The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(84)
“I really can’t believe that,” she says. “It’s kind of bullshit.”
Chris stops laughing and looks at her, and the few hairs on the sides of his head might be waving a bit like a cartoon man preparing to explode with anger, his lip trembling.
“Fine, okay, sorry,” she says, skulking away.
Chris turns back to me. Dumb, unskilled, slow-learning me. “Tell me, Tess,” he says. “What did your mom think when you told her you were going to run away with the circus?” He’s instructed me to take a break for a few minutes while the bile retreats and my eyes stop watering.
I could answer this truthfully. I could tell him the story, tell all these folks I’ve been working with for months now the truth, the whole thing, the mess of it. I’ve mentioned once or twice to a few of the other performers, Sunshine and Cassie and maybe Spif, that I have a sick mom. And they’ve told me about their lives. But life moves so quickly here, when it’s not moving painfully slowly. And when I think about trying to tell someone the whole long arc of the drama, I feel exhausted. I’m already exhausted. I look around me at all these tough folks who have had hard things happen in their lives and continue on, and it makes me want to do the same. To harden my gut. And then ready it for swords.
“My family thinks it’s great,” I say.
“They do?”
“Sort of. Well, they said it sounded fun as long as I promised not to ever try sword swallowing.”
“Ha,” Chris says. “You’re not very good at keeping promises.”
“Right,” I say, and study the coat-hanger sword in front of me, hoping for some trick to reveal itself. Knowing it won’t.
“You know why I invited you to come join the show?” he asks me.
My heart stops. I do not know. I have no idea whatsoever. I have kept myself from even thinking about it, let alone asking anyone. I am scared of the answer. It will somehow further illuminate what a fraud I am here, what a fraud I am in how I obsessively think about my mom but don’t obsessively act to help her. I’m also desperate for the answer. I manage to nod my head.
“You seemed genuinely interested in this world. You came to the show, looked me in the eyes, and I could see something about you there. That you’d stick around. Plus, I think you’re a good person. Someone like that should witness this.”
So there it is. Tapped to step into another world as witness. To stick around. To watch. For a moment, the fact of my outsiderness doesn’t seem as alienating. There is something I can do as an outsider. Something only I among us can do. I can bear witness.
“Thank you,” I say, overwhelmed, surprised.
“Are you having fun?”
“Yes, definitely.”
“Good.”
“Well, yes and also no.”
“No?”
“I’ve never worked this hard or been so bad at so many things. It’s kicking my ass.”
“Ah,” he says. “That’s normal. It’ll do that. Just remember that no matter what, we’re always playing. It’s all just playing.”
THE ANIMAL UNDONE
Day 76 of 150
World of Wonders
September 2013
How to take the animal apart:
Tough pants, hard-toed shoes.
Some of the first steps are easy. We unsnap the velvet curtains around the headless woman’s chair, locking the wooden wings that spread wide from the mummy cases, unsnap the hard vinyl belly cloths from the stage, its skirt. Close the sword cases, dismantle the electric chair, untwist its screws. For a moment, then, as we do our work, my hands touch items that amaze the audience. Many of the acts I’m in now—headless woman, four-legged woman—get a lot of groans. The other acts I talk—bed of nails, blade box contortion act—position me as the hype woman, a necessary conduit to focus the attention on the wonder taking place just beside me. The closest I came to making the amazement happened before I became an inside performer, when I was eating fire on the bally stage, or holding the snake, but those small miracles are cut down quickly by how easily new bally girls are hired and trained, by my knowledge of the pecking order.
But I want more. I want to be wonderful. I want the electric chair.
It isn’t the time to think about that now. Who I am here, in these teardown hours, matters only in terms of my physical being and my being part of the group.
And so:
Earlier in the day, we’ll have taken any hanging items down from the walls. We shove everything as far under the bunks as possible, to ready the bunk rooms to be stuffed with props.
We must take care not to puncture any surfaces when unhinging, unpinning, unclipping, folding, rolling, twisting, or stacking. Not to contaminate any of the fragile parts with mud, feces, or blood. When we bleed, we wipe our own blood on our pants to keep our precious gear pristine.
Starting with the tent’s central entrance across from the stage, we peel away the skin, clip by clip, from the bones. The live animal of the tent is dismantled. The junctures have the most resistance. It may hurt, pressing our fingers hard against the metal to release the vinyl, pressing until the skin on our fingers is marked. We do not fall off the top steps of the ladder as we reach way out to push and unclip and pull.
Once we have peeled away the tent’s skin, we continue slipping it off the body as we work our way around until we have the fully separated hide of a flayed animal. It is now three hours into teardown. The tent walls fall to the ground in huge wrinkled piles like skin we must preserve. We keep on.