The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(42)



“I’m surprised she stuck around after the first girl,” Sunshine says. “I wouldn’t have.”

“She didn’t have a chance. They were at the same time,” he says, the smile erupting through his face like a pimple bursting.

*

The sideshow men love to show photos of their daughters. They each have a few choice snaps on their phones, which they pull out and swipe through with obvious pride. The first time Spif did this, after setup one night at our first fair, he flashed a photo of a tiny girl in a bathing suit, another photo of her in little running clothes, always smiling up toward the camera.

“She’s hella smart,” he said. “She looks at a picture of a dog and says woof woof, and she looks at a picture of a shark and says dunna, dunna, you know, like from Jaws.” He looked off into the distance with half-closed eyes and tilted his head, as if he were looking right at his little object of love.

On our last day of setup in Ohio, I ask him about his daughter again. About the kinds of things she likes. I want to see him light up that way again. “Well, she likes animals,” he says, excited again.

“Whenever she sees a shark on TV, she says dunna, dunna, dunna dunna.”

I can’t tell whether this is the only story he wants us to know, or the only story he knows. Maybe whatever else he has, he wants all for himself.

The little girl, two years old, is at home with his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. The daughter doesn’t know Spif is her father. That’s the agreement they have. He can see her every few weeks or months, and she can know him as an uncle.

“Shark Week is the fucking best,” Cassie says a few days later, backstage during a slow afternoon. The conversation is about the best TV shows to watch stoned.

“Listen to this. If you ask Becca what a shark says, she’ll say dunna, dunna,” Spif says. “It’s so fucking cute.”

*

It is hard being on the road and staying connected to the other people in your life.

After our show closes on our second day performing at the Maumee County Fair in Ohio, I call my mom and Davy. I’m tired and grumpy, but before I can start to whine, Davy details the new off-roading tires he’s attached to Bubbles. The tires are huge, he tells me, monster-truck-size.

“The streets of Italy are all cobblestone, and we’re gonna have to move quickly to find the best cafés and go to all the museums we wanna go to.”

I ask him how the planning’s going, and he sends me a sixteen-page document with lists of all the port cities their boat will stop at, key attractions in other cities they are determined to see: the David in Florence, the opera in Venice.

“It’s great,” he says. “Some water taxis in Venice have ramps that can fit a wheelchair on them. It’s probably for loading goods, maybe wheelbarrows of pastas,” he says, chuckling. “A full wheelbarrow of tortellini.” He sighs. “I wonder if they ever use a crane?”

“Are you making lists of hospitals in the area?” I ask. I start to sweat. Thinking about them over there, about them remaining over there, makes me feel like I’m sliding out of my body.

“Yeah, yeah,” he says dismissively. “We’ll have all that stuff.”

“Great,” I say. Pause. “It will be so great.” I spend a lot of time imagining all the things that might go wrong on this stunt. If she has another stroke. If she falls. If she seizes and falls out of her chair and hits her head on the David’s goddamned foot. If Davy has a heart attack and she is alone in the room and she cannot help him and he cannot help her. There are so many ways they might suffer.

My brother and I have a plan. We have been putting aside money and have credit cards with high limits. We have agreed. Should it be necessary—and it will probably be necessary—we will drop what we are doing and get on a plane to wherever they are. We will rescue them. It’s all we can think to do.

Nevertheless, I pitch my voice high and enthusiastic on the phone to match their spirits. I don’t want them to know my terror. I want to be as brave as they are, and so, taking a breath and channeling my stage persona, I tell them I’m proud of what they’re doing. The stage performer can be delighted for the adventures they may find. She can be brave and strong. She loves her family and has always told them so. She is not the daughter researching the repatriation of remains.

They have to get off the phone. Too much to do. I stand alone, offstage, outside the tent in the hot, wet night air, and the tears fall and keep falling.

*

Sometimes, a sideshow can save a daughter.

A two-pound baby, deemed a “weakling” by the hospital, is expected to die. It’s 1920, and hospitals do not have neonatal facilities. Story goes: the baby’s father wraps the baby—Lucille Horn is her name—in a blanket, hails a taxi outside the hospital, and heads to the sideshow at Coney Island. The baby’s twin had just died in birth, and he was not willing to lose both children. Up until the second half of the twentieth century, hospitals did not have the equipment to keep premature babies alive.

When Lucille’s father arrived at the sideshow, a sign charging admission—twenty-five cents—was up over the door. Inside, all along the walls, teensy preemie babies of every race and class were on display in steel-and-glass incubators. Some cried, others slept in a swaddle. The exhibit was run by Dr. Martin Couney, a pioneer in neonatal incubator research. The medical community was more than skeptical.

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