When a boy’s first romantic interlude is with Phoebe the Dog-Faced Girl,
he feels a need to get out into the world and find a new life. So I
thought as I stood in the wings and watched Colonel Kingston introduce the
next act. Not that I had anything against Phoebe. She was a sweet girl
under all that fur. “Oh, Abel,” she whispered prettily whenever I brushed
her lips with mine, and perhaps she blushed – who could tell? – but I
was seventeen and yearned to kiss a mouth sometimes without getting hair
up my nose.
Out on the stage, Orlando the Magnificent, star illusionist of the
Faeryland 1899 Review, requested a volunteer from the audience. A man of
pleasant appearance in a long overcoat rose to his feet amid applause and
laughter from the crowd. I smiled. He was my uncle Jack.
Orlando bowed his turbaned head to the volunteer as if he were a stranger
and beckoned the man up the steps with both arms, which caused the flowing
sleeves of his satin robes to shimmer in the stage lights.
I wish there were other girls my age in Faeryland, I thought as Uncle
Jack lay down in a long, coffinlike box on a platform. Maybe then Phoebe
wouldn’t assume I was hers for the taking. There were older, unmarried
ladies, of course, but none of them took my fancy enough to risk breaking
my mother’s heart. Although, I admit, when I was fourteen years old, Miss
Makepeace, the Amazing Rubber Woman, came pretty darn close. Anyway, how
could a boy take a few liberties in a home where everyone knew his
business?
Uncle Jack disappeared from sight as Orlando’s young “Ethiopian” assistant
closed the lid. A head appeared through one end of the box and feet out
the other, and Orlando reached into his starry case of tricks and pulled
out a large saw. There were a few groans and titters from those who found
the sawing-a-person-in-half trick a mite old hat, but I’d been looking
forward to this.
The expected sawing began, accompanied by the usual banter. At one point
the “victim” let out a cry, which was echoed by a few delicate and
susceptible ladies in the audience, who then laughed along with their
friends to cover their embarrassment. When the saw had completed its task,
another dark-skinned boy ran onstage to help pull apart the box and show
the halves separate – toes wiggling from one, head wagging from the
other. Polite applause filled the hall. I grinned, not put off at all by
the lukewarm response.
As was predictable, the box halves were rejoined, the magician waved his
arms and incanted a spell, the box was opened, and the man rose from the
box whole once more. Again there was polite applause and knowing laughter.
The volunteer smiled, waved at the audience, and headed for the steps,
accompanied by cheers and bravos, but halfway there he stopped and
frowned. He tottered to the left. He tottered to the right. The audience
hushed. He cried out, toppled over – and split apart at the waist. His
legs scurried off in one direction, and his body crawled off in the other,
dragged by his arms.
Gasps and screams filled the air. People rose to their feet. An old man
fled up the aisle toward the back doors. At least three ladies slumped,
willy-nilly, sideways in their seats as friends and family fanned and
patted them. I was still laughing as the torso reached me.
“That was great, Papa!” I said. “Really great!”
“Yes. Perfect,” my father answered, and grinned. “But we’d better put them
out of their misery quick.”
He stripped off the doctored overcoat to reveal the evening clothes
beneath, carefully tailored and pinned, for he had no legs whatsoever. He
trotted back out onstage on his hands in time to meet his other half, a
midget, now with the trouser waist rolled down to reveal his head. Someone
pointed at them and nudged his neighbor. Then through the rear curtains
emerged the original volunteer, my uncle Jack, whole and complete with
legs, the spitting image of my father, for he was his twin.
Someone hooted as the joke dawned on him, another joined in, and soon the
auditorium echoed with thunderous applause. I put my arms around the boy
assistants, who stood to either side of me, and squeezed affectionately.
“Magnificent, wasn’t it, lads?” I said.
In the dressing room after the show Colonel Kingston clapped my father on
the back and almost knocked him off the wooden stool where he perched,
swaddled in his cut-down dressing gown. “Wonderful idea, Andrew!
Absolutely wonderful.”
“You should thank Florence,” said my father. He nodded at my mother, who
sat in a cozy chair crocheting with nimble toes.
