Betti on the High Wire

by Lisa Railsback

  “Weird,” said Bobby Ray.

  “Betti, do you want to work at the zoo?” asked Ms. Stacy, looking awfully confused.

  “No,” I started slowly. I had also painted a soldier who probably looked like a zoo man, but I didn’t want Ms. Stacy to put me in the zoo. “I want to be in the circus. Again. I was in the circus. Before. Before it burned.”

  The Summer Five stared.

  So out of nowhere I added: “And that is where my eye got broken.” I pointed at my fish eye.

  Timmy gulped. “In the circus? How?”

  “What happened?” gasped Tabitha with her mouth wide open.

  Suddenly, I was very interesting. My words tumbled out in a mish-mash of gobbledygook. “Well ... I walk on a ... a line ... up in the sky.”

  “The high wire?” asked Timmy, spitting out of his wire teeth and squinting his eyes.

  “Yes. High Wire.” I didn’t know what a high wire was, but I was sure I must’ve walked on it. I went on: “My mama stands at one end of high wire. She is the tallest woman. In a whole world. With a tail.”

  “WHAT?” hooted Jerry. “No way.”

  “And my dad... he is green.” I didn’t know the words for bumpy or alligator so I sort of pinched at my body. “He stands down at bottom.” I pointed at the ground. “To catch me. If I fall.”

  “Totally freaky,” exclaimed Bobby Ray.

  “The people watch me. They pay banana. And they go like this.” I clapped for effect. “But one night Snake Lady, named Sister Baroo, falls asleep. Her snakes ran away. And one of her snakes crawled up ... up into the sky ... on my high wire.

  “The snake”—I puffed up my chest, my arms rose up—“its head came to my face, like this. SSSSSSS.” I hissed at the Summer Five and they all scooted back on the grass. “Sister Baroo say, ‘That snake is magic! It will give you good luck. Or bad luck. It is hard to say.’ And then ... the snake takes tongue ...” I stuck out my tongue and wagged it around for effect. “... and eats my eye.”

  “Gross.” Tabitha looked like she was going to be sick.

  “Boy,” said Ms. Stacy. “Wow.”

  “My eye is broken.” I shook my head sadly and bugged out my bad eye.

  “Sounds like bad luck to me,” mumbled Bobby Ray.

  I shrugged. “But people love me. ‘We love you,’they say. And they love my bad eye.”

  “Where are they then?” asked Sam, scratching at her hair. “That Sister Baroo snake lady? And your mom and dad?”

  I took a deep breath. “They are lost. Maybe mermaids. They sing. With ghosts. And they look ... for me. But I am not a toast. I mean, a ghost.”

  Bobby Ray had a little smile on his face. “That seriously doesn’t make any sense.”

  And that’s when the mean boys started laughing like crazy.

  I looked around for George in the clusters of campers. He was far across the play yard making sand blobs. He kept looking up to watch the second graders climb the enormous funny-colored things coming out of the ground. They were swinging like monkeys with their arms. Even though George couldn’t swing because of his lost arm, he didn’t care. I could hear him giggling as if it was the best day of his life. Which just figured.

  I looked over at Mayda too. She’d been listening very carefully to my story, I could tell. Her nose was out of her book and her eyes were wide open, watching everything.

  After Ms. Stacy hushed up the mean boys, Timmy asked, “When do we get to make lava come out of the volcano, Ms. Stacy?”

  “Right now, Timmy. I’ll be right back, kids. Sit quietly please.” Ms. Stacy ran off to get lava supplies.

  I had no idea what lava was, but I definitely wanted to see it.

  Suddenly out of stupid Bobby Ray’s mouth came, “I’m a starrrr. In the circussss.”

  I moved my lips but no words came out.

  “And that’s where I broke my eye!” Jerry pretended to poke his finger in his eye. He fell over backward and rolled around on the grass. “The snakes! They ATE it!”

  I pretended that my ears were out of order.

  “It’s a good thing my mama and dad are coming any day...”

  And then I’d had it.

  “They ARE coming to get me!” I shouted as loud as I could. I gave Bobby Ray and Jerry the meanest scariest look my bad eye could give. “I AM IN THE CIRCUS! You do not understand ANYTHING.”

