by Lynn Austin
‘‘No, you don’t. You’ve been wishing I’d go away ever since Mama died. She always told me how much she loved me, but you never do. You don’t love me at all! The only person you care about is yourself!’’
My words stunned him. The anger in his eyes turned to pain. ‘‘Eliza, if I didn’t love you so much, I wouldn’t be willing to let you go.’’
‘‘That doesn’t even make sense!’’
‘‘Yes, it does. Listen...’’ He fumbled for words, raking his fingers through his jet black hair. ‘‘If...If all I cared about was myself, then I’d be trying to make you over into my image. I’d want you to carry on in my footsteps and build some kind of a clown dynasty for me. But that’s wrong. You’re not me, you’re your own unique person.’’ He crouched in front of me, gently taking my shoulders. ‘‘There’s a whole other world out there beyond the circus, Eliza. I don’t want you to be a clown like me. I want you to be what you were meant to be.’’
‘‘But...what was I meant to be, Daddy?’’
He took the towel from my hands and carefully dried my tears with it. ‘‘I don’t know, Eliza. That’s something you’ll have to find out for yourself.’’
I thought about my Daddy’s words a lot after that, but I clearly recall the day everything changed forever for me, the day I no longer wanted to work in the circus. I was twelve years old and helping out in the concession booth outside the marquee when a young family came up to purchase some cotton candy. The mother had on a pretty blue-and-white dress and the father had on his Sunday shirt and trousers. He called her ‘‘dear’’ in a quiet, loving way as they bought cotton candy for their two children, a boy and a girl. The mother crouched beside the children and patiently helped them get the hang of eating it, smiling and laughing with them. But the father wasn’t watching his children. Instead, he watched his wife’s face, and the tenderness I saw in his eyes transformed his plain, rugged features.
When they went inside the menagerie tent, I left my post at the cotton candy booth to follow them. The father bought a bag of peanuts so his son could feed the elephants, but the boy was afraid to so the father lifted him up in his arms. The mother held the little girl’s hand tightly as they looked at the tigers.
I had to hurry back to my booth, but when the show started I went inside the Big Top and searched the bleachers for that family. I didn’t find them. Instead, I saw hundreds of families just like them—mothers and fathers and grandparents and children, all laughing and enjoying the circus together. The pain I felt was so excruciating I might as well have fallen from the high wire. It knocked the wind right out of me. For the first time in my life I knew I was missing something—a family—and I ached for one with all my heart.
When the show ended I stood by the main exit as the people streamed out, and I finally saw the little family again. The father carried his sleepy daughter in his arms while the mother held the little boy’s hand. They would go home to the house they shared together, with a cozy kitchen, quilt-covered beds, and a warm stove in the parlor. They would wake up tomorrow and every morning in the same house, in the same small town where everyone knew their names.
I wandered out to my ‘‘backyard.’’ The roustabouts had the city of tents almost completely dismantled and loaded onto the rail cars already. I saw Daddy in his goofy clown suit and floppy shoes and Aunt Peanut who was tiny enough for me to carry in my arms, and I hated them. For the first time in my life I longed for a real family, not the strange collection of circus people I’d grown up with.
That longing never went away. As the circus train traveled through the night, I would see warm lights glowing inside the homes we passed and I would grieve because I didn’t live in one of those houses. The wail of the train whistle was a lonely sound that never failed to bring tears to my eyes. It meant moving on to another town, another state, where I’d be just a stranger passing through. Worse, I was part of a rowdy band of circus freaks, looked upon with suspicion and distrust wherever we went. The community locked all its doors whenever the circus came to town.
Day after day I watched the families who brought their children to the shows and I envied them—mothers and little girls in pretty dresses, fathers who bought Cracker Jack and cotton candy for their sons. And every chance I got, I begged my father to leave the circus so we could be a real family, too, and live in a real house instead of a train compartment.
But Daddy always sighed and said, ‘‘This is my job, Eliza. This is what I love to do.’’ And the razorbacks would set the ramps in place behind the flatcars, and the colorful wagons would roll onto the train again, and the circus would move to the next town. And I would move with it.
