The Orphan's Tale(19)

“Because I would never trust you to catch me.” Her voice is cold. “Come.”

She heads for a ladder on the other side of the room, parallel to the one we’d climbed earlier, but with a sturdier-looking swing. I follow, but she shakes her head. “You go on that side with Gerda.” She gestures to another aerialist whom I hadn’t seen come in and who is already climbing the ladder Astrid and I had used previously. I follow her. At the top, Astrid and I stand on opposite platforms, an ocean apart from one another. “Swing just like before. And when I say, you let go. I will do the rest.”

“And Gerda?” I ask, stalling.

“She will send the bar back for you to catch on the return,” Astrid replies.

I stare at her, not believing. “So I have to let go twice?”

“Unless you have wings, yes. You have to get back somehow.” Astrid grabs the opposite bar and leaps, then swings around so she is hanging by her legs. “Now you,” she prompts.

I jump out, kicking my toes high. “Higher, higher,” she urges, her arms extended toward me. “You have to be above me when I tell you to let go.” I force myself upward, driving with my feet. “Better. On my cue. Three, two, one—now!” But my hands remain stuck to the bar.

“Fool!” she cries. “Everything in the circus depends upon timing, synchronicity. You must listen to me. Otherwise you will get us both killed.”

I manage my way onto the board, then climb down the ladder and meet Astrid back on the ground. “You let go in gymnastics, surely,” she says, clearly frustrated.

“That was different,” I reply. By about thirty-five feet, I add silently.

She folds her arms. “There’s no act without the release.”

“There is no way that I can do this,” I insist. We stare at each other for several seconds, neither speaking.

“You want to go, so go. No one expected more.” Her words shoot out at me like a slap.

“Least of all you,” I retort. She wants me to fail. She does not want me here.

Astrid blinks, her expression somewhere between anger and surprise. “How dare you?” she asks, and I fear I have gone too far.

“I’m sorry,” I say quickly. Her face softens somewhat. “But it’s true, isn’t it? You don’t think I can do it.”

“No, I didn’t think this would work when Herr Neuhoff suggested it.” Her tone is neutral, matter-of-fact. “I still don’t.”

She reaches out and takes my arm and I hold my breath, hoping for a reassuring word. Instead, she rips the tape off my wrist. I let out a yelp, my skin screaming at the burn. We stare at each other hard, neither blinking. I wait for her to tell me I will have to leave here, as well. Surely they will make us go.

“Come back tomorrow,” she relents, “and we will try it again one last time.”

“Thank you,” I say. “But Astrid...” My voice sounds pleading. “There must be something else I can do.”

“Tomorrow,” she repeats before walking away. Watching her retreat, my stomach leadens. Though grateful for the second chance, I know it is hopeless. Tomorrow or a year from tomorrow, I will never be able to let go.





6

Noa

Theo lies across my chest, the way he likes to sleep, the warmth of his cheek pressed against me. “You should lay him down,” Greta, the housemaid who watches Theo while I rehearse, has scolded more than once in the two weeks we have been here. “If he doesn’t learn to soothe himself, he’ll never sleep well.” I don’t care. During the day whenever I am not practicing, I hold Theo until my arms ache. I sleep with him close each night so I can feel the beating of his heart, like one of the dolls I had as a child come to life. Sometimes it seems as if without him I cannot breathe.

Lying now in the stillness of the women’s lodge, I watch him rise and fall atop me on the narrow bed. He stirs, lifting his head as he has just learned to do. Theo’s gaze follows me wherever I enter a room. A wise old soul, he seems to listen intently, missing nothing. Our eyes meet now and he smiles, a wide, toothless grin of contentment. For a few seconds, it is only us in the world. I wrap my arms more tightly around him. There is that moment each evening when Astrid frees me from practice, just before I enter the lodge, when joy and anticipation at seeing Theo rise in me. Part of me fears that he might have been a figment of my imagination, or have disappeared because I had been gone so long. Then I pick him up and he melts into my arms and I am home. Though it has been only a few weeks, I feel as if Theo has been mine forever.

There could be two boys, I remind myself—if I found my child again. Could such a thing be possible? I picture the boys together at three or four. They would be like brothers close in age, almost twins. These are dangerous thoughts, the kind I have not allowed myself to have until now.

I draw the blanket more closely around myself. I dreamed of my own family last night. My father had appeared at the edge of the winter quarters and I ran up to hug him and plead with him to bring me home. But I had awoken to the cold light of day seeping in. Going home is a dream I’ve held on to for all of my months in exile. When I arrived at the circus, I imagined staying a few weeks to get my strength back and then finding a normal job to earn enough money to go back to Holland. My parents were not able to accept me with a child of my own, though; they will never welcome me back with Theo. No, I cannot go home. I still need to get Theo out of Germany somehow, though. We cannot stay here.