The Third Bear (8 page)

"I'll show them kook," she'd say, dialing yet another number.

I admit I became caught up in the idea of Sensio becoming famous, and the thought of it almost made up for Aunt Etta making us sleep in the same room with her. I don't know what Aunt Etta envisioned, but in my daydreams Sensio did make us rich, and we went on the road with him as part of a traveling carnival a little like the one painted in a picture in Pittman's house: all garish reds and greens, and smiling carnies standing to one side of cages with dancing bears in them and jugglers practicing their trade on the other. All sorts of exotic ideas came out of my head. As Sensio's trainer I would be much interviewed and admired. I'd have someone to help me with my makeup and buy me clothes. The other kids in the carnival would seek me out. When we weren't working, we'd take holidays, going to fancy restaurants and staying in swank hotels. I had a fixation with chocolate ice cream back then, so I dreamed of eating mountains of it.

But more important, it began to dawn on me that if Aunt Etta was successful, her attention wouldn't always be on me and all the things I was doing wrong. That I would have some relief, and maybe even some control, even though I knew that, thankfully, she didn't yet realize this fact. I could also, during those handful of days, pretend that, for once, Aunt Etta and I wanted the same things - for Sensio and for ourselves.

A couple of reporters finally came down, one from the Orlando Sentinel and one from the St. Petersburg Times, but Sensio wouldn't talk to them. Aunt Etta had made him clothes by then, so he'd look more human, but I thought he looked more foolish that way, like he was playing dress up, and it didn't help with the reporters, who only cared if he talked or not. The second reporter left angrier at the waste of time than the first, maybe because he'd had to drive a longer distance or maybe because he'd already been having a bad day.

When no one else would come out Aunt Etta made a fool of herself trying to get Sensio to talk to people over the phone, which he wouldn't do. The sight of Aunt Etta, on her hands and knees, holding the phone down to Sensio's mouth and pleading with him to talk should have made me feel bad for her.

When I hesitantly tried to tell Aunt Etta that no one thought of a rabbit talking over the phone as proof of anything, she snapped, "He still sounds like a rabbit."

Except, I realized he didn't sound like a rabbit. He didn't make a chutter- ing purr or the kind of warbling squeak I'd heard from other rabbits. All he did was talk in a voice like a man, and he snored sometimes at night, a sound that made me smile because sometimes he formed a chorus with Aunt Etta. Once, waking up suddenly, he made a sound like a high-pitched sonic boom.

"Maybe he's more comfortable staying in my room," I said, but Aunt Etta wasn't having any of that, either.

After the photo session, the moments extended out into a kind of standoff while I watched, Sensio staring at Aunt Etta and Aunt Etta staring at Sensio. They were like battle-scarred emissaries from two different countries that would never speak the same language and never admit to the need for an interpreter.

Almost as if to make him stop, she yanked on the rope and Sensio fell over like a child's toy. Silent. Still looking up at her. I was so surprised I just stood there.

Aunt Etta nudged Sensio with her foot as he tried to right himself. Then she kicked him in the side.

I beat on her then, my fists on that impenetrable, ridiculous skirt that seemed made of something more like aluminum siding than fabric.

I imagine I was screaming at her, although I can't remember making a sound.

A week or two before Aunt Etta contacted the photographer, she called the Ringling Brothers Circus, which kept a permanent headquarters in Tampa. The woman who came out surprised us both. I'd expected a bearded lady and Aunt Etta had expected a trapeze artist. What we got was a slim, grayhaired woman dressed smartly in slacks and a blouse. Her shoes were flat and black and simple. She had hazel eyes tinged with green. She could have been from Sears, except for her mysterious smile that made everything ordinary and normal about her seem just a disguise. I liked her. She seemed the opposite of Aunt Etta in almost every detail.

We went to the screened-in Florida Room of Pittman's house, a ceiling fan lazily revolving above our heads. The circus woman, whose name I can't remember, sat on the couch and looked out at the orange orchards in the distance while I brought Sensio in and put him on the wicker chair to her left. Aunt Etta had gotten a fancy tea service with a hummingbird pattern out of the basement, and handed the circus woman a cup of orange blossom tea.

From his comfortable wicker chair, even with me petting him, Sensio steadfastly refused to speak. Long minutes passed by in uncomfortable silence, broken only by the staccato, almost garish attempts by Aunt Etta at small talk. I remember feeling a perverse pleasure at being a kid, at not being expected to put forth the effort. All I'd had to do to prepare was put on a sun dress and let Aunt Etta tie a pink bow in my hair. All I had to do now was smile and pet the rabbit, and dangle my legs off the edge of the chair.

The circus woman was patient, and she waited for longer than most people. She even waited while Aunt Etta squatted and sidled up to Sensio on the side of the chair opposite me, and then poked him in his side as he nibbled on a carrot.

"C'mon, Sensio," she said in a wheedling voice. "Come on. Talk for the nice lady."

I didn't like those pokes. Those pokes were deceptive. When the foreman was around and I did something Aunt Etta disapproved of, she'd poke me in the side like it was a joke, but it always hurt. Sometimes it left a bruise.

