The Trapeze Act

by Libby Angel

  When the baby cried, Leda left it in its crib, climbed onto the roof and sat on the corrugated iron with legs outstretched, listening to the transistor radio she kept up there, and gazing across the godforsaken town or painting her nails.

  Kingston quickly intuited that if he caused her any grief, Leda would likely abandon him. I could walk out that door and be in Amsterdam in less than twenty-four hours, she would remind him, as she jiggled the bassinet with her foot.

  Instead of crying, baby Kingston smiled and smiled. And as his beauty grew, so did his charm, until his smile became a barb. While her back was turned he bit other children or shot out their teeth with a well-aimed shoe, but under her gaze he was unimpeachable.

  Leda could not believe the slanderous stories, could not understand why it was impossible to get a babysitter back a second time. It was inconceivable to her that this cherub, with his long eyelashes and heavenly smile could possibly behave in the diabolical manner he was so frequently accused of. Other mothers were jealous of his beauty, she reasoned, or had upset his delicate sensibility. When children ran away screaming, bleeding, and clutching their jaws, Leda accused them of overreacting or lacking a sense of humour.

  I, Loretta, her second child, was an altogether different sort of baby: ugly, yellow with jaundice, an arch complainer from the start; I was a whiner, a screamer, a moaner, a deeply dissatisfied soul, for which each of my parents blamed the other’s genes. No amount of coddling, singing, rocking or swaying would soothe me, it was said. I was inconsolable, as if my birth were an epic tragedy from which I would never recover.

  For the first few months of my life, Leda returned often to her perch on the ridge capping. The rest of the time she wore earplugs or drove around town with the car stereo cranked up, Kingston strapped to the passenger seat, me in the bassinet in the back as far from her ears as possible.

  She’s worse than King Lear, she lamented to my father, who spent eighteen hours a day at work. That was the deal. The men went out to work while their wives stayed at home placating the progeny. Unless, like the housekeeper Mrs Heaven, their husbands were useless or dead—in the case of Mrs Heaven, Leda could never determine which.

  My mother accepted her new status with increasing ease: Please clean the oven, she would order Mrs Heaven. And Mrs Heaven would do it right after she finished ironing the underpants. I have a hankering for some red meat, she would say, and less than an hour later, a steak on a plate would appear like a bunch of silk flowers out of a magician’s coat sleeve. There would even be a cloth on the table.

  Gilbert gave Mrs Heaven generous tips and Christmas bonuses, and, over time, Leda appeared to develop a fondness for her, ordering her to sit down and rest whenever she looked tired or menopausal, pouring her an afternoon tipple from an increasingly large selection on the sideboard.

  But, behind her back, Leda continued to refer to Mrs Heaven as the servant. Zo, she would say to my father, the servant has made us roast chicken for dinner. Or, the servant has ruined your dickeys again.

  While my brother outshone his peers in all respects but social niceties, I, the second child, sat empty-headed on the carpet, without the will to raise myself to my feet. If I wasn’t sitting on the floor like a moron, my mother recalled, I was in spasms, arching my back and screaming. And when, at last, I could walk of my own volition, I walked straight into the furniture, doorframes and pot plants, until one day, when my father was burning autumn leaves in the backyard, I toddled headlong into the fire.

  It is one of my first memories, my eyes whirring back in my head, the scream pouring forth from my mouth. I remember Gilbert hauling me out of the flames, into the house and under a cold shower; I remember blisters spreading in continents over my legs.

  The blisters burst and wept. The skin peeled off leaving my legs raw. My father was hangdog for weeks, rubbing the ointment in, winding the bandages round and round my infant legs while I sat stunned mute.

  A second child does not have the advantage of novelty, my mother liked to remind me.

  I was not autistic, my parents realised, but half blind.

  Leda soon exhausted the symbolic possibilities of my condition. My blindness was not a disability but a mystical power. I was Tiresias the prophet one minute, Milton the poet the next.

