Sideshow

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Sometimes there was. Aunt Sizzy always insisted on seeing identification if anybody claimed to be a doctor or nurse. If there wasn’t one, somebody from the circus would claim to be, come up on the stage, feel the flesh, look where it joined, act astonished. “My God. They really are!”

  “Yeah, but maybe they’re both men or both women,” some smartass would inevitably call. If someone didn’t, a shill would. “Yeah, but.”

  “For five dollars,” Aunt Sizzy would say, starting into her spiel. She had a chart and a pointer. She explained about chromosomes and how all other Siamese twins were either boys or girls, and how Nela and Bertran were a miracle, a one of a kind. Then she’d pull the curtain, the one with the slit in it to go over where they were joined, and all the women who wanted to pay five dollars would go to one side and all the men would go to the other and look.

  It wasn’t bad. Even the peeping wasn’t bad. Aunt Sizzy wouldn’t allow any touching, and it was only women on Nela’s side and men on Bertran’s. Bertran would unzip and unbutton, showing the hair on his chest, the genitals, small, but masculine-looking. Nela would untie, showing her androgynous chest (depilated the night before by Aunt Sizzy) and her own organs, unmistakably nonmale. Then the audience would leave, men asking their wives and girlfriends, “Was she?” Women asking the men, “Was he?” Each assuring the other that he was, she was.

  The school authorities caught up with them, of course. Aunt Sizzy, who had been meaning to phony up a birth certificate to make them two years older than they were, had to lay out a bribe plus enough to buy an acceptable curriculum, and they had to study it enough to pass the semi-annual tests, but it was nothing. Nothing! They could pass the tests without half trying. Whoever laid out that curriculum had never been to parochial school under Sister Jean Luc!

  That first year, when they went into winter quarters, Sizzy arranged for Nela to have breast implants. Not very big. Too big, said Aunt Siz, and nobody would believe it. Kind of small ones. Just right for a teenage girl. Nela had electrolysis too, to get rid of the beard and the hair on her chest and to straighten out the line of reddish-blond pubic hair across the bottom of her belly, so it would look more feminine. Aunt Sizzy put them both on a diet, so they wouldn’t have a lot of what she called “unattractive podge.” Bertran dyed his hair dark, all over, to emphasize the difference between him and Nela, who stayed blond. After Nela healed up, she and Berty visited back and forth with the other circuses, the big ones, where there weren’t any freaks who were called freaks, and the little ones like theirs, where there were. They made a lot of friends.

  Also, starting in Florida and continuing everywhere they went, they frequented the bargain counters in bookstores, always leaving with an armload of books. In their trailer at night they lay side by side in the double bed, each with a night-light and an eyeshade and a book. Nela read romances and natural history, reveling in love and zoology. Bertran read history and math texts and biographies. Both of them read about religion, fascinated by it, not as a belief but as a subject. Though the matter had never been discussed with them by their parents or the priest or any of the nuns, they both realized that religion had paid no small part in letting them be born as they were. Sometimes they even talked about that, wondering whether, if they’d had the choice, they’d have been born this way at all. Sometimes, when it had been a good day, they thought they would. Other times, despairing, they were sure they wouldn’t. Aunt Sizzy, who overheard one of these conversations, told them everybody felt that way. Some days, she said, everybody wished he or she hadn’t been born or wished he or she could just die and be finished with everything. The smart thing to do was wait and see if a few days didn’t change things. If it didn’t, well, then it was up to people to do what they had to do, and she didn’t believe anybody went to hell for suicide, not as overpopulated as the world was, but, she emphasized, usually a few days was enough to change a point of view.

  Sometimes they thought she might be right. Other times, the few days stretched to weeks and they despaired. It was possible, they told one another, to be so depressed by what they were that they were incapable of doing anything about it even though they wanted to. That’s why they went on, they said, sometimes capable of laughing about it. They went on because they were too depressed to kill themselves.

  Sometimes they mitigated depression by holding long involved conversations about Turtledove, how he was doing at school, how he was doing at Little League, whether it was sensible for him to keep up his lessons on the violin.

