The whole thing went as fast as a minute. I heard my mom say, “Isn’t that awful?” while I was pirouetting, but when I straightened up everybody was smiling. You could tell they thought I was just horsing around. It wouldn’t have occurred to them in a hundred years I was going to make my debut at the Magic Midway in a week, except that Eddie told my mom about it when we got home.
“A rubber woman? Well, that doesn’t sound very ladylike,” she said with a frown. “What will people think?”
“Oh, doll, it’s gonna be a lot of fun,” Eddie said, throwing an arm around her. “You’ll get a big kick out of seeing your little gal on stage. You’re gonna be proud of her.”
I tried to look cheerful, but I could tell I had an expression like when the sun is too bright.
My mother looked at me for a minute as though I hurt her eyes, too.
19
NANCY, 1945
Mr. Encarnacion said to go to the belly dancer’s van to get made up. The belly dancer was named Yvonne. Her face was lumpy like hives but she had live-wire eyes and an hourglass figure. One wall of the trailer was full of pictures of Yvonne dancing, but the other side was covered with swords, all different shapes and sizes.
“Arturo, the sword swallower,” she explained with a smile and a flick of her hand. “He’s my son.”
She sat me down on a narrow couch with a curlicue print cover. Dust specks fluttered up. She pulled some pancake makeup out of a grimy bag, wet a sponge at a little sink, and started on my face.
“So we’ve been with the carny fifteen years,” she told me. “Gus, that’s my husband, he’s one of the talkers, the guys who announce the shows, and he helps set up rides.” Yvonne wore a khaki-colored blouse with little epaulets like WACs, a short tangerine skirt, and perfume. Her breath smelled like exotic food. She smeared some rouge on my cheeks. “Well, now, that looks real pretty,” she said. She put lipstick in a shade called Moonswept Red on my mouth and a lot of black makeup around my eyes. I liked her hands on my face. When she finished, she gave me a rabbit’s foot.
“For luck,” she said. “Arturo always uses it and he hasn’t killed himself yet.” She laughed and we pinned it onto the side of my tights.
Eddie was waiting outside to take me to the side show tent. “Zowee,” he said. “You look like a million bucks.” But I felt self-conscious wearing the scratchy outfit and the make-up, and as we walked, my stomach churned. I patted the rabbit’s foot, hoping it would work and I’d make it big as Rhonda the Rubber Woman, but something in my bones told me different.
At the sideshow tent, the ticket kid waved us through and people stared at me as we walked by. Eddie casually flipped one of his arms over my shoulders to show he was a part of things, too, not just some ordinary sap walking me down the midway.
I liked the attention. I pictured myself stepping out of a limousine on Market Street and Shirley Metzger rushing up and gushing, “Oh, Rhonda, I saw your latest picture. The one where you did your routine for Roddy McDowell. You were so wonderful. May I have your autograph?” I pictured Bobby standing behind her, arms outstretched, later whispering into my ear, “Oh, Nancy, Nancy, don’t ever leave me again. I was so stupid letting you go away. We do stupid things when we’re young.” I’d smile back sweetly and say, “Well, we’ll see. I have a career myself now, you know.”
A talker began warming up the crowd. “Step right up, la-deez and gen-tul-men. Behind yon canvas meet Nature’s miss-takes and exx-trah-vaganzas. Alice, the World’s Fattest Woman. Tips the scale at 468 pounds. Popo, the Two-Headed Baby. Born in Borneo. Scared his mother to an early grave. Rhonda the Rubber Woman. Twists like a Pretzel. Walks on all Fours. The price of admission, ladeez and gen-tul-men: Just ten cents, the tenth part of a dollar.”
When he announced “Rhonda the Rubber Woman,” my breathing felt shallow and my throat began to ache.
“You’re nervous, aincha?” Eddie said.
I nodded, terrified.
“So remember, breathe slow. Deep. Way down. Then do every move re-al slo-ow.” Eddie stretched out the words and moved his arms around in slow motion, like a movie getting stuck.
“Okay.”
“Remember this is just a start. Next thing you know, it’ll be the big top.”
I nodded and took a deep breath but it didn’t help. I eyed Eddie and wondered how come, if he had such big ideas, he was still a two-bit trinket salesman.
