The family fortuna, p.16
The Family Fortuna, page 16
The men turned toward me.
And I felt it. The moment when I myself became exhibition.
God, I hated it. I hated it so much.
For a moment, I’d thought I could do it. I’d thought I could be an ordinary person, ready to indulge in a sharing of opinions with fellow-minded readers.
But they stared, taking in the sight of me, and I nearly crawled out of my own skin.
“Well!” one of the men finally said. “Look at this little scholar! He knows his physiologists!”
Meanwhile, the man to whom I’d replied did not look upon me with vengeance but with gratitude, as though tossing a correct citation or a rectified statistic into a conversation was not a call to arms, as my father regarded it, but a kindness, a communion.
“No,” I said, emboldened into confessing, “I know my Frankenstein.”
This made them chuckle, and it was a beautifully pure sound — free of cruelty or mocking.
Their eyes were still on me, yes, but the usual scorch of exhibitionism had faded. They were not looking at me to taunt; they were not using me for their own levity, unwinding the little knot inside me and tugging on my strings. They took in the book under my arm, a gilded Milton, and brows raised all around, mouths closed, gazes expectant.
They were waiting for me to say more.
I mentally unearthed all I’d ever read about German theories of comparative anatomy and wet my lips. A sensation stirred within me, a buzz unlike anything I’d ever felt. Even surrounded by the unimaginable marvels of the circus, I’d never before experienced such euphoria, such rapture —
“There he is! And he found the most humdrum display to cross his eyes with, I see.”
My father’s voice echoed through the room, rattling every model, every frame, every window. He could have been quieter, but he chose not to be. Every word, every inflection, was all completely in his control, and his boisterousness had the exact reaction he was hoping for.
The other men glanced up, away from me, disrupted. Papa paraded through the room, his mustache wrinkling with aversion.
I wished I could disappear; I wished I could shrink down even smaller, roll under the cabinets, become a dust particle, a flea, a mouse turd. Anything but endure this scene.
Arturo cracked another joke at my expense, brought to laughter by his own drollery, but the men shuffled their feet. This was not their flavor of entertainment. Not their type of show.
This reaction would only rile Papa up — thank God, they turned to go, to find somewhere else to continue their conversation in private. I ached to go with them. If I were a dust particle, I could ride along and listen. But Papa put his hand on my shoulder as the men headed for the exit, as if he sensed I would follow them if I were not kept in place.
“Wait!” he suddenly called, and I died. Let them go, let them leave! I wanted to shout. They want nothing to do with you. I wanted to protect them from my father, from being roped into his preposterousness. But being polite, civilized men, they turned back, though they did not bother to hide their annoyance.
Arturo jutted a finger at the Darwinian mural, at the ugliest version of the mermaid mid-evolution. “What do you think? Do you buy into it?”
Did they buy into it? I cringed at his impresario’s intonation, the way he gestured to the display as if he were a farmer hocking wares at market. This was not a decently priced watermelon; this was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, something the greatest scientists in the world were considering and debating, poking holes into or stitching their own theorems onto. It was not something you bought or fell for wholesale.
The man in the gray hat, who had clearly had enough of this buffoonery, straightened, clearing his throat. “Are you asking if I, a tenured professor of biology, buy into Darwin’s theories of transmutation of species and natural selection? Yes. His is the soundest theory of organism development and scientific naturalism we have. While there may be gaps in its execution, those are challenged and filled daily. It explains so much.”
“It explains so much,” my father echoed, and for a spare second, I was hopeful. Had the man’s sophisticated rejoinder actually left Papa spellbound?
No such luck.
“Does it explain that?” Papa was sticky with mirth; he yanked a flyer from his coat pocket, and I crumbled with chagrin anew.
Avita was there on the flyer, eyeing the viewer, THE FAMILY FORTUNA emblazoned above her. A caricature of Papa’s black top hat was stitched above the F in Fortuna, a reminder to all who entered his circus that this domain had a king and the king wore his crown with preening authority.
