Clown Girl

by Monica Drake

  I put down my pink bag and carried the orange jug into the bathroom. I slid down Rex’s striped acrobat pants, held the jug above the toilet, bent my knees, and hovered. My groin muscles burned. I could barely sustain the pose. I gathered up my shirt, held it out of the way. A sloppy stream ran toward the narrow jug opening; urine ran warm over my hand. It ran fast. A mess. I cut the flow, then let it go again. My ripped groin shook. A cold sweat cut across my forehead. Tiny yellow lakes decorated the toilet lid and the worn white linoleum floor.

  But I had piss in the jug. Bingo! I was on my way to a urine harvest. Finally.

  I screwed the lid on the jug and wiped the outside off with toilet paper. When I gave it a shake, the jug had new weight to it. The bottom of the jug was warm from urine inside. Time to get it on ice.

  My designated shelf in the fridge was a narrow middle space, second down from the top. The jug was too tall for my shelf, though. It fit instead on the shelf in the door, a shared area crowded with soy cartons, white wine, weight lifter’s shakes, and organic juice.

  I closed the fridge and wiped my hands down my striped-clad thighs, satisfied.

  ON THE WAY TO THE PHOTO SHOOT, I COPIED MISSING Chance posters. I copied Missing Plucky posters too. To hell with Herman and house rules; Plucky, Chance, Rex—I needed them all to come home.

  “Cha-ance,” I called as I walked. “Here, Chance! Here, girl!”

  “Nope,” some joker with a nasal whine called out an apartment window. “Not a chance, baby.” He giggled, coughed. Then giggled again.

  A group of kids hung out on a porch. “A clown!” one kid said. As a mass, they tumbled off the porch, arms and legs in full swing.

  Already late, I waved the kids back with one big blue glove. “I’m off work, kids. Not a clown.” I showed them the palm of my open hand. In my other hand I waggled the heavy-duty staple gun. I kept walking and called again. “Chaaa-a-ance. Here, girl. Here, puppy-puppy-pup!”

  The kids danced alongside me as I walked, all whispers and giggles. I was breaking the Clown Code of Ethics, on the street in costume but not performing. All I had to do was tie one balloon animal, toss an invisible ball, trip on a bump or even a bum on the sidewalk. Squirt the sunglasses, and I’d be up to code.

  I didn’t have it in me.

  “Do a trick!” a kid with a crusty nose shouted. He was right beside me. “A joke!”

  “No need to shout.” I stopped at a phone pole, slammed six staples in around the edge of a Missing Plucky poster, then drove another six staples home for Chance. “Say, kids, have you seen this chicken?” I held out a flyer.

  The boy chipped at the snot. His arm was scarred and thin. He said, “I got one—listen. What did the vampire say to the clown?”

  By all rights, I should’ve given this refugee of a kid a free red rubber nose.

  Another kid cut in and answered. He said, “Something tastes funny! Get it? Tastes funny.”

  Crusty Nose made to bite my arm. I jerked my hand away and said, “Nice joke, kids. Now, have you seen this dog?” I held out a second flyer.

  The boy laughed, teeth jagged and flashing. A second kid pulled on my shirt tail. The taller kids squinted. One girl reached for the flyer. I let it go into her dirty fingers, pulled out another flyer, held it against the pole, and punched staples in around the edge, each time with the loud pop of the staple gun.

  “What you doing out there?” A mom’s voice drifted through the screen door. “Get in here now,” she said, and held the door open. The biggest girl turned away first, let the Missing Chance flyer fall to the ground, and the others followed her back to the porch; the snot-nosed kid walked backward, waving.

  I yelled, “There’s money in it, if you find her.”

  The older boy poked his head out. “How much?” A hand grabbed his shoulder. Then he was gone, and the screen door clattered.

  On a side street, a yellow rubber nub poked up out of a garbage can. A rubber chicken-colored yellow nub! Plucky? I pulled on the nub, and it grew bigger, kept going, growing longer and stretched out—something held it from below—and then it snapped and slapped against my hand. It wasn’t Plucky at all, but rather was the tip of an old rubber glove covered in motor oil stuffed under a stack of catalogs mixed with porn. I wiped my hand on the ground, over gravel, bottle caps, and new grass.