  “So expensive!” said Nela.

  “But his teacher says he has genius,” said Bertran. “What would we think of ourselves, years from now, if we denied him his chance at genius.”

  Meantime, no matter how they felt, they took dancing lessons from one of the Mangini girls, and learned elocution and comebacks from Matt Mulhollan, owner and ringmaster, and picked up a few sleight-of-hand tricks from one of the clowns. Their act was fine as it was, but as Sizzy said, mere titillation was limited by both prurience and credulity, while entertainment had no boundaries. “If you entertain people well enough, they don’t care you’re a fake,” said Aunt Sizzy. “Most people don’t give a damn about the truth, anyhow.” She mentioned some politicians, including a recent president, as examples. “The world’s biggest phonies, not very bright, but they entertained people, so nobody cared.” The others in the show agreed, helping the twins practice their routines over and over, until the two of them oozed charm at every pore.

  It helped that they were bright. No one, not even themselves, had ever doubted that. They turned their minds to the task, realizing their own welfare depended upon it. They worked on their voices, Nela raising hers, Bertran deepening his. They developed a sharp line of patter and a clever way with hecklers. They made the magic tricks sparkle.

  “It’s not easy being a power sander,” said Bertran. “Not easy being a polisher.”

  “Don’t tell Turtledove,” said Nela. “He’d be so embarrassed if the other children knew his mother was an edger and finisher.”

  It was not long before their act began to draw, began to bring people in, began actually to increase attendance. A marked increase, commented Matt Mulhollan to Sizzy, during one of their regular late-evening conferences over a few beers and a little habitual sex. A steady, marked increase.

  Sizzy passed this along to the twins. When they began to preen a little, she said, “Now, don’t go feeling important. Sure, you’re a draw. Anything new is a draw. But you’re not the main event. You’re in the sideshow, not under the big top. It doesn’t do to puff yourselves up too much, because you’d just be setting up for a fall. Remember, no matter how classy you think your act is, there’s always something bigger and classier coming along!”

  Matt Mulhollan, who was no fool despite having been a little down on his luck recently, plowed most of the increased income back into the business. He bought new costumes. He repaired equipment. He added some acts he’d been unable to afford previously. Almost as an afterthought, he raised Bertran’s and Nela’s salary, and Aunt Sizzy went on doing with it what she’d done from the first: investing it in their names in blue chip stocks with a conservative brokerage firm.

  Good fortune continued. The circus began to attract notice. During the twins’ third year, it was featured as one of three notable small circuses in a nationally televised special on educational TV. The twins avoided the TV interviews. They still weren’t of age, and they didn’t want to risk someone from their hometown coming after them, not that they considered it likely. Not long after, Matt Mulhollan called everyone together to make an exciting announcement. Mulhollan’s Marvelous Circus was to tour the European continent during the following year, a kind of exchange program in return for a Czech circus coming to the U.S. and Canada. Also, there was a possibility they might go to China the year after that. If the circus was granted permission to do so, certainly one reason, said Matt, being kind, was the attractive presence, among the more standard fare, o
f the Eighth Wonder of the World, Bertran and Nela Zy-Czorsky.

  In Enarae, Zasper came to know all about Fringe Dorwalk. From a word dropped here and an implication there, from this tale and that recollection, Zasper managed to put her story together so that he felt he understood it. Perhaps, he told himself, it was part of his Enforcer’s habit, always to seek reasons for things. An Enforcer charged with Attending a Situation had to be able to judge what had caused the Situation, after all. Though perhaps, he admitted to himself, he was merely a snoopish old man who, having no family of his own, let himself dig into the interstices of other people’s. Or, he admitted somewhat wryly, it could be that he simply cared about Fringe.

  Whether it was fondness or mere curiosity, he did learn about her, and about her family, most notably her father, Char Dorwalk, scion of the Professional class. Professional wasn’t top class, not Executive, but it was far from trash, as Fringe told him, quoting her grandma Gregoria Dorwalk. Professional class was the good life, plenty of perks and not many risks, so Char had been born lucky. All he had had to do to have a good life, said Fringe, still quoting Grandma, was be sensible: set up in a profession, find a Professional-class spouse, and settle down.