I stood beside Arturo as he held up his flyer gleefully, pinched between his fingers, waiting for the men to take it like he was handing out cash.
The man in the gray hat slowly shuffled toward him, took the flyer, considered it with consternation. My sister’s face was portrayed as straightforwardly as anyone could with ink and paper, but even so, such proportions, such features were automatically dismissed by the eye as invention. Fiction.
Arturo did not skip a beat in his advertisement. “We roll into Fresno the day after tomorrow. You’ll want to come and take a gander at her, see if it explains any gaps in the theory. Although I would speculate that not even Darwin himself could have predicted this.” And then, to me: “Come on, chum, or I’ll throw you headfirst into the leviathan.”
My father waltzed past the men, who held the flyer like it was beach trash. I rushed along behind him, burnt with humiliation.
Avita was no fiction, though. She was real, flesh and bone and feather. A doctor had come to see her once, but no diagnosis could explain her weirdness. Even I had searched through my books and requested papers from libraries to pinpoint her particular infirmity, hoping to satisfy my scientific curiosity with a name, but to no avail. Oddities happened, without explanation and at random. It was as simple as that.
But to the Fortunas, it would never be that simple. When you lived in a circus, you were put on display if you had even the slightest of abnormalities . . . unless there was someone stranger than you to pull away your crowds. Though I knew it wasn’t fair, the first time I had looked at my baby sister’s face on that flyer, I had thought, Good God, Avita, can’t you tone it down? Do you always have to be so good? So magnetic? So thrilling? Can’t you leave just a crumb for the rest of us?
And as I peered at her banner now, waving smugly over the Family Fortuna’s lot, I couldn’t stop a barrage of equally traitorous ruminations from parading through my mind.
Good God, Avita, do you have to be so extraordinary? I work my ass off for him, not eating, not sleeping, not resting until the circus is precisely as polished and gleaming as he demands, yet he won’t even look at me. Not unless he has another order to give.
Won’t look at me, won’t listen to me, won’t think of me. Not when Bird Girl has the stage.
FERNANDO WAS ALONE IN THE DRESSING ROOM, pressing a length of loud lime-green calico with a fluting iron — some new costume he was stitching together, a skirt to button onto one of the girls so she could twirl around the stage like a desert mermaid. I studied the freshly born ruffles as I perched on the stool beside him, crossing my legs.
“Exciting morning,” he commented dryly, sticking the heavy iron back in the stove’s radiant coals to reheat. “I’ve never seen Arturo this bloated. He could charge headfirst into a hurricane and come right out the other side.”
“He’s finally getting his big face-off. He’s wanted this for years.” Only after I said it did I recognize the automation of my commentary — the dutiful daughter offering her lines like it was a script.
Was it a script?
“Only because he thinks he’ll win.” The way Fernando worked the iron was mesmerizing to behold; he clamped the flaccid calico between the V-shaped metal, then released it with a yawn of steam, leaving a trail of perfect folds along the hem.
So whirling was the storm in my own head, I almost missed the stinging honesty of his response. “Wait — you don’t think we’ll fill our tents?”
Fernando shrugged. “The Family Fortuna is good. You know we’re good, Vee. And Le Cirque Americana can be tackier than a pair of men’s britches. But come on. It’s no contest. Where would you spend your coin if you could only buy one ticket?”
His words weren’t meant to be hurtful or flippant, simply the neutral observations of someone with no real skin in the game. Fernando was family, but he was not a Fortuna. His affinity was bought with room and board and a small but steady salary.
Almost as if to prove he was being objective, he added, “Arturo’s the better showman by far. Anyone could build Le Cirque Americana if they had enough money — Cornelius bought his way to the top. But he is at the top. There’s not much else we can do.”
I chuckled — as if this relentless competition between the two circuses were a case of simple math.
As if Papa would ever accept that the world was simply stacked against him. As if he wouldn’t rearrange hell itself if it meant he could have every advantage.
