by Lynn Austin
‘‘What’s your name, honey?’’
‘‘Eliza Rose.’’
‘‘Mmm. Your name is as pretty as you are. Come on, I’ll show you around your new hometown.’’
I soon saw that it waslike a town—a self-contained city of tents that magically moved from place to place during the night. There was the cookhouse where the chefs prepared all our meals; two dining tents, one for the performers and the other for the laborers; a wardrobe tent; a barbershop and laundry; tents for the elephants and other livestock; and a huge, elongated tent called the pad room, which had the men’s and women’s changing rooms on opposite ends and a stable for the performing horses in the middle.
These were the private areas of our tent city, but there were also public areas—the tents that were part of the show, such as the Big Top and the Midway. The marquee was the main entrance to the Big Top and the menagerie tent, where ticket holders could view all the exotic animals. The Midway had the sideshow tents on the left, the concession stands and ticket wagons on the right.
‘‘My main job is here at the sideshow,’’ Aunt Peanut explained that first day. She pointed to the bannerline that advertised the attractions inside the tent, and the huge picture of Peanut looked taller than she was. ‘‘I’m Queen Lily,’’ she said with a humorless chuckle, ‘‘the world’s tiniest woman and Queen of the Lilliputians. Then I change costumes for one of the clown routines with your father where I’m called ‘Peanut’—but that comes later in the show.’’
She boosted me up on a little stage near the entrance to the tent. ‘‘Now you’re on the bally platform,’’ she said. ‘‘They’ll stand one or two of us freaks out here to give the people a free look. That always makes them want to spend their money to come inside.’’
Aunt Peanut lifted me off the platform with a grunt and reached for my hand, but when I saw where she was about to lead me I stopped short. Mama had taken me inside the sideshow tent a few days ago and my first glimpse had frightened me so badly I’d buried my head in her shoulder and refused to look.
‘‘What’s the matter, honey, you scared?’’ Aunt Peanut asked. ‘‘You don’t need to be. The Abominable Snowman is really a dead stuffed Alaskan bear that’s so old and moldy we have to keep pasting his fur back on.’’ She took both my hands in hers and dragged me inside against my will, talking the whole time in her squeaky voice. ‘‘The two-headed calf was real once upon a time, but see? It’s dead and stuffed, too.’’
‘‘Is the snake real?’’ I whispered, hardly daring to look. A huge boa constrictor lay coiled in a glass box on the stage beside the calf, miles and miles of the scaly creature, as big around as a man’s arm.
‘‘Yeah, but it won’t hurt you. Sylvia keeps it so well fed it just sleeps all the time. She drapes it all around herself for the show and the thing’s as sluggish as the Mississippi. Let’s go around to the back and I’ll introduce you to the others.’’
I was glad to get out of that tent, but the little group of people standing in back, talking and smoking cigarettes, looked every bit as scary as the creatures inside.
‘‘Hey, everybody, this is Henry Gerard’s daughter,’’ Aunt Peanut said. ‘‘Her name is Eliza Rose and she’s going to be traveling with us for a while.’’
They all smiled at me and greeted me with, ‘‘Welcome, Eliza,’’ and ‘‘Nice to have you, honey,’’ but my heart pounded with fright as I tried to hide behind Aunt Peanut’s skirts. Sylvia the snake woman was covered from head to toe with tattoos. Gloria the fat lady was the most enormous person I’d ever seen, with legs the size of tree trunks and a dress that could fit an elephant. One of the men in the group was so grotesque I hid my face. He had pure white hair on his pink scalp, and bulbous pink eyes, and skin that was nearly transparent. The bannerline claimed he came from a rare tribe of underground people, descendants from a marooned spaceship from Mars, but I learned when I grew older that Albert was really an albino. The only ordinary-looking person in the whole group was the rubber lady—a contortionist who looked fine standing still, but as soon as the sideshow started she would twist her body into knots like a pretzel.
