Orphans of the Carnival

by Carol Birch

  “Can you really?” Julia leaned forward eagerly. “Is that what you do? I’d love to have my fortune told.”

  He drew the makings of a pipe from a pocket. “Anyone can tell your fortune,” he said with a dolorous air. “Your face. I been doing the rounds these fifteen, sixteen years, and I never in all that time seen nothing like your face. Oh, they’ll pay to see you. They’ll pay, all right.”

  Myrtle sat down across the table. She’d cleaned herself up and was puffy ’round the eyes. “You’re no fortune-teller,” she told Ted.

  “Aren’t you?” asked Julia, disappointed.

  “No.” Ted looked mildly amused but didn’t bother to smile.

  All this time her eyes had been straying to Cato, trying to take him in.

  “Do you want to see what I do?” asked Ted.

  “Of course I do.”

  “This.”

  He gripped the skin at the side of his neck and pulled it away from his body about four or five inches till it stretched into a thin membrane. Julia screamed, then laughed. Hearing her, Cato jumped down from the swing and came running. Ted let go of the great flap of skin and let it slap back into place.

  “How do you do that?” she asked, delighted and appalled. “It looks as if it hurts.”

  “Doesn’t hurt at all.” Ted swilled the coffee grounds ’round in his can. Cato crouched next to him on the bench and set about picking fingerfuls of his neck and face, pulling them out as far as they’d go and letting them snap back. Unperturbed, Ted puffed away. When the cook brought coffee and eggs and more pancakes, Cato let go of Ted’s skin and lurched toward her along the bench babbling excitedly, but he was so gangly and badly coordinated that he knocked Jonsy’s cold coffee flying. “You bad Cato!” the cook yelled, striking the table with the flat of her palm. “I’ll tell your master on you.”

  Cato wheedled up to her, stroking her apron. She put her hand on the slope of his head and her eyes connected with Julia’s, snagged and stared. Julia smiled. The cook nodded.

  “Cato, you have to be careful,” said Myrtle. “You know you’re clumsy so you have to be careful.

  “Anyhow,” Myrtle said, “where’s Ezra? How come we always get to do the babysitting? Ezra!” She threw her voice clear to the other side of the yard. “Ezra!”

  “Why is everyone always shouting around here?” said Delia, swinging herself onto the table. “Is this pancake anyone’s?”

  “Hoo-hah.” Cato pointed at Julia. “Hoo-hah.”

  “Yes!” she said, “Hoo-oo-lya!” Rates and everyone else called her Julia with a J, and it was nice to hear the old pronunciation, even if it were unintentional. “That’s how they say my name in Mexico.”

  Cato came ’round to her side of the table and put a child’s hand up to stroke the hair on her cheek. “Yes, Cato,” she said, smiling, “I’m hairy.”

  “Cato,” said a high man’s voice. “You behave yourself.”

  A big round-shouldered boy with curly black hair was coming slowly across the yard, giving himself plenty of time to get used to Julia before speaking. “You should ask,” he said nasally, “don’t bother the lady.”

  “I don’t mind him,” Julia said.

  “Ezra Porter, ma’am.” He offered a large fleshy hand. “Just you tell him if he’s in the way, he won’t mind. Come on now, Cato, you leave the lady alone.”

  “But I really don’t mind.”

  Fascinated, she and Cato stared at each other.

  “Listen,” Ezra Porter said, “if you’re sure you don’t mind…”

  Breakfast was over and people were dispersing. The girls went off to the rehearsal room and everyone else drifted away, till there was just Julia and Cato smiling at each other, and Ezra Porter shuffling about with the look of a giant well-fed toddler, saying nervously in his irritating voice, “You know I—I have one or two things I really need to do. If you really don’t mind watching him for a while I’d be obliged….But don’t let him go out in the street.”

  “We’ll play on the swing,” she said, “won’t we, Cato?”

  Cato dashed for the swing, and Ezra Porter nipped smartly away.

  “Ready?” she said. “How high do you like to go?”

  But of course she couldn’t understand a word he said.

  The back of his head was like a coconut, and his hands on the ropes were clenched and eager. She started pushing him, but as soon as his feet lifted from the ground he shrieked so loudly she had to stop.

