The Electric Woman_A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts

by Tessa Fontaine

  The idea gives me tingles.

  The rides are all plugged in and lit up and the music is on and the air smells like frying onions and I’m costumed and made up. I meet Tommy inside the tent, ready to go out onto the bally stage with him. I feel like a bird has been loosed inside my body, brushing every organ with its wings until I can hardly keep the big tickled smile off my face, the fear of not actually being good enough to perform any of these acts just behind that.

  As the show’s bally girl, I’ll stand out on the front bally stage with the talker, who alternates every hour between Tommy and Cassie so that they don’t blow their voices. I’ll be eating fire, or charming snakes, or escaping from handcuffs, or performing a magic trick where I turn a one-dollar bill into a five. I had a fire-eating class. And Spif showed me the handcuffs and dollar-bill acts in five minutes the night before, after I’d stopped shaking from holding the snake. This was nothing like performing in school plays, where the bulk of time was spent rehearsing—here it was trial by fire, as Sunshine called it. You learned by doing. Onstage. In front of an audience. Good reason to get better quickly.

  “Ready, Tessy?” Tommy asks, walking toward the bally stage with his bag of swords in one hand, money box in the other. I’m so relieved to see the snake around his neck. “I’ll just take her for now,” he says, noticing how I’m staring.

  “Thank you, Tommy,” I say. He flashes me a big, cheesy grin, one that looks suddenly different, used-car-salesman-like, above his sequined jacket, and I laugh. It’s perfect.

  We climb onto the stage and look out at the midway. Still mostly empty. It’s Friday, late morning. We are at the farthest point from the fair’s front gates, and no eager patrons have made their way back through the carnival yet, so I have a moment to practice.

  “What’s your stage name?” Tommy asks.

  “I haven’t exactly decided yet,” I admit.

  “All right,” he says. “Should I just call you Tess?”

  “Sure,” I say. But no. I’m not here for that. “Or maybe if you think of a good name, you could just call me it? If you have any ideas?”

  “Hmm,” he says, tapping his fingers along his mouth, beneath the thin black mustache he drew on that morning. “Today, you will see Tex Fontaine eat the fire and escape from these chains right in front of your eyes,” he says into the mic. And then, to me, “Yeah, Tex?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “I’ll come up with more,” he says. “Better names.”

  A family with two strollers is approaching from down the midway, and beyond them, a few other people are trickling this way, so Tommy starts grinding into the mic, listing the acts we have inside with flourish, a warm-up he calls it, and I practice breaking out of the chains one more time before they’re close enough to be able to tell what’s going on.

  “Ready?” Tommy whispers over to me when a few other people are within earshot. I nod.

  “You don’t have to wait, but you do have to hurry, they’re in there, they’re waiting for you,” Tommy begins into the mic. I try to stand onstage like I have a purpose for standing onstage aside from wearing skimpy clothes. What pose is right? I put my hands on my hips with one knee bent and feel like I’m posing for a swimsuit ad from the eighties. I cross my arms over my chest and lean back a little bit, but now I’m a teen rebel from the early nineties. Every way I move seems to be a reference to something else. Before I have time to overthink it further, Tommy has gathered a small crowd in front of the stage.

  “That’s right, we’re putting on a free show right here, right now,” Tommy says, “you’re going to watch Ms. Mimi L’Amour change a one-dollar bill into a five, I’m going to swallow this sword for you right here, while Hercules, our massive man-eating boa constrictor, lies hypnotized around my neck,” and we’re off. The crowd grows from ten people to fifteen. “Inside you’re going to see Spidora the Spidergirl, born with the head of a beautiful woman and the body of a terrifying spider.” Tommy’s eyes sparkle and taunt, like he both believes in all the things he’s saying and is letting the crowd in on the game.

  The crowd grows to twenty. I watch people a little ways down the midway follow the sound of the voice on the microphone like a beacon.

