The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(59)
“No,” I said. “I don’t know what to say to him.” I started to turn around and walk out.
“Tessa,” she said, slowly. I didn’t move. “Sometimes you’ve just got to do the hard thing.” She stared me down. Then, she grabbed my hand and pulled me over to the headmaster, introducing us both. She explained to him how I saw myself there.
A week later, I received another letter. I’d been accepted, with a full scholarship. On the bottom of the letter was a handwritten note from the headmaster. It was so good to see you last week. The kind of interest and dedication you showed by coming to the play are exactly the kinds of characteristics we look for in our students. We honor perseverance. Welcome!
FRESH MEAT
Day 39 of 150
World of Wonders
August 2013
As unofficial alternate shuttle driver, I am tasked with heading to the airport and bus station to pick up the new performers. We are getting four at once, three who will be with us for one month and one who will stay for just two weeks. Other performers will join later in the season, as we go.
There are three new bally girls, all of whom have some performance experience, and one new inside performer, who has an act he’s been doing for years. Francine comes in from Oakland, a beautiful pinup burlesque performer who can eat fire and has dreamed of working with our iconic show for years. She arrives with armloads of boxes and suitcases, unpacking beautiful beaded tassel bras and belly dancing skirts and different-size hot rollers and feather boas and scarves, a glamorous tattooed beauty moving into a dirty truck. She is not thrilled.
Rachel flies in from Pennsylvania and has attended Coney Island sideshow school. She immediately demonstrates her human blockhead act, jamming a screwdriver deep into her nostril. Before she joined us, she ate glass for one of the touring nightclub shows and stays pretty quiet most of the time, though she also arrives with some amazing costume pieces.
The third female performer is Jessie, a local girl, who will be with us for just two weeks and looks like a mad scientist drew a sexy cartoon—with fire-engine red hair and tight-fitting white tank tops over too-tight black bras. It is immediately clear she knows some tricks that I have yet to learn about how to get things from the carnies. Most nights she strolls backstage with a foot-long corn dog or giant turkey leg that some carnie has given her just because.
The one new male performer is Brian, a lanky young guy in a bowler hat who walks out of the airport with a backpacking rucksack, a wooden board in one hand, and juggling clubs in the other. In addition to juggling acts, he also performs the rolla bolla, a balancing act where a short rectangle of wood is set on top of a cylinder, and the performer balances atop the board as it rolls around. On top of the rolla bolla he ties balloon animals or puts his body through a hoop or juggles. He walks outside first thing in the morning, hair pointing every direction, and, in his undershirt and boxer shorts, begins juggling the way another person might stretch or brush his teeth.
There is not enough space for the new performers to have beds in the back of our truck. Sunshine unfolds cots in our main backstage area with sheets hung between some of them at night for privacy. New bunks.
A flat wooden board is set on top of a lighting rack, a thin camping mat laid across it, and Brian’s room is formed. Other mats are rolled out across the stage, and people find places to sleep wherever they need. In truth, there is so little time spent sleeping, and we are so exhausted when that time comes, the accommodations almost don’t matter.
It feels good to have this fresh blood among us after the same faces day in and out for nearly forty days. But I also feel wary. Maybe Tommy or Red will take to one of them; maybe they’ll prove their worth here quickly and make my presence unnecessary. I keep a little distance, watch them carefully.
The first night, we all head to a carnie bar just off the fairgrounds. It’s packed with loud, chain-smoking men and women, most of whom are obviously people who spend all day outside, who work with their hands. The crew who have been out with World of Wonders for previous seasons greet the carnies, laughing about stories from past years, lamenting those who’ve been lost since then.
“I love Francine,” Cassie says loud and often, hugging and kissing her. We’ve found a table on the back porch that most of us are sitting around. “I’m so glad Francine is here, she’s just so hilarious and fun.” The other new arrivals quietly sip their beers. I’d started being snappy with Cassie lately. She is so loud all the time. So quick to say something mean to someone on the crew, though she is always joking. So fast to say how much she loves people to get what she wants. There is such volatility, and I am getting too tired to be good at holding on for the ride.
You’re a nice person, or you could be a nice person, I tell myself on the walk back from the bar. Mean people are usually hurting more than the rest of us, I try to remember. Be kind to Cassie, I try to remind myself. But a shadowy golem in my head asks whether niceness is really what is going to keep me afloat out here, or anywhere.
Yes, it is, I think. Right?
*
The human teeth clink like gentle bells. In a small glass in the van’s cup holder, they are a shadowy white nearing gray and look fragile, almost hollow. They have failed to keep themselves inside their human mouth despite their rooting and pinching and grabbing.
The teeth belong to our current working man. Every few hours, since he’d started with us two days before, he’d swear and spit and another hard object would fall out of his mouth and into his hand.