The Circus

by Olivia Levez

  I try not to hear the little voice in my head:

  She’s no worse than you.

  Cloud Swing

  ‘Christ almighty, what is wrong with you?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Lala is sitting up on the tiny platform, scrolling through her phone. She signals to Zella, the lighting technician up in the crow’s nest.

  ‘I cannot wait all day.’

  I blush, try to collect myself.

  ‘Sorry.’

  She scowls down. ‘Come on up, please.’

  I begin to climb, trying not to mind how the ladder wobbles. I am strong, though. All the shunting and carrying of staging and equipment has seen to that. I climb, one hand after the other, up the swaying ladder. Above me, Lala waits. The ladder’s attached to her platform. The platform’s attached to a steel frame, and also ropes that hang from the apex.

  ‘Why now?’ I say, when I am up at the top.

  She shrugs. ‘No reason.’ She pushes her phone into her jacket and zips it shut. Her eyes are pale-lidded without her swooping gold make-up; it makes her look much younger. Her hair is lighter too, the long glossy ponytail that she uses for performances gone. There’s a cluster of pimples on her forehead, which is pinched into a permanent frown.

  And then there’s the neck brace.

  Just looking at it gives me shivers, as if it’s a warning. Delilah is always full of dire tales of gore and horror: the Chinese acrobat crushed when he lost his balance and fell from the Wheel of Death; the circus elephant that went rampaging through the streets of Honolulu after kicking its handler and the ringmaster to a pulp in front of hundreds of little children.

  Lala becomes businesslike, as if this is a job she has to do, and she may as well get it out of the way. I don’t care, though. I crouch on the swaying platform and feel the blood buzzing through my veins. No one knows that this is where I come every night, when most people are asleep, and there is only the sound of crying babies or ghosting owls, and the distant hum of traffic. I climb up here, Suz, and this is where I write to you, did you know?

  I have my mother’s photo tucked into my pocket next to my heart. It’s in my blood, I think. This is where I get close to her. This is where I belong; finally know who I am.

  ‘Ready?’

  I nod, and Lala shows me how to dust down my hands with resin. I know how to do this; I have watched the acrobats many times. The dust clouds and vanishes. Up here, even the air feels alive. The pigeons feel it too; they’re shivering their feathers with the magic of it.

  ‘Hold here – like this.’

  Lala takes my hands and shows me the correct position. I am shocked at how callused hers are, her palms hardened and rough below her fingers. You sacrifice beautiful hands, being a trapeze artist. There is pain behind the beauty and grace.

  For the first time, I fasten my hands around the trapeze bar. It is worn and scruffy-looking. It has been well-used, the binding around the bar grubby and frayed. I look up. The side ropes near the bar have been wrapped tightly with black tape, similar to what you’d put around a tennis racket. It smells of effort and hard work and pain.

  My heart begins to race, and automatically I think of my pills. But there are no pills, not any more. That girl is gone, remember? I stare ahead, at the opposite platform. I don’t look down, even though I can feel the yawning space below us; I smell freshly raked sawdust and resin and sweat and the scent of rose oil that always seems to linger.

  ‘Hold on,’ I say. I feel inside my pocket for Suz’s chalk. Feel its reassuring silkiness.

  Now I’m ready.

  I stare straight ahead as Lala clips me into the safety harness. The nets are stretched below, too. I can hear the Chinese acrobats having a discussion in low voices.

  ‘You need to slow your breathing, stay calm.’

  There is concern in Lala’s voice. I can’t let her think that I am too weak for this. I am not that girl any more. I think of my tattoo spreading its wings across my back. I am powerful. I am strong. I can fly.

  ‘OK? Focus. Get ready.’

  She holds me steady around my waist. ‘Look forward,’ she says sharply, when I turn to her. ‘I will say when. You keep your eyes in front at all times. Focus. Focus. Keep your body straight. The momentum will do the rest.’

  I nod my head, my mouth dry. For a fleeting moment I am wondering if this is a good idea. Then I think of my mother’s voice. ‘Fly, little bird! Higher, higher!’

  ‘Ready? Hup!’

  Her voice is sharp, and, with a cry, I let go.

