“He looks like an excited monkey,” Leonard mumbled and shied away. The wave had drawn people’s attention to us.
I waved back.
The wolf-boy let out a grunt.
“You’re going to get us kicked out,” Leonard hissed.
“Well, aren’t that sweet,” the carnie drifted out of the darkness, seemingly floating more than walking toward us. “You gone done made a friend of Esteban there. I ain’t seen him that tickled in months. Regularly though, it’s only the grown-up folks in here he sees. You wanna meet ’im? He speaks Mexican mostly, but he knows some English.”
“It’s all right,” Leonard said. “I don’t want to.”
“Sure,” I said.
I thought of the patch of hair on my stomach, the dent in my head where the haemangioma had once been. I thought of my mother’s finger wagging. Her voice saying, “What’s that?” It made me want to know the wolf-boy Esteban.
“You’re all right, kid,” the carnie said and tucked his bottom lip under his teeth to give a sharp whistle. He rolled his hand in a motion beckoning Esteban to come over.
Esteban glanced around before making his way over. The crowd dispersed to other corners of the tent, into the darkness, as the freak approached us.
“Qué?” Esteban asked the carnie.
“These here boys is wantin’ to say hi,” the carnie spoke, his lips moving lewdly around the nail in his mouth.
Esteban smiled and beamed, “Hola. I am Esteban.”
“Hola,” I said. “I’m Richard.”
Leonard didn’t say anything and shifted from one foot to the other, then back again.
Nurse’s voice: “That is an anomalous patch of terminal hair.”
“And this,” I gestured, “is Leonard.”
“I was so happy to see you,” Esteban spoke with a thick accent. “There are no niños here.”
“Where are you from?” I asked.
“I am from Divisaderos, in Sonora,” Esteban replied. “In Mexico,” he added. His voice happy, the bristles around his mouth shook with each word.
“We bought Esteban for two thousand bucks,” the carnie laughed. “That’s like a million dollars in that backwater. His folks’re now the richest folks there, happy to be rid of ’im they was. Now back to work ya li’l bastard.” The carnie was still laughing, making his insult seem like a pet name.
Esteban nodded and said, “It was nice to meet you.” His shadow worked its way back to the spotlight.
I thought about what it must be like to travel far from home, to be in a place where everyone spoke a different language, and rarely see another kid your age. A lonely pit opened in my stomach. Esteban had seemed so thrilled to meet us.
There was a spark as the carnie fired a cigarette. For that moment, his pockmarked face glowed like a demon’s, each line and scar and wrinkle was thrown into sharp contrast from below. Then his face fell into shadow, except for the orange glow from the cigarette tip.
“You boys oughta see one more thing before ya go,” the carnie said. The orange dot bounced in the dark.
I stifled a cough brought on by inhaling a gout of cigarette smoke. “We should get back to our parents,” I said to Leonard.
Leonard looked at me for a second, a slight frown on his face. “What else do we need to see?” he asked the carnie.
The carnie pointed at a gap in the curtains that made up the wall of the tent. “Why,” he said, “y’all should see Razor’s Blades of Doom.” The carnie checked his watch, tilting his wrist to make the most of the poor light. “Show starts in five minutes,” he said tapping his watch.
Leonard went.
I followed.
I wish I hadn’t—that whole adventure had been a mistake.
The gap in the curtains was black, threatening and made the big tent we left feel warm and comfortable by comparison. My heart pounded in my ears as Leonard’s figure slowly dimmed from my sight when he passed the threshold and walked deeper into the darkness.
I paused, paralysed. Leonard was gone. My eyes darted for an escape route. They jumped from the Wolf-boy to the crowd around the Mighty Mite. I caught a glimpse of the fat man though I couldn’t tell which bloated body part I saw, a leg maybe, before the gap in the crowd filled in. I couldn’t tell where we had entered the tent. The flap leading to the outside had fallen, caging the area in. My eyes jumped, looking for any difference in the tent wall, any slight change of colour or line of light that would betray the exit and lead to the safety of the crowds outside. The midway seemed so safe and so far away. I spied the cabinet full of jars. The snake with the scorpion in its mouth and the two-headed fetus, drowned in yellow formaldehyde, trapped in jars, the outside sounds muted and aqueous.
The smell of cigarette smoke and a clasped hand on my shoulder prompted a squeak. I wriggled free and darted through the gap in the curtains, into the dark, into the unknown. The carnie cackled and coughed somewhere close by. I strained to see but couldn’t. I heard noises, feral animal noises all around me: grunts, whispers, shuffles, the rustle of clothes and feet on the dirt and hay-covered floor. The air reeked of people.
Something big was going to happen.
There was a pop and a bright light came on, illuminating everything.
I closed my eyes, easing them open as they adjusted, not wanting to see but feeling the need to for self-preservation.
I looked over at Leonard. He sat next to me in the photo booth with the red-and-white-striped backdrop. He didn’t return my gaze though his face was tight. I was happy to be safe in that curtained capsule with my best friend.
