Clown Girl (10 page)

“
Thin ice
,” he said again. “This is about the breaker.”

“I’ll pull the flyers down.”

“Sheesh.” Herman fell back against the couch.

I limped into the kitchen. My cane tapped against the chipped linoleum.

“Injured in the line of duty?” Italia asked. She sucked ice cream from a spoon, with a carton in her hand, her knuckles big. “They must a treated you pretty bad down there. You look like crap.”

I shifted the bag on my shoulder. “Down where?”

She stuck her spoon in the ice cream again. “At the station, like? Am I wrong, or didn’t you just get arrested?”

My face was reflected in patches of glowing gray-white in the window over the kitchen sink. An overgrown laurel hedge kept that window dark all day. In the blurred shadows of the hedge, my eyes looked big and sunken like a skeleton head, holes in a mask. I set my pink bag and sunglasses on the counter, ran warm tap water, and cupped my hands to rinse the dust of the Ruins from my face.

Chance’s dish, on the kitchen floor, was still half full of kibble. She never left her dish half full. I called her name. She didn’t answer. Nadia-Italia put her palms on the counter and hoisted herself up backward to sit.

“Chance?” I called again. I opened the mudroom door. The room was empty, no dog. I tossed my bag and cane on the bed. “Where’s my dog?” I said.

“Lost your only Chance?” Italia smiled. I swear she smiled.

I said, “It’s not funny. She was here when I left. What’d you do with her?” I opened the basement door and called Chance, down the dark stairs.

“You lost your Chance and you’re trying to blame it on others.” Italia sat on her hands, her big knuckles under her thighs, on the counter. She shook her head at me. “Maybe the little yapper joined the circus.”

I said, “Tell me—where’s Chance? No joking.” My heart picked up its pace again. My hands felt weak.

“No clowning, Clown Girl?” Italia still smiled. “I’m not your dog’s keeper. It’s not our job to watch that rat terrier.”

“She’s a schipperke, not a terrier. Herman!” I called. My voice cracked with panic. I looked in the backyard, stood on the back steps, and called for Chance again. Nothing. I called Herman’s name again. Then Chance’s. Then Herman’s, until finally Herman came out behind me.

He said, “What up with the noise?” He pulled a pouch of tobacco from his pocket.

I said, “Where’s Chance?”

Herman took rolling papers from the side of his tobacco pouch.

“She was here when I left,” I said. “At the window.” I went into the yard and called her again. Herman followed. I kicked at the weeds.

First Rex, then the chicken, and now Chance was gone? First my folks, and ever since then, my life. Nothing came together. I picked up an empty clay planter and threw it into the grass. The planter broke into pieces. I couldn’t take it anymore. I called for Chance and kicked my way through the broken shards.

“Hey, easy, easy,” Herman said. He sat on the back stairs. “Listen—the dog was going insane. Barking at the windows, scratching at the door. We opened the door, that’s all. She’s a dog, right? She’ll be back.”

He balanced his tobacco on one leg, sprinkled a line in the paper, and rolled it between his fingers. I called for my dog, and my voice sailed out into the neighborhood.

“You want a chance with me, girl?” somebody called back.

Herman said, “Remember when you were a kid? Maybe you had a family dog, you let it out, and it came back.”

“Chance is not that kind of a dog,” I said. “She’s a puppy. She’s a schipperke. She’s high-strung.”

Herman licked the edge of the rolling papers. He said, “The whole world’s high-strung, clowns included, it seems. Chill. The dog’ll come home.”

The thought of searching the neighborhood on my bum leg made me feel weak. I had no help. Where was Rex? If Rex were home, Rex would get Chance back. Rex would stand up to Italia, and Chance wouldn’t be gone in the first place.

I sat on the steps and folded my hands over my calves. I put my forehead on my knees. I had to shut down before I exploded.

Herman ran a hand over my back. He rubbed my shoulder. He said, “Remember how it was back when you had plans, and ambition? The whole art thing.”

I half-turned to look at him from the corner of my eye, his hand still rubbing my back. “I have ambition now. More than ever. I’m working on a plan.” I had Kafka, a vision, a message and a massage. The muscles at the back of my neck gave in to the warmth of his hand.

He said, “I mean artistic ambition, not just financial.”

“I have artistic ambition. I won’t stay a corporate clown for long.”

Herman rubbed my left shoulder. “You sure? Money sucks in the best of the best.”

The best of the best
. That was Rex, in my book. And money hadn’t gotten to him yet. Not at all! In fact, he didn’t earn enough to cover the cost of his own face paints. The door clattered open behind us. Herman’s hand fell away from my back fast.

Italia said, “What’re you doing?”

I sat up. Herman looked at me. I looked at Italia. She looked from him to me.