Daddy wouldn’t let me learn any circus tricks, but he did make sure that I learned some of the skills I would need in the outside world. I learned how to cook from the chefs at the cookhouse, and it’s a good thing my husband had a big appetite because I’d learned to make everything in huge proportions. I learned how to sew from the wardrobe ladies, and when I became a teenager, Gina and Luisa taught me to use makeup and fix my hair. Charlie and the other clowns taught me to laugh at myself and at life. I’d handled a chimpanzee and elephants and even a trained bear, so I was never afraid of pigs and cows and chickens.
The sideshow people who once scared me so badly taught me not to look down on people who were different. ‘‘It’s the heart that matters,’’ Aunt Peanut taught me, ‘‘not what people look like on the outside. Some of the handsomest people in the world have hearts that stink worse than elephant manure.’’
I learned what it meant to stay flexible and roll with the punches as the circus weathered all sorts of crises—band members who suddenly quit between shows, roustabouts who got drunk and missed the train, horses with broken legs, and windstorms that blew rain into the wardrobe tent, soaking all the costumes. Even seasoned performers sometimes fell and injured themselves, or a catch might go wrong in the trapeze act and result in broken teeth and bruised jaws. When our star bareback rider broke her ankle, her brother put on a wig and dressed in drag to ride in her place. We coped with mud-mired fields and weeks of rain-canceled performances and paychecks that arrived late. We never had a train wreck, but we’d heard horror stories of other circuses that had, so the fear was always there.
My religious training was a patchwork quilt of beliefs, pieced together from a variety of denominations and sermons in churches scattered across America. We usually had Sunday off, and Daddy always made sure I went to church if he could find one nearby. I remember sitting on his lap in a rear pew when I was little, listening to the beautiful music and gentle prayers and wondering about this heavenly Father everyone always talked about. Surely He didn’t wear a clown wig and floppy shoes. And the ministers all said He lived in a house with many rooms in a place called heaven, not in a train compartment.
One Sunday I came out of an Orthodox church after hearing a sermon about Adam and Eve, and I was madder than a hornet. I confronted my daddy with what I’d learned as he walked me back to the circus grounds.
‘‘You’re always telling me I have to do what the Good Book says, Daddy, but you don’t do it! The Bible says it’s not good for a man to live alone. That’s why God made a helpmeet for Adam.’’ I stomped my feet on the sidewalk for emphasis as I walked. The fact that I was all riled up seemed to amuse Daddy.
‘‘I don’t live alone,’’ he chuckled, ‘‘I live with you—not to mention three or four dozen other performers.’’
‘‘That’s not what the Bible means and you know it! You need a wife, Daddy.’’
His smile faded. ‘‘I had a wife—your mother—and that didn’t work out so good.’’
‘‘Well, Mama is dead, and I think it’s high time you got married again. I need a mother and you need a helpmeet. Why can’t you marry Aunt Peanut—for real, this time?’’
Daddy and Aunt Peanut got ‘‘married’’ during every performance. He walked around on stilts, and because he was so tall and she was so tiny it
was impossible for him to kiss his new ‘‘bride.’’ After Daddy would try three or four hilarious schemes that didn’t work, the acrobats would finally come out and help the newlyweds by standing on each other’s shoulders and lifting Peanut higher and higher until she and Daddy finally kissed and the audience cheered.
‘‘You’re joking, right?’’ Daddy asked. ‘‘You want me to marry Peanut?’’
‘‘Don’t laugh! I love Aunt Peanut...and she loves you.’’ He glanced at me with a worried look. ‘‘It’s true, Daddy. She’s always been crazy about you. If you weren’t so busy flirting with Gina and Luisa and all the other pretty girls, you’d see how much she loves you.’’
‘‘Well, I’m sorry,’’ he sighed, ‘‘but I just don’t feel the same way about her. She’s a good friend, that’s all. And besides, my love life is really no concern of yours.’’
We’d reached an intersection and I was so worked up I stepped out in the busy street without looking, right into the path of a rushing streetcar. Daddy stuck his arm out just in time and pulled me back.