“That’s it.” Auntie Maggie pulled the curtains back and we both climbed out.
The three of us stood in the electronic beeps and flashing lights of the video games. Children ran, screaming from one machine to another, from one group of laughing friends to the next.
Auntie Maggie grinned at us, her head swivelling from Leonard to me and back again. We avoided her beaming face. Two minutes passed.
The photo machine whirred and ticked before spitting out four tiny photographs. Auntie Maggie took them out of the metal tray and looked at them. She frowned.
“You boys aren’t too cool to smile occasionally you know,” she said as she tore the photo strip across the middle. She handed two photos to Leonard and two to me.
I looked at my two pictures. It showed us, the both of us, looking lost and haunted. I was wide-eyed, on the verge of tears, terrified. I looked terrified. I was terrified. Scared of the freaks in the spotlights two years earlier, the leering eyes circled around them, the snide comments, my inability not to watch them, what happened with the Razor and his Blades of Doom. Scared of my need to be looked at, my need to have more than only my cousin turn up for my birthday, my need for my mother to be here, my father to be here.
Sitting next to me in the photo, Leonard’s eyes were blank and his mouth taut. There was a slight crease in his forehead, as if he was concentrating on something or trying hard to forget something. His face was a mask, hollow and papier mâché.
Would he look back on this photo and laugh?
I wouldn’t.
The sun set as we wandered into the parking lot. Father carried a box of leftover pizza. The sky was a palette from blue to black, blue on the horizon where the sun had just disappeared and black on the opposite end of the land. It was huge, so much bigger than the parking lot where Father and I said goodbye and thank you and see you to Auntie Maggie, Uncle Tony and Leonard. The evening sky, endless in depth, spotted with billions of stars, was so much bigger than the space inside the Pacer. Even opening the window to let the cool air in did nothing to quell the feeling of claustrophobia.
Now, looking back on that night, my tenth birthday, one decade old, I can’t believe I felt that way. As we drove out of the parking lot, we passed Margaret Koshushner’s 1982 Monte Carlo parked in front of a medical clinic opposite the restaurant. Margaret was the last patient of the day. She sat on a cold examination table, wearing
a blue paper gown. Her doctor was telling her that she had pancreatic cancer and would be dead within five years.
Funny. What a small world it is.
CHAPTER 6
Do You Know Why You’re Here?
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“Mother made me come. She made all of us come.”
“And why’s that, Richard?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because she thinks we’re crazy.”
“That’s not a nice word. We won’t use that word. It’s a judgment word.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“Only ignorant and uninformed people use words like that. People who don’t understand that we’re all different and equally unique.”
“I won’t use that word anymore.”
“Thank you. Do you think you’re crazy?”
“No.”
“Then why would your mother? Can you think of another reason, the real reason your mother would want you to come here?”
“Maybe it’s because we’re always fighting. That’s what she says. That we are fighting all the time and…”
“Why are you fighting?”
“…sometimes I set things on fire…”
“You’re fighting because you set things on fire?”
“No. You didn’t let me finish. We’re fighting all the time and sometimes I set things on fire.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, I think we’re here because we’re always fighting and sometimes I set things on fire.”
“Is there anything else, Richard?”
“No. That’s all Mother told me to say.”
“She told you to tell me that?”
“Yes. Well, that’s what she told me to say if we saw anyone she knows here or when I was asked. But I wasn’t supposed to tell you she told me.”
“So why did you tell me?”
“I don’t know, because you asked I guess.”
“How old are you, Richard? Ten? Eleven?”
“I’m thirteen.”
“I see. Let me run this by you. I think you told me because there’s some other reason you’re here, one that even your mother doesn’t know about. You don’t necessarily agree with your mother that that’s the reason you’re here. Richard, do you sometimes not do what your mother tells you to? Do you sometimes disobey her?”
“Sometimes, I guess.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“She tells me not to light stuff on fire. Sometimes I do.”
“Can you remember when you started lighting fires?”
“Yes.”
“Will you share that with me, please?”
“What are you writing down?”
“I’m taking some notes to help me remember what we talked about.”
“Are you going to show them to Mother and Father?”
“No. I won’t. It’s just to help us out in these talks. The notes are for nobody else. You won’t get in trouble here. I won’t tell your parents anything and I won’t show them these notes. The notes are just for the two of us.”
“Can I see them?”
“No. Now, tell me about when you started lighting fires.”
“I don’t know. It was a while ago.”
“I see. Richard, do you ever feel lonely?”
“No.”
“Do you ever lie to please people, possibly to avoid getting in trouble?”
“No.”
“Are you lying to me now?”
“Yes.”
“Did you lie when you answered my last two questions?”
“Maybe.”
“Richard, if we’re going to continue, you have to be honest with me. That’s the only way I’m going to be able to help you. We have to trust one another and explore these things together. Can we trust each other?”
“Yes.”
“Please don’t roll your eyes.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. Now, let’s start again. Clean slate. Do you ever feel lonely, lie to please people or lie to avoid getting in trouble?”