  THE PHOTO SHOOT WAS IN THE BASEMENT OF THE BALONEYTOWN Lucky Strike bowling alley, Featuring the World-Renowned Strike and Rake Lounge! A photographer Crack knew was doing the photos for a cut rate, some kind of favor. I didn’t want to know what kind. I stapled flyers to a nearby pole. Out the open doors of the Lucky Strike, already I heard the smash and clatter of pins.

  Inside, a cluster of drunks in the Strike and Rake Lounge started rubbernecking, like I was the freak on the scene. They were bar refugees hiding from sobriety.

  “Well, bowl me over with a rubber nose,” one called out. His skin was green, his eyes red, and his hair a thin collection of well-greased strands. He gave a big tongue wag. Ghouls.

  “You must be the Rake,” I said, and kept going. I followed Crack’s directions, through the lounge and past the cigarette machine…I headed toward a narrow set of dimly lit, industrial-green cement stairs.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the basement was dark. I crossed a storage space. One light was on in the far back, and in that light I saw a handwritten sign taped to a nearly hidden door: Pssst! Sniff and Matey—In Here!

  I pushed that door open, stepped in.

  Inside the room glared bright; it was a nest of draped white sheets and photographer’s lights, full of smoke and with empty bottles on the floor. An old toilet was hooked up in the back corner, no stall. Crack sat on a chipped office table and puffed on a Swisher Sweet. A man swiveled in a swivel chair. His eyes were hidden under folds of skin, drooping lids, and dark circles, like an old sea turtle. He had a camera, two or three lenses, and rolls of film scattered in front of him. The man ran his fingers over his skinny mustache again and again.

  From above came the rhythmic rumble and smash of the bowling alley: Th-th-th-th-ump! Kaboom!

  Crack took the stogie out of her mouth. Her jaw fell open. She said, “What the hell is this?” She came at me fast, put the Swisher Sweet back in her mouth, unbuttoned my collar, and roughed up my clown hair. “You look like Bozo.”

  “Bozo!” I said. “It’s the cloth of the trade!” I flinched when her hand came at me. “You said go all out. This is my best stuff. High Clown.”

  “High on something, all right! Now let’s fix it up.” The cigarillo jumped between her lips. She tugged on my wig. The wig was pinned on with bobby pins and the pins clawed my skull. She squeezed one long-lashed eye against the smoke of her own cigar. “This is way too Ronald McDonald.”

  I tried to pull away. “We’re clowns! This is all-out clown stuff.” I pressed my hair back into a round poof. “I’m dressed to find my spirit leader.”

  “Well, ain’t that a fine kettle of fish,” Crack said. “Plan to do kids’ gigs forever?” Crack was dressed like a hooker Harlequin, in a dark wig, loud fuchsia lips, a fake fur-trimmed polka-dot dress, and fishnets sturdy enough to catch a marlin. One glance at the photographer, and it looked like she’d caught a shark.

  “‘All-out’ as in, like, let’s sell ourselves, right? Not all-out jokers.” She had a cobalt blue heart drawn below her right eye. Her nose was big, but that was her real nose, nothing she could do about it. Her wig was a bouquet of tight curls.

  She patted me down, then reached up and pulled the red rubber nose from my face. She tossed the nose over her shoulder.

  “Hey,” I said. “That’s bad luck.”

  In a halo of smoke, Crack said, “No, it’s tough luck.”

  The nose rolled across the table and fell off the far side. She reached for my ruffled collar and gave it a shake. “Slut it up a little, you got it? Think audience.”

  I pulled away from her, climbed under the table, over the white sheets.

  Crack cr
ouched down beside the table and said, “Ask yourself—who do you want to engage? Who’s got the cash? Who’s going to pay your way, see?”

  My nose was a red sun setting on the horizon of the sheets, guarded by the photographer’s tapping foot. “Parents? They cut the check.” A guess. I grabbed the nose. As I stood, my head knocked on the edge of the table. I slid the nose in my pocket and reeled back, a hand to the knot on my skull. The bees took up their swarm in the distance. A strike crashed in the alley above.

  Crack dropped her stogie and ground it out under the heel of one Mary Jane. “You want to throw strikes, or you going to throw balsa at them pins the rest of your life?” She unbuttoned two buttons on my striped satin shirt. “Got anything like a push-up bra?” She dug in my pink bag. Missing Plucky posters fluttered to the floor. “Maybe a couple balloons. Blow these up.” She shoved two balloons at me.

  “Those are banana style,” I said. “Twisters, long as my legs.”

