The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(10)

We drove farther from our small town’s redwoods and oaks, farther from the golden hills hiding vultures and whitening bones. The houses grew bigger and cleaner the closer we came to the school. Fifteen and then twenty minutes of driving, twenty-five, and the houses shone at the tops of long-necked driveways. And we were there. My mom’s hands were tight on the steering wheel. There was sweat on her face.

“I guess I’ve forgotten my pearls,” she said as we pulled into the school’s arched entryway. The buildings were ivory, the rolling lawns manicured and plush. She brushed the hair back from her ear, smoothed her shirt and slacks with the palm of her hand. We were dressed up fancy. Earlier that morning I had been instructed to remove the boxers beneath the baggy jeans I was wearing and to instead wear some corduroys, a sweater. Wealthy-people clothes. I needed a full scholarship. I wasn’t sure whether leaving everyone and everything I knew for this new world was what I wanted or not, but my mom was uninterested in my doubt. She pulled into a visitor parking spot, and we sat in silence for a moment. “I never had a chance like this, you know,” she said. She reached into her purse and pulled out her lipstick. “But you,” she said, twisting the tube and unfolding her mirror. She stopped what she was doing and looked at me. “You are so goddamned smart.” Her voice was sharp, almost angry. She pressed the color to her lips.

My fingernails dug into my skin as I surveyed the students in crisp, clean cardigans and new tennis shoes. I took a deep breath and opened the door to get out, but she grabbed my arm. She spoke very quickly. “You are just as smart as anyone here,” she said. “Smarter. Do not let them intimidate you.” She did not take her eyes off mine. “I let people tell me I wasn’t smart my whole life and I believed them and it almost destroyed me. But you. Go show them. You are very, very special.”

*

Down the hall, my mother was not dead. The table beside her bed was full of nail polish. Reds. Glitter. Day after day, I sat beside her and painted and then repainted and repainted the nails on her left hand, and her toenails, because they were the only parts of her body we were allowed to touch. The skin on her right hand, the crook of her elbow, and her fingers were covered by tape holding needles in place. There were four different tubes going into her head.

People die.

Of course they do.

And yet, against the lessons of history, against the inevitability of time, against her bleeding brain and how much of her already seemed lost, I felt this small thrumming hope deep in my stomach that she’d recover. It kept me certain that this couldn’t be the end. I was terrified to let the hope grow.

“You are not special. You are not special. You are not special,” I said to the mirror.





OPEN THE GATES

Day 8 of 150

World of Wonders

June 2013

The carnival is waking.

Music blasts from the Alien Abduction ride just to our right, turns up louder, then shuts back off. We’re in Butler, Pennsylvania. Carnies I’ve seen only in grimy T-shirts in the four days we’ve been setting up at our first fair swagger between rides in bright blue polo shirts, the company uniform, greeting one another with quick nods or, for the older guys, handshakes. This carnival, which includes most of these games and rides, has already played a couple of fairs this season, and the carnies jump from the edge of their rides onto the ground with the ease and comfort of big cats, a strut in each movement, an ownership. We are independent contractors; we travel between carnival companies, working with new folks at each spot.

In twenty minutes, the 2013 World of Wonders season will officially open and the gates will let the marks inside. I will eat fire, charm snakes, perform magic, and escape from chains for the first time in front of a crowd.

The idea gives me tingles.

The rides are all plugged in and lit up and the music is on and the air smells like frying onions and I’m costumed and made up. I meet Tommy inside the tent, ready to go out onto the bally stage with him. I feel like a bird has been loosed inside my body, brushing every organ with its wings until I can hardly keep the big tickled smile off my face, the fear of not actually being good enough to perform any of these acts just behind that.

As the show’s bally girl, I’ll stand out on the front bally stage with the talker, who alternates every hour between Tommy and Cassie so that they don’t blow their voices. I’ll be eating fire, or charming snakes, or escaping from handcuffs, or performing a magic trick where I turn a one-dollar bill into a five. I had a fire-eating class. And Spif showed me the handcuffs and dollar-bill acts in five minutes the night before, after I’d stopped shaking from holding the snake. This was nothing like performing in school plays, where the bulk of time was spent rehearsing—here it was trial by fire, as Sunshine called it. You learned by doing. Onstage. In front of an audience. Good reason to get better quickly.

“Ready, Tessy?” Tommy asks, walking toward the bally stage with his bag of swords in one hand, money box in the other. I’m so relieved to see the snake around his neck. “I’ll just take her for now,” he says, noticing how I’m staring.

“Thank you, Tommy,” I say. He flashes me a big, cheesy grin, one that looks suddenly different, used-car-salesman-like, above his sequined jacket, and I laugh. It’s perfect.

We climb onto the stage and look out at the midway. Still mostly empty. It’s Friday, late morning. We are at the farthest point from the fair’s front gates, and no eager patrons have made their way back through the carnival yet, so I have a moment to practice.