I longed to run back to the safety of my daddy’s train compartment, but I didn’t know my way through the maze of tents. My new home and new family were so strangely bizarre they overwhelmed me. I’d never ventured more than a few blocks from the boardinghouse with Mama, and up until she started having nightmares, my limited world had remained very safe. Now it seemed as though I’d stepped inside one of Mama’s nightmares.
‘‘Goodness, you’re shaking like a leaf!’’ Aunt Peanut said as she tried to pry my fingers off her skirts. ‘‘I guess you can’t stay here with me, after all. If I went up on stage with you clinging to me like this, they’d have to bill us as Siamese twins!’’
I heard them all talking about me in low voices, asking Aunt Peanut about my mama and trying to figure out who could take care of me once the sideshow opened for business. They couldn’t seem to decide what should be done with me, and they argued for such a long time that pretty soon we all heard the parade heading back to the circus grounds.
‘‘I guess I’d better take you back to your father,’’ Aunt Peanut finally said.
Daddy sat high atop a fancy parade wagon, pulled by a team of four Percheron horses. I recognized him by the red nose and wig and the gigantic shoes. He and the other clowns started climbing down as soon as the wagon came to a stop beside the pad room. Daddy seemed startled when Aunt Peanut marched right up to him with me in tow, as if he’d forgotten all about me.
‘‘You were right, Henry,’’ she said. ‘‘The sideshow scared her. She’d better stay with you.’’
He looked as though he wanted to run away. His clown face was smiling but his real face wasn’t. ‘‘Listen, I don’t know—’’
‘‘And don’t you dare lock her away in your compartment again!’’
Aunt Peanut hoisted me up with a grunt and flung me at my father so suddenly that he had no choice but to catch me in his arms. Peanut turned to go.
‘‘No, wait!’’ Daddy said. ‘‘What am I supposed to do with her?’’
‘‘Hold her, Henry,’’ she called over her shoulder as she toddled away. ‘‘Just hold her!’’
At first my daddy’s arms were as cold and stiff as the stuffed Alaskan bear’s in the sideshow, but as I buried my face against his chest and cried for my mama I felt his body slowly relax.
‘‘I know...Iknow...’’ he murmured, and soon he wasn’t simply holding me but hugging me, patting my back and gently rocking me to soothe my tears. He smelled of greasepaint and cigarettes and the Macassar oil he always used to slick back his real hair.
‘‘Everything’s going to be all right,’’ he promised. ‘‘You don’t need to cry....’’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
But I did cry. For days and days. It’s a wonder Daddy’s clown suit didn’t sprout mildew. I clung to his baggy trousers so tightly he had no choice but to take me with him wherever he went. He hid me by his feet on the floor of the clown wagon during the parade, then seated me in a special chair beside the bandstand during the afternoon and evening performances. I watched the Bennett Brothers Circus perform over and over again until I knew every act and musical selection by heart.
Eventually the memories of my mother began to fade and my life slipped into its new routine. Early every morning the train would come to a halt and I would wake up in a new town to the shouts and whistles of the razorbacks as they unloaded the flatcars in a vacant field. They unloaded the cookhouse and wardrobe wagons first so that the performers could eat breakfast and get dressed for the parade. I’d go down to clown alley with Daddy after breakfast and watch him put on his clown suit, wig, and makeup. He drew big white circles around his eyes and mouth, then outlined them in black. By the time he’d painted on his smiling red lips and attached his buffoon nose, he no longer looked like my handsome daddy.
Meanwhile, the roustabouts and canvasmen
would set up the tent city. I later heard a sermon in an Episcopalian church in Milwaukee about how Ezekiel spoke and the dead bones came to life and rose up and lived, and I thought it must have looked just like the bones of those tents coming together—first the skeleton, then a covering of canvas skin, then they were filled with music and wonder and life.
The first event in every town was always the parade. This gave the townsfolk a taste of what the circus had to offer and lured them to buy tickets to the Big Top. In most of the places we visited, the circus was the only entertainment people had all year and the town would pretty much shut down as if it were a holiday when we arrived. Where else could farmers who were tied to their land and their animals year-round see lions and elephants and dancing bears and giant snakes?