  “The way you say that, I guess he didn’t do it,” said Zasper.

  No, she told him in Grandma Gregoria’s words, Char hadn’t been sensible. Char didn’t set himself up in a profession and pick a Professional wife. Instead, he picked a pretty little chirp of a Wage-earner woman who kept the books at the debt-slave market. Her name was Souile Troms, and as if Wage-earner class wasn’t bad enough, she was clerk caste to boot.

  “Clerk caste isn’t exactly trash,” Fringe quoted Grandma Gregoria once more. “But when you get that low, you’re getting close.”

  “Does your grandma always tell you anything that comes into her head?” Zasper asked, dumbfounded. “Including stuff about your ma?”

  “Grandma says my ma is a perfectly nice woman,” Fringe explained with some surprise. “She just isn’t suitable for my pa.”

  Zasper shook his head. “Didn’t your pa think she was suitable when he married her?”

  “Oh, my pa! He was all in a fine fever of dedication, saying he’d draw her up to his level,” Fringe replied, quoting Grandma Gregoria once again. “Grandma told him he could draw Ma up all he liked, but what was he going to do about her family?”

  “Her family?” asked Zasper.

  “The Tromses,” said Fringe. “Ma’s ma and pa. They live with us. Their names are Nada and Ari.”

  Further questioning by Zasper elicited that the Tromses were from the very bottom of the class structure, Trashers— sometimes nicknamed Troughers, because they had their noses in the public trough. Souile Troms, born a Trasher, had done well to rise to Wage-earner class by her own efforts, but raising up her folks had been beyond her.

  “If your ma wanted to marry Char, she should have left her folks behind,” Grandma Gregoria had said. “Her brother and sister went off and left them behind. Souile might have had a chance if she’d done that. I tried to tell my son, before he took them all in, but he wore me down. I finally told him to do whatever it was he was going to do. I couldn’t stop him, and after arguing and arguing, you get so tired you quit trying.”

  Char had done what he wanted. Souile would not leave her parents behind, so Char had taken the setup money left by his father—every respectable Professional family provided funds to set up each child in a profession—had “invested” part of it, and with the rest bought a house large enough to hold them all plus the children he and Souile planned to have.

  No house could be large enough for both Tromses, however. Their continual battles ranged from room to room and the smell of old Ari permeated any space he occupied. An hour after Nada and Ari moved into the room allocated to them, Nada moved out and into the space intended for children, which she had to herself until Fringe came along. Fringe had few memories of herself as a young child, but many impressions of that room, full of sniffles and groans and cries heard through the darkness.

  “Don’t you dare talk to me like that! I’m your mother! Ah, my heart, my heart. When I’m lying dead, you’ll realize what you’ve done to me. Oh, help me to my bed. Let me lie down.”

  “Ma’s dying, oh, Char, she’s dying, she says …”

  Char’s voice, his dark-time voice, the one Fringe never heard in the light. “She’s always dying. Never a day goes by she isn’t dying. So, let her die, if she’ll just let us alone. Will you all let me alone! Never any peace, no peace at all!”

  “Hush, Char! Pa’ll hear you. All he wants is …”

  “Let the filthy old fart have whatever he wants. I’m too tired to argue.”

  “I guess Pa thought they’d all get along all right,” Fringe said to Zasper in the careless voice she always used when she talked about her family. “I guess it just didn’t work out.”

  “Things like that often don’t work out,” said Zasper. “Despite good intentions.”

  “Yeah,” mused Fringe.

  “It takes a strong man to turn back from a bad choice.” This was Enforcer wisdom, hard-learned.

  “Yeah,” said Fringe again, this time with a quick sidelong glance to say she’d noted that one down for future reference.

