by Haley Tanner
Rasia knows that her son has kept secrets from her many times but that he has lied to her only once, and she thinks about this time now, and she knows exactly where he has gone.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN
…
When Rasia buys a ticket for the famous Coney Island Sideshow, she is surprised at how familiar the little red ticket stub has become, how it looks to her, even as she sees the man tearing it off the big roll of hundreds of identical tickets, like a personal thing. She remembers the first day with Lena at Coney Island, the day when she knew her son had lied to her, the day when Lena became the most important person in his life. She remembers going through his tiny pockets that night by the washing machine, finding the red ticket stub, remembers reading the words. She remembers the sink of her stomach when, after he told her they had gone on a ride, she found, in his pocket, two ticket stubs to the sideshow. The sideshow!
Now, as she walks into the sideshow’s theater, through the dark hallway, through the black door, she hopes that he will be there and that he will not be there, and she tries to breathe a little bit into the spaces around the awful thing she has to tell him.
HEATHER HOLLIDAY
…
Inside the sideshow’s theater there is an audience of only one person, one boy magician. He is wearing his black electrical-tape-and-cardboard top hat, he has covered his sneakers in silver aluminum foil, and his hands, inside his white magician’s gloves, are folded politely in his lap.
When he sees his mother come into the theater, he is surprised and confused about how she knew to find him here, and then afraid that he is in trouble, but mostly he is relieved. It has been very bad, very scary, to sit alone in the dark theater, knowing that something bad has happened to Lena, something terrible that would stop her from coming on the day of the show. He does not feel nervous for being in trouble with his mother for sneaking out. He guesses correctly that today is a day during which there is no getting in trouble for the normal things that usually get you in trouble.
Rasia comes and sits next to him, and she puts her arms around him, and he starts to cry. The lights go down; the show is about to start.
“Do you want to go home?” Rasia whispers.
“No,” Vaclav whispers. “I want to stay.”
Rasia is glad, because she is still unsure of what to tell Vaclav, and she is curious about the sideshow. Vaclav wants to stay to see the show because he is afraid of the day moving forward any more, and he knows that soon the day will move into a new time, and the time before, the time he spent sitting alone in the theater, not knowing anything, will be gone, and he will know something. There is no going back once you know something, because from then on, you always know it.
Together, they watch Insectavora climb the ladder of swords, then they watch the glass eater eat glass, and they watch the human blockhead hammer nails into his nose. Vaclav stays nestled under Rasia’s arm, and even when the Great Fredini comes on and does a magic act that is both astounding and hilarious, Vaclav cannot keep the tears from coming into his eyes.
When the lights in the theater go down, just before the last act, Vaclav knows what is coming next.
Heather Holliday is very tan, not like she is tan from the sun but like she is a person who was born with skin that is already tan, and her hair is two different colors, light blond and black, and it is done in a hairstyle like a lady from black-and-white television. She has cheeks like a little girl’s, and a silver loop through her nose. She smiles without showing any teeth, and her smile is like a wink.
She is wearing the golden bikini.
There are things about Heather’s golden bikini that make Vaclav sad about Lena.
Heather Holliday’s bikini is very small, and a lot of her skin is showing, but she does not look naked at all. The skin that is showing, the skin of her belly and the tops of her thighs, does not look like private skin. She is wearing black fishnet stockings on her legs, and her legs look strong, like the legs of a superhero, not like Lena’s tiny legs. Also, Heather wears white high-heeled shoes, but she wears them like she could run in them, like she could do anything in them. Lena’s feet look shy, always trying to hide behind each other, even in sneakers.
The best thing about Heather Holliday is the way that her arms are hanging casually at her sides, like she is holding someone’s hand or holding a grocery bag with just a candy bar in it, when what she is holding are two big, long, shiny swords, like a knight in medieval times.
She takes the center of the stage, and she stands there, with her big winking smile and her feet in her white high heels slightly pigeon-toed.
At first Rasia is appalled: The girl can’t be older than twenty-five, she’s wearing almost nothing, and she has in her nose a ring like a bull—disgusting. But the way that she walks to the center of the stage and curtsies, and the way she smiles, is elegant. When she lifts her chin and tilts her head all the way back, Rasia wants to rush up on the stage and stop her from hurting her tender, exposed neck, to tell her that this is not something for such a nice girl to do, that she could easily find work as an administrative assistant; Rasia could help her. Heather opens her mouth wide, and Rasia is finding the whole performance terrifying, but she can’t look away.
When Heather actually swallows the sword, she makes it look easy. Rasia is surprised to think that this sword swallowing is lovely, and that when Heather pulls the sword out, it doesn’t look like it hurts at all. Rasia thought that it was going to be disgusting, but aside from a little bit of slobber on the sword after she pulls it out, it is actually pretty.
Heather swallows three more swords and then leaves the stage all of a sudden without taking her bows, but she returns a moment later with the man who hammered nails into his nose.
