The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(12)
The sword’s tip emerges from his body, and Tommy does a quick bow.
“For an opening-day special, adult tickets are only three dollars right now and kids are just two dollars. Snickers is waiting right here with the tickets, so go on in and be amazed by the strangest show on earth,” Tommy says. Everyone goes in. A line twenty people long stretches back from the ticket box, and the line draws more into it, everyone assuming something that can’t be missed is going on right there. It continues to build as the first people go in, and behind me I can hear the inside show starting. Red is on his stage, welcoming people inside by pounding a nail up his nose, and I’m standing on the far side of the ticket box, waving people in, smiling in my gorgeous glimmering booty shorts, and they keep coming, buying tickets and stepping right inside. I’m dazzled. Dazzling.
“Good turn,” Tommy says when the crowd is all in and I walk back onstage. “That almost never happens, where we have a total turn.”
“We must have the magic,” I say, winking, feeling that this might be the life for me. This might be my most right self. We high-five, and I’m as high as I’ve ever been.
Our next bally, which we immediately begin, goes just as well, with a one-dollar bill turned into a five and sword swallowing and stories of grandeur, but at the end of the bally, as we stand onstage with ta-da smiles, everybody turns around and walks away.
On the next one, two people come inside.
Next, three more.
We’re forty-five minutes into the five-month season, and I feel defeated. Though we’re performing the same minishow over and over, now and forever, for every new group that wanders by every seven to ten minutes, each iteration has to look completely new and exciting. And sometimes, they are really unimpressed.
*
My feet ache. It’s been an hour.
My heels are low—two and a half inches, maybe—but I’m not one of the graceful naturals.
Also, the fishnets pinch my waist.
I’m sweating my makeup off.
I’m getting a little short of breath from the cinch of the corset.
When I have a fifteen-minute break a few hours into performing, I closely inspect the corsets the other performers are wearing backstage. Sunshine’s corset wraps her body closely, but it seems to fit more like a shirt than a vacuum sealer, zipping up on the side and not bothering with unlacing or relacing at all. Cassie’s is the same. And then I think about eating a snack. I’m not sure I could. I don’t think the granola bar would have anywhere to go, that it would sit like a mouse in a snake’s throat above my corset, a great lump. I reach behind me and loosen the corset further, keeping it still tight, still uncomfortable. I’d performed in a lot of plays when I was younger, and there it doesn’t matter if your costume is uncomfortable or you’re feeling tired, because the adrenaline is pumping and the performance time is limited. But here, it begins and carries on like a record skipping into eternity. I like this idea—that every day I can try and retry and retry to be better and better at the same thing. That every day I get a chance to redo what I’ve done before until one time, eventually, I’ll get it just right.
*
We had a lot of chances to fine-tune our reactions to bad news about my mom. A lot of practice in tightening our face muscles, tensing our jaws, and furrowing our brows while listening to a doctor’s update. These were the choruses of our days: There’s a strong chance she will not make it through the night.
There’s a moderate chance she will not make it through the afternoon.
Wear the face mask. Wear the disposable robe. Wear the shoe protectors.
There’s a 75 percent chance this last complication has been too much for her body to fight.
She will not last the morning.
Use this soap to wash your hands before and after you put on and take off the gloves. Do not remove the protective plastic eye shield from the face mask.
We’re going to give you some space.
We’ll give you alone time.
This is probably the end.
One day of life-halting emergency.
Do you see the Kleenex?
Don’t let her see you cry. She might give up.
Do you see the Kleenex?
Four days of life-halting emergency.
Don’t let her see you look like this is hard.
Eat a sandwich.
This is certainly the last degree of complication a person can survive.
A week of it.
Four weeks.
Prepare yourself: we’ve got to pull the plugs.
How are you holding up? Are your bowels regular?
Four months.
Do not touch her face.
She might live, but what kind of quality of life would she want?
What are her advance directives?
Sir, you can’t ignore her advance directives.
On.
Nine months.
A year.
Two.
On.
*
It had taken three days to drive from Gibsonton, where the crew had met, to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of our first fair.
When we arrived, a giant piece of plywood leaning against a fence read BIG BUTLER FAIRGROUNDS. Behind the sign, we parked in a huge, open field, the grass already summer-dry and patchy.
Tommy and Sunshine disappeared into the fairgrounds. I looked at Spif and Pipscy for answers.
“Tommy’s going to find the boss canvasman so we know which lot is ours,” Spif says. He has opened the van’s side doors and lies sprawled across the steps, digging at something under his fingernails with a dagger he’s pulled off his belt.