Clown Girl (14 page)

I put my other hand to my forehead. The beer was wearing off, the Chinese pills. The tinctures. “This is why a clown shouldn’t drink in costume. It goes right to our wig-wearing heads,” I said.

The alley opened up to the street. I took a breath. We stopped walking. Jerrod shoved the plastic pistol in his tight front pocket and put his hands on my arms. He looked at my face, into the scratched lenses of my daisy-rimmed sunglasses, and said, “This isn’t the circus.”

I said, “I know. I’m not a circus clown. I’m a people’s clown. A clown without borders.”

Jerrod said, “I’m serious. What’re you thinking ?” His face was close to the red wig of my hair. He drew me into his cloud of cinnamon spice. “You could’ve gotten yourself killed. Mad Addie, she’s got her own weapons, you know? A shotgun behind the bar.”

The night air was soft. “Killed? Jesus.” I put a hand to my heart. Shook off Jerrod and leaned against the wall. “Shotgun ?” Adrenaline beat against my body from inside. “I’m going to faint. I’ve got heart trouble. I’m sick, I need to sit down.”

“Take it easy. Just breathe,” Jerrod said. He held my hand as I slid down the wall. He checked my pulse.

“I feel sick. I’m not kidding.” The wall was my support, my world, and all I had to hold off
death or insanity
,
death or insanity
, the two immediate options.

“Some holdup artist—this is all a little on the self-destructive side.” Jerrod massaged my hand.

“I left my cane in there.”

“Don’t worry about your cane. I’ll get it later. And what is all this stuff?” He dropped a fistful of the spilled vials, like a handful of raw amber.

“Medicine.” I felt like I’d had the wind knocked out of me. I slid the rest of the way down, sat on the sidewalk with my back against the wall. “Valerian.” I held my hand out. Snapped my fingers, opened the palm again. “I need it.”

“Valerian?” He read the labels and sounded each word out carefully. “Go-tu kola, Pip-siss-iwa…It’s overpriced snake oil, Sniffles.” He slid the silver gun back in my bag. With the tinctures piled in one hand, he put his other hand on my back. “You’re OK. But you’re wasting your money on this stuff.”

My money. I didn’t have extra money. The tonics were hot, stolen.

He sat beside me. I’d never seen a cop in uniform sit on the sidewalk before. “So what’s the gun a cure for?” He dropped most of the vials to the ground. Two of them he shook in his hand like a gambler’s dice, and said, “Same prescription as the sunglasses—to keep people away?”

“It wasn’t even real…it’s a prop gun.” I picked through the vials on the sidewalk until I found the valerian, unscrewed the top, and poured drops into my mouth. My hands shook. My bones shook.

“I know it’s a prop, Sniff—now—but those drunks in there, they don’t know. Flashing a gun is the fast track to trouble.” He ran a hand over my wig. The wig rustled against my ears like leaves in the wind. “Let’s take this off.”

“No, don’t.” I pulled my head away, put a hand to the wig to keep it in place. The evening sky was heavy with low clouds. My glasses dimmed the world further, a sweet dusky blue. I said, “Jerrod—you should get up. You need to go.” I didn’t want him to go. His hand on my back was a warm reassurance. Under his hand, the knot of a fist around my heart loosened. The pounding in my ears eased. Maybe I wouldn’t die or go crazy, not just yet. I said, “You can’t be seen on the street, outside a tavern, in uniform, on the ground.”

He ran his hand in circles over my back. “Don’t worry about me. Just breathe. You’re OK.”

I was a cat, under Jerrod’s hand. A stray cat, left out in the cold too long. And the solution was the cause again, like stealing the tinctures, getting away with something. “You know,” I said, “I can’t be out with you, can’t be seen with you.”

His hand stopped circling. “You can’t be seen with me?”

I looked up at him, past stray strands of the red wig. I said, “It’s not you.”

“What’s wrong with me?” He took his hand away. Where his hand had rested seconds before, I still felt the warmth and weight, and held on to the warmth of it, to keep my heart calm, my bones at ease. Consolation.

“It’s the cop suit. I can’t be seen with a cop.”