Fernando suddenly let out a sinful squeal. “Did I tell you about Pepper and the mustachio twins?” As he fluted another layer of ruffles, he spilled every bit of circus gossip he possessed. As the hub of the kootchie tent, all these little tidbits of stories and secrets were laid at Fernando’s feet, sometimes unintentionally, and since he was jazzed by the chance to spill this juice to me, I said nothing. I let the prattle of lighter subjects wash over me: who borrowed whose hairbrush and passed along the lice they’d caught from a barkeep; who had stepped on whose tap shoe, and who speculated that it had been deliberate; who had walked in on Bart the Bull’s-Eye tangling tongues with Graciela the cake lady.
A dancing girl came inside to grab her cigarettes and locked eyes with me in her mirror; she peered at my scarf, right where my beak was hidden, then turned away, like my mouth had gone rogue and snarled at her of its own accord.
Chagrin congested in my throat.
You are that mirror when you’re onstage.
What did the dancing girl see when she looked at me?
Did they all see it?
Had they all seen it all along?
“One more thing.” Fernando dropped his volume and kept his lips stiff. “Your sister’s been sneaking out of the show early — on multiple occasions. Some of the girls think she’s got —”
“Oh. Yes. She’s been working with customers.” I dropped the lie effortlessly and with minimal guilt. “Arturo’s been lining them up.”
Fernando merely shrugged and fluffed the skirt, spraying various sticky substances on the fabric to freeze it into perfection.
My sudden loyalty to Luna was a bit perplexing, but before I could reflect on my role as her secret keeper, Fernando spoke. “Doesn’t matter anyway. Not even the duchess can beat Cornelius. There’s only one act that could spin this all in Arturo’s direction, and that’s you.”
Heat traveled up my neck, and I inhaled.
“I know for a fact that Cornelius doesn’t have anything like Bird Girl on his docket, and it could cost him. People think they want that shiny savoir faire he serves up, but eventually everyone’s inner philistine comes out and they get hungry for something truly repulsive.”
Repulsive.
Me. My monstrous face on that banner.
Tomás in the tent, quietly drawing my features.
The sound of screams echoed between my ears, and I was dried out, a barren lake that would never again feel rain —
“Vee?” Fernando tilted my chin until I was looking at him. “What’s wrong?” Even in my scarf, he could read me like a compass.
Answering my best friend, however, would require me to bore directly into the drippy caverns of my soul and put into words that which I had not even begun to explain to myself.
To start, I offered this, which rang out like a confession as I said it: “I know what we’re up against with Le Cirque — I know this isn’t just a regular headliner weekend in some podunk town — but maybe I could . . .” I picked at a loose thread on my gown, tugging until it gave and wormed around my fingers. “Maybe I could do something else.”
“Something else?” Fernando pursed his lips. “You mean —”
“Other than Bird Girl.” I was raised by a circus; there was glitz under my fingernails and a tentpole in place of a spine. I could skip into my ring and put on, with glazed proficiency, any kind of show. I could sneeze out a tap house shanty. I could jump and juggle half a dozen eggs or dance the mazurka on stilts . . .
But none of that mattered. I sighed, thoroughly trounced by reality. “I’m Arturo’s big trump card,” I pronounced. “His grand finale.” Bird Girl was supposed to be in her tent tonight, running double showings, rattling her cage and chomping chickens. “There’s no way he’ll let me do anything else.” Fernando had said it himself — there was no way Papa could win without me. Without Bird Girl.
“Oh, Vee.” Fernando plunged the iron into a bucket of water and met my eyes, giving me his full attention, a gift that nearly made me well up from gratitude. “I thought you loved it. Being Bird Girl.”
Being myself.
A tent of my own.
An act of my own.
All those years. All those butts in bleachers. All those screams.
“What is it you want to do, exactly?” Fernando leaned over to a vanity and dabbed a berry gloss onto his mouth. “You want to dance? Or spin with the aerialists? Do you want to be the bell-in-the-jar? Or sing?”