“Sometimes.”
“Can you tell me more?”
“Sometimes, I feel lonely.”
“When?”
“Since Mother started home-schooling me. I didn’t like going to school but sometimes I feel lonely when I don’t see anybody my age for weeks.”
“When did your Mother start home-schooling you?”
“A few months ago. She saw an article in the paper about that guy who drove around in his car asking kids if they needed a ride or telling them their parents asked him to pick them up. Then one got in the car and the guy took the kid away. Mother read it twice and decided to home-school me.”
“Do you like being home-schooled?”
“It’s okay, I guess. Some stuff that I didn’t understand in class, I get now.”
“But you miss your friends.”
“I didn’t have a lot of friends but I feel lonely because there’s nobody around who is my age.”
“Okay. This is a good start. I’m encouraged by our sharing. Thank you for sharing that with me, Richard.”
“What did you just write?”
“I’m here to listen. I hope you’re learning that you can be open with me. Already, I feel you’re getting more adept at sharing your feelings and articulating them into words. It’s a tough thing. Many grown-ups can’t do it. This kind of communication is the only way to trust and learn from one another. You’re doing really well… Now, let’s talk about telling lies.”
“…”
“Can you tell me a bit about that?”
“Oh, that was the question?”
“Yes.”
“I sometimes have to lie…”
“Sorry to interrupt but, you have to lie?”
“Sometimes I have to, especially when Mother or Father is mad.”
“Why do you lie?”
“Sometimes it’s easier, you know, to fib. Sometimes, if I tell a lie, things turn out better than if I had told the truth.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Father wants me to lift weights and run for an hour a day, during school days. He wants me to get bigger. Most of the time I don’t feel like it, so I lie and say I do, when I don’t. What are you writing?”
“You aren’t scared you’ll get caught?”
“Father is at work all day. Mother usually has a nap in the afternoon when I’m supposed to be running or lifting weights. She doesn’t pay any attention anyway; she takes her sleeping pills and has a nap.”
“I see.”
“Sorry, was that a question?”
“No. No, I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“Oh, a hamster. Do you understand?”
“No. Not really.”
“Okay. Richard, please don’t roll your eyes at me. It’s disrespectful.”
“Sorry. What don’t I understand about the hamster?”
“I would like you to think about that and explain it to me. You don’t have to answer right now but I want you to realize that all of these answers are in you. You just don’t know how to order the questions to make sense of it all. It’s okay, you’re eleven years old…”
“I’m thirteen.”
“…the answers and questions to all of these problems will come in time. You just have to trust in that. This is a confusing time for you. You’re at the point when things you took for granted as fact come into question, things you thought were solid and true become grey and murky. It’s scary because you don’t know where these cracks in your foundation will stop. You’re just starting to realize that your parents are human and prone to fault…”
“Just starting?”
“…like everyone else. This is when you learn that Santa isn’t real…”
“He’s not?”
“What?”
“Santa’s not real?”
“Um. It’s a metaphor.”
“What are you writing?”
�
��Do you know what a metaphor is, Richard?”
“I think so.”
“It’s something that stands for something else.”
“Like what? I don’t get it.”
“Like when someone calls working life a rat race. Do you understand?”
“Like when people say they’re so hungry they could eat a horse?”
“No, that’s hyperbole.”
“Oh. A metaphor is a kind of a lie though. You’re calling one thing something else. The people in the race aren’t rats, are they?”
“No, Richard, it’s not a lie. It’s a different way of describing the truth, a different way of looking at a thing. Sometimes you have to look at something in a different way to get deeper into it, to understand it on a deeper level. Some would say a metaphor is really a more truthful way of communicating.”
“I get it. It’s like the hamster. The hamster is a metaphor.”
“Exactly, like the hamster. Have you ever had thoughts of attempting suicide, Richard?”
“No.”
“Are you lying?”
“No.”
“Perhaps you ought…”
“Perhaps I ought to lie?”
“No, Richard. Perhaps you ought to think about attempting suicide.”
“Do you mean metaphorically?”
“No. For real. Literally.”
“Why would I do that? I don’t want to kill myself.”
“No. No, good God, no. Richard, no. That is not what I’m saying. I’m not saying you should commit suicide. What I am saying is attempting to commit suicide.”
“Oh.”
“Yes. It’s a very different thing that you were thinking of. My goodness, Richard. Very different.”
“Yes, very.”
“Let me explain. From our brief meeting so far, it’s apparent that, under the surface, you have a strong craving for the attention of your peers and your parents. You feel that attention is owed to you and it’s overlooking you. Everyone has the need for attention. Some crave it more than others. It’s perfectly normal, perfectly natural. You shouldn’t think of it as a character flaw… ever. Lighting fires is a way for you to get the attention you need, but it garners feelings of fear and alienation, anger and confusion in those around you. It’s the wrong kind of attention, not the kind you want or need. Attempting suicide, on the other hand, brings forward sympathy, caring and a host of positive, motherly, nurturing feelings.”
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