My stage was separated from the two-headed baby and the snake charmer by a flap of canvas on each side. I took off my robe and sat on the stage, rubbing my legs while the talker out front announced the sword swallower, the belly dancer—that was Yvonne—and a new act called Donna and Her Erotic Donkeys.
Next door the snake charmer’s music started up. It was the tune kids sing, “Oh, they don’t wear pants in the southern part of France.” People started coming into the tent but I couldn’t look at them. I rubbed my arms and legs over and over, studying them as though somebody had just given them to me.
“Okay, time to start,” Eddie yelled and put on a record of “Indian Love Song.”
Now I looked out at the crowd for a second but they were just a blur of hair and T-shirts, cotton candy and sailor suits. A corner of the tent flapped in the warm breeze. The poles that held it up seemed lopsided and wiggly, as though the whole thing could topple down any minute. I was so nervous I was scared I might die of stage fright.
Then I threw myself into the twisting and things got better. A couple of times I heard people say “Ooooh” and during one twist when I had to stick my butt out some guys hooted but other than that it was quiet except for “Indian Love Song.”
When I finished, my makeup, wet from the sweat, was dribbling into my eyes and mouth but I tossed my hair and smiled, glad I was still alive.
A couple of people clapped but most just shuffled out, curious to see the next show. Eddie rushed up and said I’d done great. Yvonne, too. “You looked real cute,” she said. “The Moonswept Red lipstick really sets off your costume.”
My mom hadn’t come. “I’m feeling a little under the weather,” she’d complained at the last minute. “I think my blood count must be down.” But I knew that was an excuse. She always blamed her blood count when she wanted to back out of something.
Every show I thought I spotted Bobby’s sandy hair, his green eyes beaming at me from the back of the crowd, although I knew that was impossible. He’d graduated from high school and was playing the clarinet in a combo in the Pocono Mountains for the summer. In the fall, he’d probably go on to college, God knew where. Sometimes I daydreamed about meeting Mrs. Felker on the street and we’d stop and have a heart-to-heart and she’d feel so bad being wrong about me that she’d quick call Bobby on the phone and tell him to rush back. One day I’d walked out to the R.D. and stood across the street from their house hoping she’d come out, but she didn’t.
The carnival folks were just what I needed—friendly, with no questions asked. I ate dinner at Yvonne’s twice: chicken stew and homemade spaghetti with the biggest meatballs I ever saw. Yvonne loved to cook and she even put up her own spiced peach marmalade. She made all kinds of things you wouldn’t think a person could do on a teeny stove in a trailer.
“Pretty soon she’s going to be the only belly dancing grandma in the world,” Yvonne’s husband Gus cracked one day. That’s because Arturo was engaged to the age and weight guesser’s daughter. But you could tell Gus was real proud of Yvonne, and you could see why, too. She had a way about her as if she knew she could take care of herself. It showed in all kinds of little ways. How she looked you in the eye when you talked like she was really listening instead of worrying what to say back. How she picked up a glass as if it was hers, she wasn’t borrowing it from somebody else’s cupboard. How she walked like she was teaching people how. Yvonne reminded me a little bit of Aunt Cora.
One night after the shows, Yvonne and I were sitting on the steps of her trailer. It was late and things were winding down. The air seemed magic
al, warm and full of things that might happen. The string of lights around the edges of the carnival somehow made the world seem safe and exciting at the same time. Thoughts raced through my mind. Thoughts about people who had lived way back when. People in Babylonia and places like that. People who I figured must have sat in the night and looked at the moon and hoped for things like I did. I got a full feeling in my chest and I wanted to cry.
“So what are you going to do if Mr. Encarnacion takes you on?” Yvonne asked. “Quit school or just do the summer circuit? The summer circuit usually goes to October.”
I turned toward her. She had a wise look in her eyes.
“Jeez, I haven’t had time to think past the tryout week,” I whispered.
She nodded, as if she knew.
I stared out at the white moon and listened to the crickets. The snake charmer came out of her van and hung her costume on a clothesline to air out. The carnival lights went off and I felt pings in my throat.
I turned toward Yvonne, wet-eyed. “I’ll quit school,” I said, too loud, my voice thick. “I’ll quit in a minute. I can’t wait to get away from this burg.”
