Betti on the High Wire (19 page)

George poked his finger into the dirt. “I don’t think I can be in the circus anyway.”

I knew he was thinking about his lost arm. “Everyone in the circus is broken, George.”

“I want to be a doctor for animals. My mommy said I could be a doctor for animals someday.”

“Our circus
needs
a doctor for animals. It’s a very important job, George. Think about it.”

He thought about it. “But—”

“I can’t leave you here all by yourself.
Alone
. In crazy America! You might get lost.”

George tapped his finger on my knee and looked up at me. “My mommy won’t let me get lost. And I’m not alone. I have my mommy, and some new friends, and I have you, but—”

“Don’t you see? You’re forgetting your real family. The leftover kids. You’re forgetting everything.” I stood up and stomped my foot. “Just like a traitor.”

Traitor was a bad, bad word in my country. George’s bottom lip stuck out like he was about to cry.

Then I started walking fast, really fast, on my invisible high wire line, which had become crooked. George tried to catch up with me, knocking into my heels.

“No, Babo! I never forget them!”

I started counting my perfect steps—twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six—when I heard George’s mommy calling for him. Suddenly George wasn’t following me anymore. He was standing on the sidewalk, stuck.

“I must go, Babo. My mommy—”

“I know.”

“Babo, to-morr-ow? Swimming poo? My horse house?”

“Tomorrow,” I hollered back at him, “I may be gone.”

“I don’t want you to go, Babo!” George called out to me and sniffled like crazy. “I want you to be happy. With me. Here!”

I didn’t answer. But I did turn around and watch George. His mommy was waiting for him across the play yard. His second-grade Melon friend, named Stephanie, was waiting too. She was probably going to get a cookie, and swim in his swimming pool. George used to ask me every day at the circus camp if he could be my best friend. Now he ran toward his new mommy and his new friend.

And then he was gone.

Forty-eight. Step step step. Fifty-one. Step step. Fifty-three. I was definitely going to be a circus star. This was just the beginning. I’d be so good that the circus people would
never
leave me behind. They’d need me. I’d be so good that everyone would clap for me, even the Summer Five.

I was watching my feet so closely, staring at my bright white play shoes, that I almost tripped over a book on the grass. A few books actually. And Mayda. Her legs were crossed on a curb between the grass and the street.

“Hi Babo Betti,” said Mayda. “Are you going home now?” Her face was all red and patchy. From a terrible rash, or from picking, or from crying, it was hard to say.

“Um, yes?”

“Do you want to walk with me?” Mayda looked a little nervous as she picked up her books in her arms, and dropped two back on the ground. “I think we go the same way.”

“I ... I have to wait,” I answered. “For Mrs. Buck-worth.”

Mayda looked down and tapped her dirty shoe against the cement.

“But ... you can wait too,” I suddenly blurted out. “And walk with me too. And Mrs. Buckworth too.”

Mayda looked up and smiled. “Okay!”

So I sat down next to Mayda and we waited. We kicked our heels against the curb.

She finally asked, “Were you really in a circus, Betti?”

I nodded. And gulped.

“That’s really cool.”

“Yes. It was ... is ... cool.” Which must’ve been the word for when the wind blew in my face when I was on the high wire.

“Is it a traveling circus?”

“Um, we have home ... a camp ... but we travel. All over the world.”

“I travel too.” Mayda bit her chapped lip. “It’s not nearly so cool as being in a circus though.”

“What is your car ear dream?” I asked her.

“Me? Oh, well, I guess I want to be a photographer. I don’t know if it’ll happen though.”

I had no idea what a photographer was, but I told her, “The world is an oyster.”

Mayda just shrugged.

I wanted to ask Mayda where she had come from and why she was a new student, and why she wasn’t in Day Camp like everybody else, and why Nanny lived next door sometimes. But Mayda didn’t look like she wanted to talk about any of it. Her lips were locked. Ugh.

Instead she said, “Do you think you can show me? I mean, what you did? On your high wire?”

“I don’t know. I ...” I squeaked. “I ... I need a line ... up to ... the sky.”

But Mayda’s eyes sparkled behind her pink glasses as she looked up at the clouds. “It doesn’t have to be in the sky, Betti. It can be right here.”

So I couldn’t say no. My knees were shaking as I stood up. “I ... I walk like ... this.” I put my arms out. I took one step. And another step. I curled my pinky fingers as if I was a real star. I raised my head in the air like an exotic bird, and tried to point my missing toes. One graceful step and another.

