The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(71)
*
I don’t know if Davy’s interpretation of her actions would be the same as mine if I had been there—did she really string sounds together for an hour, or did he just want her to badly enough that he interpreted a few sounds that way?—but reading this still makes my gut feel like it is filled with moths, then stones. The idea that she might talk is overwhelming in its beauty, in how desperately I wish for it, have wished nonstop for it, until I remember that even if it were true, I would not be there to hear it. They are gone. Maybe she will talk again. Maybe being on the road will enable her to find the words she hasn’t been able to find since her stroke, and maybe Davy will get to hear them and know what she thinks about the sound of the rain on the cobblestone streets, but I won’t. They’re gone.
*
In Minnesota, there was a dangled carrot. It glimmered, all rooty and infused with beta-carotene dreams, and we wanted it because we were starving.
After the two weeks at the Wisconsin State Fair and a week at the small Wisconsin county fair, we’d moved on to the biggest meat-grinder of the season: the Minnesota State Fair. And Tommy knew just what to say to keep our gears turning.
“Finish setup early,” Tommy said, “and we can take a little trip over to the Mall of America.” The idea was astonishing, a vast lighted complex smelling of perfumes and soft pretzels and the starchy carpet-scent of cheap clothing made overseas. Indoor plumbing. The chance to buy new underwear or soap or a bra or a costume piece that didn’t come from Walmart. Forty-three million people per year come to this mall, the largest in the United States, and our presence there, however fleeting it might be, felt like a necessity and a glorious extension of the America we were learning through the fairgrounds. We’d just be regular shoppers, strollers, eaters, not on display any more than everyone else.
We hang lights at double speed, leap off the ladder halfway up, and unfurl the tent’s sidewalls with a mania that I usually only see when it seems like a neighboring crew has scored something really good. But we had the mall ahead of us. America’s mall.
*
“You have an hour and a half. Meet back here at seven. We’ll leave without you if you’re not here,” Tommy says as we emerge into the clean, climate-controlled palace. The only places I’ve felt air-conditioning in the sixty days I’ve been with the World of Wonders are Walmart and the occasional fair building I sneak into, so the idea of being left here is intoxicating. I could sneak into the Applebee’s at night and gorge on fruit that’s not deep-fried. Could sleep on a nest of hoodies in a toilet stall—my own toilet stall, with walls. Could find a mall boyfriend to hold hands and share an Orange Julius with. Once I made it past the preteen years, malls had never been places where I’d wanted to spend much time. But I have never been so overcome with a desire to purchase everything within my sight until now. There is a store called Journeys, full of hats and fat sneakers, and I want to put on each of them. Nearby, several tables seem to be piping the overly sweet smell of fake apple pie and vanilla from candles that sit grouped together in small waxy armies.
Because we’ve been paid only in cash, I have a huge pile of ones and fives. I didn’t count it out, just grabbed a big handful from the envelope where I keep all my cash, stashed deep in my duffel bag tucked under my bunk, which always makes me nervous. I’ve heard about plenty of carnies getting robbed, but the number of us crammed into one truck means there’s always someone around to keep an eye out.
Spif and Sunshine immediately lock arms and skip down the tiled hallway, the blinking sale signs they pass on each side like an enchanted forest they can’t wait to explore. They laugh at each other. I take a sharp turn and disappear into the maze of H&M, touching every piece of clothing I pass—tankinis, bralettes, wispy purple scarves, plastic heels, boho sweaters with tassels to the floor. I narrow in quickly on the racks that hold clothes in blacks and grays, torn and tough. Much of the rest of the cast dresses like they’re in a hardcore band when we’re not performing, and I don’t want to stick out from them, for them to comment anymore on how square I look, how like a sorority girl. I grab a cheap necklace made up of four or five gold chains loosely braided together, imagine myself a Hells Angels biker, and head for the register. I buy an Orange Julius, which I drink, alone, wandering the corridors. It is strange to be under evenly lit halogen. It is strange to be inside. I wonder if people can smell me as I pass, as I linger beside soaps not tested on animals, then hundreds of Lego animals. I want each thing. But as I keep walking, I enter fewer and fewer stores, gawk at the prices in those that I do, am less sure that the items could fit in the life I’m currently living.
I round a corner and find myself staring at a giant roller coaster. Though the Mall of America is the number one tourist destination in the Midwest, though on any given day the mall becomes Minnesota’s third largest city by population, though it is 1.15 miles around each level, when I find the roller coaster, I also find Tommy, Cassie, and Ben. I join them as we watch kids screaming past, and then Sunshine and Spif skip up, and we all stand there in a row, listening to the sound of wheels on the tracks, to the click of the pulleys hauling the carts uphill, the symphony of our lives, the screams of our dinner sound track, the smiling whiplashed faces and flying hair of our most familiar neighbors. Sunshine breaks our trance.
“I’m going,” she says.
“Me, too,” Tommy says.