The Bright Unknown

by Elizabeth Byler Younts

  A woman spoke. I could hear her words but didn’t understand them. I looked at her, but everything was moving in slow motion as I tried to catch my breath. The woman had dark hair, tanned skin, and Rosina’s smile. Oh, I missed Rosina. Her hair was slicked in a knot at the back of her neck, but Rosina’s was often short because of the lice. But the slack jaw was also the same.

  The woman who was not Rosina sat me down next to her on a soft mattress and rubbed my back and spoke in a soft, unknown tongue that soothed me. Her words were laced with a thick accent I didn’t recognize, and even though she wasn’t singing, it reminded me of a lilting tune. After another few minutes my breathing began to slow down. But every part of me was afraid, and I wished I’d never found these people who had just managed to separate Angel and me.

  “You okay now, my dear?” were the woman’s first words in English. It was a voice of age and weight and wisdom all folded together as one.

  I shook my head. I wasn’t okay. I was scared. And then the pressure in my chest came again and I gasped for air.

  “Now, now,” she said and patted my back. “What you afraid of, kotik?”

  Even though I didn’t know what that last word meant, the affection and tenderness in her voice weren’t lost on me. She shushed me, and her hand against my back was the kind of touch I needed.

  Across from me were three identical girls who appeared around my age. The three tilted their heads to the left exactly the same way and smiled.

  They sat so closely to each other, like they were one. They were beautiful. Dark eyes, dark hair, dark skin. Their faces were all eyes and smiles. Their straight black hair hung like thick curtains down the sides of their faces. I was mesmerized.

  “We cannot pronounce their real Hindi names, so we call them Persephone, Penelope, and Thalia. They are the Sirens. Say hello, kotiks.” One year I’d read a little of the Odyssey and knew Sirens could lure the hardest of hearts.

  “Hello,” they said together.

  “I am Alima, kotik.”

  “What does that mean?” My question was breathless and quiet.

  “Mean?” Her accent separated her from my memory of my asylum friend. She was different.

  “It’s not English,” I said, still gathering my breath.

  “Kotik?” Her eyebrows lifted into her hairline. “Oy, it means ‘little kitten.’”

  She’d called me kitten. I liked it.

  There was silence for a few long moments, and then I had to ask another question. “They won’t take Angel away from me, will they?” Breathe, I told myself. Breathe.

  “Your friend? The sick one?” Alima’s thick voice rested in my ears.

  I nodded my head.

  “He will be okay,” she said and patted my knee. “Doctor will take good care of the albino boy.”

  His name is Angel, I wanted to yell. He isn’t just an albino boy.

  “So it’s true?” one of the Sirens asked. I didn’t know which one had spoken, even though I was looking right at them.

  “True?” My breath was still thin, and I had to concentrate so it wouldn’t thin further.

  “An albino came with you?” one of them asked.

  “Tishe, quiet about that,” Alima admonished. She smoothed my hair from my face, then returned her attention to the three across from us. “Sing for her. Soothe our new friend.”

  And without consulting one another in any way that I could see, they began. And everything in my body was heavy and tired and moved slowly. A small thread of smoke from a corner began dancing as the truck moved and rocked me to sleep. It was warm, and suddenly I couldn’t keep my eyes open.

  The Sirens sang me to sleep.

  1990

  Evolution

  Kelly wants an explanation of every photograph, but when we get to Angel I pause. She wants to know, but I’ve always held him tightly to me and can’t tell her. She doesn’t push.

  The photo of Angel, however, makes me laugh a little. His trademark innocent smile is so wide, like it had always been. But I can see now, as an experienced photographer, that I’d gotten the exposure entirely wrong. It made for a decent photo for our purposes, but I wish that I’d done better. The photo is washed out and brighter even than his albinism. The boy I knew. The boy who had saved my life so many times and in so many ways. He’d also broken my heart more than maybe anyone else ever had, but that was well after this picture had been taken.