Heather pushes a box on wheels onto the stage. The man explains that she will contort herself to fit in the box, and that he will then drive swords through it from every angle. He announces that the audience must be quiet and to focus closely on this trick, because it is extremely dangerous. Vaclav has never seen this trick performed before, but he has read about it in The Magician’s Almanac, so he is very interested. He thinks that this might be a perfect trick for the magic act, that Lena is the perfect assistant for this trick, because she is so small.
The nail-nose man helps Heather step into the box and watches as she folds her feet and legs under her, and then adjusts and readjusts and squishes down so that she is completely inside the box. Without warning, the man plunges Heather Holliday’s long sword into the side of the box. Rasia gasps loudly, and Vaclav thinks he heard a tiny squeal from inside the box in Heather Holliday’s voice. She’s been hurt, thinks Vaclav. His mother grabs his hand and holds tightly.
The nose-nail man seems not to have noticed, and he plunges another long sword into the side of the box, perpendicular to the first. A small wheezing cough comes from inside the box. Rasia expects, at any moment, to see blood dripping to the stage from the bottom of the box, and as the man lifts yet another sword and prepares to stab it through the box, she again fights the urge to rush forward to the stage. She is sure at once that Heather Holliday is dying slowly, losing blood inside the tiny box, and sure just the same that it is all part of the trick.
Vaclav doesn’t want to think anymore about doing this trick with Lena.
The man turns to the audience and announces that as an unprecedented treat, he will invite the audience to come to the stage and peer inside the box. He unlatches the lid and peers inside from above, and Vaclav and Rasia hold their breath, because they are sure that Heather Holliday is dead, impaled inside the box, but he only smiles and then beckons the audience to come to the stage.
Vaclav and Rasia get up from their seats in the theater slowly. They feel at once excited to go onto the stage and to peep inside and to see secrets, and they also feel bad for wanting to peep and to see. Vaclav feels nervous to be so close to Heather Holliday, and to look at her in the box.
Vaclav steps onto the stage firs
t, one aluminum-foil-wrapped sneaker after the other, and turns to help Rasia up onto the stage. The stage is only a little more than a foot high, and for Vaclav it is easy, like taking stair steps two at a time, but for Rasia, who is older and thicker than other mothers, and is creaky from the changes in climates in her life, it is difficult to get on the stage.
Vaclav takes her hand firmly in two of his, and she concentrates on holding her purse and puts one foot on the stage, and they both heave a little bit so that she is on the stage, two feet and two ankles and thick-soled shoes. They both feel the hollow plywood shell of the stage beneath them; they both feel it is less solid than they would like, less solid than they had thought it would be.
They approach the box, still holding hands.
The nose-nail man tells them to get a close look.
They both inch closer.
The box is very small, and Heather is curled up inside just like a baby, except that her arms are over her head instead of at her sides. The swords are going in all directions all around her. There is one sword that fits across her middle, where her stomach sinks away from her ribs before rising up again to meet her hips. There is one sword squeezed between her thighs. There is a sword just above her cheekbone, so that she is not able to turn her head.
Vaclav and Rasia are not able to focus on the swords and the incredible way that Heather Holliday has contorted around them. They are awkwardly trying to seem comfortable looking down at a live human being in a golden bikini stuffed into a box. Heather Holliday is not able to turn her head, but she looks at them out of the corner of her eye, and she still wears the smile that is like winking.
Vaclav can’t stop staring at Heather Holliday’s exposed left armpit. There is a diamond of tiny black stubble, and lines of white crusting the folds in her skin. Vaclav feels that this is the most private part of someone he has ever seen before. Even Heather Holliday cannot see this place on Heather Holliday’s body.
They spend many seconds looking into the box while the nose-nail man looks at them, while Heather Holliday looks around, and up at the ceiling, like a person in a dentist’s chair while the dentist’s hand is in her mouth. Vaclav tries to find a good place to look, but among the golden bikini and the skin and the fishnet and the armpit, he does not know what to do.
“Is lovely,” says Rasia, with her heavy, thick voice, surprising them all.
THE LIGHT OUTSIDE
…
After the show, Vaclav and Rasia leave the theater, and are blasted by the sunlight, the smell, and the rush of traffic outside. They walk toward the subway, holding hands, but they do not talk.
When they get home, Rasia tells him to change, and she goes to the kitchen, and she pours juice into two little glasses, and she sets them on the kitchen table, and then she sits. She hears the sounds of Vaclav changing into his regular clothes; she hears drawers opening and closing.
When Vaclav takes a seat across from her at the kitchen table and looks at her, so afraid and worried, she takes a deep breath and starts.
“Do you know this, what has been happening to Lena?” she says. Vaclav’s face tells her that he doesn’t know what she means. “Did you know that not-nice things were happening to Lena?” she asks.
“No,” says Vaclav, thinking Maybe.
“Did you know that Lena’s aunt was not taking care of her?” she asks.
“No,” says Vaclav.
“I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe. So I had to say something, because I was worry about Lena.” Rasia feels the conversation settle into the reality of the kitchen, feels that it is getting easier to talk about these things.