And then ...

I tripped on a clump of grass. “Ow ow,” I slurred. “Ow.”

Mayda gasped. “Are you okay?”

I nodded and rubbed my bad eye like I had a bug in it. Very clumsy.

“That was still pretty good,” said Mayda. “I bet you’re really good.”

I smiled, just a little, because I couldn’t help it.

When Mrs. Buckworth came to pick up Mayda and me a few minutes later, we walked quietly past the old bicycle in the yard and the skateboard. Past the garden and the pond and the quacking ducks. Past the mailbox and the tree house. And then, after we reached Mayda’s house, Mayda turned to me and asked, “I wondered if, maybe, you would like to come back to my house? I mean, to play? Would you like to play with me someday soon?”

Mayda didn’t understand that I couldn’t have any friends in America. I was going to be running away any day, and I had a terrible time leaving friends. But Mayda’s face looked awfully hopeful.

Finally I stammered, “O ... okay,” because she was probably broken.

“Really?” Mayda’s face lit up. “That’d be great!” She smiled as if I’d just given her a big fat present.

SOMETHING WAS VERY., very wrong.

Malibu Margie and Ramon had squished my snake tree and knocked over some leftover kids. Roller Derby Tina was sitting right in the middle of my fire circle. Jessie Lynn was smiling in her wedding dress on top of my lion cage.

“I just want to play with it!” cried Lucy as I tossed her dolls one by one over my shoulder into the grass. “Please?” Her foot was still enormous but she was walking around with wooden sticks under her arms. “WHY can’t I, Betti?”

“Your dolls are too ... perfect.” I watched an ant crawl through my miniature fire circle. “Circus people are not perfect.”

“Mydolls aren’t that perfect.” LucyheldRoller Derby Tina up to her nose. Tina’s head was a bit squished from the roller skate accident.

“And ...” I put my nose in the air. “It is MY home. For circus people.”

“What circus? I don’t see any circus people!” Lucy picked up all of her plastic people and waved them over my circus camp. They were three times bigger than the Hairy Bear Boy’s empty tent or the snake tree.

“You can’t see them.” I carefully fixed the lion cage and propped up the trees. “Because you don’t have a special eye. Like me.”

“Maybe I can see them too. I’ll look really hard.” Lucy’s eyes got all squinty and googley as she stared at the ground. “I’m pretty sure I see them now. Yeah, I do. My dolls will just practice here. On these rocks.”

“Those are NOT rocks. You are smooshing my pigs!”

“Well.” Lucy rubbed her eyes. Her bottom lip stuck out like she was going to cry. “They don’t look like pigs to me. And the rest of it doesn’t look like a circus. It looks like a bunch of sticks.” Lucy gathered her dolls in a clump and stood up. “I’m going to make my own circus then. In my dollhouse. And everyone will come and see it.” She tried to carry her dolls as she hobbled on her wooden sticks toward the house. “You may not even be invited, Betti.”

I shrugged. I moved my pig rocks into a circle. A chorus of rock-singing pigs. The tall Auntie Moo stick and the Babo stick—me—sat next to the river washing our clothes, and laughing private laughs.

In about one second Lucy was back. “Can’t I play with yours? Yours is better.”

I sighed and carefully put my sticks down. “You must be born in the circus. Not in America.”

“How come you’re so bossy?” cried Lucy. “You weren’t born in any ol’ circus!”

“Yes.” I took a deep dramatic breath so I could begin my Big Mouth story. “In my circus, Fifi the elephant did show and clowns with red hair stood on her back.”

“Did the clowns have hair like my hair?”

I nodded. “And Teeny-Tiny Puppet Man did funny show about war.”

Lucy squatted down next to me in the dirt. Her fat foot knocked down the Teeny-Tiny Puppet Man as she put her little hands on my feet.

“One day ... soldiers come to circus camp. Fifi the elephant scream, ‘Climb up, climb up on me!’ She put her big fat nose in the air. So Teeny-Tiny Puppet Man climbed up on the clowns, and the Hairy Bear Boy climbed on Teeny-Tiny Puppet Man, and Cindi the lion—”

Lucy scrunched her eyes. “The lion climbed on top of the elephant?”

“BOOM!” I continued, and Lucy scooted back in the grass.