Near the end of this thankless and uncomfortable sitting, with Aunt Etta's pokes becoming more like jabs, a strange thing happened. Sensio lifted his head and a look of recognition, almost sympathy, passed between the rabbit and the circus woman, her mysterious smile growing momentarily larger and fuller before fading. It was so quick and so ambiguous, I couldn't tell if I'd imagined it, let alone begin to understand its meaning.

A few minutes later, as if on a pre-arranged signal between her and the rabbit, she rose, giving a nonchalant pat to Sensio that, in my imagination, now is elongated and slowed down so that some kind of communication or comment is occurring there. Then, with a smile of sympathy toward me that I warded off by looking away, she ignored Aunt Etta's pleas to give Sensio another chance with some polite collection of words like "a lovely rabbit, but I don't think it's the kind of act we're looking for."

She handed Aunt Etta a business card and, on the way out, managed to - while giving me the solemn, leaning-over handshake of adult to child - slip a tiny deck of tarot cards into a pocket of my dress. If there was something serious in her gaze, I couldn't understand what it might be any more than I could understand Sensio.

After the circus woman had left, Aunt Etta folded her arms, stared down at Sensio, and said, "No dinner for you." And then, looking over at me, "For either of you."

No dinner because of someone else's failure wasn't unknown in our strange, sealed-off household, but this seemed so unfair I began to cry. Or maybe I was upset because the circus woman had left.

"I'm sorry," I said to Sensio through my tears. "I'm sorry." After all, I had led him into this trap.

"It would all be the same anyway," he said very seriously.

"No, it wouldn't be," I said. I don't know what I meant by that, though. Did I mean if he'd talked to the circus lady or something else?

"I am not what she wants me to be," Sensio said.

"What are you then?" I asked him, bringing his warm fur up to my face as I hugged him close. "What are you?"

"Does it matter?"

After Aunt Etta kicked Sensio, she dragged him through the dirt back toward our bungalow, holding the rope tightly in her boxer's fist. There was no one to see her do it. The workers had the afternoon off and the foreman was out at a local bar.

I was screaming, kicking at her, but she didn't even notice. Sensio remained silent. Not a squeal, not a squeak, although it must have hurt him terribly.

"Stop," I kept shouting. "Stop!"

But she wouldn't stop. She was caught up in the moment. She couldn't stop. Something hidden at the core of her had come out. She would have dragged him through the rows of orange bushes, choking, until his fur came off and he was raw and spasming. She would have turned him into rabbit stew without any protest from Sensio, as if this was what he had been set on earth to become. There wasn't even anything personal about it, and that made it worse, like she'd planned it all along. Like she'd wanted it to happen that way. Was it because she couldn't stand being turned into a fool? Was it from sheer frustration?

All I know is that I ran back to the post. With a grunt, bending my knees, I put my bulky frame to use and pulled the post out of the ground in an explosion of dirt, splinters ripping into my hands. When I caught up to Aunt Etta - she was still dragging Sensio by the rope around his neck, his paws flopping in the dirt - I shouted "Stop!" again in my loudest voice. But still she refused to hear me, so I had to make her hear.

I hit Aunt Etta across the shoulders with the post. She turned to me with a distant look on her face. I couldn't tell you what that expression meant. It didn't stop me from smashing her in the knees, through that ridiculous armored skirt. It absorbed some of the force of the blow, but she still let out a loose, oddly high-pitched cry of pain. She lurched to the side, but regained her balance.

"Stop it, Rachel," she said. "Just stop it. It's just a rabbit." She was breathing heavily, and her words sounded like they'd been said in a foreign language.

I hit her in the knees again, with all my strength. She cried out again, this time more piercing. She fell almost like a statue, straight down, as if she had no joints, the skirt settling around her like a parachute. She was slapping out at me as she fell like I was some sort of insect rather than a big, clumsy twelve-year-old with a wooden post in her hands. Even then she refused to let go of Sensio, her hand clenched white against the rope. Maybe it was just a reflex, but I saw it as more refusal, more proof that Sensio was in danger.

I hit her in the head. Once, twice. She gasped like all her breath was rushing out of her, tried to get up, and my anger turned to fear. If she got up, she would do to me what she was doing to Sensio. And I could not let that happen. I hit her one last time.

Aunt Etta groaned and slumped and lay still while I freed Sensio from the rope. His fur had been ripped off in places, revealing pink, bloody skin. There was sand and grass and dirt all over him.

"Are you okay?" I asked him, frantic as I cradled him in my arms.

But he said nothing.

You can see the photograph now, as a postcard, in antique stores and gift shops in Florida. Sometimes it comes with a funny title, like "She dealt swiftly with evildoers." It has been doctored to include shadows for both Sensio and Aunt Etta. Her clothes have been colored, as has his straitjacket uniform. Because of these changes, which make the photo look even less real, there is no chance that anyone would ever believe Aunt Etta really tied a talking rabbit to a post and, dressed in her Sunday best, had someone take a photograph of her with the rabbit. No one will ever know that I was there, too, or what happened after.