by Haley Tanner
“Hello. I am Vaclav. It is nice to meet you. Welcome to my house. Can I get you something to drink?” he said, and tried very hard not to sound rehearsed. Lena just looked down, embarrassed.
“Okay,” said Vaclav. Vaclav started to feel embarrassed as he went over in his head why Lena maybe didn’t answer him, why she looked down at the floor, embarrassed. He had said, “Nice to meet you,” but, of course, it was not the first time he had ever met Lena, because they had been in school together and were in the same ESL class in kindergarten. Vaclav felt his face grow hot. He became worried, but he saw that Lena’s face looked hot and worried too.
The three of them, the mother, the young magician, and the tiny girl, stood silently, looking at the floor between them.
“Does anyone need to use the bathroom before we leave?” said Rasia.
“No,” said Vaclav. “I already went.” He looked at Lena, but she said nothing.
“Okay, I pee and then we go,” said Rasia, and she turned and walked to the bathroom, leaving Vaclav and Lena to stare at the floor together.
CHILDREN UNDER FORTY-FOUR INCHES
…
As they walked to the subway station together, Vaclav and his mother made strange efforts at having conversations that would be of interest to Lena, and that were in clear and simple English so that she could listen and feel included, but also in no way required Lena to respond or to answer questions. They talked about how they would be starting first grade at the end of the summer, about shows Vaclav liked on TV, and about how hot it was outside, but Lena did not join in.
All the way along East Sixteenth Street, onto Avenue U, all the way into the subway station and up the stairs to the platform, Vaclav and his mother did a dance around Lena, trying always to keep Lena between them, but Lena walked slowly, looking only down at the ground, and so Vaclav and his mother kept falling back to keep her between them, to keep up the illusion that they were enjoying the morning together.
Lena felt unsure of what to do. She had never been out with anyone besides her babushka and the Aunt. When her babushka was alive, they barely ever went out, because her babushka was weak and she had meals delivered for free from the nice volunteers at Meals on Wheels, and Lena and her babushka would share those. So mostly they went out only to the store on the corner for toilet paper or garbage bags, and that was only very rarely. The Aunt rarely took Lena anywhere.
Also, Lena had never taken the subway, and she felt very scared because she had no money. She didn’t think the way that Vaclav did, which was with total trust that if he needed something his mother would give it to him, would know and prepare him. Often Lena needed money for things and the Aunt did not give her any. She had only asked the Aunt for money once, and then never did it ever again.
Lena was afraid as they got closer and closer to the subway that she would have to pay in some way, and that she would be embarrassed and would have to ask Vaclav or his mother for money, and also, even if she had money, she did not know at all what was supposed to happen at the subway, she did not know how to pay to board the train, and she was terrified.
When they approached the subway station, Lena hung back and would not walk any farther, because she did not know where to go in the strange tangle of gates that looked like cages, and she saw the people rubbing yellow cards through the machine, and she did not have one.
Vaclav stood next to Lena and waved through the big metal cages to the man who sat in the booth on the other side. Vaclav pointed to his own head and to Lena, and then held up two fingers. The spinning-cage gate made a buzzing sound, and Vaclav took her hand and said, “Come, we go through together!” and then, to make sure that Lena did not feel embarrassed, “It is more fun to go two together.”
Lena was amazed that Vaclav knew the man in the booth, amazed that he knew the special hand signals to get the man to open the complicated gate to let them both in for free. She did not know yet, as Vaclav would later tell her, that up to three children forty-four inches tall and under ride for free on subways and local buses when accompanied by a fare-paying adult, and when he did tell her, the mystery of the subway went away and a new, amazing feeling of freedom took its place, but the safe feeling of Vaclav holding her hand never went away.
On the train, Vaclav showed Lena the best place to sit (in the back, facing backward, by a window), and Rasia sat across from them, with her purse in her lap, watching as Lena watched everything and Vaclav watched Lena.