“What was the boom?”

“A bomb.”

“A bomb?”

“And Big Uncle’s tire. Boom!” I wildly waved my arms around for effect. “He climb up too. And Auntie Moo. And the leftover kids. I climb on very top. My dad wait below to catch us if we fall. But ... we did not fall.”

Lucy’s eyes were wide open. She was listening very carefully, so I went on.

“My mama waits for us. She is tallest woman in the world. She lifts us into the sky. In her hands. Big, big hands. Over the trees, over the high wire.” I raised my hands and stared dramatically into the Buckworths’ big tree.

Lucy looked confused. “My mom said that your mom and dad died, Betti. A long time ago.”

My whole body suddenly got stiffer than a scarecrow in a bean field. Birds could’ve made nests on my head and I wouldn’t have noticed.

Lucy had a very Big Mouth. But my Big Mouth was louder.

“NO!” I practically shouted, jumping up from the grass. “We are lucky. Mama and Dad and all circus people. We are IN THE SKY.”

Fluffing up Jessie Lynn’s wedding dress, Lucy said, “Well, my mom said that your parents weren’t saved. And that’s why you got to come live here, Betti.” She tilted her head and looked up at me. “That’s why we wanted you to be in our family ’Cause you were an orphan.”

My good eye was watering so much that I had to rub it, as if I was shooing away a hundred bugs. My nose was running so much that I had to wipe it with my sleeve. “No! We are SAFE.”

Lucy shrugged. “That’s not what Mom said.”

I had to practice for the circus. Immediately. I had to walk on my high wire line.

Mrs. Buckworth had a long green snake line that she used to water her flowers. Perfect. I stepped onto it gracefully and walked on perfect toes across the middle of the yard. My pinky fingers were curled up and my toes were pointed. I didn’t see anything but my high wire.

“Can’t I be in your circus, Betti?”

Step step step. One foot at a time.

“Please?”

Step step. I couldn’t hear a single word.

“Sometimes you’re not nice, Betti.”

I needed to hear the circus music. I needed to keep walking.

But suddenly ... water was flying everywhere! It hit me and just about everything else like a monsoon. Lucy had the other end of the green snake and was whipping it around in her little hands.

My whole head was drenched. Water dripped off my lashes and into my eyes as I slid right off my line and into the mushy grass.

“I’m giving a bath to the circus animals!” Lucy hollered. Rooney and Puddles shook water off and hid under Mrs. Buckworth’s bushes.

My stick trees were buried and my leftover stick people were soggy. My fire circle was a little swimming pool.

That’s when my Big Mouth came back with a roar. “Your dolls are SOLDIERS! Do you not see? They are Melons! Too big. They stomp my people. My people disappear. They wash away!”

Lucy’s eyes grew huge. Scared. In a tiny peep she said, “My dolls aren’t going to hurt anybody, Betti. My dolls are nice dolls. We just want to play.”

“NO!” I shouted. “Tricky!”

Lucy’s whimpers turned into loud jaggedy sobs. “Well I—hate you—sometimes!” She stood up and stomped her good foot and shouted, “’Cause you’re mean. Really really MEAN!”

I put my hands over my ears. I searched for the Auntie Moo stick by the river. I searched for Babo.

Suddenly Mrs. Buckworth was standing outside. “LUCY!”

But it didn’t matter anyway.

I ran like I was running from the soldiers. Straight past Mrs. Buckworth to the pantry. I crawled under the shelves of boxes and cans and made myself as small as I could, almost invisible, into a tiny ball.

I heard Lucy bawling and I heard Mrs. Buckworth saying, “Did you say something, Lucy? What did you say to Betti?”

“Nothing! Well, I said she was MEAN.”

“You need to say you’re sorry.”

“NO! She
is
mean. I don’t want a big sister!”

I wanted to stay in my hiding place pantry forever. No one would ever find me. Of course, the Buckworths didn’t want to find me anyway. I was sure of it. I wasn’t even their real kid. And I was a mean and horrible big sister too. Finally the Buckworths definitely realized that they’d made the wrong choice. Finally they understood everything.

But when Mr. Buckworth found me hiding in the pantry and picked me up in his big bear arms, I didn’t even have the energy to fight like a little tiger. When Mrs. Buckworth smoothed my hair and Mr. Buckworth carried me into my yellow room, I didn’t have the energy to explain to them—again—how very horrible I was.