  When we get to Rosina and Carmen, I tell Kelly about the prayers and the food and how much they loved each other. And Lorna. The room full of women in tightened camisoles. I will never be able to remember every name. Then the picture of hydrotherapy surfaces.

  “I can’t believe I got it right,” I whisper, that day returning to me.

  “What?” Kelly asks.

  “See the light in that window?” I point. “The beam didn’t take over the photo but made the steam more visible, and for a photo older than the hills—it’s good. We broke the rules taking this shot, and I’ve wondered since I was sixteen if I got it right.”

  Then there is me.

  A river of hot tears washes my face. Oh, the girl I was. The girl in the photograph didn’t know what life she was about to live and all she would have to endure for the freedom she needed. I grieve for her. How lost I was without Brighton. That girl believed she would never see anything but the four walls around her, even though she had hopes and dreams. But being forgotten in the asylum was her truth at the time of this photo. I know better now.

  The next set of photos brings such dark clouds. My hair had grown, but Grace’s had begun to fall out. She was so thin. Her skin, even in the black-and-white photos, looked ashen and aged. The twinkle in her eyes couldn’t be caught in a photo any longer. Her smile had been lost long before.

  “Tell me about her?” Kelly asks quietly.

  I nearly forget she’s with me.

  “This is what the asylum did to her—what it did to most patients.” I tap the photo and hold it up so she can really see. “I was spared some of this—evolution—because I’d been, well, as Dickens would’ve put it, I was raised by hand there. I’d been cared for and loved and, for a time, kept away from so much. I was played with and educated. It was all I knew. But Grace had lived in the real world with a real life. Then she had to give it all up.” I pause and look. “I wish I could’ve saved her.”

  1941

  A Family

  When I woke, I was alone. I was curled up among heaps of blankets with remnants of the earthy scent from the night before still circling in the air. Light came through the thinly curtained windows. Voices snuck in from outside, though indiscernible and so mixed together that it reminded me of the asylum dayroom. But I wasn’t there. I was somewhere in Ohio in some type of house truck with people who called themselves the Fancies and Fears. Performers, the man had said.

  I sat up with a gasping inhale.

  Angel.

  Where was he? It took me several nerve-wracking moments to remember everything from the previous night. He’d been carried off under the watchful eye of an elegant albino woman. She made me feel far away from Angel. Like he would never see me the same way again.

  I had to find him. My bare feet chilled on the truck floor. Where were my shoes? I pictured Alima taking them off and tucking me in like I imagined a grandmother would do. But she didn’t seem real anymore. Had there really been a woman who had spoken sweet, oddly comforting words to me? Had I really seen three identical girls? The visions from the night before were blurry.

  I found my shoes and slipped them on, breaking the shoelace of the left one. I cussed and then slapped my hand over my mouth. Joann would have threatened to wash my mouth out with soap if she’d heard me. But she was far away. I closed my eyes and breathed in and out, in and out. I rubbed my hands over my face and smoothed my hair into a small ponytail, then opened the door.

  I welcomed the cool breeze that caressed my cheeks. We had moved from the road to an expansive field, and all the vehicles we
re parked along the edges. Numerous trucks with those rooms on the back and some larger vehicles that looked like something between a bus and a train car. I’d never seen anything like it. Some had curtained windows and a porch on the back, like a caboose on a train. A few tents had been built, and the smell of food found my nose.

  Farther ahead a small platform and walls were being constructed. A dozen people carrying crates passed me without even noticing me. Children helped with smaller items and their wiggly bodies zoomed around with spills of laughter every few moments.

  Beyond the movement of workers and the vehicles I saw a small town. With a lineup of storefronts. Another diner. A building with a cross on the top of a white point—a church? My eyes lingered on the cross, and I could see Rosina making the sign of the cross over her body. I almost did the gesture myself. Beyond the town and all around us there were houses and other buildings and a large lake off into the horizon. The scent of a farm was in the air.

  But where was I? And more important, where was Angel?