  And then there’s air and space and whooshing speed and the thudthudthud of my heart in my head and there’s nothing below me or around me or above me and then –

  ‘Good.’

  Lala catches me as I return to the platform, steadies me as I stumble a little.

  ‘OK?’

  I can’t speak.

  When I turn to her, panting and trembling, there is a half-smile playing around her lips, and then she switches it off. Becomes businesslike again.

  ‘Again. This time, keep your body straight, but try to relax.’

  I do it again and again, until the palms of my hands are raw and red, and my shoulders burn and my body is drenched with sweat. And each time, it feels more and more right; my arms feel strong and sure; my body and my thick, sturdy wrists were born to do this.

  If only Suz could see me now.

  Tumbling

  My body is changing, subtly. My shoulders are broader, wellmuscled. My abdominal muscles are corded with steel, my triceps hard as stone. My hands though are a mess.

  Lala shrugs when I show her. ‘Circus hurts,’ is all she will say. But she calls Kit for the first-aid pack.

  I flinch and shudder as Kit pulls away my bandage.

  ‘Oh god, I can’t look,’ I say.

  He turns over my hand and pours brandy over it – I hiss with pain. He takes a swig and laughs. ‘You can always pee on it,’ he says. ‘That’s what Russian athletes do.’

  But I am whimpering too much to answer. I watch as he takes a bottle of something brown and sticky and unscrews the lid.

  ‘What is that?’ I say.

  He smirks. ‘Friar’s Balsam. Cough mixture. It will help build up calluses. Ready?’

  I nod, throat tight. Clench my teeth as he pours the mixture straight onto the tear in my flesh. We watch as it bubbles and seals itself with a skin-like white powder. The pain is fierce fire, but somehow makes me feel high and exhilarated. It makes me want more pain, because then I feel buzzy and alive. Kit cups his hand under mine and holds it still while it heals. Lala waits, scrolling through her phone, scowling.

  It is time to be bandaged, and then I must go through it all again.

  ‘Hup,’ barks Lala, and I jump up and let go, keeping my eyes forward, my body straight.

  ‘Now, waitwaitwaitwait.’

  It’s such a rush, all that air and space around me. It’s worlds better than the feeling I got being on the rooftop, or hanging from the tallest tree. I focus on looking ahead at the other platform, where one day Lala will wait, ready to catch me.

  ‘Legs up!’

  At her command, I lift my legs forward and up, clench my tummy muscles and force them through the gap, until they’re up and over the trapeze. I feel the padded bar beneath my knees, feel the blood rushing to my head, and my heart buzzing with the thrill.

  ‘There you go, nearly there,’ she calls, as I near her platform again.

  I have hardly swung away from her when she shouts, ‘Hands off!’ and I let go like a flying angel, like a bird spreading its wings, like a child running downhill. Kit laughs and takes pictures on his phone but I am hardly aware of it because

  oh my God, I’m flying

  I’m flying

  I’m flying

  and the world is just one huge

  rush

  before

  ‘There you go, that’s perfect. Now the bar. Legs out. Legs up a little bit. And drop!’

 
; And I fall, into the safety net, legs out and bouncing hugely, and

  Ican’tspeakIcan’tspeak

  for laughing.

  Lala shrugs. ‘OK, I suppose.’

  Cavorting

  Lala teaches me how to do neck hangs, hair hangs, toe hangs, and how to smile through the pain. All the time, she rarely speaks, other than to issue commands, and that worry squiggle in the middle of her forehead gets a little deeper. When she is not on her phone, she and Kit are often together, talking in Bulgarian in low, fast voices.

  Delilah fusses over me like she is my mother, feeding me up with meat.

  ‘You need protein, our kid, with all that cavorting through the air,’ she says, when I protest at her latest offering.

  ‘But it’s liver,’ I say, pulling a face.

  ‘Sheep’s liver, fried up with salt and paprika. Best thing for growing muscles,’ she says. ‘Don’t want you fainting in mid-air. You’d make a big splat right in front of where the kiddies sit, have you thought of that?’

  I have thought of dying, of course I have.

  But I am obsessed. Being up in the air makes me forget who I am, who I was. I have always been running from something, but now I am finally flying. The only thing that is real is nownownow.