“So you’re judging me because I’m an officer. My job. You’re worried what your friends’ll think?”

“It’s not what they’ll think, but what they’ll do. They’ll kick me out of the house.” I said, “You have to understand—it’s like the fear of clowns. Like those families, back at the grocery store. Only it’s a fear of cops. Is there a word for that, fear of cops?”

He took a deep breath, stood and brushed off his pants. “Paranoia, poor socialization, that’s what that is,” he said. “I’m the good guy here. And you don’t need those herbs.” The vials lay in a cluster on the walk. He tapped the bottles with the toe of his shoe. “What you need is to stop hiding, stop being afraid of everybody, and take care of yourself. Stop with the sunglasses and the pistol routine—”

“I’m not the only one carrying a pistol, or the only one in costume. Maybe you’re a little afraid of something yourself, officer?” When I stood, my blood was slow to follow, head dizzy, and for a moment the world narrowed again. In panic, I reached for Jerrod’s hand. He held my hand, and gave it a squeeze. Quieter, I said, “They’ll think we’re on a date.”

Jerrod brushed a strand of my clown wig behind one ear. He ran his palm over the makeup on my face. “Well, that’s one thing I’m not afraid of,” he said. The white dusty powder of dried water-based makeup clung to his skin. When he lifted the sunglasses off my nose the world became a lighter place again, as though he’d bought me a few more evening hours. “Maybe this is a date,” he said. “Would it be so bad?”

In the new light of my evening’s reprieve, his face was soft, earnest as the moon.

I said, “Well, no. Not so bad. Not to me, but really, they’d kick me out of the house. I’m not kidding. You saw my friend the weight lifter, right?” I nodded back toward Hoagies and Stogies. “She’s looking for a way to do me in. Sink my ship. Herman doesn’t want cops around, I mean police, and he thinks I’m a cop magnet now and Italia’s his right hand—”

Jerrod leaned over, and he kissed me.

I kissed him back. I did. I leaned toward him and pressed my lips to Jerrod’s and his mouth was sweet with beer. My pink clown bag slid forward on my arm. Tricks and props and cures spilled onto the sidewalk and rained down around our feet.

Ooo la la! That kiss was fine, and it was full of all the words I didn’t need to say. It was an experiment, empirical, a single moment of unearthing the archaeology of emotion—Jerrod’s were the first lips to touch mine in years other than Rex’s painted smooch. He was the first body, the first smell to surround me besides Rex’s kerosene and sweat. And for the moment of the experiment, in the comfort of Jerrod’s sweet cinnamon spice, the luxury of his skin, the press of his mouth, the kiss was a tincture better than a palliative, soporific, or vice. I was calm. Ta da! Calm.

When Jerrod pulled away, it was with a dash of red clown paint across his mouth, and a dot of white where my nose touched his cheek, the press of my skin on his.

“What’s so funny?” he asked. Then he kissed me again.

13.

Silence Isn’t the Only Thing That’s Golden

FOUR IN THE MORNING. THE DEPRESSION HOUR. THE hour of brain chemistry and despair. My mouth was cotton-mouth-beer-drinking dry. I reached for a cup of cold tea on the floor beside the futon. My fingers grazed the dry skin of Chance’s sharp nose. Sweet, sleeping Chance. I stretched farther, gave a pat, but there was no soft fur, no silky ears. Just the nose. I fumbled in the dark. Nose? It was no nose, but a blackened banana, caught in the blankets like a fish in a net! I dropped the banana and sat up fast; my other hand hit the coarse hair of a kiwi, smashed against the sheets. It was Jerrod’s bruised banana, the one he left on the barroom table, and his smashed kiwi—his fruit in bed beside me!

In the grainy moonlight the blackened banana was unwelcome as a severed horse head. The room was thick with the breath of overripe fruit. This was no accident—it was a threat, either from some unpaid tropical bookie or from someone much closer to home: Italia. She knew I’d been out with a cop.

The second kiwi rolled loose against the sheets in its tiny hair shirt, a fruit martyr doing penance. I’d be the one doing penance if Nadia-Italia had her way.

