Outlawed(23)

“It’s how I learned,” Lo said.

“Who taught you,” I asked. “The Kid?”

Lo laughed. “Please,” she said, “I taught the Kid and everyone else here. It’s a wonder they weren’t all hanged for witches before I came along. No, I learned from the best—Naaman Theophilus Harrow and his traveling players.”

“They came to Fairchild when I was twelve,” I said. “I saw them do Antigone!”

“That was one of my favorites,” Lo said, coming alongside me and smiling into the mirror. “Do you recognize me?”

A visit from a troupe of traveling performers was a big event in Fairchild—once or twice every summer, a group of jugglers, dancers, or actors would set up tents on the riverbank south of Coralton and put on a show for two or three days before moving on. For those few days a festival atmosphere would take hold, almost as wild as Mothering Monday—Edgar Winchell and his sons John and Jonas would sell beer and sweet wine outside the dancehall before the show, and afterward couples would stagger off into the woods together. The spring after a show typically brought at least one fatherless baby, its mother watching it as it grew for signs of skill with pirouettes or juggling pins.

I remembered Antigone well—I had seen it twice, once with Ulla and once with Janie and Jessamine, who grew bored and began playing baby’s cradle with a loop of string they’d found on the floor of the hall. Antigone and Ismene had been played by women so alike they might really have been sisters: tall and raven-haired, they were sought after by local boys and men and warded them off with identical wedding bands. Eurydice and the nurse, meanwhile, were played by old women, their faces deeply lined.

Lo looked to be around Mama’s age, not old and not young. She was a head shorter than me, large-breasted and broad-hipped, and she wore her hair in blonde curls cut close to her scalp.

Lo saw my confusion. As quick as slipping on a coat, she changed the set of her shoulders and the focus of her eyes, stooping over and gazing above the frame of the mirror as though at something far away.

“ ‘This is the way the blind man comes,’ ” she said. “ ‘Lock-step, two heads lit by the eyes of one.’ ”

I laughed aloud. In the play, the old prophet Tiresias had worn a long white beard and hobbled across the stage supported on one side by a cane and on the other by a young boy, chosen from the fifth form at our school for the privilege. He had worn long, flowing robes that concealed his body, but I had never thought to wonder if he might have been played by a woman.

“They let you play a man?” I asked.

“The male roles were the most prestigious,” Lo said. “Lean your shoulders back and pitch your hips forward.”

I squared off my legs and, trying to keep them square, hooked a thumb in each belt loop. I braced myself but the kick didn’t come.

“And I was the best of all the players,” Lo went on.

“Why did you leave?” I asked.

Lo gave me a sad smile. “You know why I left, little colt,” she said.

I had known girls who had babies by traveling players, but I had never thought about the players themselves marrying and having babies, or marrying and failing to have them.

“Did your husband kick you out?” I asked.

Lo chuckled to herself. “I didn’t have a husband,” she said. “None of us did. We believed in free love, or at least Naaman did. Make a fist for me.”

I showed her my clenched hand.

She shook her head.

“Thumb outside your fingers,” she said. “Good. Now put your fists up.”

I delayed, wanting to hear the story.

“So, did Naaman—”

“Come on,” she said. I assumed what I thought was a fighting stance.

She came close, lifted my left fist a little, then my right.

“My mama taught me, same as yours,” she said. “Don’t sleep with the same man too many times without a wedding ring, just in case. But I was young and dumb, and I was so in awe of him. Show me a punch.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Come on,” she said. “Hit me in the stomach.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” I said.

“You won’t, little colt. Come on.”

I jabbed half-heartedly at her red plaid shirt with my right hand. She caught my fist with her hand.

“He always told me the troupe would never survive without me,” she said. “ ‘You’re our soul,’ he said. But when it came time for me to go he couldn’t even tell me himself. He had one of the new girls bring me my things in an old feed sack.”

She released my fist. “Hit me again,” she said.

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” she said. “Now, come on, hit me.”

I jabbed with my left. She caught my fist with one hand, and with the other, punched me in the stomach hard enough to take my breath away.

I gasped and staggered, my eyes watering.

“What was that for?” I asked.

“That was your first real fighting lesson,” Lo said. “Odds are, every time you fight, you’ll be fighting a man. He’ll be bigger than you, and he’ll be stronger. If you fight fair, you’ll lose every time. So you have to learn to fight dirty.”