  But Gilbert didn’t buy it. Everybody likes to think their child is exceptional, he said flatly, even when it is clear they are not. In any case, she will still need to be able to tell the difference between three and eight, and cross a road without being hit by a truck. As soon as he had a minute he would make an appointment at the optometrist. In the meantime, Leda decided, I needed to develop some compensatory skills. In the circus, she had for some years acted as a knife thrower’s assistant, tied to a turning target, arms and legs strung apart like a starfish. For the finale, the knife thrower was blindfolded, and he never once came close to impaling her. Like the knife thrower, I needed to develop greater spatial awareness and better coordination.

  So began my education. My brother and I spent entire afternoons with my father’s ties wrapped around our heads playing pin the tail on the donkey or blind chasey, which went like this: I ran around the lawn while my brother swung wildly at me with the closest object to hand, a chair or broomstick. Leda watched on the sidelines, laughing, applauding, urging me. Use your hearing. Listen to the sound of the broom swishing through the air. And for God’s sake, move.

  I had barely recovered from the burns when, during one of these games, I fell into a cluster of rosebushes and broke open the new skin on my legs.

  It was just a bit of educational fun, my mother told my father when he came home from work, while my brother stood an inch from my ear and threatened: It’ll be more than your legs you’ll have to sook about next time.

  In the next instalment of our lessons, Leda blindfolded us and drove us around in the car like hostages, yelling, Guess where are we now, children? What does the air smell like? And, when we stopped at the lights: If you could only see the look on the face of the woman in the car next to us!

  The optometrist raised my seat with a foot pedal until we were eyeball to eyeball. He swung a pair of robot eyes down in front of me, clamped my skull into the contraption, turned down the overhead lights.

  Nice—moody, my mother said.

  I looked at the rows of animals projected onto the wall in front of me, each line smaller than the last.

  And can you tell me what the animals in the third row are, beginning with the first?

  Rabbit, I guessed.

  Good try.

  We all know what that means, said Leda.

  The optometrist slid lenses in and out of the robot eyes, screwing, unscrewing, twirling knobs. His tie dangled in my lap.

  Better or worse?

  Cow.

  For God’s sake! my mother scoffed.

  The optometrist sighed.

  I tried to focus on the blue plastic lid of his Bic pen as he moved it from side to side in front of my face. He peeled back my eyelids with cold fingers and shone a bright torch into my pupils so that I could see the underside of my lids, the veins and blood.

  If she’s not blind yet, she soon will be, Leda said.

  After the examination, as a consolation for a lifetime of poor vision, the optometrist poured two jellybeans out of a jar into the palm of my hand.

  Zo, she can become toothless as well as blind, my mother quipped.

  The optometrist smiled woodenly. But, as blind as I was, I could see the look on his face as he opened the door for Leda and watched her walk through it.

  I wore an eye patch over my left eye for the next three weeks as instructed, barely an imposition after the blindfold training. My mother made mini eye patches out of paper and ribbon for all of my toys.

  Now my bed became a pirate ship, my toys pirates, ship hands and cooks. Dolls with frilly knickers were wenches. Using a length of rope around the bed end, Leda taught me how to tie knots—hitch knot, clove hitch, bowline, slip knot; circus kn
ots, sailor’s knots—my hands on her hands, ghosting the movements of our ancestors’ hands.

  She started calling me Captain, though I was not a natural leader. When the time comes, she assured me, you will bandage your breasts flat to your chest, raise your sail and wield your sword. Unless you would rather be a whore?

  My brother was less original in his mockery: Oi, cripple! How many fingers?

  At last the glasses arrived, coke-bottle lenses in blue plastic frames, so heavy they left a red mark on the bridge of my nose.

  You can only imagine my surprise when I saw them clearly, my family, for the first time. My parents loomed over me, dark angels, my mother’s smile like direct sun at noon, my father’s gold-capped tooth flashing in the cave of his mouth, the stubble of every whisker on his face.