RIDING ON THE Q TRAIN
…
On the train Lena saw: a white lady with a big leather purse and big leather boots and big, frizzy hair talking to a black man who talked to himself; a glass bottle half full of juice that rolled back and forth around the train, bumping into everyone’s feet; a man in a business suit who picked up a newspaper from the ground and read it and tucked it under his arm to take it with him when he got off; a man with one arm; a lady who wore gloves like a doctor; a skinny lady eating chicken out of a paper tray; three girls putting makeup on one another’s faces; two old ladies holding hands; a teenage boy with a tiny mustache and huge headphones; a lady with a plastic bag full of plastic bags; three men with big black hats and curls on the sides of their faces; three ladies with the same exact haircut pushing babies in strollers; a man sleeping on his own knees; a woman feeding a baby from under her shirt; a woman crying under sunglasses; and two girls wearing white shirts and red skirts, laughing and whispering.
Vaclav saw Lena looking at everything. Vaclav mostly looked out the window when he rode the subway, and it took a very special thing, like a homeless person with no shoes dressed up as an alien or someone singing very, very loudly, to make him look.
When Lena had seen everything that was on the train, she looked out the window. Out of the window of the train, Lena saw: houses with tiny backyards filled with toys, clotheslines and more clotheslines, graffiti in bright colors, garbage that looked familiar and unfamiliar, the tops of buildings, billboards somebody forgot about, billboards with somebody’s name written on them in black spray paint, the sky, pigeons in trees, the stop for Neck Road, the stop for Ocean Parkway, and then, finally, the sign for Coney Island/Stillwell Avenue, which was when it was time to get off the train.
THE WORLD, COLORED IN
…
Vaclav took Lena’s hand again when it was time to get off the train, and he pointed to the gap between the train and the platform, to show Lena to be careful. They both walked along the platform to the stairs, with Rasia following closely behind. Vaclav knew the way to exit the subway station, because he had been to Coney Island before, but he glanced back just to make sure that his mother was still there.
A hot wind was blowing as they came down the stairs from the elevated train platform, and at the edges of the wind Lena could smell a smell like the back of the supermarket, where they keep the fish. As they crossed Surf Avenue, Lena and Vaclav could see the Cyclone snaking above the hot-dog stands and the tarot-card lady and the kids and the ladies in tight denim shorts. In the space between the streets, past the Cyclone and the hot dogs and the people, Lena could see the beach and, beyond that, the ocean.
To Lena, who had grown up in a tiny brownish-gray apartment, with her tiny brownish-gray babushka, and walked along cement streets to a big brick school, it looked as if the world had been colored in.
Together they snaked their way quickly through the games and the booths selling hats and T-shirts, and all the wild things and wild people and fried food. It seemed like everyone was in their way, and to Vaclav it felt as if they were already wasting time. Lena, holding tightly to his hand, did not look around her at all the people the way she had on the subway. She looked through everything, straight ahead of her, and not once did she take her eyes off the big, blue ocean.
They squeezed and excuse-me’d their way through everything and came out the other end, on the hot wooden boardwalk, where the boards squished a little bit with each step like piano keys. Rasia made her way to a bench and sat d
own.
“One minute,” she said. “We take a rest.” It was too hot out, Rasia was perspiring everywhere, and her sciatica was roaring up her leg.
“Come on, Mom, let’s go to the rides,” Vaclav said.
“One minute,” Rasia said.
“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi …” Vaclav began, counting off the seconds to a minute.
“Listen, Mr. Ants-in-pants, I didn’t mean one minute exactly, I meant let’s rest for a little while,” she said. Vaclav looked like he would burst.
“Come on!” he said. “Time is running! We are missing the rides!” He could barely contain himself. She looked up at the gigantic Wonder Wheel looming over them. She could see, from where she sat, the baskets and the tops of the heads of the people inside. It didn’t look very fast at all.
“Come on!” he said. “Come on come on come on!”
