Among the Wonderful (8 page)

There would be no costume and so in the morning I put on my blue ombré dress and the gray shawl over my shoulders. A mist from the harbor gave the impression of frost, but the morning was strangely warm, much warmer than March
at home. I tidied my hair in the small oval mirror. What will they see? Shoulders wider than their fathers’. Strides wider than they can jump. A hand strong enough to lift them off the ground, big enough to encircle their necks. Breasts they will imagine when they get home. A face. Yes, up there, what about the face? As white and expressionless as fog.

I picked up my bottle of Cocadiel’s Remedy from the small table and drank deeply.

By the time I had walked across the beluga gallery and down the many flights of stairs, the remedy had numbed the revolting pain in my legs, lightening my burden in its usual way.

At nine in the morning a sizable crowd already roamed the halls. I walked as slowly as I could bear. If I was to walk for three hours I needed a slow rhythm to sustain me. Also new shoes. In the past my manager would arrange for a cobbler to visit me. I worried over how I would find one in the city. I feigned a charitable countenance, entered the portrait gallery, and listened as conversations trailed off in my wake.

The very tall, like the very beautiful, become accustomed to a certain range of response from those around them. Whereas the beautiful woman maneuvers in an arena of unprovoked deference, envy, illusion, and lechery, I remain mostly surrounded by the many incarnations of fear. I am an amusement in the marketplace, but delight is not usually the emotion I provoke. There is only one element of my work that has remained interesting to me over time, and that is the infinitely variable expression of surprise.

A majority of people respond to my presence in familiar ways: a widening of the eyes, of course, and the related eyebrow movement; an audible intake of breath (I have never seen an exhale in these instances) that may or may not become a vocalization; some stutter in bodily movement, most often stopping completely or backing up, and occasionally an actual leap backward.

Apart from these generalities, the average member of the public has one or two involuntary responses that, frankly, would surprise them if they could see them as I do. In Halifax
I encountered a lady who, when she saw me as Athena, began to violently pull her own hair and did not stop until her escort shielded her from my sight. One fellow seemed to take no notice of me at all. But as he stood with the others looking into my booth he suffered a delayed reaction: He crossed his left leg tightly over his right and leaned forward, twisted as a pretzel, as if he was overcome with the need to urinate, pointing at me while his hat toppled off his head.

And then there’s my favorite kind of surprise. It is that instance when a person tries his hardest not to show a change in expression at all. This particular, temporary flatness in the eye and stiffening of the neck may be the only symptoms, but they are enough to give him away. I find this response strangely heartbreaking: as if by denying a reaction he is denying reality itself in a small, futile attempt at self-protection in an uncertain world. Then there are always the yelps, the clutching at friends’ hands, the jump back, the handclap, the run away, the simple laugh, the blush, the hoot, the faint, and the horror.

I passed a group of three friends lounging on benches. They seemed accustomed to the portrait gallery, as if they met often there. The men — boys, really, they must not be older than twenty — wore wool frock coats and striped vests, one with a brown umbrella for a cane. This one stood with one leg propped on the bench, leaning over his knee with his hat tipped slightly over his forehead. His friend, skinny and red-haired, produced peanuts from one vest pocket, shelled and ate them, and deposited the shells in his other pocket.

The woman sat on another bench. She wore a pale coffee-and-cream-colored dress and cape and spoke excitedly to the boys. She was so caught up in the conversation that she’d failed to notice that one of her slippers had slid off her foot. It was as if they hovered around a table in their parlor instead of a wooden bench in a museum. None of them saw me when I passed. How could they not see me?

“He’s just wrong if he thinks he can stop it using the city government,” the girl with the fallen slipper was saying. “Just wrong.”

“Are you back on Mayor Harper, Bitsy? Why don’t you find something else to talk about?” This from the one with the umbrella.

“Because he’s about to fail at the job, and he’s had it for only two weeks.”

I slowed down. They
must
see me by now. They did not.

“He wants to stop liquor and immigration using the same method, and it’s simply not going to work. It’s insulting,” the woman huffed. “A Temperance man, for Christ’s sake. That’s not what this city needs. Doesn’t he know that a public ban will —”

“Are you saying the Irish are like whiskey?” said the one eating peanuts.