  Each morning I am first up. I spend hours stretching, doing planks and pull-ups and leg lifts. By day I rummage around Eastbourne’s tat shops for scraps of fabric and old saris and dancewear that I can give to Ana to transform into makeshift costumes for my act. I still perform my fire dance, each matinee and evening, and each night it gets wilder and wilder till I dance myself into a frenzy and try hard to lose myself, as the violins blur.

  Afterwards, exhausted, I splash ice-cold water over my face from the outside tap, and look into the spotted mirror hanging over the trough. I stare deep at this stranger’s face with her shocking red buzzed hair and taut cheekbones and corded neck, and I wonder who on earth I really am.

  When I can’t sleep, I climb up in the crow’s nest, and write to Suz. Sometimes I visit the horses and breathe deep their warm scent of leather and hay and home.

  At night, I sleep in the tack room. Tilly has put up a narrow camping bed for me behind a pinned-up blanket in the tackroom, and I am surrounded by saddles and plumes and different types of bits and leading reins and bridles. I have made a hole in the gap between two of the boards in the wall behind my bed and stuffed my Little Kit of Happiness and journal inside it. Over it, I have hung the chalk drawing that Suz left me; both of us soaring over a toadstool city, riding a giant magpie.

  My favourite stunt is back-somersaulting, letting myself fall backwards through space to catch the bar with my ankles upside down at the last second. Timing is everything: if I thought about it too much, I would miss the moment, and fall.

  When I have finally mastered the back somersault, Lala waves me over.

  I crouch on the platform, trying to catch my breath. I can’t wait to go and get a shower and file down my calluses, soak my hands in baby oil for a while.

  Lala’s voice is matter-of-fact, but what she says sends me soaring.

  ‘You are ready to perform,’ she says. ‘Tonight.’

  Sequins

  Ana hands me my costume: plastic-wrapped, shiny, special.

  Then I see inside. At something that makes me hiss in my breath.

  It’s The Dress. Lala’s.

  It’s the gold sequinned one that Lala wore for her act. When I look at Ana, she presses it into my hands.

  I touch the plastic. ‘Mine?’ I say.

  Ana laughs toothlessly, smiling and nodding. Beside her, Kahlo begins picking up pins and sticking them into her basket, chattering. I stand at the full-length mirror, and hold out my arms. The other performers come and go, collecting hats and wigs and laundered costumes.

  Shivering a little, I draw the dress over my arms. It is backless, and fitted expertly so that nothing pops out midperformance. It’s what Beanie and I would do all the time, borrow each other’s clothes. When we were little, we’d often sneak into the prefect’s dorms, lifting their bottles and creams on their dressing tables, sniffing their perfumes.

  I clench my abdominals then, and focus on my face, staring at my eyes until I can let go of the mirror with my other hand. I want to put make-up on, swoop out the shadow until it looks like a golden peacock. I pick up the eyelashes that Kit made, the ones with tiny real feathers that he made for Lala’s birthday. He stayed up all night in his wagon, spraying each feather with gold glitter.

  I lift my arms and imagine I am in the spotlight.

  I am the Phoenix. I am the golden girl. I am beautiful and I am strong and I can fly.

  ‘It suits you.’

  Kit is watching me in the spotted mirror. He is hunched over the dressing table in his black hoodie, applying the rest of his clown make-up.

  ‘Shit, Kit – you frightened me!’ I laugh.

  I watch him for a moment as he circles his eyes with kohl. He seems edgy tonight, spilling powder, dropping his brushes.

  ‘Like it?’ I say, spinning around for him.

  ‘You look fabulous,’ he says, but his eyes don’t smile. I wonder if it is because I am taking over Lala’s act until she mends. They always seem so close.

  ‘Are you sure she doesn’t mind me doing this? Her show, I mean?’ I say, turning around again so that Ana can stitch up the rip. She has attached little silver bells around the bodice and hem, in the fringing, so that I tinkle as well as shimmer.

  ‘You are a fallen phoenix,’ says Kit. ‘Or something. The storyline behind Tilly’s shows isn’t always clear.’ In the shadows, his face looks hollow and somehow very serious and sad. ‘You try to reach the sun, but it all turns stormy, and then you fall. Caught like a bird in a cage,’ he whispers.