  The photographer gave an eyebrow raise that lifted the folds of his puffy eyes; a stirred sea turtle, he murmured, “There’s a thought…” He checked his watch. “When’s the other skirt getting here?” His voice was gravel, like he drank whiskey out of an ashtray. He dropped a pack of smokes, hands shaking.

  It was hard to think of Matey, all bones and fists of muscle, as a “skirt.”

  Crack said, “Matey’ll be here any minute.” She turned to the photographer, pulled me by the shoulder and said, “Now you tell me. Would you pay for this?” She pointed to me like I was merchandise, straight out of For-Salesville.

  He stuck a bent cigarette between his teeth, shrugged, and smiled out of half his mouth—a smile I didn’t like at all. He ran the back of his thumb over his bottom lip, hand trembling, and swiveled in his chair. “She’s a real trouser-crease eraser,” he said. His moustache jerked under the words. “I just might.”

  “Oh, lovely,” I said. “You two are a fine pair.” Over the crash of pins and a cheer upstairs, I said, “I’m a good clown. This is a good clown look. It’s classic.” I took the balloons back and put them in my pink bag. “I’m not trying to be a glamour girl.”

  “As boss of this rig, I say it’s time to start. Do the glam-clown thing, a big-ticket item. You read me?”

  “Glam clown?” I said. “No, no I don’t read you. Glamour and comedy, they’re opposite sides of the same coin. Sexy or absurd. One or the other. It’s not the stripper doing pratfalls, the clown with the pasties.”

  “Look,” Crack said. “I’ll give you a clue: we’re in this for money.”

  I nodded.

  “Show her the graphics, Pete.” She snapped her fingers.

  The photographer lifted a shaky hand and unrolled a poster on the table: For a Good Time, Call Trixie, Twinkie, and Bubbles! Crack’s cell phone number was printed at the bottom. In between was room for a photo.

  I said, “Who’s Trixie, Twinkie, and Bubbles?” I’d never heard of these clowns, not in our neighborhood.

  Crack and the turtle traded a shifty glance. The photographer smirked and Crack laughed out loud, a single note: “Ha! Could be anyone. That’s the whole deal of it—fantasy. Where the skirts are short and the party’s long,” she said. She tapped a finger to the poster as she said it, as though adding the words.

  “Oh shit,” I said. “Us, Crack?”

  She pulled a bottle from her pink prop bag and sprayed my red wig with a candy-smelling hair gel. “Look, grown-ups have money. They spend it. And they don’t care about rubber noses.” She combed her fingers through the fake hair, twisted the front of the wig, pulled the curls away from my face, and slid a bobby pin in to set a hank of the wig in one little pin curl. The knot on the back of my skull was hot and throbbing under her hands. “Corporate parties can’t hire strippers anymore, but they can hire clowns. Got it?” She said, “Can’t have a lady in a cake, but they can have heavily made-up chicks in Lycra paid to do anything.”

  My head jerked each time she ran her fingers through the tangles of the plastic wig.

  “That’s where we cut in. Opportunity. Trixie, Twinkie, and Bubbles! We’ll make a killing, I tell you—a killing!”

  She stuffed Kleenex in my bra and pinned Rex’s acrobat pants back to make them snug over my thighs. I let her work, and thought about the stack of business cards on my shelf at home, the endless string of suggestions, dates, and phone numbers. The architect. Those spatial use and planning consultants. The dishwasher. So where were clowns on the titillation continuum? Somewhere between sex with a nun in full habit and a stripper, I’d guess, made-up and covered up. Not what I wanted to be.

  “I don’t know about this, Crack. It doesn’t feel right. Doesn’t feel like art to me.”

  “Art?” she said. “You’re joking? It’s the oldest art in the book. And listen, I know your best interest—you’re looking to make enough lettuce to hook up with Mr. Sexy Rex. Plan to do that by tying knots into a balloon Jesus?”

  Christ.

  I glanced down at Rex’s acrobat pants. The stripes of the cloth outlined the muscle of my thighs and made a tight V at my crotch, an arrow to my Mound of Venus. Stripes aren’t just for clowns and cons; stripes are also for prostitutes, all the way back to Leviticus. The mark of the sinner: striped stockings, striped cloaks. Indulgence and punishment.

  Crack was right—I needed the cash. I was stuck. Trapped. Rexless. This was Rexless behavior I was caught up in.