‘‘Hey! Watch out, Eliza!’’ The close call shook him. He crouched in front of me, gripping my shoulders. ‘‘Are you okay?’’ We were eye-to-eye and my usually cocky father looked pale.
‘‘I’m fine.’’ The near-miss barely fazed me. I wanted answers. ‘‘How come you didn’t live with Mama when I was little?’’ I blurted out.
He stood again, shaking his head. We then continued walking, and I didn’t think he would answer me, so it surprised me when he did.
‘‘That marriage was a disaster right from the start,’’ he said. ‘‘We met on the Vaudeville circuit, where your mother was the star singer, and Charlie and I did a comedy routine. Yvette claimed she loved me, but she always hated what I did, hated that I covered up my face with greasepaint and wore stupid clothes. She kept trying to change me, you know? Make me look for a different line of work. Then when she took to the bottle so bad, I kept trying to change her. That never works. You either accept each other the way you are or it’s over. For us, it was over. I got a job with the Bennett Brothers and went on the road. She stayed in New Orleans with you. She said she didn’t want to travel anymore.’’
As we approached another intersection Daddy reached for my hand. I guess the close call with the streetcar had scared him because it was one of the very few times that he ever did that.
‘‘I’m telling you all this,’’ he continued, ‘‘because I don’t want you to mess up like your mother and I did. The Good Book is right—people shouldn’t live alone. But you need to marry someone who’s going to work together with you, Eliza, like a team, not someone who tries to change you. Watch how the Flying Falangas work together in their trapeze act sometime. They trust each other. They put their lives in each other’s hands every day. And they’re always there to catch the other person before they fall. That’s what a husband and wife should have—teamwork and trust.’’
When I became a teenager Aunt Peanut decided I needed the company of other women to help guide me, so I moved out of Daddy’s train compartment and into the women’s sleeping car. The old Pullman car had been retired from passenger service and converted for use by the circus. There was nothing beautiful about those living quarters at all. The car was cramped and hot, with a narrow aisle down the center and bunks stacked two high and two across. Each berth had a pair of liver-colored curtains on rings that you could close for ‘‘privacy,’’ but they didn’t block out everyone’s snores and giggles and tears. Or their secrets. I knew who was feuding, who was in love, and who was thinking of ‘‘blowing the show.’’
I felt all grown-up living on my own, and like the other women I bunked with, I began to take an interest in the opposite sex. I kissed a boy, one of the stable grooms, for the very first time one night when he walked me home to the women’s sleeping car after the evening performance. I didn’t think my daddy knew what I was up to any more now that I no longer lived with him, but I learned how wrong I was that night! We barely had time to duck behind the rail car for one little smooch before Daddy came charging around the corner with fire in his eyes. The poor boy took off running and I don’t think he slowed down until he crossed the state line.
Meanwhile, my father dragged me off to his train compartment, corralling poor Aunt Peanut along the way. He was furious and I was scared. I had no idea what I had done wrong. I sat huddled beside Peanut on the banquette seat while Daddy paced the tiny room like one of Gunther’s lions. He roared like one, too.
‘‘What in blazes did you think you were doing? Guys like him are after only one thing, Eliza!’’
He glared at me as if I should know exactly what that one thing was, but I was terribly nai ve—and quite mystified. ‘‘What, Daddy? I don’t have anything.’’
I was even more mystified when Daddy began to blush. ‘‘Tell her, Peanut,’’ he mumbled.
‘‘Oh no, you don’t! That’s your job, Henry.’’ She hopped off the banquette and headed for the door as fast as her tiny legs could go.
Daddy blocked her path. ‘‘Well, I’m asking you to help me.’’
‘‘No way! I’m out of here!’’ Her voice squeaked even higher than usual.
They went back and forth like this until I felt ready to scream. ‘‘Tell me what!’’ I yelled, pounding my fist on the table.
Aunt Peanut finally relented. She booted Daddy out of the car and told me the facts of life. She finished her explanation by saying, ‘‘You see? Most boys won’t bother to buy the cow if they’re already getting the milk for free. Wait for a wedding ring, honey. Wait for Mr. Right.’’