  Certainly Char hadn’t turned back. Instead, he’d taken to spending most of his time away from the house. Nobody knew where he went or what he did. He wasn’t practicing a profession, that was certain. Rumors came that he was gambling. He did that a lot. Ma was gone most of the time too, but Fringe wasn’t supposed to ask where, and Nada wasn’t supposed to tell, even though she did tell in a shamed whisper: Souile was out earning money.

  “We need it to buy food,” Nada whispered. “We need it to pay the school fees. But don’t tell your pa.”

  “Grandma Gregoria says working for wages is disgraceful for a Professional-class person,” Fringe explained to Zasper. “Ma should go to the E&P Wives Club instead. She should go there and do acceptable activities.”

  “E&P Wives Club? Acceptable activities?” asked Zasper. Though he’d been reared in Enarae, he didn’t recall hearing about acceptable activities.

  “Acceptable activities, you know,” said Fringe. “Things your class says are acceptable. Like, if you’re a Trasher, you can gang-fight, but not if you’re a Professional. Professional women are supposed to go to the Executive and Professional Club and do women things. Wardrobe development. Conversation salon. Social dancing. History of Customs and Courtesy. E&P games. Acceptable activities. You know.”

  Zasper’s Outcaste youth had been spent in activities that weren’t remotely acceptable, so he didn’t know, but he took her word for it.

  Little girls, according to Fringe, learned about acceptable activities by playing with the E&P dolls their mothers gave them. E&P dolls had large wardrobes and extensive talk programs built right in.

  “Tomorrow is the fifth of Springflower, Great Question Day,” a doll would say. “Everywhere on Elsewhere, people will consider the Great Question of man’s destiny. Here in Enarae red and gold are the traditional colors for Great Question Day. What will you wear?”

  “…”

  “We must all look our best for the festivities. I’ve done my eyes a new way. They make me look lovely, don’t you think? Do you like the new way I’ve done my hair?”

  “…”

  “Do you suppose I’ll be picked for the promenade?”

  “…”

  Girls were supposed to fill in the blanks with conversation about grooming and style. That way, when they went to school and had conversation salon or grooming-and-style classes, they’d have a head start.

  “At school they say we’re supposed to consider the Great Question,” said Fringe to Zasper, screwing up her mouth. “But nobody talks about the question at all. I mean, that could be kind of interesting, that question, about what mankind is for, but what we really do is play dolls. And all the dolls look alike. Exactly alike. They all have precisely t
he same face.”

  Zasper noted her expression, which was of someone about to spit out something nasty. “Don’t you like them?” he asked innocently.

  “I hate them,” said Fringe, who had always managed to break her dolls almost as soon as she got them, though she never exactly planned to. “Maybe if I had someone to play with. But Ma and Pa are always gone. And Grandma Nada is always dying.”

  “Always?” asked Zasper.

  “Well, every few days. Grandma Gregoria said she does it to keep in practice.”

  “Who takes care of you and your brother.”

  “Grandma Nada. When she isn’t dying.”

  Certainly it was Nada who kept Fringe and Bubba fed and clothed. Sometimes Ari would come out of his reeking room and amuse them with wild tales of his ganger youth. By the time she was old enough for school, Fringe had picked up the Tromses’ attitudes and accents, their habits of speech, their habitual actions and responses to the actions of others; Nada’s defensiveness, Ari’s belligerence, the Tromses’ low-class vocabulary.

  “Fringe talks like trash,” Grandma Gregoria said to Char, making a moue of distaste, either not knowing or not caring that nine-year-old Fringe was behind the door, listening and watching through a crack. “Your daughter talks like trash, Char. She’s low! And your son will be!”

  The words shocked Fringe. She knew the two sides of the family hated each other, but though the knowledge was painful, she hadn’t thought it had anything to do with her. Now, she realized she was mixed into it. She, Fringe, was right in the middle of it!

  Shortly after the conversation between Grandma Gregoria and Pa, Bubba was sent away to a Professional-class boarding academy. Pa couldn’t have paid for the school, so Grandma Gregoria must have done it. Though Grandma Gregoria had a daughter and several granddaughters, Bubba was her only grandson.