She leaned toward me and patted me on the back, nodding again. I could feel her breath on my eyelids as I wondered whether the Magic Midway ever played the Poconos.
Driving home, Eddie wasn’t his usual bouncy self. He kept sucking in and puffing out his cheeks.
“So do you think Mr. Encarnacion will take me on?” I asked.
He cleared his throat and flipped his bottom lip up over his top one. Finally he said, “Well, if he doesn’t, the hell with him. We’ll find another carnival. A classier one. Maybe not this year, the season’s almost over anyway, but next year for sure. What the hell? A year’s practice wouldn’t hurt.”
I looked at Eddie with his bottom lip flipped up like a monkey, and I knew he knew something I didn’t and it wasn’t good. I had three days left to my tryout week so I threw myself into my routine. I put extra zip into my twists and strutted around. I liked being a ham as long as people didn’t know it was me behind the makeup, and I listened for the hoots and ooohs. I knew I had to zing the marks while I was on stage because the minute I finished they couldn’t wait to rush on to the next tent and the next freak.
I lived for every day when Yvonne put on my makeup. I realized after the talk we had in the moonlight she was used to runaway kids begging to sign up in every two-bit town they played, but I wanted her to feel special about me.
I rehearsed asking if she and Gus would take me in when Arturo got married. “He’ll move out. You’ll probably get lonely for another kid,” I’d say. “Hey, you’d have fun playing mother to the world’s youngest rubber woman.” But I didn’t get a chance because Arturo caught a summer cold and had to stay in bed in the trailer for the rest of the week. One thing a sword swallower can’t afford to do is to cough during a performance.
After my last performance Eddie came around wearing a grin that smelled of Old Crow and my heart sank. We stood behind the sideshow tents as he asked, “So, kiddo, ya ever catch Yvonne’s routine?”
“No.” I’d thought about it a couple of times but I knew I didn’t really want to. Anyway, this was no time to talk about Yvonne.
He kicked some sawdust. “Too bad.”
“Eddie, you’re stalling. What did Mr. Encarnacion say about me?”
He blew out his cheeks and looked up at the sky. “Well, he said he’d take ya on.…”
“He did?” I felt my chest swell and my mouth stretch into a grin.
“Wait, wait, wait … just hold your horses. He … uh … said he’d take you on if ya do double duty as a rubber woman and a kootch dancer.”
A kootch dancer? The merry-go-round music rang in my ears. I figured Eddie must be fooling around. “A what?” I asked.
He threw his arms out at the midway. “You have to understand Armando’s running a business and one thing that’s good for business … uh … the marks like their kootch dancers young and Yvonne is getting up there. Uh, he said maybe the two of you could do a routine together for a while—you and Yvonne—but eventually he’d have to get rid of her.”
Eddie must have seen the disbelief in my eyes.
“Well, maybe not get rid of her, she’s a feisty old gal, make her a paymaster or something. Anyway, if you’re any good, you could take over doin’ the dance.”
“A hootchy-kootchy dance?” I still thought he must be pulling my leg, teasing me the way he sometimes teased my mother. For a minute I felt sorry for her.
“Oh, well, that’s just one thing they call it,” he said. “It’s more like a belly dance. Hootchy-kootchy. Belly dance. Same difference. Like Yvonne does. You like Yvonne, doncha? The two of you seem to hit it off.”
“You’re not kidding.” My throat swelled up. “You think I should do a belly dance? Take Yvonne’s job?” I looked at Eddie for a sign he was teasing. “I’m only fifteen.”
“Well, kiddo, the truth is, that’s what Mr. Encarnacion likes about ya.” Eddie looked down. “What happened, a gypsy girl name of Ramona heard what you was doin’ and came around and said hey, she could do twists same as you and the hootchy-kootchy, too, only zippier than Yvonne.” He looked up at me but more at my hair. “That’s what gave Armando the idea of you doin’ double duty. Tell ya the truth, up ‘til then he wasn’t all that interested. He’s been packin’ ‘em in with Donna and the donkeys. Only reason he’s offering now, Ramona gave him the idea. I guess she ain’t no prize package in the looks department and he heard you been puttin’ more oomph into your routine last couple of days and he knows the marks like ‘em young and good-looking.”