  I looked back at the truck where I’d slept and noted that the door was yellow, chipped and crooked too. I didn’t want to forget where my bag was. I would leave it for now. I needed to find Angel. Besides my apprehension about this unusual group of people, my main concern was helping Angel get well and finding out if we could trust the doctor.

  I went to the truck house next to me and nervously stood in front of the door and knocked. The door opened and the smallest woman I’d ever laid eyes on opened it. I could’ve held her on my hip like a child. I stepped back. Was this the woman I’d seen in the arms of the giant last night? She was dressed in a multicolored red and purple skirt threaded with gold. Her hair was wrapped in a scarf. Her shy smile revealed gaps between her few teeth.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said in a hundred-year-old voice. An untucked strand of silver hair contrasted with her dark skin.

  My brow knit up. None of this made sense to me. The vision of the giant from last night and then this tiny woman in front of me. The other albino. Conrad had called them Fancies and Fears and said they were performers. What did they perform?

  In shock I shut the door in the woman’s face and ran to the next truck, but before I knocked I would try to see through the window. This one had no curtains. The words from the first diner lady, Sandy, came to mind. Something about a troupe and an albino woman, and she’d used the word freaks. Were these the freaks she was talking about?

  Then through a hazy side window of the truck, I saw him. I saw my friend. My only friend. The one who said he loved me. He was sitting up and looked better than the night before. What sort of doctor had been able to do that? No doctor at Riverside could have. When patients were as sick as Angel, they often died. He had that healthy subtle pink in his lips again. He was wearing different clothes. A white shirt that was cut low in the chest, cuffs unbuttoned. His pants were white also. There was no harsh crease down the middle, and both the shirt and pants were loose on his body. The clothes reminded me of his hospital uniform and were nothing like what Dr. Woburn had given him.

  And she was there too.

  Gabrielle. Hadn’t that been the name Conrad had called her?

  I could see that she was older than him. Nearly his mother’s age, I guessed. Her white hair trailed down to her waist, and her white lacey dress was also cut deeply down her chest. She was holding his hands. Was he holding hers back? Every now and again she would take one of her white, graceful fingers and stroke his face or smooth his hair. He tilted his head and looked so intently at her. Like he was studying her face.

  Had he ever looked at me like that? Then she put her arm around him, and he nestled against her chest like a small child would with his mother. His real mother had held him also—but then rejected him. He closed his eyes and seemed to be more relaxed and content than I’d ever seen him. The kind of contentment his mother had never offered.

  Then Gabrielle turned and looked right at me. It startled me, and I turned away from the window, only to find that Conrad had come up behind me. He stood so close that his smoky and musky scent encircled me. He was handsomer than I’d remembered. He wore denim pants and a loose shirt that was similar to Angel’s. A blue bandanna was tied around his thick neck. Under other circumstances I would have said that his dark hair and light eyes were memorable, but in the presence of this group with such unusual appearances, he was entirely commonplace. The giant, the tiny woman, the three Sirens, Gabrielle, and even something about Alima seemed almost mystical—though I couldn’t reason it out. But Conrad wasn’t like any of them. He was like me. Ordinary.

  “You have questions?” He lifted his eyebrows.

  I nodded.

  “Where are we?” I needed this simple question answered first.

  “We’re somewhere in Ohio still. A few hours from where we found you—or you found us. Come, let me show you around.”

  “What about Angel?” I didn’t want to leave him again.

  “You can see he’s made a remarkable recovery—our doctor is gifted—and is in good hands with Gabrielle.” He gestured toward the truck.

  “If he’s well, then we need to be on our way. We—”

  “All in good time, Nell.” He offered his hand. “Come.”

  I studied his confident expression. It reminded me of Dr. Woburn’s arrogance—but diffused with such charisma it warmed instead of cooled me. So I took his hand.

  I’d never held any man’s hand but Angel’s. It didn’t feel the same. Angel’s had always been soft next to my own, warm and familiar and protective. But Conrad’s hand was thicker, and his skin was tough. He held my hand a little tighter, but not protectively; it felt controlling. My guard was up, but I wasn’t frightened.