In the shadows, the Mount Rushmore of Rex as a clay bust perched on the closet shelf stared down at me and the banana. Rex stared from the hard lines of ink drawings and the curve of sculptures, his enigmatic smile caught in the moonlight, that smile turned now from complicit to condemning: I was guilty. I kissed a cop.

But Italia had snuck into my room while I slept. She trespassed.

God—I couldn’t stand it! If Rex were in town, nobody would threaten me with a bruised banana. Nobody but Rex would kiss me, and I wouldn’t even look at anyone else but Rex, my man, my show, my whole family and all I had.

I threw the banana out of bed and it hit a window with the soft thunk of a broken-necked pigeon. Why had I kissed Jerrod? What was I, crazy? Kissing a cop on the street. I was weak, weak, weak! So much for Clowns Sans Frontieres, those clowns without borders—I was a clown without boundaries. Without even the cheapest of boundaries! With one mistake, my world would crumble, slide away like sand in a tipped sandbox, melted cotton candy, a popped balloon Jesus. Nadia-Italia’d tell Herman. They’d both tell Rex. Maybe that poltroon had already told Herman. But no—more likely she’d drag it out, enjoy the power. I was at her mercy, and it was my own fault.

I was a worthless lump of earth. A clod.

Clown
and
clod
came from the same root word: A lump. I shook Chinese BBs from the almost empty jar. I couldn’t lose Rex. Why did I give in to Jerrod?

If Rex were home, he and I would take a flashlight, walk the streets, and call Chance until she appeared. Because Chance was gone, I wanted Rex home more than ever, and because Rex was gone, I couldn’t stand the thought of losing Chance, losing our rubber chicken, our child, and then failing the urine test because I lost the hospital equipment too.

“Nobody ever lost a dime underestimating the intelligence of the American people.” That’s what P.T. Barnum said, and he made himself a fortune. If P.T. Barnum could do it, why couldn’t I? I had talent. Brains. Maybe even looks. And I had artistic vision—the Kafka sketch, my literary interpretation. I could do more than lose things.

Clown
and
clod
were related, but so was the word
cloud
. I couldn’t forget that. That’s the clown’s real job—to stay grounded on the earth, the clod, but with her head in the clouds. I needed to keep my head, and keep the clown dream alive.

All I needed was a new plan, or at least a swift variation on the old one. I’d be a Horatio Alger of the clown circuit, an American success story; I’d pull myself up by my own striped stockings. A modern, striving Emmett Kelly. I had to cut to the chase, earn some real moola, and move out gracefully
before
I was thrown out.

If I moved out at will, I wouldn’t have to explain. Rex would have a place to live when he came home—a real place, not a mudroom, a clod room. A clown room.

When life sucks, throw yourself into art
. That was Rex’s survival tactic.
If the audience doesn’t like the act, burn shit up. Light something on fire. They go for fire every time
.

I could earn money as an artist, not just as Crack’s unwilling whore. Not as Trixie, Twinkie, or Bubbles. This would be the last night I’d spend as fate’s stooge.

Just thinking about my round-the-corner success made me thirsty. That, and the beers I drank with Jerrod. Or maybe the pills I snacked on like popcorn. Or the tinctures I threw down by the bottle.

I tiptoed out of my room for water, and when I turned the corner a wedge of white glare cut through the kitchen.

In the spotlight of the open fridge, Italia held my orange plastic jug to the shine of her plum-tinted lips. She tipped her head back, and drank. I whispered a quiet, “ No,” and sucked in my breath, but it was too late. Vitamin B-rich urine ran in a trickle from her mouth. I froze. Yikes—the horror! I was doomed. Below her half shirt, her abdomen rippled like an earthquake. She threw herself forward and spit everything out. She spit on the fridge, on our chores list. She spit on the worn chart that said it was forever my turn with the lawn.

“What the hell?” The orange jug was marked with her purple lipstick at the rim. “What is this shit?”

Not shit, but piss
, I thought. Maybe hers was a rhetorical question, thrown out to the darkness. In the slim hope that she hadn’t seen me, I ducked behind the table in the center of the kitchen even as my bum leg screamed, unwilling.

