The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(21)
Story goes: Snickers was born triple jointed in every joint. He had thirty-six birth defects. Spent his first four years in the L.A. Children’s Hospital. “I was their poster child,” he says, unbuttoning his vest. “I mean, really. You drive down the 101 and you’d see my cute-ass face on the billboard. They loved me.”
He takes off his vest, folds it neatly, and sets it on a stool. Across the right side of his chest and shoulder is a tattoo of a thick, thorny vine, as if one of those popular tribal tattoos had been sharpened at each point. His torso itself is crooked, with a few bones protruding in places I haven’t seen bones protrude before, a single point sticking out from just below his ribs, like something inside is trying to escape his skin.
After a deep pull on the cigarette, he tucks it into the corner of his mouth. An exhale, and then he sucks his stomach until it’s as thin as a cereal box, with the two wings of his ribs protruding. He contorts his torso, twisting, and something pops with the kind of sound that usually makes people seek medical attention, and he twists further, his ribs moving closer together and his hips going the opposite direction, bones protruding from places I don’t understand. He straightens and throws his shoulders back, and there are more pops, and one of my hands covers my eyes except for the slit through which I can’t not look and the other hand covers my mouth. He asks if I have a stringless tennis racquet that he can contort his body through. I do not, I apologize.
“My ribs are made of rubber. It’s been my dream all my life to be on this show, and I’ve been performing now for twelve years, so I’m good at what I do. I don’t mean to brag, but I’m really good. I’m gonna get a spot as a performer here. I have to,” he says.
“Back to work,” Tommy calls from the back end. I go.
*
“Don’t be upset,” Tommy says, “if Red yells at you.”
We’re tying canvas straps to the metal stakes, which will bind the circus tent to the earth. “I’m gonna put you on his crew. Just don’t take anything personally,” he says as Sunshine walks over.
“Are you putting her with Red? Poor thing,” she says, stroking my shoulder. “He knows everything and he’s amazing, but don’t be offended when he insults you.” Cassie overhears and calls from where she’s building the stage curtain’s frame.
“He’s gonna call you a dummy. He calls everyone a dummy,” she says. “Dummy means he loves you.”
“Dummy means he thinks you’re a dummy,” Sunshine says. “But it’s okay. Everyone’s a dummy compared to him.”
I look across the tent to where Red sits, shirt off, belly round and hard out front. He’s bent over an electrical box with a tool in one hand, frowning.
“Red! Tess is on your crew,” Tommy calls down to him. He nods and looks away. I walk over, tentative, eager, wanting to show him that I’m the real deal. Tattoos line his arms and chest, an anatomical man bending back with three swords down his throat. Stars surrounding the man. In yellow letters over a red circle on his forearm: STRANGE. On the other arm: FREAK. A cigarette hangs out his mouth while he fixes a lightbulb with his hands.
“Hi!” I say. “I’m Tess—”
“Bring me a spreader,” he says.
“I’m not exactly sure—”
“Go!” he yells, so I start running in the general direction he’s pointed, grab Cassie’s arm as I hustle to ask what a spreader is, then keep running. Spreaders, it turns out, are long, rectangular metal bars covered with red and blue bulbs that attach to the long banner-line poles to make the frame where everything else hangs. We’re testing each section and piece of the banner line’s lights, readying to raise it twenty-five feet into the air.
The night before, I’d heard something about Red. An explanation, maybe. Story goes: he married young, had a wife and baby whom he loved ferociously. The kind of love that can only be felt by a person who gets the things he never thought he’d get. Then his baby died. And then his wife died. He was alone again.
“Test the spreaders from the main junction box,” he yells. I run toward a huge pile of electronic boxes on a metal cart, hoping for sudden insight about what a junction box looks like, say, but the stack of buzzing transformers and loose cords remains an enigma. I grab at a plug, thinking the prongs might give me a clue, and when they don’t, I try to follow the line with my hands to its origin. I glance back at Red, hoping that he might be watching and help, and also hoping he is not watching and has moved on to something else and forgotten about me. He’s nowhere in sight. I turn back to my scrambling, untangling cords, and trying to guess how things might power one another, when suddenly he’s right behind me.
“No,” he says, grabbing a cord out of my hand.
“I don’t really know—” I start, but he jumps back in. “Find the flag bag and tighten the slip-ties.” I stare blankly. “Fine,” he says, looking around for a job simple enough for an idiot. “See all these bulbs in each spreader?” I nod. I do. “Plug the spreader into this junction box,” he says, and I realize this is the same job I failed at just moments before. “Check each bulb to make sure it works. If it’s a dud, or if one of the bulbs is broken, stick these pliers into the socket, unscrew the base of the bulb, and get a new one in.” I look at the pliers he’s just handed me. Metal. I know nearly nothing about electricity, but I remember the early childhood lesson about not sticking metal into an electrical outlet.