  I began climbing things to get a better view of the world—furniture, trees, rocks and, later, the walk-in wardrobe. Perhaps I was my mother’s daughter after all. She only encouraged me. Conquer the heights, she said. She attached my glasses to my head with hat elastic so they wouldn’t fall off. Use your legs, she would call out, as I shimmied up the nearest street sign or public sculpture.

  I looked down on the world. My mother laughed, while the other mothers wheeled their pushers away.

  Less than a month later, Kingston stole the goggles right off my head. He took them up into the camphor tree, which he had laced with pulleys and ropes and a bucket to winch things up in. From the tree he would climb onto the shed roof where he had built a torture chamber for snails, spiders and insects. The glasses were to be used for burning beetles, or to start cremation pyres with dried twigs and leaves.

  When I tried to climb up the tree after him, my brother stomped on my fingers with his new Clarks boots. When I sat under the tree and cried, he spat at me from the glossy leaves: Shut up, mutant!

  By the time my mother retrieved them several days later, the plastic frames were snapped in two, the lenses scratched and blackened.

  Subsequent pairs did not fare much better, through no fault of my brother’s. Even with the elastic they were forever falling onto gravel, dirt or concrete while I whirled around the monkey bars. If I took them off, they were swept off the table and crushed underfoot. In a matter of weeks, the lenses were scratched, the screws fell out, the frames were bent or broken. While Leda did her best to repair them with pliers, gaffer tape and fuse wire, I often walked around in a blur, with one-armed glasses taped to my scone.

  As for Kingston, he moved on.

  On his first day of school, my brother released his grip on my mother’s hand and swaggered into the classroom without looking back. He began his scholastic career by ingratiating himself with his teachers—that smile!—and displaying a precocious aptitude for the three Rs—not just a pretty face! But no sooner did they turn to the blackboard than he stole money out of their purses or had one of his fellow students pinned to the floor in a chokehold. When the teachers turned around again he would be sitting at his desk, straight backed, hand raised, the answer to their question ready in his mouth.

  By the time I started at the same school three years later, my brother had sent two of his classmates to hospital and burnt down the toilet block, all without causing the least suspicion of his culpability. So blinkered were the teachers by his charms, they received me with expectation. Was I, too, a golden child, or just the half-blind runt I appeared to be?

  On my first day at school, I humiliated my mother by clinging to her skirts. She had spent her life conquering fear, but I, her spawn, watched the world wide-eyed and afraid. I was well versed in the heroic abasement of fear that was executed on a daily basis in the circus. This much I understood; hadn’t I conquered the roof summit only yesterday? But the less tangible dangers I now faced were entirely unfathomable to Leda.

  There is salt in your blood, she said, unclawing my fingers. We were born for rough seas.

  I stood outside the classroom in my black lace-up shoes with a thumb-and-a-half width still to grow into, holding my new blue case with the silver clips. The teacher had a smile like the gates of Hell. I turned heel and followed my mother down the corridor and out the door.

  Look, said Leda, pointing up to the sky. When I followed her gaze, she turned and ran away.

  Strength to your sword arm, she shouted back at me, flying out the gate.

  I heard the Volvo roar off.

  After school, Kingston and I waited outside the gates for over an hour before Leda came to collect us. Having sped through the school zone, she mounted the kerb, coming to a halt within a handspan of our feet.

  About bloody time, my brother sulked, whereupon our mother swerved off down the road again, leaving us to make our own way home.

  My brother became an expert in acts of bold defiance and quiet deception. One Saturday afternoon, on his way back to the storage room after the interschool tennis matches, our sportsmaster, Mr Oakes, saw smoke rising from the roof of the state-of-the-art toilet block. Moments later he saw my brother running through the car park, a petrol can in one hand, a box of Redheads matches in the other. (Despite his many talents, Kingston had no interest in tennis.) First thing on Monday morning Mr Oakes filed an incident report.

  As well as being a gifted sports teacher, Mr Oakes was one of the school’s fire wardens, and his quick actions with the fire extinguisher managed to save all but the roof of the new facility (and all without besmirching his tennis whites). The headmaster praised him in the school assembly and hoped the matter could be resolved without recourse to the law.