She smacked her lips together. “Is this…Christ…it’s piss!” She’d figured it out! Then she dove at me around the table. “You… Clown Girl!”

I straightened up and ran around the table. She doubled back and came at me from the other way. I ducked, reversed direction, almost tripped on a barbell, and jumped to keep from falling. I skidded past Nadia’s outstretched hand. She threw the jug at me. Urine rained down, the jug bounced off the stove.

I turned the corner, made it to my room, and slammed the door. Italia’s weight-trained fists hit the mudroom door like hammers.

My mouth was sand. My heart was a knot.
Heart trouble, heart trouble
…I needed to stay calm. I couldn’t go back to the hospital. I pressed in the lock and pulled on the doorknob. My legs were light and shaky, and so was my head, pumped up on Chinese B B s. “I didn’t do anything,” I hollered through the door.

Italia hit the door again. Three quick hammers. “And you won’t ever again! Open up,” she hissed, as though through a clenched jaw.

The lock was only a button pressed into a two-bit knob. I had to work fast. I used a shoulder and all the strength I had to shove the dresser in front of the door. The dresser scraped along the wood floors.

I got on my knees and dug my fingernails into the loose cotton of the futon mattress. I lifted one side. The other half lay as a dead weight, a clumsy dancer. My pillows tumbled off. I folded the mattress over, tried to flop it up on one end. My bad leg ripped anew and my back ached as the mattress and I two-stepped toward the door.

Italia snarled, “I drank your clown piss? What the hell? I’m going to twist you into those balloon knots.” The dresser trembled. The knob moved back and forth with a tight jerk and a clicking sound. I hefted the mattress against the chest of drawers.

“I can still taste your piss, you little skank.” Italia spit, three times in a row, fast:
Hack-too, hack-too, hack-too
…

Hormones, estrogen, androgen, testosterone—all the working out Italia did, I swear she was making her own Y chromosome. She was nuts. Worse than the “Twinkie defense.” She said, “I’ll kill you, Clown Girl. If you mess with my food…”
Hack-too
. “Jesus. You knew I’d drink out of that jug.”

She’d kill me! She meant it. I yelled, “It was medical. I needed it for medical tests.”

“Oh, now you’re a freaking urologist… ”

I said, “No, a patient! The doctor asked for that urine, for tests—”

“Sick clown piss?”
Hack-too
. She beat on the door again. “So you’ve got something and I drank it ?” Her fists came harder and faster now. She spit as she pounded.

The coins on my shelves rattled. A sketch of Rex fell off the wall.

“Nothing catching. Urine’s really clean. I read that. It’s acidic.”

When did my voice get so high?

The door buckled. My vision narrowed. The bees in my brain were buzzing at full tilt. I said, “Women washed their faces in urine, in the old days.” My voice broke. There were spilled BBs on the floor. I picked up a few and put them between my teeth.
Calming
. Through a mouthful of BBs I yelled, “Swamis drink it. People live on it.”

Italia slammed against the door and everything shook—the door, the floor below us, the house. The futon slumped to the ground, a casualty of our war. I was trapped. Trapped in a room of small glass windows.

“Open the door,” Nadia hissed, breathless. The wood made the sound of splintering, giving way. “You put that piss on my shelf on purpose; you set me up.”

“It wasn’t your shelf,” I yelled back. “It was in the side door. Communal!”

She body-slammed the door again. “It was my part of the communal rack. You knew it.”

“
Your
part?” Clearly, she was crazy. “We don’t designate on the communal side.” My voice trembled. “That’s what
communal
means.”

“I’ll kill you, girl. Kill you—” Methodically she slammed into the cracking door.

“You put that banana in my bed,” I yelled back. I couldn’t run if I tried—my torn ligament was shredded after the sprint in the kitchen. It was the kind of pain that deserves a name, like a special enemy, a military tactic, or a new disease in search of a salable angle: Hip Socket Hell. The Rotator Awareness Plan. I yelled, “It breaks a house rule, coming in my space.” I picked up a stretched canvas and swung the hard corner edge at the glass panes of my tiny windows.