  Suddenly ... our huge volcano exploded! My Big Mouth made our balloons pop one by one, which made our volcano cave into one big pile of crusty mush.

  “Whoa,” said Tabitha.

  “Seriously freaky,” said Bobby Ray.

  “Ew,” said Timmy.

  “Oh my goodness,” said Ms. Stacy, who’d come jogging back when she heard me screaming. She slapped her hand to her forehead.

  Sam took the wad of gum out of her mouth and stuck it on the mess of goo.

  “I hate this art project flaky stuff,” she said, picking globs of white volcano out of her pointy hair.

  I looked over and saw Mayda laughing on the grass, at least a little. So I laughed a little too.

  Our volcano lay in a huge flat, floury, popped balloon-ey heap all over the wooden table. Maybe this was the lava. No one had anything to say—no Big Mouth words—as we all stared at it. I thought it’d probably be stuck there forever. At least maybe the Summer Five learned one thing from my important lessons:

  This was definitely a people disaster.

  Little Traitor and My Trip

  I STOMPED ACROSS the play yard in a straight line. I was practicing for the circus. I was going to practice all night. Those mean boys didn’t know anything.

  “Babo! Babo!”

  Even in America George was about the slowest runner in the whole world. His new backpack bounced up and down like a sack of potatoes.

  “You want ... swimming poo?” George tilted his head and his eyes stared into space. He was trying to think of the right words. “Play with we? My horse. For KOOKEY. And swim?”

  My feet teetered. “I do not want a swimming poo or a horse, George. And I cannot play with you because I have to think about my car ear.” I rubbed my watery eyes dry.

  George ducked his head as a ball flew through the air and nearly took off his big ear. “Car ear? What is car ear?” He put his finger on my wet cheek. “What’s the matter, Babo?”

  “America is horrible. Stupid. Crazy.” I put my nose in the air and held my arms out. My hands were curled as pretty as possible. “I want to go home. To—”

  “To our circus camp,” George said softly. “I know, Babo. You always do.”

  “I’ve thought and thought about it. I’ve tried to be bad and the Buckworths still love me. So I’ve decided that we have to run away. Any day now. We have to try to run back to the big bird plane, and back to Big Uncle’s taxi, and back home.”

  George was quiet. Finally he said, “But ... I already have a home, Babo. I don’t want to go back there.” He looked back at the play yard. “I like it here.”

  I stepped off my high wire line. I put my arm around George and made him sit down next to me on the grass. “What about the circus? When it comes back again?”

  George poked his finger into the dirt. “I don’t think I can be in the circus anyway.”

  I knew he was thinking about his lost arm. “Everyone in the circus is broken, George.”

  “I want to be a doctor for animals. My mommy said I could be a doctor for animals someday.”

  “Our circus needs a doctor for animals. It’s a very important job, George. Think about it.”

  He thought about it. “But—”

  “I can’t leave you here all by yourself. Alone. In crazy America! You might get lost.”

  George tapped his finger on my knee and looked up at me. “My mommy won’t let me get lost. And I’m not alone. I have my mommy, and some new friends, and I have you, but—”

  “Don’t you see? You’re forgetting your real family. The leftover kids. You’re forgetting everything.” I stood up a
nd stomped my foot. “Just like a traitor.”

  Traitor was a bad, bad word in my country. George’s bottom lip stuck out like he was about to cry.

  Then I started walking fast, really fast, on my invisible high wire line, which had become crooked. George tried to catch up with me, knocking into my heels.

  “No, Babo! I never forget them!”

  I started counting my perfect steps—twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six—when I heard George’s mommy calling for him. Suddenly George wasn’t following me anymore. He was standing on the sidewalk, stuck.

  “I must go, Babo. My mommy—”

  “I know.”

  “Babo, to-morr-ow? Swimming poo? My horse house?”

  “Tomorrow,” I hollered back at him, “I may be gone.”

  “I don’t want you to go, Babo!” George called out to me and sniffled like crazy. “I want you to be happy. With me. Here!”

  I didn’t answer. But I did turn around and watch George. His mommy was waiting for him across the play yard. His second-grade Melon friend, named Stephanie, was waiting too. She was probably going to get a cookie, and swim in his swimming pool. George used to ask me every day at the circus camp if he could be my best friend. Now he ran toward his new mommy and his new friend.