  Tommy hands a teenage girl in the audience a dollar bill so she can make sure it’s real. “Go ahead and smell it,” he says. “Do you smell the mint? That’s government. And it stinks.” Small chuckle from the crowd. “Hand that bill back to Ms. L’Amour,” Tommy says, and I take the dollar from the girl’s hand, lay it flat in my palm so it looks like I’m readying to convince them that they aren’t being fooled. Tommy keeps ballying, listing the acts, introducing amazing stories that he interrupts with other amazements and promises of astonishment, becoming his own Scheherazade.

  With dramatic turns of my wrist I smooth the dollar bill in front of me—the audience’s eyes following my fingers as I fold the bill into a flat line. Tommy is pitching our medical mystery. I fold the bill into a long strip and wind it around my finger. Many of the eyes in the audience never leave my hands, sure that if they watch hard enough, pay close enough attention, they’ll catch the trick, the moment of the inevitable switcheroo, and beat the game. They watch and watch, and I eat it up, the attention, that belief that enough focus will reveal some secret truth. I’m smiling and just a little unsure I’m doing the act right, but it feels good, very, very good, to be onstage.

  Though I have the five ready before it’s time, I ramp up the drama, blowing on it in my hand, shaking my closed fist to keep them watching, to make their eyes work extra hard to find the moment of slip and switch. When I finally hold one hand, palm facing me, out to the crowd, Tommy looks over, nods, and says, “Now watch Ms. Mimi L’Amour turn a one-dollar bill into a five,” and I flip my hand around, revealing the bill folded into the shape of the number five in the palm of my hand, and a few people smile and shake their heads, a few others groan, a few crane their necks to get a better view as if they are missing the joke, as if there must be more to it.

  “And now,” Tommy says, clanging his sword on the metal pole above his head to get their attention and show that the sword is, indeed, metal, “the sword swallower will swallow a sword.” He readjusts the snake, asks for a volunteer from the audience. A teenage girl raises her hand. “Down the hatch without a scratch,” he says, and straightens all the way up, puffs his chest out, and slides the sword down his throat. Half the metal blade disappears inside him. I’m as transfixed as the rest of the audience, not having seen sword swallowing up close before. What a beautiful act, the grace, the danger, the seeming impossibility of it even though it’s happening an arm’s length away. Tommy bends over with the sword down his throat, lets the audience see the metal disappearing into the darkness of his mouth, lets them imagine the tip pressing its point against the sac of his stomach, almost breaking him open, his arms out wide beside him, his eyebrows raised. He leans close to the teenager and, with a gesture, invites her to grasp the sword’s handle and she does, nearly brushing his cheeks with her hands. He doesn’t gag as it slides out. His lips remain stiff. He watches the girl intently as she cringes while pulling the sword from his mouth. Her father, standing just behind her, has a wide, amused frown, and her mother is snapping photos.

  The sword’s tip emerges from his body, and Tommy does a quick bow.

  “For an opening-day special, adult tickets are only three dollars right now and kids are just two dollars. Snickers is waiting right here with the tickets, so go on in and be amazed by the strangest show on earth,” Tommy says. Everyone goes in. A line twenty people long stretches back from the ticket box, and the line draws more into it, everyone assuming something that can’t be missed is going on right there. It continues to build as the first people go in, and behind me I can hear the inside show starting. Red is on his stage, welcoming people inside by pounding a nail up his nose, and I’m standing on the far side of the ticket box, waving people in, smiling in my gorgeous glimmering booty shorts, and they
keep coming, buying tickets and stepping right inside. I’m dazzled. Dazzling.

  “Good turn,” Tommy says when the crowd is all in and I walk back onstage. “That almost never happens, where we have a total turn.”

  “We must have the magic,” I say, winking, feeling that this might be the life for me. This might be my most right self. We high-five, and I’m as high as I’ve ever been.

  Our next bally, which we immediately begin, goes just as well, with a one-dollar bill turned into a five and sword swallowing and stories of grandeur, but at the end of the bally, as we stand onstage with ta-da smiles, everybody turns around and walks away.

  On the next one, two people come inside.

  Next, three more.

  We’re forty-five minutes into the five-month season, and I feel defeated. Though we’re performing the same minishow over and over, now and forever, for every new group that wanders by every seven to ten minutes, each iteration has to look completely new and exciting. And sometimes, they are really unimpressed.