“Okay, listen,” she said. “You go straight to the Wonder Wheel, you ride one time, and you come straight back here.” And she handed Vaclav ten dollars in singles. She and Vaclav had talked at length about all the rules that would prevent all of the horrible things she saw each week on American television from happening to her son. He knew not to talk to strangers, how to ask a policeman for help, how to yell and shout if anyone bothered him, and to stay exactly where he was if he got lost. He would be fine for five minutes.
“Yes!” he said. “Lena, let’s go!”
As she watched him walk out into the big American crowd, under the big American roller coasters, she felt the world spinning wildly away from her, and she sat and cried because she was happy and sad that he did not look back, because of how much she loved his little body and his awkward, cowlicky head and that tiny rib cage, and the way that he knew, already, to take a girl’s hand if she was afraid.
CHILDREN LESS THAN FORTY-FOUR INCHES BUT GREATER THAN THIRTY-FIVE INCHES
…
Vaclav and Lena walked across the boardwalk, away from the ocean, Vaclav dragging Lena behind him by the hand, because Lena kept looking behind her at the ocean, always wanting to see if it was moving, because it seemed to come toward her, away and back, and it seemed like it might creep up, or rush at her suddenly and crush everything. She imagined the water flooding in through all the stalls and all the rides; she imagined everything being underwater; she imagined floating on top of the water, sitting on the top of the Ferris wheel.
“First we will ride the Wonder Wheel! There is no line!” Vaclav said, and he pulled Lena toward the entrance, rushing to beat the imaginary hordes.
Vaclav and Lena waited at the gate for the man to come take their money. The gate was painted blue, and where it was chipping you could see that it had also been painted green, and orange, and black, and all the way at the bottom, it was red and rusty.
The man said, “Hey, girlie, you’re not tall enough to ride this ride,” and he pointed at a clown made out of plywood, extending a plywood hand, palm down. On the belly of the clown were painted the words YOU MUST BE THIS TALL TO RIDE!
The man had talked to Lena loudly, and she did not know what he had said, and she looked to Vaclav, feeling afraid. Vaclav looked at the clown, and he looked at Lena, and he knew there was no chance that he could maybe make the man think that Lena was tall enough, even by making her stand on her tippy-toes.
“It’s okay. Is not so fun anyway,” Vaclav said. Lena didn’t understand what had happened, she didn’t understand the clown or the words on the clown, she only understood that she had not been allowed to ride the ride but that Vaclav had forgiven her.
Vaclav and Lena walked back to Rasia’s bench.
“We cannot ride that ride; it is not for us,” Vaclav said. “We will go on a different ride.…” He turned behind him and pointed at the Cyclone.
“That one,” he said.
“Okay, you ride this ride and then come right back,” Rasia said, but at the entrance to the Cyclone, another clown told them that this time they were both not tall enough. Vaclav thought that his mother would not mind if they tried just one more ride. As Vaclav and Lena walked through all the stalls, they saw more and more rides, all of them guarded by the YOU MUST BE THIS TALL clown. When they thought that they might have spotted a ride that did not have a clown, suddenly someone would move aside to reveal that the clown had in fact been lurking there the entire time.
Vaclav did not give up, however, and he pulled Lena through the people and the rides and out the other end, so that they were almost back on Surf Avenue and Lena could not see the ocean at all. If they had only walked the other way, they would have found all the kiddie rides, but they didn’t.
Vaclav and Lena stood on the corner, the rides behind them, the subway and all of Brooklyn and then all of Manhattan and the United States of America ahead of them. They did not know it yet, but they were standing right in front of the world-famous Coney Island Sideshow theater.
THE WORLD FAMOUS CONEY ISLAND SIDESHOW THEATER
…
“Only five dollars!” They turned around to see a man in a black hat and a tuxedo suit, standing on a tiny stage in front of a building painted in wild colors. There were signs all over the building that said freak show and beer, and these were things, in addition to the very dark entrance, that made Vaclav think that he and Lena were, again, too little to go in.