“I’m simply saying that if Harper
encourages
the dismissal of immigrant labor, the only thing it’s going to cause are riots and more illegal —”

“The only thing that’ll stop the Irish is cholera,” said the peanut-eater. They laughed.

“Cholera didn’t stop you, did it, Colin?” the other boy said.

“No, sir. I wasn’t going back to Dublin just because of some trifling disease, was I?”

I stole looks over my shoulder as I walked farther on but the friends had not looked up. Now I was disappointed, and angry at myself for it. I paced down the other side of the gallery, where two raggedy children squealed and pointed at me.

“The only reason Colin didn’t lose his job” — the boy was waving his umbrella as I approached them again — “is because he already had money. Harper doesn’t care where you were born, as long as you’ve got it.”

“I don’t care what you say. This platform will never —” and then, finally, they saw me. “Well! At least someone can see the portraits they’ve hung up so high,” said the woman.

The boy with the umbrella straightened, off guard for only an instant before he tipped his hat and gave a little bow. “Good morning, miss.”

I nodded, suddenly overcome. By what? Something that
made the natural distance between us stretch threefold. I tried to smile. Was this simple shyness, the same thing I would feel if I could look them straight in the eye?

“You weren’t here last Saturday, were you?” the boy went on. I shook my head. “You do work here, miss?”

“Yes. I’ve just arrived.” All of them nodded. I took a step back. “From Canada.”

“We
adore
Canada,” said the woman. “I’m Elizabeth Crawford. Welcome to New York.”

“Thank you.”

I said my name and wanted to say more but I blushed like a girl. Why? For what? I could easily have stopped, asked or told them something. Anything. Easily. Instead, I was grateful for my assigned task and I moved on.

After three hours I returned to my room. No one was monitoring my movements, so who would care if I left the public sphere for a while, to rest a little and then take my lunch? I had the annoying sensation that someone
was
observing me as I made my rounds, but this was the result, undoubtedly, of the myriad eyes of museum visitors.

When I reached the hall on the fifth floor, I saw an open door two doors beyond mine. It wouldn’t kill me to be neighborly, would it?

It was a bigger apartment than mine, and a carpet with a distracting geometric design dominated it. Several suitcases filled with clothes were strewn about the place. I wondered what would appear as a feminine voice grew louder, but the woman who appeared from a small adjoining room appeared normal on first glance. She stopped when she saw me. She had never seen someone as tall as me. How could she be here, moving into
this
museum, and still be surprised? We looked at each other. Her mouth opened slightly. Her eyes:
How dare you frighten me?
She didn’t speak.

“I’m Ana Swift.” I held my ground. People find my hands monstrous and I never offer to touch others, so I kept them at my sides.

We were the same age. Hers was a narrow face, smooth and curved like a cake of soap worn down in the middle. Eyes set high and close under trembling black curls. A small mouth my presence had soured.

“Are you a new one? You must be.” The woman didn’t come closer. “They’re coming like a
plague
, for goodness’ sake.” Her eyes darted uncontrollably. Behind her were full bookcases and velvet chairs. They appeared to have been living there for some time, and yet there was no outward sign of her purpose in a museum of curiosities, unless she was an acrobat or had another invisible talent. But she didn’t have that look about her. She was a woman with
things:
tablecloths, porcelain, and a portrait on the wall. “They didn’t tell me this would happen.”

“That what would happen?”

“Mama —” A girl with a ridiculous blue satin bow around her head entered the room behind the woman. “Oh!” Eyes widening, hand rising to her mouth.

“They’re still arriving,” the woman murmured. But the girl rushed forward, tripping over her own feet and quickly regaining balance.

“I’m Caroline.” Breathless, the girl craned up.

“Ana Swift.” The girl was as tall as my waist, probably ten or twelve years old.

“I’m so glad to meet you.” The girl gave a little bow. “Where did you come from?”

“Pictou, Nova Scotia, originally.”

“Would you like to sit down?” Caroline waved at the tiny chairs.