The big Percheron horses that had labored to unload the rail cars were quickly decked out in fancy plumes and glittering harnesses to pull the circus wagons in the parade. The bandmaster split his band in two, and half the musicians rode in the lead bandwagon while the other half rode in one of the tableau wagons in the middle of the line-up. These tableau wagons were covered all over with fancy carvings, brightly colored paint, and gold leaf to depict various fairy tales. When I grew older, Aunt Peanut dressed me up as Cinderella and I rode on one of the wagons, holding a glass slipper in one hand and waving to the crowd with the other. I had a lot of fun until Daddy put a stop to it. He said the cheers might go to my head and give me a taste for show business, which was the last thing in the world he wanted for me.
The clowns marched in the middle of the parade, pulling pranks and making everybody laugh. Sometimes Daddy walked down the street on a towering pair of stilts that made him look ten feet tall. The lions and tigers rolled by in their cage wagons, pulled by more horses, but Gunther only uncovered one or two of the cages for a peek so folks would be sure to come to the circus to see more. The elephants paraded near the end because they were the attraction that everyone was dying to see. The Gambrini family, who trained our elephants, dressed their three children in sparkling costumes and perched them on the elephants’ backs to wave to all the people.
Last of all came the steam calliope, rolling down the street with a warble of organ pipes and the clash of drums, cymbals, xylophones, and bells. People would fall into step behind the calliope and follow us back to the circus grounds to see the show. They would have time to view Aunt Peanut’s sideshow, to visit the menagerie tent, and to buy cotton candy and Cracker Jack before the afternoon performance began.
Daddy would take a short break to catch his breath after the parade and we would grab some lunch at the dining tent. But then the clowns would have to reassemble in the Big Top to entertain the children while the audience filed in for the shows. When the performance finally began, Daddy marched on his stilts again in the Grand Entry parade with the entire circus ensemble, then he came back four or five times throughout the show to perform his comic routines with the other clowns. It was their job to entertain the crowd while the workers cleaned up after the elephants and moved equipment in and out for the various acts. Daddy was also an expert stunt rider and he performed a clown routine with one of the show horses. He pretended that the horse had run wild with him hanging on for dear life, and he scared me half to death the first few times I saw him—riding backward, ‘‘falling’’ beneath the horse’s belly, doing handstands on its back.
The circus performed two shows in most of the towns we visited, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. My daddy wouldn’t get to sit down and take off his floppy shoes and makeup until the last audience had finally left the tent.
During the final performance, the roustabouts would take our tent city apart again and reload the train, saving the Big Top and pad room for last. They’d put everything on the train in the order we would need it in the next town, and as soon as they’d pulled the last tent stake everyone would board the train. We slept through the night as the locomotive hauled the five stock cars, ten flat cars, and four coaches to the next town, then we woke up the next morning and repeated the whole cycle all over again. When I heard a Sunday school teacher describe how the people in the Bible moved from place to place with their tents and their livestock, I thought for sure that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had traveled with the circus.
I slept on the banquette seat in my daddy’s tiny compartment. Single men like Daddy usually bunked in the sleeping car with the other bachelors, rather than in a private compartment—the circus usually reserved those for their star performers and family acts. But the Bennett brothers regarded Daddy very highly, putting him in charge of all the other clowns, and he’d convinced them he needed space to plan out all the clowns’ routines and to come up with new gags and acts. When I grew too big to sleep on the banquette seat, one of the carpenters built a fold-down bunk above Daddy’s bed for me to sleep on.
After the last show my daddy needed time to unwind, so he usually went down to the pie car for a while every night to talk and relax and play a game of cards with the other performers. But he always listened to me say my prayers first, then tucked the covers tightly around me and said, ‘‘May the Lord keep His angels ’round about you.’’
By the time my first season with the Bennett Brothers’ Circus ended and we returned to our winter home in Macon, Georgia, I no longer clung to my daddy day and night. To be honest, I’d grown sick to death of watching the same show over and over twice a day, and I’d begged him to let me stay outside in the ‘‘backyard’’ behind the Big Top instead. The other performers cheerfully shuttled me from tent to tent while Daddy worked, and there was always a willing pair of arms to hold me. They might belong to a clown or to an acrobat or a bareback rider, but someone always watched out for me.
