father.”
Mr. Bean narrowed his eyes. “How old are you?”
“Almost eighteen.”
“Can you prove it?”
“When I was born, it was in the papers.”
He smiled. “Right,” he said. “Let’s have a look.”
He was a fat bald man in an undershirt and suspenders and with an English accent. He had her take off Sue’s shoes and stockings, and then he squeezed each bare leg along its length. “Can you move ‘em?” he asked. “Bowels function?”
She signed a contract that afternoon. Five years, forty dollars a week, free room and board, a fifty-fifty split on wardrobe and prop expenses. A second big sign would be painted, featuring her alone and calling her The Incredible Girl-Boy. Sue would become Bill, and Sylvie would tell funny stories about the trials and tribulations of being attached to a boy.
Sylvie and Merry Mary share a trailer. They’ve been sharing one for six years, from Sylvie’s first day, their only stretch apart being when Mary had a fling with Leopard Man, and Sylviemoved in with one of the barker women.
A baby came of Mary’s affair, a surprise baby, since Mary had no idea she was pregnant until she started giving birth on her specially made toilet. Sylvie was in the trailer at the time, and she pulled the baby out while Mary grunted in mild discomfort and gripped the toilet’s support bars. It was a girl. Tiny, normal. Perfect.
“Well, whaddaya know?” Mary laughed, and on the spot she named her Sue, after Sylvie’s legs. Mr. Bean went into high gear, planning a wedding, printing flyers. But before the flyers were sent out, Sue turned blue and died.
“The fat lady don’t cry,” Mary said when Mr. Bean advised her to let it all out a couple of hours after Sue stopped breathing and Mary was still holding her. She gave her up only when supper arrived. After eating, she put on her crown for her act and said, “Easy come, easy go,” to comfort Sylvie, who was crying into a pile of laundered diapers and having a memory spell about gluing down a gypsy moth.
It took weeks for Sylvie to stop crying. She couldn’t understand why she and Mary and the other freaks were alive, and a perfectly formed baby was dead. The minute she’d laid eyes on Sue it had struck her that it was all right being deformed if deformity had to exist for there to be such perfection. Sue’s death left her out of kilter. “It doesn’t make sense,” she kept saying. And Mary said, “It sure don’t,” and “That’s life,” and then she said, “Who said it’s supposed to make sense?” and finally she told Sylvie to snap out of it.
Mary never shed a tear. She said she wouldn’t, and she never did. Instead she gained another eighty pounds, mainly in her lower half.
Now, Mary can hardly walk twenty feet, and more than ever she badgers Sylvie to visit whatever town they happen to be in, to see what’s going on and to tell her all about it. “Take a break,” she says, referring to Sylvie’s ability to pass for anormal. It gives Mary a charge that the freak everyone comes to see is the only freak who can go around without being seen.
At one time or another all of the freaks have asked Sylvie what it’s like to pass. What it’s
really
like. She knows that they want to hear how wonderful it is, because passing is their dream, but they also want to hear how strange, even unpleasant, it is, because passing is a dream that won’t come true for them. The truth is, it’s both things. On the one hand Sylvie loves the feeling of being like everybody else, which is to say like nobody in particular. On the other hand when she feels most like a freak is when she’s getting away with not being one.
For one thing she isn’t as inconspicuous as the other freaks like to think. Aside from the spectacle of the unfashionably long full skirt she wears to cover her legs, there’s her resemblance to Vivien Leigh. Wherever she goes, men look at her. Of course, she discourages the advances of strange men, but one
Mr. Bean narrowed his eyes. “How old are you?”
“Almost eighteen.”
“Can you prove it?”
“When I was born, it was in the papers.”
He smiled. “Right,” he said. “Let’s have a look.”
He was a fat bald man in an undershirt and suspenders and with an English accent. He had her take off Sue’s shoes and stockings, and then he squeezed each bare leg along its length. “Can you move ‘em?” he asked. “Bowels function?”
She signed a contract that afternoon. Five years, forty dollars a week, free room and board, a fifty-fifty split on wardrobe and prop expenses. A second big sign would be painted, featuring her alone and calling her The Incredible Girl-Boy. Sue would become Bill, and Sylvie would tell funny stories about the trials and tribulations of being attached to a boy.
Sylvie and Merry Mary share a trailer. They’ve been sharing one for six years, from Sylvie’s first day, their only stretch apart being when Mary had a fling with Leopard Man, and Sylviemoved in with one of the barker women.
A baby came of Mary’s affair, a surprise baby, since Mary had no idea she was pregnant until she started giving birth on her specially made toilet. Sylvie was in the trailer at the time, and she pulled the baby out while Mary grunted in mild discomfort and gripped the toilet’s support bars. It was a girl. Tiny, normal. Perfect.
“Well, whaddaya know?” Mary laughed, and on the spot she named her Sue, after Sylvie’s legs. Mr. Bean went into high gear, planning a wedding, printing flyers. But before the flyers were sent out, Sue turned blue and died.
“The fat lady don’t cry,” Mary said when Mr. Bean advised her to let it all out a couple of hours after Sue stopped breathing and Mary was still holding her. She gave her up only when supper arrived. After eating, she put on her crown for her act and said, “Easy come, easy go,” to comfort Sylvie, who was crying into a pile of laundered diapers and having a memory spell about gluing down a gypsy moth.
It took weeks for Sylvie to stop crying. She couldn’t understand why she and Mary and the other freaks were alive, and a perfectly formed baby was dead. The minute she’d laid eyes on Sue it had struck her that it was all right being deformed if deformity had to exist for there to be such perfection. Sue’s death left her out of kilter. “It doesn’t make sense,” she kept saying. And Mary said, “It sure don’t,” and “That’s life,” and then she said, “Who said it’s supposed to make sense?” and finally she told Sylvie to snap out of it.
Mary never shed a tear. She said she wouldn’t, and she never did. Instead she gained another eighty pounds, mainly in her lower half.
Now, Mary can hardly walk twenty feet, and more than ever she badgers Sylvie to visit whatever town they happen to be in, to see what’s going on and to tell her all about it. “Take a break,” she says, referring to Sylvie’s ability to pass for anormal. It gives Mary a charge that the freak everyone comes to see is the only freak who can go around without being seen.
At one time or another all of the freaks have asked Sylvie what it’s like to pass. What it’s
really
like. She knows that they want to hear how wonderful it is, because passing is their dream, but they also want to hear how strange, even unpleasant, it is, because passing is a dream that won’t come true for them. The truth is, it’s both things. On the one hand Sylvie loves the feeling of being like everybody else, which is to say like nobody in particular. On the other hand when she feels most like a freak is when she’s getting away with not being one.
For one thing she isn’t as inconspicuous as the other freaks like to think. Aside from the spectacle of the unfashionably long full skirt she wears to cover her legs, there’s her resemblance to Vivien Leigh. Wherever she goes, men look at her. Of course, she discourages the advances of strange men, but one
Similar Books