I stared at Eddie and slumped into a folding chair.
“I didn’t think you’d go for it,” Eddie said, still talking to my hair. “I tried to reason with him, kiddo. ‘Jeez,’ I said, ‘she’s only a kid.’ He told me to take it or leave it.”
20
GEORGIA, 1945
Everything started going haywire at once. Nancy came home the last night of her tryout week with a face as long as your arm. She didn’t say peep, just went in the bathroom, slammed the door, and stayed in long enough to have puppies.
Eddie stayed out all night, and the next day the two of them acted like there was never such a thing as Rhonda the Rubber Woman. I figured Nancy hadn’t gone over too good or else she’d got in a snit and quit. Either way, it was fine with me, I’d always thought it was the silliest thing, twisting yourself into all kinds of ungodly shapes. It was embarrassing, your kid being a rubber woman.
The only thing, in September Eddie started going on the road more than before, and if that wasn’t bad enough, half the time he was home, Cora was coming around crying on his shoulder over Walt. Just when everyone thought Walt’s shell shock was getting better, it took a turn for the worse. He hit a guy at work for being 4-F, and one night a cop stopped him and Walt said oh, so sorry, ossifer, and slapped the cop on the shoulder and the cop said calm down, buddy, but Walt just yelled why don’t you calm down yourself, ossifer, and got louder and louder until they took his driver’s license away.
“Eddie, I just don’t know what to do,” Cora would say, batting her eyes. “I really need a man’s point of view,” and Eddie’d put his arm around her and say too bad a looker like her had to put up with that kind of guff and then he’d go on for hours about it.
I felt sorry for Cora, but I didn’t understand why she had to pick on Eddie. What did Eddie know about shell shock? There were plenty of other men in the world whose shoulders she could cry on. The guys at Finkel’s or the regulars at Jolly Jack’s. Cora knew more men than you could shake a stick at. The truth was, it got so I hated to see her come. My own sister!
In the end I suppose it didn’t matter. One day another letter came from Lyndora, and I knew what it was the minute I saw it. It was the same flowered envelope as before, only this time addressed to me. It was from Eddie. “Hi, sweet stuff,” he said “looks like I’m going to be staying in Lyndora
for awhile. I got an old friend here, she’s a little under the weather and needs some looking after. Sorry so sudden, but this is a special friend, we’ve been through a lot together. A sweet person like you, I’m sure you understand.”
I felt small and worn out. I lit a Raleigh and stared at the handwriting, scribbly, with a lot of loops. I remembered how once Eddie’d introduced me to a black-eyed woman, Madame Olga, who could tell what was in store for you from how you wrote. He said she’d told him he was like a bird, flying high, following the sun. That’s why the carny was so perfect for him. He told me she’d do me free, being a friend of his, but I said no. I didn’t want to know what was coming.
The letter went on. “Just hang onto the stuff I left, it’s not all that much, you know I like to live light.”
The apartment felt cold but it was only September. I looked out the window; the sky was gray and low like a tent. I put some water on for tea and put a teabag into a cup. The cup was shaking in my hand. Outside a drizzly rain began and I watched men who had just got off the late shift at Pritchard’s Coal and Ice walking home from work, going to their Beatrices and their Ediths and their Thelmas. Tears started up in my eyes and suddenly one of the men looked like Eddie. I was sure of it. You could see the limp. He’d come back, but then I could see it wasn’t Eddie at all, just Sparky Williams acting up, trying to hop between the raindrops.
The phone rang. I jumped and saw that the water had boiled down in the pan, leaving caramel-colored swirls. I turned the burner off and my insides dropped as I lifted the receiver from the hook. Maybe it was Eddie saying he’d just been teasing. Sometimes he could be an awful tease.
“Hello.” It wasn’t Eddie. It was Joanie calling for Nancy. “She’s not here,” I snapped and hung up, cranky. I never liked Joanie. She was too sassy and she wore huarachis. Cora’d told me over in Clinton the fast girls wore huarachis. Why couldn’t Nancy take up with some of the nicer girls once in a while?
Rhonda the Rubber Woman Page 15