I smiled, put a hand on Herman’s thigh, and said, “Like old times.” Easy buttons to push, I couldn’t resist. OK, it was a bitter moment—I was bitter. I was a bitter clown on the precipice of corporate wasteland. I baited Italia because she let my dog out when that dog was all I had. In a soft voice I murmured, “You’ve always had such strong hands.”

Herman said, “Drop it, Nita.”

Italia said, “Herman?”

He said, “Look, don’t worry. What do you need?”

She ran her nails over the screen of the screen door, with a sharp scritch of sound. “There’s like, some kind of family at the front door, with a rubber chicken…” she said, and made the scritch again.

Herman flicked loose tobacco from his tongue. “Christ.” He nodded his head at me. “They’re yours. Get rid of the bounty hunters, I’m serious, or you’re out on your ear.”

10.

Our Kodak Moment; or, Rexless Behavior

ALL NIGHT I LIMPED THROUGH BALONEYTOWN. I CHECKED every piece of worn tire rubber, pile of old clothes, and cascade of trash, anything that looked like a possible curled dog-body in the dark. As the sun rose I sat on the sagging couch on Herman’s front porch and made a sign:
Find My Lost Chance! No tail, no collar. All Black. Knows Tricks. Left-handed, half-trained, full-blooded schipperke. Reward: $$
. I drew a picture of Chance sitting up and begging, her two paws in a prayer pose, as though she prayed to come home.

I was stretched out on the porch couch when Herman opened the front door. He rubbed his head, his sleepy hair. “You’re up early. What gives?”

I flipped the poster over to hide it. “Work. Clown gig.”

“Crying doesn’t become you. Makes your eyes puffy.” He ran the end of his thumb along the side of my face. I knocked his hand away. Unruffled, he asked, “Where you working today?”

“Photo shoot. Publicity.”

Herman laughed. “Oh shit. Bad day for that one, ’cause you’re looking like hell. But that old paint and spackle covers pretty well?”

I tucked the flyer close to my hip and went back to the mudroom, where I stood on the mattress Rex and I called our bed and checked out my face in the shard of green-tinted mirror duct-taped to the wall. Herman was right. My nose was sunburned and my skin was a map of red patches. My eyes were bloodshot, puffy, and shadowed. My lips were cracked. Every mirror asked the old existential clown question: If that’s me in the mirror, then who am I? I was a wreck. I could still hear Crack issue her order:
Go all out. Show up looking good. Photos cost a lot of cabbage; we’ll do it once, that’s it. You read me?

Ah! Bless St. Julian for whiteface and war paint. I faced the mirror again and got to work. The room was quiet without Chance’s rapid, summer-hot panting, her sudden fits of scratching her toenails against the wooden floor. My stomach was an empty pit, my heart a pounding fist.

Go all out
,
see?
In my book that meant call on High Clown style: big hair in a cloud of fried red plastic curls fluffed with a pick, two waxed spit curls tight over my ears. I’d wear a river of blue tinsel clipped in my wig. Big red lips, black arched brows, and of course I’d break out my best red rubber nose: classic.

I snapped the seal on the acupuncturist’s amber jar of Chinese pills, pulled the cork, and shook half a dozen of the white pills, smaller than BBs, into my palm. I swallowed three with a drink from a dusty glass of dog hair linted water beside the bed. I took another pill and let it rest on my tongue, where it melted fast as candy. When I didn’t feel anything, I popped three more. They rattled against my teeth. I bit down without breaking them, like biting on ball bearings, and rolled the pills under my tongue, where they melted into nothing.

A naked Rex watched from a scratchy ink drawing on the wall, with his ever-present secret smile. He peered in miniature as a sculpture on top of the bookshelf. He turned his back in a pencil sketch, showed an ear in oil paint, and held a hand open to the sky. I sat on the bed, the phone on my pillow.

I slid another pill on my tongue.

Rex was everywhere, but I couldn’t get him on the phone. I called one more time, and said into the clown hostel answering machine, “Rex? It’s Nita. There’s some trouble with Chance…she’s gone, Rex. She disappeared. Rex? Are you there?”

I slid on a pair of his striped pants, to keep Rex with me through the clown shoot. I needed the luck. They were Lycra acrobat pants, snug on Rex but loose on me and brushed my thighs in a band of wide stripes. I rolled a fat cuff at the hem and tied a pink scarf at the waist. Ta da! I put on my best ruffled collar with blue piping at the edges, over a striped satin shirt.

Stripes are key to clowning
. That was a line from our edifying routine, Clowns in the Schools. The Clowns in the Schools shtick started in black leotards and plain face. Then Rex and I, we’d dress in front of the kids. Rex would pull on his skintight pants and say, “Stripes are the cloth of the outcast, the proud flag of clowns, prisoners, and artists.” He’d give a toothy smile.