Eventually I felt at home everywhere, and everyone knew me and gave me little jobs to do. Gunther taught me how to water his lions and tigers without being afraid. Mr. Gambrini always took me along with his own three kids when his elephants went down to the river to cool off. He taught me how to swim and to ride on the elephants’ backs. Lazlo taught me how to juggle, starting with two balls and working my way up to four. He taught me how to skip rope, too, only Lazlo could do it on a slack wire while I had to stay on the ground. Charlie the clown taught me how to ride a bicycle. He had a chimpanzee named Zippy who rode the bike as part of his act and Charlie sometimes paid me to ‘‘monkey-sit.’’ The hardest part of monkey-sitting was keeping Zippy from smoking. He’d gotten hooked by watching the other performers smoke, and he picked up the cigarettes they tossed aside when their turn came to enter the Big Top. That chimpanzee could even blow smoke rings!
‘‘Don’t let him get his hands on any butts, Eliza,’’ Charlie would warn when he left me in charge. ‘‘He’s starting to get a smoker’s cough.’’ But Zippy was fast as lightning, and if I didn’t get to the stubs first and crush them out, Zippy would snatch them right up and start puffing up a storm and there was no way on earth you could get the butts away from him after that.
Daddy taught me how to read when I grew older, then sent me to ‘‘school’’ with the other circus children for three hours every day. There were never more than a dozen or so of us, with our parents taking turns as teachers. Everyone except me had a part in his parents’ acts and had to perform in two shows a day, so our education was pretty hit-and-miss. Once Daddy enrolled me in a regular school during the months our circus spent in Georgia. I hated it! I was so different from all the other kids that it was impossible for me to fit in and be accepted. I cried and stomped and fussed until Daddy finally gave up the idea. I went back to taking lessons with the other circus kids, in between training sessions as their families practiced their new acts for the coming season.
I longed to be part of my daddy’s act—or any other act, for that matter. The Gambrini children wore spangled costumes and got to ride on the elephants’ backs, grinning and spreading their arms gracefully as they showed off their skills. One elephant would lift little Angela Gambrini right up in the air on h
is trunk while she waved to the cheering crowd. Another family act trained the dogs and ponies, and their two young sons had learned how to put the animals through all their paces before they’d even learned how to read. The horseback riders balanced their kids high on their shoulders as they stood on the horse’s back and galloped around the ring for the finale.
But Daddy absolutely refused to let me be part of the circus. When he caught Gina teaching me how to shinny up the rope she performed on, he chewed her out something awful, then wouldn’t speak to her for a whole month. I offered to ride in the elephant act when the Gambrini kids caught the chicken pox and couldn’t perform, but Daddy said, ‘‘Absolutely not!’’ But he was angriest of all the time I talked Charlie the clown into painting my face to look just like my father’s. Daddy was furious with both of us.
‘‘You’re fired, Charlie!’’ he bellowed, ‘‘And you! You’re washing that stuff off right now!’’ He dragged me to the washhouse by the scruff of the neck. I’d never seen him so angry.
‘‘Why won’t you let me be a clown?’’ I sobbed as he scrubbed my face clean. It’s a wonder he didn’t take off all my skin, too.
‘‘You’re grounded for a week!’’ he replied.
‘‘So what? I’m grounded all the time, anyway! I have nothing to do all day, Daddy. Everyone’s part of the show but me. Where do I fit in?’’
‘‘You don’t. You’re not part of this circus, and as long as I have anything to say about it, you never will be part of it!’’
‘‘But why?’’
He finally stopped his merciless scrubbing and tossed me a towel. ‘‘Listen, I’m raising you here because I don’t have a choice. But someday I want you to make a better life for yourself, away from this place.’’
I looked up at his scowling face and angry eyes, and I began to tremble. ‘‘You don’t want me, do you, Daddy?’’
‘‘Of course I want you, but—’’