  * * *

  My feet ache. It’s been an hour.

  My heels are low—two and a half inches, maybe—but I’m not one of the graceful naturals.

  Also, the fishnets pinch my waist.

  I’m sweating my makeup off.

  I’m getting a little short of breath from the cinch of the corset.

  When I have a fifteen-minute break a few hours into performing, I closely inspect the corsets the other performers are wearing backstage. Sunshine’s corset wraps her body closely, but it seems to fit more like a shirt than a vacuum sealer, zipping up on the side and not bothering with unlacing or relacing at all. Cassie’s is the same. And then I think about eating a snack. I’m not sure I could. I don’t think the granola bar would have anywhere to go, that it would sit like a mouse in a snake’s throat above my corset, a great lump. I reach behind me and loosen the corset further, keeping it still tight, still uncomfortable. I’d performed in a lot of plays when I was younger, and there it doesn’t matter if your costume is uncomfortable or you’re feeling tired, because the adrenaline is pumping and the performance time is limited. But here, it begins and carries on like a record skipping into eternity. I like this idea—that every day I can try and retry and retry to be better and better at the same thing. That every day I get a chance to redo what I’ve done before until one time, eventually, I’ll get it just right.

  * * *

  We had a lot of chances to fine-tune our reactions to bad news about my mom. A lot of practice in tightening our face muscles, tensing our jaws, and furrowing our brows while listening to a doctor’s update. These were the choruses of our days:

  There’s a strong chance she will not make it through the night.

  There’s a moderate chance she will not make it through the afternoon.

  Wear the face mask. Wear the disposable robe. Wear the shoe protectors.

  There’s a 75 percent chance this last complication has been too much for her body to fight.

  She will not last the morning.

  Use this soap to wash your hands before and after you put on and take off the gloves. Do not remove the protective plastic eye shield from the face mask.

  We’re going to give you some space.

  We’ll give you alone time.

  This is probably the end.

  One day of life-halting emergency.

  Do you see the Kleenex?

  Don’t let her see you cry. She might give up.

  Do you see the Kleenex?

  Four days of life-halting emergency.

  Don’t let her see you look like this is hard.

  Eat a sandwich.

  This is certainly the last degree of complication a person can survive.

  A week of it.

  Four weeks.

  Prepare yourself: we’ve got to pull the plugs.

  How are you holding up? Are your bowels regular?

  Four months.

  Do not touch her face.

  She might live, but what kind of quality of life would she want?

  What are her advance directives?

  Sir, you can’t ignore her advance directives.

  On.

  Nine months.

  A year.

  Two.

  On.

  * * *

  It had taken three days to drive from Gibsonton, where the crew had met, to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of our first fair.

  When we arrived, a giant piece of plywood leaning against a fence read BIG BUTLER FAIRGROUNDS. Behind the sign, we parked in a huge, open field, the grass already summer-dry and patchy.

  Tommy and Sunshine disappeared into the fairgrounds. I looked at Spif and Pipscy for answers.

  “Tommy’s going to find the boss canvasman so we know which lot is ours,” Spif says. He has opened the van’s side doors and lies sprawled across the steps, digging at something under his fingernails with a dagger he’s pulled off his belt.

  “We don’t know already?”

  “How would we know?” he asks, shrugging at me. I shrug back. I don’t know anything about anything. Spif relents, explains that the boss canvasman will have created a map of the fairgrounds designating where each ride, game, food truck, vendor, show, and so forth will go. This map is both practical and political, taking into consideration, for example, rides that have a lot of motion with spindly arms—these go in the middle aisle so customers can see through them to more rides they’d like to buy tickets for. A carnival’s central walkway where the rides and fast-food joints cluster is called the midway, and you want the biggest attractions, the roller coasters and drop zones, spread on either end of the midway’s oval so that fairgoers must walk the full midway and see all the other possibilities as they go. Placement is also dependent on the length and depth of the relationship between the individual joint owner or carnival company and the boss canvasman. Canvasman likes you, you get a money spot. Hates you, you’re on the edge of kiddieland.