“The dress of scalawags, rapscallions, and reprobates,” I’d chime in, as I stepped into a big striped tent of a dress. We’d rehearsed a hundred times.

We’d team juggle disks of face paint as Rex recited, “The best clown gear finds its place in tradition. History. It’s sacred in some communities, prized in many cultures. Should a clown wear whiteface or go natural? Be a German country bumpkin, the Auguste clown, or a Native American ethereal spirit?”

“Jester, juggler, acrobat, Pierrot, or Harlequin,” I’d say, and cock an eyebrow. Clowns in the Schools was government-sponsored for about ten minutes. Then we lost our funding. Still, we practiced.

“Getting dressed is all about calling on the other world—the underworld—to find a spiritual patron, an inspiration,” I said out loud, to myself now.

Rex Galore was my inspiration.

Maybe he wasn’t in the underworld, but he was a long ways away, even as his spirit surrounded me. I kissed the tip of my index finger and touched my finger to the lips of the red clay head, where it hovered in the closet. My bank, my love, my heart. My future.

There was only one detail left: my nose.

I lifted a barrel-shaped wooden clown doll from a shelf. With a twist, the clown fell in two halves, and a smaller clown fell out. I gave the second clown a twist and an even smaller clown fell out. When I turned the third, one more appeared. A final twist, and there it was. My prized red rubber nose, lovingly made at the Red Rubber Nose Factory.

Those Clowns Sans Frontières ran the factory. So noble! Every penny of income from the Nose Factory went to kids in war-ravaged countries. Kids without limbs, without homes, without rubber noses. Once, Rex and I talked about starting up a chapter of Clowns Without Borders right in Baloneytown, a neighborhood bad as any other.

Bottom line, though—I wasn’t a red nose clown. For the photos, my rubber nose was a talisman.

I slid on my big-frame, squirting, daisy-rimmed sunglasses, dropped the jar of Chinese pills in my bag, chose my best hand-painted Keds, and grabbed the staple gun.

My orange hospital jug was a glowing harvest moon that looked down from the top of the bookshelf.
Harvest
, the moon of a jug said.
Harvest that urine!

I still had no urine in the urine bank. I had no urine funnel.

Now, after a night of looking for Chance, I was completely confused. When was the first piss of the morning in a night without sleep? When was the last piss of the night?

I put down my pink bag and carried the orange jug into the bathroom. I slid down Rex’s striped acrobat pants, held the jug above the toilet, bent my knees, and hovered. My groin muscles burned. I could barely sustain the pose. I gathered up my shirt, held it out of the way. A sloppy stream ran toward the narrow jug opening; urine ran warm over my hand. It ran fast. A mess. I cut the flow, then let it go again. My ripped groin shook. A cold sweat cut across my forehead. Tiny yellow lakes decorated the toilet lid and the worn white linoleum floor.

But I had piss in the jug. Bingo! I was on my way to a urine harvest. Finally.

I screwed the lid on the jug and wiped the outside off with toilet paper. When I gave it a shake, the jug had new weight to it. The bottom of the jug was warm from urine inside. Time to get it on ice.

My designated shelf in the fridge was a narrow middle space, second down from the top. The jug was too tall for my shelf, though. It fit instead on the shelf in the door, a shared area crowded with soy cartons, white wine, weight lifter’s shakes, and organic juice.

I closed the fridge and wiped my hands down my striped-clad thighs, satisfied.

ON THE WAY TO THE PHOTO SHOOT, I COPIED MISSING Chance posters. I copied Missing Plucky posters too. To hell with Herman and house rules; Plucky, Chance, Rex—I needed them all to come home.

“Cha-ance,” I called as I walked. “Here, Chance! Here, girl!”

“Nope,” some joker with a nasal whine called out an apartment window. “Not a chance, baby.” He giggled, coughed. Then giggled again.

A group of kids hung out on a porch. “A clown!” one kid said. As a mass, they tumbled off the porch, arms and legs in full swing.

Already late, I waved the kids back with one big blue glove. “I’m off work, kids. Not a clown.” I showed them the palm of my open hand. In my other hand I waggled the heavy-duty staple gun. I kept walking and called again. “Chaaa-a-ance. Here, girl. Here, puppy-puppy-pup!”

The kids danced alongside me as I walked, all whispers and giggles. I was breaking the Clown Code of Ethics, on the street in costume but not performing. All I had to do was tie one balloon animal, toss an invisible ball, trip on a bump or even a bum on the sidewalk. Squirt the sunglasses, and I’d be up to code.

I didn’t have it in me.

“Do a trick!” a kid with a crusty nose shouted. He was right beside me. “A joke!”

“No need to shout.” I stopped at a phone pole, slammed six staples in around the edge of a Missing Plucky poster, then drove another six staples home for Chance. “Say, kids, have you seen this chicken?” I held out a flyer.