“I would have played the bottom half myself,” she said. “But alas, I am
too tall. I’m afraid we shall have to stick to bicycling.”
My parents had an act wherein they rode a bicycle together. He, with no
legs, was able to steer; she, with no arms, could nevertheless pedal
admirably, despite her long skirts and petticoat.
“How were receipts, Arthur?” asked my father as he massaged Macassar oil
into his hair and smoothed his locks into glossy place.
Colonel Kingston shook his head and leaned on his cane with both hands.
“Could be worse, my boy,” he said, but his mouth was pinched and his white
whiskers bristled. The crowds were smaller these days, and performers had
begun to leave and join new shows. The better acts could make more money
elsewhere. Colonel Kingston had hoped that the shows at Faeryland would
finance him through his old age, but a stationary show needed continued
variety to keep the audience coming back, and no new acts had joined us.
Lately I had more than once interrupted a worried conversation between my
parents.
Faeryland had formerly been a spa where the rich from Washington and
Baltimore took the waters for their health. It had fallen into disfavor
years ago, and Arthur Kingston, veteran of three circuses and one war, had
bought the property for a song to create a resort that would offer the
finest educational entertainments and display of oddities to be seen in
one place since the great Barnum’s second New York museum burned to ashes
in 1868. I had lived in Faeryland most of my life.
The grounds of Faeryland consisted of a Colonial mansion called the
Castle; the Elvin Gardens; and Pixie Village, where the midgets and dwarfs
lived in miniature houses, alongside a tiny church and a fire station
complete with a pint-size fire wagon pulled by Shetland ponies and manned
by a troupe of “pixie” firefighters. When customers walked through Pixie
Village at certain times of the day, a bonfire was almost certain to be
out of control and in need of extinction for their delighted pleasure.
The rest of us, including three giants, lived in the Castle, where
visitors attended matinee and evening performances in the great hall – “an
extravaganza of amazing oddities, mystifying the audience with their
uncanny skills, death-defying deeds, and wondrous physiognomy.”
After the audience had gone and the theater had closed for the night, I
made my way up a back staircase to my family’s apartments, but before I
reached my front door, Phoebe’s little brother scampered up to me, yelping
my name.
“What is it, Apollo?” I asked. I tousled the twelve-year-old’s silky blond
hair. Like his sister and mother, Apollo the Puppy Boy had long hair
everywhere. Like his father, he was prone to excitement.
“Violet and Rose are leaving,” Apollo said between gasps.
My gut sank. The Giovanni Siamese twins were stars of the show. I hurried
after Apollo down to the main entrance.
In the front hall a small group of performers and staff were whispering
and glancing to where Colonel Kingston talked to the Giovanni twins’
father. Apollo bounded over to where the pinheads had gathered with their
nurse. All three wore long, colorful shifts, even though two of them were
male. Apollo pretended to lift their hems up, which made the simple
creatures giggle and grab their skirts around their knees.
Violet and Rose stood by a stack of trunks and boxes, back-to-back of
necessity, dressed in their best traveling gown and matching black veiled
hats with cherries. Long black gloves graced their hands. Next to Violet
stood her dark-eyed gentleman, quiet as always. My mother swore he was
sullen – and after her money, at that – but perhaps he was shy.
Every time Violet edged toward her beau, Rose tugged the other way. Joined
irrevocably to a stronger soul, Violet had no choice but to follow. Both
girls appeared ready to burst into one of their famous spats. I felt a
little sorry for Rose, even if she tended to bully her sister. After all,
Violet was the one who had found love, and it must be hard to ignore one’s
sister’s beau when one was joined to her at the rump. I had heard some
cruel speculation about what married life would mean to the maiden twin.
“That’s my final word,” proclaimed Signor Giovanni, his stormy temperament
finally getting the better of him. “The offer is too good to pass up.”
More than once my mother had shaken her head over Colonel Kingston’s
informal business practices. “A contract is better than a handshake,” she
had warned. Lately she had often been proved right.
“Where are they going?” I asked Jolly Dolly, the fat lady.
“Europe,” Dolly said, and wiped the eternally present sweat from her brow.