“Men, women, and children! Human beings of all ages, shapes, and sizes, step right up! Come on in!” the man hollered. The man had said “all ages, shapes, and sizes,” but no matter what the man said, Vaclav thought that he and Lena should stay away, because he had a strange feeling about the place, which reminded him of the Video Palace where he was allowed to look at any video or DVD in the front of the store, but when he had accidentally gone behind a black curtain, not out of curiosity but by accident, the video clerk had yelled at him and he had felt embarrassed and afraid and hot and angry.
Vaclav wanted something good to happen so that Lena would be happy, but there were no more rides. So he decided to take a risk. He took out all of his dollar bills, and he handed them to the man who had yelled, “Come on in!” The man leaned back as he slid Vaclav’s dollars into his back pocket, and then he reached out his hand to shake Vaclav’s hand. Vaclav took it, afraid still that the man would turn them away, and that as punishment the man would keep his money. The man shook his hand up and down.
“That’s a good choice, son! Show’s starting, go ahead on in!” The man let go of Vaclav’s hand, and in they went, into a dark hallway. At the end of the hallway there was a brightly painted sign that said FAMOUS CONEY ISLAND SIDESHOW THEATER with a big arrow beneath it, pointing to a door that was painted black and had dusty footprints on it.
Vaclav opened the door, and he and Lena stepped into the theater and a tingle went through their bodies from the tops of their heads all the way down to their toes inside of their socks and sneakers, and they both kept their sounds inside, sounds that were gasping or giggling or yelling, but the sounds pushed around inside of their heads and their eyeballs grew bigger and bigger with the pushing of the sounds, so that they could see more and more and more of what there was to see. They had to leave halfway through so that Vaclav’s mother would not worry, but what they saw was enough to change everything.
After the sideshow, Vaclav and Lena went right back to Rasia. Without even talking about it, they knew that they were going to keep the sideshow a secret. Something can feel like it should be a secret if it is very close to your insides, so that if you tell it and someone else says a bad thing about it or, worse, laughs at it, then you will feel very hurt. Also, Vaclav knew that he had not exactly followed the rules, that the sideshow was not exactly the same as a ride, and that he might get in trouble if he told his mother. So it became a secret.
When Rasia asked them how the ride was, Vaclav told her that it was great but that he was ready to go home, because it was so hot out and because the rest of the rides were stupid and boring. When they got home, Vaclav and Lena w
ent immediately into Vaclav’s room to be alone with what they had seen.
The very first thing they did was make a list of the sideshow performers, and the tricks that they had performed, and all the things they had used.
FIVE YEARS LATER, SOMETHING ELSE THAT BECAME A SECRET
…
“The golden fringed bikini of Heather Holliday,” says Lena. She says it quietly, like she is breathing it, not like she is saying it to Vaclav, just like she is saying it to the universe, like she is saying a prayer.
He looks down at Lena from his chair. Lena sees the concern on Vaclav’s face, mostly in the eyebrows and a little bit around the nose.
“The golden fringed bikini of Heather Holliday,” says Lena, “is perfect.”
Vaclav knows that this is not a good thing for Lena to wear, and he also knows that Lena wants very badly to wear it.
“Okay,” says Vaclav, “for you it shall be.” Lena smiles and begins thinking about how to replicate the most amazing costume ever worn by any magician’s assistant anywhere in the world, ever.
“We begin planning the act tonight. We begin with lists,” Vaclav tells Lena, and Lena gets on her belly on the floor next to the bed and lengthens her body out at the hands and at the toes so that she can reach far under the bed and with her fingertips touch and pull at the magical box that holds all the lists and plans for their first-ever magic show together. Vaclav plops down on the floor in front of her with his legal pad and his pen, ready to make more lists. Lena lifts the lid off the box gently, ceremoniously, careful not to disturb any magic that may be brewing beneath.
They begin by un-wax-sealing the many folded lists, one at a time, reading each one carefully. They start with the lists that they made the very first day they met each other, when they came home from Coney Island and Vaclav wrote down everything they saw, and all the things the master of ceremonies said about the performers.