  “Ssh! It’s all right. You’re on the ground.”

  He wouldn’t get off the swing and started shaking the ropes.

  “I’m not pushing you if you’re going to scream,” she said.

  She tried again but it was hopeless.

  “Come, you can play my guitar,” she said, but as she led him across the yard he became distracted by the white cat, and followed it ’round to the front of the house, hooting excitedly. She ran after him. The front yard was cool and shady and Madame Soulie was bending over, watering her azaleas.

  “Why are you up front, Cato?” she said, getting up. “You go back now. Go on. Good boy.”

  “He’s after the cat,” Julia said.

  Madame Soulie put down her can. The cat leapt up the fence and dropped down into the street. “Go back now, Cato. Are you looking after him?”

  “Yes.”

  “What? He’s left you in charge, has he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t let Ezra take advantage.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said.

  “Well, perhaps you should. Anyway, keep him back there. Gate’s closed but they look through the fence. Go on, boy. Best you stay back there too, Julia.”

  “Yes.”

  “He was taken for the devil baby once,” Madame Soulie said, “and it could’ve turned nasty.”

  “The devil baby?”

  “The devil baby.” Madame Soulie brushed her apron down, advancing on them with her bulky height, sweeping them back down the walkway and following after. “Did you never hear about that?”

  “I never did.”

  “It was this woman across the lake who had too many girl babies and she wanted a boy. She got so sick of all these girls she said, goddamn I’d rather the devil than another girl. Well, she got what she asked for. A big bouncing boy with horns and a tail and hooves and teeth, standing upright and talking right away.”

  She made sure they were well shepherded as far as the benches outside the kitchen. Cato ran back to the swing.

  “Poor mother died of fear when she saw him,” said Madame Soulie, “and he ran away down into the street and up over the roofs. They tried to kill him, but he won’t be killed.”

  “I heard a baby crying last night,” Julia said.

  “Oh, you’d know it if you’d heard him. I heard him once. Never saw him, wouldn’t want to, but I heard him.” She shuddered. “Dreadful sound. Never leaves you.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Not like any ordinary baby. Not even like a cat.” She shuddered again, more visibly this time. “Anyway, this boy here gets out one day and walks down the street and someone screams: the devil baby! Look! Ezra had to run out, good job he’s so big, Ezra. You’ve got to be careful, believe me. Look, you want me to go get Ezra?”

  “Oh, no. We’ll stay in back,” said Julia, “won’t we, Cato?”

  Madame Soulie returned to her watering, and they went back to Julia’s cabin. He was hopeless trying to play the guitar and soon lost interest. “You dance then,” she said, “I know you can dance.”

  She played her guitar and he danced, with knees cracking and no vestige of grace, his smile eerily oversized, till he grew tired very suddenly and fell asleep on Myrtle’s bed with a look of surprise on his face. Strangest face she’d ever seen.

  Poor devil baby, she thought, playing on. Crying for Mamá. Because Mamá took one look at him, screamed her head off and died.

  Brady Childer’s grocery and coal yard stood on the corner past a s
hoemaker’s and a couple more cottages. Upstairs was a room, oddly shaped because of the way the store had been built at an oblique angle on the corner, with a piano and a couple of old sofas pushed up against the walls, and a balcony running along two sides. Long windows were open for the air, but they were always covered by several gauzy layers of drapes. Couldn’t have the people across the way getting a free show. When Julia arrived with Mr. Rates, Michael was playing a jaunty “Rose of Alabamy” at the piano while the girls danced. What a sight! Delia danced on her hands, strong square shoulders and lean hips wiggling in time. She wore a plain gray dress and a red tignon, and her eyes were closed. Myrtle hoofed it energetically by her side, the frills of her sleeves flapping up and down and occasionally revealing smooth pink stumps. Perfectly in time, the girls sidestepped each other, changing places. Julia threw back her veil. When they finished, she clapped her hands and shouted “Bravo!”

  “Water!” Myrtle said, “I’m dying.”

  “You’re so clever!” Julia took off her shawl and threw it on one of the sofas.