  And then he was gone.

  Forty-eight. Step step step. Fifty-one. Step step. Fifty-three. I was definitely going to be a circus star. This was just the beginning. I’d be so good that the circus people would never leave me behind. They’d need me. I’d be so good that everyone would clap for me, even the Summer Five.

  I was watching my feet so closely, staring at my bright white play shoes, that I almost tripped over a book on the grass. A few books actually. And Mayda. Her legs were crossed on a curb between the grass and the street.

  “Hi Babo Betti,” said Mayda. “Are you going home now?” Her face was all red and patchy. From a terrible rash, or from picking, or from crying, it was hard to say.

  “Um, yes?”

  “Do you want to walk with me?” Mayda looked a little nervous as she picked up her books in her arms, and dropped two back on the ground. “I think we go the same way.”

  “I ... I have to wait,” I answered. “For Mrs. Buck-worth.”

  Mayda looked down and tapped her dirty shoe against the cement.

  “But ... you can wait too,” I suddenly blurted out. “And walk with me too. And Mrs. Buckworth too.”

  Mayda looked up and smiled. “Okay!”

  So I sat down next to Mayda and we waited. We kicked our heels against the curb.

  She finally asked, “Were you really in a circus, Betti?”

  I nodded. And gulped.

  “That’s really cool.”

  “Yes. It was ... is ... cool.” Which must’ve been the word for when the wind blew in my face when I was on the high wire.

  “Is it a traveling circus?”

  “Um, we have home ... a camp ... but we travel. All over the world.”

  “I travel too.” Mayda bit her chapped lip. “It’s not nearly so cool as being in a circus though.”

  “What is your car ear dream?” I asked her.

  “Me? Oh, well, I guess I want to be a photographer. I don’t know if it’ll happen though.”

  I had no idea what a photographer was, but I told her, “The world is an oyster.”

  Mayda just shrugged.

  I wanted to ask Mayda where she had come from and why she was a new student, and why she wasn’t in Day Camp like everybody else, and why Nanny lived next door sometimes. But Mayda didn’t look like she wanted to talk about any of it. Her lips were locked. Ugh.

  Instead she said, “Do you think you can show me? I mean, what you did? On your high wire?”

  “I don’t know. I ...” I squeaked. “I ... I need a line ... up to ... the sky.”

  But Mayda’s eyes sparkled behind her pink glasses as she looked up at the clouds. “It doesn’t have to be in the sky, Betti. It can be right here.”

  So I couldn’t say no. My knees were shaking as I stood up. “I ... I walk like ... this.” I put my arms out. I took one step. And another step. I curled my pinky fingers as if I was a real star. I raised my head in the air like an exotic bird, and tried to point my missing toes. One graceful step and another.

  And then ...

  I tripped on a clump of grass. “Ow ow,” I slurred. “Ow.”

  Mayda gasped. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded and rubbed my bad eye like I had a bug in it. Very clumsy.

  “That was still pretty good,” said Mayda. “I bet you’re really good.”

  I smiled, just a little, because I couldn’t help it.

  When Mrs. Buckworth came to pick up Mayda and me a few minutes later, we walked quietly past the old bicycle in the yard and the skateboard. Past the garden and the pond and the quacking ducks. Past the mailbox and the tree house. And then, after we reached Mayda’s house, Mayda turned to me and asked, “I wondered if, maybe, you would like to come back to my house? I mean, to play? Would you like to play with me someday soon?”

  Mayda didn’t understand that I couldn’t have any friends in America. I was going to be running away any day, and I had a terrible time leaving friends. But Mayda’s face looked awfully hopeful.

  Finally I stammered, “O ... okay,” because she was probably broken.

  “Really?” Mayda’s face lit up. “That’d be great!” She smiled as if I’d just given her a big fat present.

  Invasion of My Circus Camp

  SOMETHING WAS VERY., very wrong.

  Malibu Margie and Ramon had squished my snake tree and knocked over some leftover kids. Roller Derby Tina was sitting right in the middle of my fire circle. Jessie Lynn was smiling in her wedding dress on top of my lion cage.

  “I just want to play with it!” cried Lucy as I tossed her dolls one by one over my shoulder into the grass. “Please?” Her foot was still enormous but she was walking around with wooden sticks under her arms. “WHY can’t I, Betti?”