“What did you have to say?” says Vaclav.
“I had to say somethings to the police,” she says. This makes Vaclav feel that his mother might be crazy for reporting something not nice to the police. Vaclav thinks of the not-nice things happening all the time at his school, like when the gym teacher yells at everyone to climb the rope faster, or when kids push one another in line for the water fountain. He thinks of large SWAT teams of police like they are on TV and on Russian news, rushing all the time up and down the corridors of his school, trying to stop all the not-niceness.
“Why did you do that?” says Vaclav.
“So that if things are happening, they are stopping them.” This makes Vaclav feel that maybe the not-nice things are actually very serious, for the police to be interested.
“Right now, the police are also thinking that not-nice things are happening. So they are taking Lena away.”
“What?”
“They are protecting her.”
“Where is she?”
“I don’t know. I am not her family. They will not tell me.”
“How will we find out where she is?”
“I don’t know. I can ask the police. I don’t know. I don’t know if they will be telling me. They say they are putting her somewhere safe.”
“Who is with her?”
“Nobody.”
“Nobody?”
“I cannot go because I am not her family.”
“And …”
“And you cannot go because you are not her family.”
“Is her aunt with her?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Her aunt, she was not taking care of Lena.”
“She is alone!”
“Yes.”
“Call her aunt and ask where she is!”
“Her aunt is not knowing either. No one is knowing where she is, so that she is safe.”
“Lena will want me to know! Why can’t I know?”
“No one can know.”
“I am not no one.”
“I know.”
“Who will talk for her?”
“What?”
“Who will talk for her? Who will make sure that she is okay?”
“There are people.”
“What people?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where is she? I have to go be with her. She’s alone and she’ll be afraid. You have to tell me!”
“I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” And now Rasia realizes that she was wrong about the parts of this conversation to be nervous about. She was as afraid as any mother is afraid both to embarrass her son and to embarrass herself, to not give him all the right information and to give him too much information, which would scare him. What she could not predict was that Vaclav would not focus on the bad things that happened to Lena at the hands of people bigger and more powerful than himself. He would focus on the very bad thing that Rasia did, which was to take away his only friend.
THE SAME BUT HORRIBLE
…
When Vaclav went to school on Monday, no one knew anything about what happened over the weekend. No one knew anything about Lena, or not-nice things, or the Aunt, or about Rasia ruining everything and calling the police. No one knew anything, and everything was the same but horrible.
Mrs. Bisbano asked Marina and Kristina again about where Lena was, and they didn’t know, but they didn’t seem too bothered.
Vaclav thought they might come by to talk to him, to ask him if anything had happened to Lena, but they didn’t.
Sometimes some people just stop coming to school. Like Genesis’s half-sister, who used to come but now lives in Puerto Rico most of the time and just comes for the summer.
Lena is gone, and it is because Rasia, who knows nothing about America and American police except for what she sees on Law & Order, and who has made a huge mistake and told some things to the police, probably not even the right things—probably they did not understand her, with her rumbling voice and her thick tongue—and she made them take Lena away because of her stupidity; she made them take Lena away.
Vaclav is like an empty person because he has nothing.
Vaclav has nothing, except for anger.
At his mother.
All day the anger is growing, and it is making new anger, and it is burning the back of his t
hroat.
Every day he wakes up thinking that Lena might come back. All day at school, he waits for her to walk through the door.
After school, Vaclav comes home and goes into his room directly, and he does not come out for dinner and does not come out when he is called, and does not come out or respond when his mother sits outside the door, crying quietly and saying “Please, please.”
A MAGICIAN, A MOTHER,
AN AMERICAN GIRL
…
“Knock, knock. I am coming in,” Rasia says loudly to the closed door of Vaclav’s bedroom. Rasia has a new habit of both knocking and saying that she is knocking. This is a new habit that began when Vaclav became a person taller than she is, singing in the shower in a voice so low that on occasion Rasia hears this voice and thinks, Oh, no, a man has broken into our home and is showering in our shower, a serial killer like the man on the Special Victims Unit television show who has a cleansing ritual that he must do before he brutally kills his victims, and this man is going to come out of the shower and kill me.
She is amazed by him. When did he become seventeen? He was little forever, and now he’s suddenly big like a man, and has a girlfriend. She worries, and this is the motive for Rasia’s knocking, and this is also the motive for Rasia to enter the bedroom quite frequently.
“Mom! Come in! I want to show you something,” Vaclav shouts. Rasia can hear in his man voice the softness and insistence of the little boy who is always needing to show her this, show her that. This needing is not going away, so far.
Rasia opens the door and feels relief because the bed is made and is totally unrumpled, and her little boy and the pretty American girl are not tangled together naked in the bed as she dreads. Her son is standing and holding many dollar bills. This is part of his newest trick, which is to make dollar bills disappear. Why this is a trick he is wanting to learn, why this is a trick anyone wants to see, Rasia does not understand.