  “Merci,” said Delia, swinging herself across the floor and jumping up onto the sofa. She lay back in one corner with her arms thrown over her head.

  “We’ve been doing it a long time,” said Myrtle, swigging from a bottle. A fine sheen of sweat shone on her forehead.

  “Has Michael got my music?” Julia asked.

  “I should hope so.” Rates was fanning himself in the heavy air seeping in through a gap in the gauze.

  “I’m out of practice,” Julia said, nervous, stepping into the center of the room.

  “Poor old Michael,” said Michael, “he doesn’t get a break.”

  “Soon enough,” Rates said.

  Michael bent low over the keyboard.

  “So much space to dance,” she said. The girls sat side by side waiting for her to begin. She wanted to run. Fool. Nowhere to practice on the journey. You’ve come this far, she told herself sternly.

  “You ready?” he asked.

  You’ve done it a million times. She nodded.

  It was horrible at first. He played her Spanish tunes clumsily but with gusto, too fast, and she lost the rhythm a couple of times. But then she did what she always did at home, danced as if no one was there. It was the only way. Once she got into her stride and he’d slowed down a bit, they were fine. In fact it began to be fun, and she sensed appreciation but didn’t dare look at anyone in case the luck broke. She’d been doing this from childhood. The story went that Don Pedro had noticed her sitting still as a stone to listen in the doorway as he played the piano one day. “Hello, little Julia,” he’d said. “Do you like the music? Is it pretty?”

  Doña Inés happened to be passing at that moment.

  “She should learn the violin,” she’d said, “I should like that.”

  The violin didn’t work, but the old red guitar that was lying out on the stone bench on the gallery had become hers, and someone must have given her the green harmonica, she couldn’t remember, and the boys’ music teacher showed her how to sing scales and tap out rhythms. She’d learned the schottische, the polka and the highland fling. Songs came in with Solana, in her old cloak coming in from the marketplace, in her good cloak coming back from Mass. Most of them were desperately sad because sadness made better songs. These days she danced more ballet. It was hard but she was getting better, and when she was tired she could slip back so easily into the old Spanish steps, turning, stamping, clapping her hands. In the lovely wide space of the room above Brady Childer’s, she began to whirl.

  “Olé!” cried the girls, jumping to their two hands and two feet, and when it was over, everyone cheered. I did the right thing, she thought.

  Everything was exactly as it should be.

  Madame Soulie was in the yard when they got back. “Marvelous, aren’t they?” she said, emptying the contents of a box of handbills fresh from the printer onto the wooden table and spreading them out in a fan shape. Human Curiosities, they cried, the words elaborately leaf-twined. The most remarkable and unimaginable abnormalities known to man, living testimony to the infinite variety of nature. There they all were, Jonsy the White Negro, Edward Pitcairn the Elastic Man, Myrtle Dexter and Delia Mounier, Armless and Legless Dancing Wonders. And there at the top of the bill—Julia Pastrana, The Marvelous Hybrid Bear Woman.

  The only one whose humanity was in doubt.

  “Is that your name?” asked Charlotte. “That big one there?”

  “It is,” said Julia.

  “You’re at the top!” said Charlotte.

  Mr. Rates came out of the house. “We’ve been mentioned in the Picayune,” he said, waving a newspaper in one hand and a playbill in the other. “Look. I don’t think the words ‘Bear Woman’ are big enough. What do you think, Ede? And don’t you think they should be a fraction higher?”

  Madame Soulie put her head on one side and frowned.

  “I think we should seize the current,” he said, “strike while the iron’s hot. What we need for you, Julia, is a good picture.”

  “A photograph?” Julia sounded amazed.

  “No, no. Get someone in to draw you. Pen and ink perhaps.” Rates smiled. “You’d better get used to this, Julia. They’ll be standing in line to draw you, you know. We need a new pamphlet, a separate one, The Life of Miss Julia Pastrana. Same nice ivy design ’round the letters.”

  “Acanthus, Matt,” said Madame Soulie, “they’re acanthus.”

  “Mr. Rates,” said Julia, “I need my costume for the show.”

  “Of course you do. I’ve been thinking about that,” he said.