  I shiver. ‘Don’t,’ I say. ‘That’s horrible.’

  I change the subject.

  ‘How do you know Lala?’ I say. ‘Just from the circus?’

  He shakes his head. ‘We go back a long way,’ he says. ‘Our families know each other, in Plovdiv.’

  He picks up a paintbrush from where he’s dropped it.

  ‘Her little boy’s back in Bulgaria,’ Kit says. ‘She is trying to save up money to bring him over.’

  ‘She has a child?’ I think of her silences, the way she is always on her phone. No wonder Tilly’s not keen. ‘But circus work doesn’t bring in much money, does it?’

  Kit turns back to the mirror and begins to fill in his clown smile. ‘But what if it is all you know how to do?’ he says.

  There is a breeze, and Lala comes in. She stands in her wellies, arms crossed over her chest. She’s wearing a fringed shawl that looks like it’s one of Silviya’s, wrapped around her throat and neck brace, and she’s shivering, even though it’s not cold, not at all. She’s wearing Kit’s tweed cap on her tousled hair. I have time to notice that before she comes over.

  I freeze, still holding the eyelashes in my hand. I feel foolish all of a sudden, in her dress. I place the lashes back on the table.

  ‘Let me,’ she whispers. Her eyes dart over to Kit.

  Ana stands aside and Lala zips up the dress. Her hands are cold as she hooks up the clasp. The dress is tight, suddenly, like I can’t breathe. I can feel Lala looking at me as I lean forward into the mirror.

  I feel her breath on my cheek, and think of Suz, blowing pixie dust over my face, all those weeks before. The mirror wobbles a little, and the remaining heaps of beads clatter to the floor.

  ‘Thank you – for everything,’ I say.

  Lala stares at me for a moment. Doesn’t answer.

  She ducks out of the tent flap and is gone.

  The movement stirs the breeze and makes the false lashes on the little plastic table flutter like dreadful spiders.

  Arabesque

  I am ready.

  My body buzzes with a thousand bees. I jiggle about, then try to focus on my stretches. Every five minutes, I leave the tent to check up on the line of people joini
ng the little ticket wagon. Kit is already entertaining the children in the queue, whizzing up and down on his little toy car.

  ‘Honk, honk,’ he says. ‘Honk, honk.’ Each time, his vintage car horn squirts bubbles at the children, who shriek and then clamour to follow him.

  I run beside him to catch him up. ‘There’s quite a crowd,’ I say.

  Kit seems distracted. He has forgotten his red nose, and I pick it up from the dashboard and put it on for him.

  ‘I expect they’ll get to see quite a show tonight,’ he says. His eyes slide to one of the ring boys, whom I don’t recognise. This one is leaning up against the side of the Portaloos, looking uncomfortable in his spangly tights. A customer goes to ask him something, and he shrugs his shoulders and points vaguely towards the car park.

  ‘Well, break a leg,’ I say, but Kit is gone, beeping his horn manically as the children chase after him.

  There really does seem to be a lot of people, which is strange for a matinee. The car park is full. One car near me has its door open, and a woman is talking to its occupant in a low voice, balancing her coffee on the roof.

  I duck under the tent flap and make my way over to the holding area, where performers wait and warm up before their act. The pot-bellied pig runs in and scratches himself vigorously against a unicycle. Delilah is smoking an electric cigarette, talking to one of the maintenance workers. She gives me a wink as I pass.

  ‘You look fricking amazing,’ she mouths, and I smile.

  I feel fricking amazing. I go through my stretches once more, sliding easily into the sideways splits this time; pull myself forward onto my toes, feeling strong and supple. My feet are bare – ‘better to feel your moves,’ said Lala – and I have bronze-coloured footless tights under my gold sequinned dress. It is totally backless, to show off my dramatic tattoo, which is now fully healed, its colours rich and fresh and vibrant. When I move my shoulder muscles, my phoenix moves too, as if alive. Its great beak curves around the back of my neck, and its tail feathers curl and twine over my vertebrae, shifting and moving as I twist.