Carol Birch - Orphans of the Carnival

As Julia and Zelda walked back to their wagons in the dark, Zelda said, ‘She’s meeting her fiancé in Cleveland. Did you know?’

‘No.’

Five or six other wagons hunched in the dark like beasts and a small campfire crackled in the field.

‘Sometimes I just don’t understand this world,’ Zelda said, cupping her hand around a disintegrating crumble of cake. ‘She’s got a fiancé and here’s me all on my own.’ Zelda licked her palm clean and brushed her hands.

Julia looked at her in disbelief. ‘Oh, you’ll be all right,’ she said.

There was an awkward moment.

‘What about me?’ said Julia. ‘I’ll always be on my own.’

Zelda said nothing. The awkwardness rose higher between them like a wall, and they walked the rest of the way in silence till Julia turned aside at her door.

It was cold in the wagon, and she shivered. The cold was in her bones. Stupid girl, she thought, surprised at the tears she felt. Stupid girl can walk down the street, no one looks twice. She lit a candle then got under the covers just as she was, pulled a blanket into a sort of tent over her head, and ate the last two cakes, one lime, one spice. The lime cake had an exploding centre of sweet curd, and by the time she’d swallowed the last mouthful she was crying. Even Maud Sparrow was going to have a husband. All the others, the plain girls, the not-so-pretty, the squinty, the flabby, the downright ugly, not one was as ugly as her. I am ugly, ugly, ugly, she said, and reached for bald, blurred, worn away Yatzi. It got her like this sometimes. Some old song would get her. I’ll never have that, she’d think. Love. Never even have it to lose. They love it when I sing those songs, a face like that, like mine, singing a love song. She felt as if a lump in her throat had sprung a leak, and it was draining from her eyes. Tears made long streaks in the hair on her cheeks. She got up, undressed and put on her nightie, got back into bed and blew out the candle.

She could get no sleep. The wind began to blow, and the wagon creaked. They moved on in the morning, and the wind howled all next day and all the day after as they travelled. Loneliness settled in, sure and steady as snow.

A few days later, Zelda knocked on her door and walked in without waiting for an answer. ‘So,’ she said bluntly, as if she’d been building up to it, ‘how’s this kind of life treating you then?’

Julia was sewing ribbons onto one of her stage dresses. ‘Oh!’ she said, surprised. ‘I’m getting along very well, thank you.’

Zelda sat down and leaned forward, staring into Julia’s eyes with something like defiance. ‘I can’t imagine what it must be like to be you,’ she said too quickly.

Julia showed her teeth in what she knew to be a disturbing smile. ‘Of course you can,’ she said. ‘It’s easy. But you don’t try.’

Zelda looked away. Her mouth drooped open and her eyes were dreamy. ‘You know, I’ve always thought I had a good imagination,’ she said. ‘I do, that’s the trouble. I imagine all the terrible things that might happen and all the places I could be that are better than this.’

‘There’s no use at all in that,’ said Julia, bending her head back to her sewing.

‘I know. But I do it anyway. What are you making?’

‘Just sewing some ribbons on.’

‘I’m moving on,’ Zelda said. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye.’

‘Oh! It’s today, is it?’

‘Couple of hours. Indianapolis, Louisville—’

‘Will you be happier with the circus?’

‘I think so. At least I’m heading in the right direction. When we get to Saint Louis, I’ll see my family.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘Not really.’ She smiled faintly. ‘They’re not really very nice.’

Now she comes talking, Julia thought, now she comes making friends. This is what it’s like. People coming, going.

‘You’re right,’ said Zelda, licking her dry lips and looking uneasily away, ‘I don’t try. To imagine what it’s like to be you. My thoughts run away from it.’

‘Just do it,’ Julia said. ‘ I know.’ She put down her sewing. ‘We’ll change places. Go on. I can easily imagine what it’s like to be you. It’s easy. Go on, close your eyes.’

‘Close my eyes?’

‘Yes. And I’ll close mine.’

They did. ‘Now,’ said Julia. ‘I’m a lady with a nice face. I can bend like a snake. You’ve got hair all over you. Like the dogs and the burros .’

They sat for a few moments then both opened their eyes at the same time and laughed, not knowing what to say.

‘You’re good with a needle,’ Zelda said.

‘I’ve always made all my own clothes.’

Zelda rose with a long sigh. Catching sight of herself in the small square of mirror by the door, she put a finger to the outer corner of either eye and pulled the skin up listlessly. ‘At least you don’t have to worry about getting old,’ she said.

‘Why? Do you?’

Zelda turned from her reflection. ‘See you again somewhere,’ she said.

‘You take care now, Zelda.’

When she’d gone, Julia sat up late sewing by candlelight till her eyes were tired. I’m a lady with a nice face, she was thinking. I’m a baboon. A hog, a dog, a wolf. I’m from a deep hole in the mountains where the duendes come out.

Long after dark they passed through a little place in Vermont with a billiard hall and a big clock hanging over the town square. There was some kind of trouble with Maud’s wagon so they had to stop in the main street while the drivers fixed a wheel. Julia had been dozing on her bed, but she sat up when the wagons stopped and drew back the curtain. She saw a tidy moonlit street, all closed up, and a dozen or so hogsheads standing outside the store. There was a big barn of a place with a sign that said BILLIARDS, and the clock read quarter to eleven. The forest pressed in all around the town. No one was around, but a candle burned in a window high up in a house on the right, and Julia imagined that there was a child up there, a girl who’d got out of bed to look down. She was standing there now, wondering about all the freaks down there. She’d love to see the freaks. That could be me, she thought, up there looking down at me. I’m living in that house, sleeping in that room, this is my town. I live with my parents. And someone else is down here. But no matter how much she tried, when she tried to picture the parents, all she could see was her mother’s pigtail.

The wheel was fixed, and the wagons lurched on through the woods a couple more miles out of town, pulled up in an open space in the back of a circus midway.

In the morning, up and dressed, opening her tiny window and looking out as she combed her hair, she saw the big circus tent in the distance, and the bright coloured signs along the midway: LOBSTER GIRL. STRONG MAN. ZEO THE WILD HUMAN.

The air smelled of impending rain. Maud was sitting on the steps of her wagon nearby, eating elegantly with her fingers from a plate of fried bread and bacon while an old man in a long blue jacket, a peddler of some kind, laid out his wares before her on the bottom step. Maud’s fiancé, a tall man in a rumpled white shirt, loafed around in the doorway behind her, swigging from a bowl of coffee. Shivering a little, Julia closed the window, pulled a shawl round her shoulders and sat down to pull on her boots. Good old boots, she thought. Never had any that fitted so well.

She heard Maud’s voice:

‘Well, look at you . No one ever teach you it’s rude to look up a lady’s skirt?’

And the fiancé, mildly, ‘What the hell, kid, run away.’

A laugh, chuckleheaded. A throaty gurgling.

Cato. Surely. She looked out. There was Maud like an empress indulging minions, the old peddler bowed over on one side, Cato on the other, grinning and lolloping from foot to foot in a grass skirt that came down to his knees. Oh, quick. Of course it took ages doing up her boot laces because she was hurrying too much, and by the time she’d got her veil on and opened the door, there was Ezra Porter, all togged up in a fancy suit with a high white collar that looked as if it was strangling him, coming across the field with a skinny girl trailing after him.