  He led me back toward the trucks. He waved at some people, and they all looked from him to me and then back to him with different expressions. Some winked. Some raised an eyebrow. Conrad’s arm stretched back holding on to my hand, and I had to work hard to keep up because of my broken-laced shoe, and my insecurities.

  “Who are all these people?” There really were so many more than I’d realized the night before and so many of them were ordinary like Conrad and me, confusing me further.

  “The common ones are our workers and builders, and the gifted ones are our performers. You might use the words normal and, well, abnormal.” He turned around and smirked.

  The way he said normal was something I understood—the inflection, the insinuation. I knew what he was trying to say, and it made me feel itchy as if I wanted to slip out of my skin. It took me too far back to where I didn’t want to go. But I couldn’t resist the memory of Joann calling me normal, saying that I wasn’t like a real asylum patient. I wasn’t what they called feebleminded or mad. I wasn’t mentally disturbed and had never starved myself like Grace—though I had been starved. I didn’t hear voices or see people who weren’t there—though now I often heard the voices of my patient friends in my head and recognized them everywhere in the people I was meeting. And here I was being called normal again, because I wasn’t too tall or too small or too light.

  On the other side of the erected tent, there was a wooden fence. It separated our field of tents and trucks from the sidewalk and town. Boys ran over from the neighborhood and stood on the bottom rail.

  “Freak show, freak show, freak show,” they chanted over and over, reminding me again of Sandy’s words.

  A small group of children on our side of the fence who were playing with marbles stopped and looked over, listening. The largest two boys stood. Their fists balled and their mouths grew straight and solid. Conrad called to them and nodded a stern no. Discontent dripped from their faces, but they retreated back to their game playing. The taunting, however, did not cease.

  Unflinching, Conrad kept our conversation moving. “These men here build the stage and the walls and the corridors for patrons to come and look.”

  “Look?”

  “At their fancies.” He let go of my hand and turned to walk ba
ckward to face me and gestured with grandeur. “And fears.” His eyes sparkled.

  I was starting to understand, though what they performed was still a mystery to me. I just looked at my surroundings, taking in as much as I could. Conrad lowered his arms and stopped walking. His gaze locked on me.

  “You have a question.”

  “What do the gifted perform?”

  He smiled and put his hand out to me again. “You’ll see tonight.” I took it and he comfortably tucked my arm close to his side and led me on. “But now you must meet someone very important.”

  Conrad walked me toward the colorful tent behind the stage. The only thing I could think about was a picture I’d seen once of a circus. It was from a brightly illustrated children’s book Joann had read to me when I was a child. Was that what this was? A circus? But didn’t circuses have animals? Lions, horses, tigers, monkeys. Was there such a thing as a circus without animals?

  When we got to the curtains, I wasn’t sure how Conrad could find his way through, but he held open the curtain for me, revealing a dimly lit hall. I hesitated and looked back at the truck that held Angel and Gabrielle.

  “He’ll be okay,” Conrad said with a convincing smile. “Don’t worry about him.”

  I let him lead me through several curtained hallways. I didn’t see anyone else but I could hear voices. I recognized Alima’s voice and the Sirens singing quietly, but Conrad kept me moving and led me to a curtained wall, then stopped.

  “Lazarus?” he called loudly.

  “Yes?” the voice said.

  “I brought the girl,” Conrad responded.

  It was strange to be referred to as the girl. It was like nothing had changed except the people around me. I was still just the girl who didn’t belong.

  “Come on in,” the curtained voice said.

  With Conrad’s hold still firm on my arm, together we ducked through the lighter-curtained doorway and entered a fabric-lined room. The room inside was darker than even the hallway. There was a table, dark wood and heavy looking. A man stood behind it with his back to us. He wore a soft-looking jacket that I wanted to touch. It was a shade of deep red like almost everything else around me. The man was fitting something over his head, and we stood there for a few stretched seconds before he turned.