Her mother took a step forward as if to stop her, but the girl gave her a stern look, and she wilted. Now the woman was not only unsettled by my presence but also embarrassed to be following her child’s example. “Well, yes. Do come in. I’m Mrs. Charity Barnum.”

The chair was not sturdy enough; I sat on the edge of the love seat, supporting myself partially with my legs. It is my usual custom in these situations to ensure that my full weight never rests on other people’s furniture. Mrs. Barnum went for tea, and Caroline sat across from me.

“You’re very tall.” The girl walked to the chair I’d rejected and sat down primly.

“Oh, you can do better than that, can’t you?”

She swung her legs delightedly. She seemed no different from other children, with her bold, somewhat refreshing manner. I meet at least as many children as adults and I’ve come to depend on them to simply blurt out one of several variations on the sentence Caroline had just uttered.

“It must be strange. There are two others. Tall, like you. One’s from China. They live next door to each other, down the hall. The two last rooms. They arrived on the very same day. Tuesday, I think it was. But it was the first time they’d met.”

“Mr. Barnum is your father?”

“Yes. We moved into the museum a month ago, but Mother refuses to unpack her things.” Caroline gestured to the suitcases with her foot. “We couldn’t keep our apartment.”

“Why not?”

Caroline leaned toward me. “My sister’s sick,” she whispered, her smile fading as she pointed to the back room. “In there. It costs
money
. My mother” — she leaned forward even more — “is going to have another baby. But Papa is going to come back with a lot of money.”

Mrs. Barnum returned with a pot of tea and cups. Shakily, she set down the tray and sat down herself.

“Well,” she said. She glanced somewhere below my collarbone before looking at her lap.

“I just arrived.” The decent thing was to try, for just a few minutes. You’re always over my shoulder, Mother.
They will see themselves in you
. But do they see something good? Something that they want to see?

Caroline poured the tea. “The best time to see the museum is at night when everyone’s gone. That’s the very best.”

“Hush, Caroline.”

We sat in silence. How long could Mrs. Barnum bear it, this stillness with me in the middle of it? Caroline had handed me a teacup and saucer. I had not taken a sip and did not intend to. The teacup was absurd in my hands. I was not working. I would not entertain them.

No one broke the silence and within it I awakened from a
certain fogginess of mind. I do not know how long I’d been in it. There’s been a haze ever since they put you in the ground, Mother, but this is different. Maybe it’s that sense of half belonging that I feel in a place like this. The emotion facilitates a certain stability, a certain focus of intention that makes me look up suddenly, wanting to have something, like a hobby or a pet. But it’s a strange deception, the idea of a community of anomalies. The feeling crumbles when I examine it. No, this feeling must be a simpler vigor, perhaps chemical in nature, born in the silence between Mrs. Barnum, glaring from behind her tea, and me. I came awake when the silence stretched on too long. I felt no need to fill it but I knew Mrs. Barnum did. I didn’t need to do
anything
. She didn’t expect me to behave normally. Just as Father said long ago, although by that time he wouldn’t meet my eyes:
You’re lucky, Ana. People will pay to see you and you don’t have to do a damned thing
.

Suddenly these small people, this typically sized room, these things mattered. Not to me personally, perhaps, but they mattered because this is where life had delivered me, and from this point I must function. This woman’s husband was paying me more than anyone ever had. Paying me to be here and show myself. In two weeks I would send the money home to Father. Maybe he would visit me. Perhaps I’d have a place with a carpet, with a bookcase full of books.

Finally the two of them cocked their heads toward the back room, toward a child’s high voice. “Who is it, Mama? Caroline, who’s there?”

Both of them jumped up. Caroline went to her sister.

“She has a fever … I don’t know. We’ll leave this place very, very soon. The draftiness, you know. It’s not right. It’s very bad for us. For the girls.”

“I hope she recovers soon.” Small talk doesn’t suit me. “When will your husband return?” If I could get that information from the woman the visit would be worthwhile.

Mrs. Barnum did not take well to this question, either; she rose and turned on one small heel. “Soon, very, very soon … I’m sorry, Miss Swift, this … 
place
is wearing on my
nerves.” She offered me a pained expression as she raised her hand toward the door.