The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(93)

I thought I could see the world, but it turned out I was only seeing the first layer. You cannot stop at the first layer. There are always worlds behind worlds, days inside days, the richness of any moment magnified by how open you are to what’s happening, each person not just who they are in some interaction with you, but a whole world opening infinitely out from your expectations, from their experiences. What was set up, what appeared onstage, what the audience saw, what happened behind the curtain, what happened beyond.

*

The setup:

Inside Vickie Condor’s chair, it reeks of mothballs. The four-legged woman illusion requires a hollowed-out armchair, covered over by a seat and a back, upon which the outer Vickie sits. The inner Vickie must be small enough to squeeze her body within the very thin hollowed-out space inside the chair, must have bony enough thighs that they fit through the slit at the chair’s front, covered by Vickie’s skirt. The inner Vickie’s body is pressed against old wood and a few springs and whatever small, dry creatures hid themselves in the cracks while the chair was tucked away with other unnecessary props in the off-season.

*

Behind the curtain:

The turkey appears out of nowhere. Spif is walking from the main backstage area to his bunk to grab something, and when he comes back, a giant turkey leg is sitting on the steps at the stage door. It is wrapped in tinfoil and the size of a small cat.

“Somebody left a turkey leg out here,” Spif says over his shoulder toward us.

Lola slowly raises her head from the book she is reading. “Oh,” she says. “That’s for me.” She reaches her hand out toward Spif, slowly unfurling it like a tongue readying to coil the meat.

“You got somebody dropping off meat for you?” Spif asks as he hands her the wrapped leg.

“Maybe,” she says.

“How’d you do that?” he asks.

“Spif,” Sunshine says. “Guess.”

“It’s not fair, all the shit you get ’cause of your titties.”

“It’s not fair all the shit you get ’cause of your dick,” Lola says.

She unwraps the tinfoil and the salty meat smell of roasted bird spreads through the whole container quickly.

At that moment, Sunshine and I simultaneously rise from our chairs backstage and walk behind the curtain to the side stage. It’s time for us to become Vickie. We kick off our shoes, climb, carefully, onto the rickety side stage, one of us holding the curtain for the other. There’s an act taking place on the main stage, different acts in different orders at different fairs. This time, it’s Short E’s balancing act, with his loud voice and the crowd’s loud cheers and the continuous noise of the carnival whirling through space all around, so there’s no need for us to lower our voices as we prep.

“Damn, that smelled good,” Sunshine says, “and I’m a vegetarian.” She hands me a pair of Vickie socks.

“I don’t know how they make those turkey legs so amazing,” I say, putting on the socks, then the vest and skirt.

“It’s especially nice after the smell of the bathrooms in this place. Did you go this morning?”

“Yeah, horrible.”

“I can’t even tell what that smell is,” she says, lifting the cushioned back of the chair up and seat cushion out.

“Yeah, it’s not really sewage smell,” I say, taking the chair’s back from her hands to hold up while she slides her body inside the chair.

“It almost smells like there’s standing water in there. Like, rotting pools of water with shit in it.” She’s inside the chair now.

“It does smell like old, stagnant water,” I say, lowering the back and seat cushion on top of her body as she turns her head to the side and tucks her arms in close. She’s inside the chair now, in darkness, with the mothball smell. I sit down on top of her.

*

What the audience sees:

“Hello!” I say to the crowd as the talker on the main stage pulls the curtain aside.

“And how are you today, Ms. Vickie Condor?” the talker asks.

“Oh swell, just wonderful. Except for one of my cats, Pickles. He had a bit of a sneeze fit this morning,” I say, or something else I make up on the spot, because one way I’ve learned to survive the strange monotony of performing the same acts over and over and over is to keep my brain active by saying new things each time.

Sometimes people laugh a bit, humor me. Mostly they don’t. They stare at my four legs, craning their necks around the person in front of them to see if there is a trapdoor beneath the chair that a person hides inside, or if someone is crouching behind the chair, or what could possibly make this dumb trick work.

We banter a minute, and then the music starts. I tap Sunshine’s legs as if I’m counting time on my own legs, and at the agreed upon tap, we begin our dance routine. We alternate pairs of legs kicking together so the audience, the haters, the mugs, can see there are in fact four real human legs, four live limbs that can move independently of one another. This is when they really pay attention. I have a big smile and splay my fingers in jazz hands, but all the audience’s eyes are on our legs, trying to work out how the illusion is done.

*

Behind the curtain:

“Actually, I think the smell is rotting pumpkin,” Sunshine says as I lift the false back of the chair up once our act is through and the curtain has been closed.