  Near us are a smattering of other vehicles and a trailer surrounded by a small metal fence, inside of which are eight or ten ponies, each bridled and tied to one long metal arm of an octopus, which spins as they tread behind one another in a circular march, bobbing their heads as they step.

  “Ponies!” I say, pointing to the little ring of animals and then clapping my hands.

  “Greenhorn,” Spif snorts.

  “Are we allowed to go pet them?” I ask.

  “There will be ponies everywhere we go,” Spif says. “And cooler animals. Tigers and shit,” he says, so I give it up and watch the ponies from afar. Pipscy climbs out of the van and motions for Spif to give her a neck rub.

  Inside the fairgrounds, trucks are slowly unfolding. Since America’s highways became numerous and reliable, the circus stopped moving by train; the rides in any traveling carnival have to disassemble and fold up within the space of a truck bed. I’m witnessing a secret ritual here, viewing a carnival’s insides. A man is bolting the extended legs of the Octopus out wide.

  A pickup truck full of young pink-skinned men honks as it drives by. Every few minutes, another truck passes us as it heads into the carnival entryway, hauling in its bed a load of stuffed animals bundled together in giant plastic bags or a half dozen carnies, and each time all the heads in the truck turn toward us for as long as the truck is in sight.

  “Not many women around,” Spif says, digging into Pipscy’s neck. “They’re gonna be real interested in you two,” he says. “Watch out.”

  It sounds like an invitation to trouble and I like it. I crawl over Spif and Pipscy and sprawl on the grass. Let them look. I’m three days in, and though it has been obvious at points that I am not a part of this troop yet, don’t get the inside jokes or know the metal band they’re playing loud in the van, I am here and part of something spectacular. I’m happy—elated, really, to be here. There was no reason to believe the carnival would be anything less for me than the wonderland it is for most attendees, with the lights and sweets and deep-fried del
ight. I feel all that—some collective nostalgia—as I watch truck after truck enter the grounds, as the occasional blast of music is tested from a ride’s speakers. There is pleasure in the idea of the carnival. It has been a long time since I’ve been overwhelmed with the kind of excitement these first few days have brought, where the future isn’t filled with hospital equipment or the terror of loss.

  I think about how much she’d love it. How funny she’d think it is. There are goddamned ponies.

  * * *

  An hour after we arrive at the Big Butler Fairgrounds, we unhitch the trailer in our spot. We are at the center of the midway’s farthest U-curve. Good to be at a pinnacle point, like the tip of the U, though less good to be at the farthest point from the main entrance.

  “Let’s get that possum belly unloaded,” Tommy says to Sunshine, Pipscy, and me. “Boys, set the stake line,” he tells Spif and Big, Big Ben, our show’s working man.

  I follow Sunshine to the compartments below the trailer’s main storage area. We unlock them, then pull the heavy metal covers off these giant versions of the luggage storage beneath a bus. The possum belly is an old circus term for the storage box built beneath a work wagon that doubles as a napping spot.

  “The possum belly is a special, special place,” Spif says, grabbing a steel tent stake. “It’s a place for lots of fun,” he says, humping the metal.

  “It’s where truckers bang hookers at rest stops,” Sunshine adds, crouching into the possum belly and looking over the massive stacks of metal tent poles strapped together. “They’re called possum belly queens, those truck-stop hookers, so that’s what we call whoever is in charge of our possum belly. The possum belly queen. I’ve been it for years, and it’s scary and dangerous and disgusting, so I’m done. Now it’s you,” she says, turning to look at me. She smiles. “Congratulations.”

  I feel a little gush of pride. Could they tell what a hard worker I was?

  In the possum belly, there are about forty tent poles stacked on top of one another in a precarious pile. Sunshine unlatches the massive straps holding them together, loosening the ratchets slowly. “Come sit here,” she says to me, patting the lip of the possum belly. I do. The smell is wet and metallic and mossy, like the inside of a mine, I imagine, or a tunnel through the earth. The stack of steel poles is five feet high and twenty-five feet long.