The boy chipped at the snot. His arm was scarred and thin. He said, “I got one—listen. What did the vampire say to the clown?”

By all rights, I should’ve given this refugee of a kid a free red rubber nose.

Another kid cut in and answered. He said, “Something tastes funny! Get it? Tastes funny.”

Crusty Nose made to bite my arm. I jerked my hand away and said, “Nice joke, kids. Now, have you seen this dog?” I held out a second flyer.

The boy laughed, teeth jagged and flashing. A second kid pulled on my shirt tail. The taller kids squinted. One girl reached for the flyer. I let it go into her dirty fingers, pulled out another flyer, held it against the pole, and punched staples in around the edge, each time with the loud pop of the staple gun.

“What you doing out there?” A mom’s voice drifted through the screen door. “Get in here now,” she said, and held the door open. The biggest girl turned away first, let the Missing Chance flyer fall to the ground, and the others followed her back to the porch; the snot-nosed kid walked backward, waving.

I yelled, “There’s money in it, if you find her.”

The older boy poked his head out. “How much?” A hand grabbed his shoulder. Then he was gone, and the screen door clattered.

On a side street, a yellow rubber nub poked up out of a garbage can. A rubber chicken-colored yellow nub! Plucky? I pulled on the nub, and it grew bigger, kept going, growing longer and stretched out—something held it from below—and then it snapped and slapped against my hand. It wasn’t Plucky at all, but rather was the tip of an old rubber glove covered in motor oil stuffed under a stack of catalogs mixed with porn. I wiped my hand on the ground, over gravel, bottle caps, and new grass.

THE PHOTO SHOOT WAS IN THE BASEMENT OF THE BALONEYTOWN Lucky Strike bowling alley,
Featuring the World-Renowned Strike and Rake Lounge!
A photographer Crack knew was doing the photos for a cut rate, some kind of favor. I didn’t want to know what kind. I stapled flyers to a nearby pole. Out the open doors of the Lucky Strike, already I heard the smash and clatter of pins.

Inside, a cluster of drunks in the Strike and Rake Lounge started rubbernecking, like I was the freak on the scene. They were bar refugees hiding from sobriety.

“Well, bowl me over with a rubber nose,” one called out. His skin was green, his eyes red, and his hair a thin collection of well-greased strands. He gave a big tongue wag. Ghouls.

“You must be the Rake,” I said, and kept going. I followed Crack’s directions,
through the lounge and past the cigarette machine…
I headed toward a narrow set of dimly lit, industrial-green cement stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs, the basement was dark. I crossed a storage space. One light was on in the far back, and in that light I saw a handwritten sign taped to a nearly hidden door:
Pssst! Sniff and Matey—In Here!

I pushed that door open, stepped in.

Inside the room glared bright; it was a nest of draped white sheets and photographer’s lights, full of smoke and with empty bottles on the floor. An old toilet was hooked up in the back corner, no stall. Crack sat on a chipped office table and puffed on a Swisher Sweet. A man swiveled in a swivel chair. His eyes were hidden under folds of skin, drooping lids, and dark circles, like an old sea turtle. He had a camera, two or three lenses, and rolls of film scattered in front of him. The man ran his fingers over his skinny mustache again and again.

From above came the rhythmic rumble and smash of the bowling alley:
Th-th-th-th-ump! Kaboom!

Crack took the stogie out of her mouth. Her jaw fell open. She said, “What the hell is this?” She came at me fast, put the Swisher Sweet back in her mouth, unbuttoned my collar, and roughed up my clown hair. “You look like Bozo.”

“Bozo!” I said. “It’s the cloth of the trade!” I flinched when her hand came at me. “You said go all out. This is my best stuff. High Clown.”

“High on something, all right! Now let’s fix it up.” The cigarillo jumped between her lips. She tugged on my wig. The wig was pinned on with bobby pins and the pins clawed my skull. She squeezed one long-lashed eye against the smoke of her own cigar. “This is
way
too Ronald McDonald.”

I tried to pull away. “We’re clowns! This is all-out clown stuff.” I pressed my hair back into a round poof. “I’m dressed to find my spirit leader.”

“Well, ain’t that a fine kettle of fish,” Crack said. “Plan to do kids’ gigs forever?” Crack was dressed like a hooker Harlequin, in a dark wig, loud fuchsia lips, a fake fur-trimmed polka-dot dress, and fishnets sturdy enough to catch a marlin. One glance at the photographer, and it looked like she’d caught a shark.

“‘All-out’ as in, like, let’s sell ourselves, right? Not all-out jokers.” She had a cobalt blue heart drawn below her right eye. Her nose was big, but that was her real nose, nothing she could do about it. Her wig was a bouquet of tight curls.