a queen-size yellow waterproof sheet. An identical sheet was tacked to the ground.

  It reminded Bitty Jack of her childhood Slip’n’ Slide. Every time she slid and yelped “Rock!” her father would get on his knees and flip over the Slip’n’ Slide. No matter how small a pebble he picked out of the grass, his response was always the same. “My princess found a pea.”

  Pulling her Miss Piggy one-piece swimsuit out of her crack, Bitty Jack would say “Daddy!” and march back to the front of the Slip ’n’ Slide.

  Johnny said, “I don’t need one of the lit-up mirrors like the others.”

  Two vanity tables lined the connecting tent wall. Bitty Jack examined postcards and pictures stuck in the creases where the lightbulbs met the glass. She was happy not to find the Freak Boss’s wife in any of them. Hers was the one show Bitty didn’t think she could sit through.

  Johnny said, “There’s not much to my act. Between shows, one of the Regulars lets one audience out, then lets the next audience in. You can’t see them from back here, but believe me, on the other side of that curtain the Freak Boss packs the house. Anyway, while that’s going on, I stand on the tarp and you hose me down. In the summer, the tent gets incredibly hot. It’s hard on my skin. Besides, the water makes my scales shine.”

  Johnny pulled his wig off a faceless Styrofoam skull on the corner of the nearest vanity table. He kept the wig in his hand as he tugged his T-shirt over his head. Scales covered his back where hair might sprout on an old man’s body. He said, “It would help if you took care of my wig and threw me a towel during the breaks. If I get Little Miss Horse and Pony wet, she’ll have a major cow. She spends a lot of time on her tail and if it gets wet it frizzes or something.”

  Bitty Jack said, “No problem.”

  “I know it’s kind of gross, but I swear I’m not contagious. If it makes you feel better, there’s some gloves in Little Miss Horse and Pony’s top drawer.”

  Bitty Jack opened the top drawer, expecting to find a pair of Little Miss Horse and Pony’s gloves, white lace with elastic ruffles at the wrist. What she found were the dish-washing variety as yellow as the slicker sheets. She said, “I don’t need any gloves.”