  “Your dolls are too ... perfect.” I watched an ant crawl through my miniature fire circle. “Circus people are not perfect.”

  “Mydolls aren’t that perfect.” LucyheldRoller Derby Tina up to her nose. Tina’s head was a bit squished from the roller skate accident.

  “And ...” I put my nose in the air. “It is MY home. For circus people.”

  “What circus? I don’t see any circus people!” Lucy picked up all of her plastic people and waved them over my circus camp. They were three times bigger than the Hairy Bear Boy’s empty tent or the snake tree.

  “You can’t see them.” I carefully fixed the lion cage and propped up the trees. “Because you don’t have a special eye. Like me.”

  “Maybe I can see them too. I’ll look really hard.” Lucy’s eyes got all squinty and googley as she stared at the ground. “I’m pretty sure I see them now. Yeah, I do. My dolls will just practice here. On these rocks.”

  “Those are NOT rocks. You are smooshing my pigs!”

  “Well.” Lucy rubbed her eyes. Her bottom lip stuck out like she was going to cry. “They don’t look like pigs to me. And the rest of it doesn’t look like a circus. It looks like a bunch of sticks.” Lucy gathered her dolls in a clump and stood up. “I’m going to make my own circus then. In my dollhouse. And everyone will come and see it.” She tried to carry her dolls as she hobbled on her wooden sticks toward the house. “You may not even be invited, Betti.”

  I shrugged. I moved my pig rocks into a circle. A chorus of rock-singing pigs. The tall Auntie Moo stick and the Babo stick—me—sat next to the river washing our clothes, and laughing private laughs.

  In about one second Lucy was back. “Can’t I play with yours? Yours is better.”

  I sighed and carefully put my sticks down. “You must be born in the circus. Not in America.”

  “How come you’re so bossy?” cried Lucy. “You weren’t born in any ol’ circus!”

  “Yes.” I took a deep dramatic breath so I
could begin my Big Mouth story. “In my circus, Fifi the elephant did show and clowns with red hair stood on her back.”

  “Did the clowns have hair like my hair?”

  I nodded. “And Teeny-Tiny Puppet Man did funny show about war.”

  Lucy squatted down next to me in the dirt. Her fat foot knocked down the Teeny-Tiny Puppet Man as she put her little hands on my feet.

  “One day ... soldiers come to circus camp. Fifi the elephant scream, ‘Climb up, climb up on me!’ She put her big fat nose in the air. So Teeny-Tiny Puppet Man climbed up on the clowns, and the Hairy Bear Boy climbed on Teeny-Tiny Puppet Man, and Cindi the lion—”

  Lucy scrunched her eyes. “The lion climbed on top of the elephant?”

  “BOOM!” I continued, and Lucy scooted back in the grass.

  “What was the boom?”

  “A bomb.”

  “A bomb?”

  “And Big Uncle’s tire. Boom!” I wildly waved my arms around for effect. “He climb up too. And Auntie Moo. And the leftover kids. I climb on very top. My dad wait below to catch us if we fall. But ... we did not fall.”

  Lucy’s eyes were wide open. She was listening very carefully, so I went on.

  “My mama waits for us. She is tallest woman in the world. She lifts us into the sky. In her hands. Big, big hands. Over the trees, over the high wire.” I raised my hands and stared dramatically into the Buckworths’ big tree.

  Lucy looked confused. “My mom said that your mom and dad died, Betti. A long time ago.”

  My whole body suddenly got stiffer than a scarecrow in a bean field. Birds could’ve made nests on my head and I wouldn’t have noticed.

  Lucy had a very Big Mouth. But my Big Mouth was louder.

  “NO!” I practically shouted, jumping up from the grass. “We are lucky. Mama and Dad and all circus people. We are IN THE SKY.”

  Fluffing up Jessie Lynn’s wedding dress, Lucy said, “Well, my mom said that your parents weren’t saved. And that’s why you got to come live here, Betti.” She tilted her head and looked up at me. “That’s why we wanted you to be in our family ’Cause you were an orphan.”

  My good eye was watering so much that I had to rub it, as if I was shooing away a hundred bugs. My nose was running so much that I had to wipe it with my sleeve. “No! We are SAFE.”