  Only then did the other teachers begin to suspect that there was a speck of truth in the rumours they’d heard about my brother. Maybe he really did drop a brick off the bike shed roof just centimetres in front of Mrs Porter? Maybe he really did push Troy off the monkey bars causing Troy to break his arm? And, as much as it choked them up to admit it, as much as they were glad of the new facilities, they had to face the possibility that it could well have been Kingston who had burnt down the original toilet block, too.

  The problem was that there wasn’t any proof. They had only Mr Oakes’ word against that of my nine-year-old brother, who promptly galvanised his side of the story with allegations of sexual abuse. Perhaps Mr Oakes had burnt down the toilet block himself in an attempt to destroy evidence? And if one of the students burned it down, who could blame a molested minor for responding to trauma in this way?

  My mother refused to discuss the matter with the school board and threatened to sue the school for slander. After hours of meetings, loath to become ensconced in a legal battle against a family member of one of the town’s most indomitable barristers, the school board composed a letter to my parents.

  Kingston was such a gifted child, they posited, he would surely be better placed to explore his potentialities in a learning environment that boasted superior facilities and a more rigorous curriculum than they, the school, with their meagre government resources, could offer at this point in time.

  Zo, said Leda. Case in point. She didn’t want her son turning out bureaucratic twaddle like that. Potentialities, ha-ha!

  In any event, it had long been decreed that my brother would attend the same school my father had attended, as my father’s father had attended before him and so on since the school’s inception in 1869, a school with arches, a clock tower and a chapel, its grounds maintained by gardeners and grounds keepers.

  In the interview, or audition as she called it, my mother reminded the deputy headmaster that, in his day, my father had been a stellar scholar at the school. Indeed, there had been enough scholarships, cricket-team captaincies, duxes and prefect appointments in the Lord family to give serious weight to my brother’s application. Next, my mother exhibited some of Kingston’s class reports from his pre-arsonist days, in which his teachers had written fawning remarks. And, in a final bid for a coveted place in the year-five intake, my brother smiled at the headmaster and shook his hand.

  The teachers called him Master Lord.

 
For the next few years I continued to go to the local primary school, almost invisible in the long shadow of my brother’s legacy. It had its upside—the school bully never bothered me and the teachers tried their best not to upset me, because who knew what lurked behind my benign-looking face?

  Well done, dear, Mrs Dawson would smile, handing back my maths test, an exact copy of my neighbour’s, for which we both scored thirteen out of twenty.

  In his more illustrious days at the school, my blue-eyed brother had twice played Joseph in the school nativity play, while year after year I was in the group of children left sitting on the carpet who were told, Those of you not yet cast will be shepherds.

  The speaking parts for girls, those of Mary and the angels, always went to girls with long hair. You can’t have a Mary with glasses, the other girls explained to me.

  My mother tried to console me. There were advantages to being able to blend into a crowd, she argued. It was not for nothing that, since time immemorial, wizards and apothecaries had been experimenting with potions in an attempt to disappear their corporeal forms. Feats that magicians worked years to accomplish with rabbits, watches and whatnot, I achieved on a daily basis with pedestrian ease.

  The teachers paid me special attention only rarely: once, when I climbed to the top of the jungle gym and stood balanced on the narrow bars, and again, when I climbed up the itchy-bomb tree and swung out on a branch overhanging the footpath. It was for breaches of propriety, rather than for any kind of accomplishment or beauty, that I shone.

  In my final year at the school, I took my place in the back row of the nativity tableau as usual, a Native-Birds-of-Australia tea towel affixed to my head with my father’s dressing-gown cord. I scanned the faces in the seating, trying to find my parents. Even in disguise, my mother was always more neon light than vaporous wraith, and, when I couldn’t spot her after a few seconds, I knew they had missed my moment. Then, as we took our bows, I caught sight of them through the window, locked out, late, running and laughing in the summer rain.