“What’s going on?” It was Herman now, outside the door. “What’re you doing, babe? Stop, you’re breaking the door.”

“I’m going to kill her,” Italia said. “Giving me hep C, the swine flu, whatever’s in her piss.”

“She put a banana in my bed!” I yelled. “I was asleep. And I don’t have hepatitis.” I hit the windows again with the wooden edge of the canvas. Glass rained down around my feet.

“She put piss in the fridge in my area—”

I yelled, “It wasn’t your area, you know it.”

“She was at Hoagies and Stogies—”

“Back off, sweets,” Herman said. To me he yelled, “What’s going on? What’re you breaking?” Then to Italia, he said, “Babe, listen. Back off, for real. Settle, OK?”

Herman was big, but Nadia-Italia was crazy. I said, “Call the cops. Quick!” I swung at a second pane of glass, building my escape route. “Herman, hurry!”

“I’m not calling the cops, Nita. I’m not calling your cop boyfriend on my girl. This isn’t a time for jealousy, or whatever feelings you still have going on—”

“Herman! Call any cop you want.” I swung again. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”

“Open the door. What’re you breaking?” Then, to Italia, Herman said, “Let me talk to her. Alone.”

Two windows were broken out, but the windows were still too small to fit through. I needed at least four cleared. I’d have to smash the thin wood in between. I pulled glass shards from the wooden frames. I ran my hand over the jagged edge, to loosen broken pieces.

Hack too
. She was still there, outside
.

“Hey, don’t spit on the floor, man. Go upstairs,” Herman said. “No joke. Wait for me.” Then he said, “Nita, calm down. Don’t break anything, OK? I’ll talk to her. Open the door.”

Italia spit again. I held a bloody finger—cut on the shards—to my mouth. “I’m not coming out. Not as long as she’s there. Not without the cops.”

I waited, still and silent, until I heard them walk away. What if they came around to the outside? Now I had a hole in my windows. I held the canvas like a shield and grabbed a juggling pin, ready to swing for the bleachers.

There was the quiet rattle of a wire inside the door handle, a sound as tiny as mice doing orthodontic work. The door popped open. It swung outward—the dresser and the slumped dead body of the mattress hadn’t done a thing by way of a barricade.

Herman’s head popped over the top of the dresser, a puppet show, face puffy, his hair in a tangled knot. Puppet Herman said, “Nita, it’s four in the morning. Don’t you ever take time off?”

I dropped the tools of my trade—the canvas and the juggling pin, shield and weapon—and fell to my knees. Heartsick. Exhausted. “She’s a total loose cannon.”

“You’re bleeding.” He reached a hand over the top of the dresser, as though to pet a dog, but couldn’t reach me. His arm flapped in the air.

It was true. I was covered in cuts. And then I started to cry.

With one long arm Herman reached over the chest and pushed on the mattress until the mattress inched down toward the floor. I scurried out of the way.

He said, “Nita, what’re you crying for? You’ll be OK. Put pressure on it.”

“I’m not crying about a few cuts,” I said. I flung my hand aside, and blood splattered on my striped pants. I wiped it into a smear. “That doesn’t matter.” I was tired and sick. My dog was gone. Herman seemed so far away, I barely knew him anymore. I needed a comforting hand, a pat on the back, somebody to smooth my hair. Somebody to kneel beside me and say that everything would be all right. The soft scent of cinnamon, or the bite of sweat. Jerrod, Rex, Herman.

Emancipated minor? I’d been one for years—emancipated, but no longer a minor, and I was ready to have a team, a side, a family. Somebody to back me up. A person shouldn’t be emancipated so long.

“She won’t bother you,” Herman said. “We cut a deal.”

He tried to slide the dresser, but instead knocked the dresser over. I scrambled like a hamster in a cage dodging a falling water bottle. A sock drawer slid open on the way down and a silky rainbow of tricks and scarves fell out. Herman climbed over the mess. “Don’t worry about the windows. That’s easy enough to fix. But what’s up, what’s with the piss in the fridge?”