  She brushed my tangled wig and her fingers clawed their way through the synthetic strands. My neck was in a kink the way she held my head. I looked at Crack over my shoulder. Her eyes were circled in black. Her lips were brilliant red, her neck was marked with the creases of new wrinkles, age finding her already. “Got a problem with strippers?”

  I said, “It’s not what I’m trying to be.” My voice was thin; the words fell apart, breaking as I spoke.

  “You’ve already got a client,” she said, like this was a good thing. “We ain’t even started this joint venture yet, and already Lover Boy, from the Chaplin gig? He left a message on my cell—says he wants a private show, you and him. How’s that grab you?”

  “Exactly—I don’t want him grabbing me! Crack, I don’t think it’s my thing—”

  “What, to be a breadwinner? I’ve been a stripper, a hairdresser, and I managed a bank. There’s no difference.” The cobalt heart high up on her cheek danced as she spoke. “But trust me, I’ll make you some cash. That, I know.”

  It was true; Crack was the only reason I could lend Rex cash to travel to Clown College.

  She leaned in closer. “What’s on your face, motor oil?”

  I put a hand to my skin. My fingers came away black and oily. The trash can, the rubber glove. The greasy reminder of porn in a Baloneytown alley.

  She pulled my head back, looked into my eyes, and asked, “You OK in there? You’re pale as a ghost.” Crack and the photographer laughed. She let go of my hair, smacked me in the butt. “It’ll work out. Don’t worry so much. Now go freshen up before Matey gets here. You look like you been crying all night.”

  It still showed? I took my bag back to the mirror on the wall beside the toilet.

  “Make it pretty,” she said. “Sexy. Like the ad says, a good time, right? A party. Put a little heart, like this one.” She pointed to the heart on her cheek, bit the edge of her fingernail, and spit it on the floor.

  The photographer pointed his camera at me. Flash. “Sad clown on the way to the john,” he said, through yellow teeth. Did he mean the toilet or a hooker’s john? In the mirror’s chipped reflection my orange wig, parted far to the left, now was decorated with a row of twisted curls in Crack’s design.

  “One thing,” she called over. “I’ve got a job for us day after tomorrow. Noon. Supereasy. Clown clothes, clown face. All you have to do is show up, but it’s a high-buck gig; I promised ’em three girls.”

  Three girls. I wiped white pancake off my blotchy skin. I opened my kit and began again. In the mirror I watched Crack sit on
the photographer’s lap. She ran her tongue over her deep fuchsia lips.

  The door swung open. “Ta da!” Matey flung herself into the room and slid on the nest of the photographer’s white sheets mixed with empty beer bottles and ashes. “Whoa!” She caught herself from falling. Her pink bag swung on her shoulder. “Badaboom!”

  “Ah,” Crack said, and jumped up again to clap her hands. “Our favorite S&M clown.”

  Matey took a fast bow. Her hair was slicked up onto her head and decorated with Christmas ribbon. Her dress was tight, cut low, and her fishnets snagged. “Thanks, but don’t flatter me,” she said. “Every clown’s an S&M clown, even the ones that don’t know it yet.” She dumped her pink bag upside down on the floor near the slice of mirror where I worked on my face.

  “I’m not,” I said. I feathered in a heavy, cobalt blue line of eyeliner.

  Matey dug through her things until she found a cake of white paint. She looked up, rolled her eyes, and said, “And then the other ones that don’t know it yet.” Her wrists were freshly bruised, her arms tough and knotted. Her dress fit like a plastic bag around a pack of carrot sticks.

  Crack put her hands on my shoulders, gave me a backslap. “Sniff here’s the high artiste.” She winked. “Remember? Riding our sorry gravy train until the local Shakespeare troop comes along.”

  Matey bit down the end of a fat covered brush and pulled the cover off with her mouth. “Can’t separate it out,” she said. “Every clown’s a bottom and every bottom’s a fool, and there’s money in taking the underdog role.”

  I leaned in toward the mirror, didn’t say anything. That wasn’t how I saw it. Sure, a clown’s an underdog, but that didn’t make every clown a fool. It was an art, in my book, to take on the role of the oppressed. We spoke up for those without a voice. We were those without a voice—voluntarily relinquishing speech—and we illuminated the plight of the impoverished through every act. I let it go. Instead, I changed the subject. “Which one am I?” I drew my left eyebrow in a high, puzzled arch.