I was disgusted with boys, my daddy, Aunt Peanut, and the world in general for several weeks.
Not long after my eighteenth birthday the circus played in New Orleans. I’d found out from Charlie that he and Daddy had grown up in New Orleans and that I used to live there with my mother. The last performance of a two-day run was about to start when Charlie came racing up to me at the concession booth where I worked. He was all out of breath.
‘‘Where’s your father, Eliza? Have you seen him?’’
‘‘No, not since lunchtime. Why?’’
‘‘The show’s about to start! He already missed the preshow, and he’s supposed to be lining up for the grand-entry parade right now!’’
I couldn’t believe it. ‘‘Daddy’s...missing?’’
‘‘Yes! I’ve searched everywhere and I can’t find him!’’
I was suddenly very frightened. It wasn’t like my daddy to be late for a show, much less miss one altogether. ‘‘I’ll help you look for him,’’ I said. I turned off the cotton candy machine, handed the cash box to the ticket-booth cashier, and took off at a run for the back lot, praying that something awful hadn’t happened to him.
He wasn’t in clown alley. He wasn’t in the pad room either, and the horse he always rode in his stunt act was still tethered inside. The rail cars had been parked clear across the field from the Big Top, but I sprinted all the way over there when I ran out of other places to look. I bounded up to Daddy’s compartment and flung open the door without even knocking, then stopped dead in my tracks in shock.
Daddy was there all right, sitting at the little table. And right beside him sat my mama. She wasn’t dead at all! She looked just as thin and ill as she had the day she left me, thirteen years ago, but she was very much alive!
‘‘Eliza? Sugar, is that you?’’ Mama asked. ‘‘Why, you’re a beautiful young lady, Sugarbaby! Isn’t she beautiful, Henri?’’
Even if I hadn’t recognized Mama’s face I would have known her by that velvety drawl—and by the bottle of amber ‘‘medicine’’ on the table in front of her. I was almost too stunned to speak.
‘‘Mama? You...you’re alive?’’
‘‘Well, I think so, Sugar,’’ she said with a little laugh. ‘‘At least I was the last time I looked.’’
I couldn’t take it all in! If Mama was alive, then why had she gone away and
left me here with Daddy? And why had my daddy lied to me all these years, making me think my mama was dead if she wasn’t? I looked from one of them to the other, and the anger and betrayal grew inside me until my rage finally exploded.
‘‘You lied to me, Daddy!’’
‘‘I didn’t lie. I never said—’’
‘‘Yes, you did! You knew I thought Mama was dead, and you just kept on letting me think it was true!’’
‘‘Eliza, let me explain....’’
‘‘No! Why should I believe a word you say? All this time you and Mama could have lived together and made a home for me so I would have a mother and a father like everyone else, but you were both too selfish!’’
‘‘That’s not true—’’
‘‘You never wanted me! Neither one of you! Mama abandoned me on the doorstep because she didn’t want me—’’
‘‘No, sugar, I loved you so much that—’’
‘‘And you didn’t want me either, Daddy! You’ve been trying to get rid of me all these years, telling me to leave the circus and go out on my own. Well, you’ll both get your wish! You’ll never see me again!’’ I turned to run out the door and bumped smack into Charlie.
‘‘There you are, Henry!’’ he cried. ‘‘What in blazes are you still doing here? Come on!’’
Daddy bolted to his feet. ‘‘Holy smokes! What time is it?’’
‘‘You already missed the grand entry and it’s almost time for your bareback routine. And look at you! Where’s your face?’’
Daddy’s face was bare. His wig and red nose lay on his bunk beside the stained towel he’d used to wipe off all his greasepaint. He looked from Charlie to me, then to Mama, and I could see he felt torn.
‘‘Fill in for me, Charlie,’’ he begged. ‘‘I’m in the middle of something—’’
‘‘Are you crazy? I can’t do that bareback routine, none of us can. We’ll kill ourselves.’’ He snatched up Daddy’s wig and clown nose and shoved them into his hands. ‘‘Come on!’’