  He’d promised to buy her a new dress. She’d never worn a dress from a shop before. Solana had made all her clothes till she was old enough to do it for herself.

  “Would it not make sense for me to wear it when I sit for the picture?” she asked.

  “Very good idea.” Rates looked surprised. “One second.” He held up one finger, turned and went back into the house.

  “Let’s get out of this heat.” Myrtle moved away toward the shack. “Come on, Julia.” Inside was scarcely cooler than the yard. Myrtle picked up a palm fan and got onto her bed, settling cross-legged in front of her toilet box.

  “Don’t let him tell you what to wear,” Delia said, coming in behind. “He will if you let him.”

  “He wanted to put me in this downright vulgar thing,” said Myrtle. “Skirt up to here like a whore.”

  “And have you asked about your contract?”

  “Oh, no,” said Julia, “I forgot.”

  “No good,” said Delia, “no good at all. You have to look after yourself.”

  “She’s right,” said Myrtle. “You can’t afford to be silly about money. That’s the only thing I learned from my mother.”

  “I remember your mother,” Delia said. “She didn’t know the first thing about money.” She unwrapped her tignon and her long hair fell down.

  “That’s what I mean.” Myrtle opened her box and looked at her face in the mirror. “She was about as stupid with money as it’s possible to be, my mother, so I said, I’m never going to be like that and I never have.” She looked at Julia and smiled. “She drank, my mother.” She took out her tweezers, leaned forward and curled her white-bloomered leg up easily to pluck one raised eyebrow. Rates knocked sharply and came in with a red dress lying over his arms. “Try this on for size,” he said to Julia. “We can get it cut down a bit.”

  Julia took it and held it at arm’s length. Low-cut and short-sleeved, it had a cheap look about it. “It’s wrong,” she said.

  “What do you mean, wrong?”

  “It wouldn’t suit me,” she said.

  Rates laughed, an impatient whicker down his nose.

  “It’s better if I choose my own clothes,” Julia said.

  “What’s wrong with it?” said Rates, looking huffy. “It’s a nice dress.”

  “Well, you know a woman usually knows best what suits her,” Myrtle said, licking her toe and
stroking her eyebrow. She picked up a jar from her box of pastes and powders with her foot, passed it to the other foot and started unscrewing the lid carefully. Her toes had the deftness of fingers.

  “It should be in your contract,” Delia said, head on one side, combing out her hair.

  “What would you like to wear?” asked Rates.

  She knew exactly. “I’ll write down the measurements,” she said. “We could have it made up. But I’d need to see some cloth.”

  “Hm.” Rates looked puzzled. “I thought we could just go into town and…”

  “Oh,” she said, “I’ve been making clothes all my life. It’s much cheaper. The dress must be right or the dance won’t work, and I know how it should be.”

  Rates stuck out his chest and looked sideways, making chewing motions with his thin line of a mouth. “Well, I suppose I can get some samples sent over,” he said, “l’ll ask Madame Soulie to arrange it.”

  “I’d rather go shopping,” said Julia. “I don’t want the cloth brought here, I want to go out and see the shops and the market.”

  “She’ll know what to buy,” said Myrtle, rubbing Creme Celeste into her face.

  Charlotte stuck her head ’round the door. “Aunt Soulie wants Julia,” she said.

  “Julia’s tired.” Delia threw down the comb and began plaiting her hair down one side.

  “That’s all right,” said Julia, “I’ll come.”

  Could have been a doll that got burned, hard to tell. Sitting against an elephant-embroidered cushion, Tattoo, Rose thought, was like a stray dog brought in from the cold.

  She heard the messy banging of a piano downstairs, went out onto the landing and called down. “Adam!” Her deep voice echoed in the stairwell. When she called again, the piano stopped and he came out on the landing below, covered in paint, a pinch-faced twitchy kind of a person with spiky hair and a crooked jaw that he held in a stiff, unnatural way. “What?” he said irritably.

  “You know exactly what.”

  “Oh, Rose!”

  Rose sat down on the top step, imperturbable, smoking a cigarette. “No skin off my nose,” she said, “but he’s not going to let you live here rent-free forever.”