I considered his question.
Like a dream, the memory came to me: the way the crowds in the Tent of Wonder shifted and blurred in the reflection of the stage lights like a living, moving painting. The sound of them clapping and wailing for the dancing girls, for Luna, for Dolores and Delilah, for Fernando and Suzette, that rhythm, the tambourine jingle of their cheers. Their wanting, something you could feel like warmth from a campfire.
Other memories brimmed to the surface, too: the flap of my newly printed banner, disturbing the breeze with its abhorrence. Shrill, mewling screams. The understanding that I was detested. And I had chased it! I had longed for it! I had longed for my crowds to cower from me; I had longed for the burden of their fear.
You are a mirror when you are on that stage, Papa always said. Whatever the audience gives to you, you must give it back tenfold.
The audiences of the Spectacular Aviary Extravaganza did not give. They always took and took and took.
I’d thought Tomás saw through that mirror.
My painted visage, quivering in the sky, said otherwise.
I found my own reflection in a vanity. “I want the whole world talking about me,” I said, staring into my own dark eyes. “I want them watching my every move. I just don’t want to make an ass of myself anymore.”
And I never wanted to put another chicken’s squirming head between my teeth.
Never wanted to frighten a crowd into screams again.
The fluting iron’s hiss died out as it cooled. Fernando tapped his finger on his chin as he contemplated the possibilities. “Well, love, there are plenty of places we could use you here. You pick things up fast enough — but you know what you have to do first, right?”
Instantly the prospects flooded me. Get fitted for a new costume. Tell Pedro he could roll his spotlight over to the shallow divers for the rest of the gig. See if the dancing girls wanted to use me in their pineapple dance tonight.
See if Tomás would let me sit for him again. See if he could see me as something other than a monster.
“You need to talk to Arturo.”
My gut distended. I knew Fernando was right, but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow. Talking to Arturo was always like wrestling with an eight-legged snake.
“Avita.” Fernando lifted my chin. “I know he’s Arturo, but he’s your father, too.”
Bless Fernando for knowing exactly how to breathe courage into my bones.
“Just ask,” he said. “The worst he can say is no.”
I was Papa’s million-dollar gal. My wagon was filled with a decade’s worth of toys and trinkets, the spoils of his love. And I put on a hell of a performance every night as Bird Girl — there was no reason why Arturo shouldn’t let me finagle the Spectacular Aviary Extravaganza into a new show entirely.
I wrapped my scarf tighter around my selling points. I barely felt my boots grind into the dirt as I headed in my father’s direction with single-minded purpose.
Just ask.
Ask, and ye shall receive, as the Good Book says.
And not even Mama would argue with scripture.
“PAPA, I NEED TO TALK TO YOU.”
The third time I said it, I was finally able to finish my sentence without my father butting in — to congratulate himself on the marvelous horse-and-rider routine currently happening on the other side of Big Red’s curtains, to give orders to the grooms who would rush out and handle the dapple grays as soon as the act was over, to prattle on with the kinds of show notes that were usually snapped at Ren.
My father peeled his eyes away from the rotund rumps of the horses as they galloped around the dirt. He turned to face me, a trough of water between us.
“Make it quick,” he said with a parent’s waning patience. “As soon as Jo-Jo finishes her tuck and tumble, I’m closing out the show.”
I knew every Family Fortuna act like a spider knows flies. The girls would do a few more laps of their tippy-toed choreography before launching into their flips.
I wiped my damp palms against my skirt. I only had a minute, give or take.
Good. If I had more time, I’d be a coward, stretch the minute out, wait for the precise opening — but the moment was now.
Now.
“I want to do something different.” My chest thudded, my vision starry with nerves.
He’s my father, I reminded myself. I’ve tangled my arms around that scruffy neck for sixteen years. As a child, I’d sobbed on his chest when my cousins wouldn’t let me play. I’d looked deep into his eyes and copied his breathing to steady myself as he dabbed away the blood from my pluckings.