“They are going on tour with Fortuna’s Circus,” said her younger sister,
Baby Betty, in a voice too hushed and tiny to come from a woman of her
bulk. Together the sisters were billed as One Ton of Fun.
Dolly warbled with laughter. “And Violet thinks she and her fancy man may
have a chance to be wed there,” she said.
Violet and her beau had been turned down for a marriage license in at
least five states. There was some question as to propriety, as well as
whether Violet and Rose legally constituted one person or two.
I supposed the twins couldn’t be blamed for their decision to join
Fortuna’s. A considerable amount of money could be made on tour by an act
like theirs, but what about those left behind?
I went to say my farewells, and Violet raised her arms to welcome me. Rose
elbowed Violet aside and took my hands. “Good-bye, my dear,” she said. “I
shall miss you most awfully.”
“Not as much as I,” declared Violet. She elbowed Rose back and claimed one
of my hands for her own.
I blushed. Why did they always have to make a fuss of me?
“Why should you miss anyone, hussy?” spat Rose. “You have your slimy
lothario to comfort you.”
“Jealous.”
“Deluded.”
I squeezed their hands to get their attention. “Please don’t go,” I said.
“What will we do without you?”
“Have some peace and quiet,” Archie Crum said from behind me.
I ignored the hurtful words of the dwarf strong man. “Who will I talk
about our books with?” The twins and I shared a passion for the novels of
Mr. Kipling and Mr. Haggard.
“Oh, darling, you will find someone else to read to,” said Violet, wiping
a tear from her eye with a gloved finger. “Someone younger and prettier -”
“And unattached,” inserted her sister.
At that moment their carriage to the train station arrived and ended the
impending squabble. Trunks and cases were carried through the front door,
and the twins were bundled into the coach, despite the coachman, who fell
over his own feet several times, too busy looking over his shoulder at the
assembled oddities to watch where he went.
“Go on, kiss ’em good-bye, Tall Dark and Handsome,” Archie Crum said, and
slapped me on the rear.
I glared at him before I poked my head through the window to give each
young woman a peck on the cheek. They were argumentative, it was true, but
they were witty and bright when not fighting, and made me feel important.
“You’re a sweet boy, Abel Dandy,” said Violet. “I swan, if you were older,
I wouldn’t be going. Wear this to remember me by.” She pressed something
small and hard into my hand.
I found a gold ring in my palm, fashioned in the Egyptian style with a
turquoise stone carved into the likeness of a scarab beetle, the details
of which were etched in a darker green.
“Not the rubbish from that half-wit professor,” said Rose. “The one he
said a goddess in a dream told him to give to you.”
Violet knit her brow. “No, hon,” she said. “I think that was my dream. She
told me to give it to Abel.”
“Whatever you say, you mixed-up hussy,” said Rose. “I thought you were
going to treasure it forever.”
“I was, wasn’t I?” Violet said. “But I now want to give it to him.”
The ring was thrilling. It spoke of far-off places and exotic lives. I
wasn’t sure if it was quite my style, but I was honored to receive such an
intimate gift from a grown woman. “It shall be my good-luck charm,” I
said, and slipped it on my finger. What were the odds? It fit perfectly.
The world shifted.
For a moment my eyes were blinded as if by bright sunlight, hot air seared
my nostrils, and I heard birds and babbling water. I swore lips brushed my
cheek. Then the dim interior of the carriage came into focus again – and
the worried faces of the twins.
“Are you all right, hon?” asked Violet.
“Yes,” I mumbled. I felt foolish.
The coachman cracked his whip, and I half fell, half jumped off the
running board. “Thank you,” I called, and waved at the carriage until it
reached the end of the long driveway, too stunned by my odd spell to do
more.
Finally I took a deep breath and followed the others indoors on unsteady
feet. Was I so unnerved by the twins’ leaving that I would have a fit? Did
I fear this was the end of life as I had known it? If Faeryland closed
down, my parents might have to go on the road again to make a living. They
hadn’t done that since I was small. Now I was almost a man, I would have
to pull my weight too, but was I afraid I wasn’t up to it? I was so
ordinary, after all. I didn’t have an unusual physical difference to trade
on; did I have enough talent? Was my knife-throwing good enough?
A crowd still loitered in the lobby, and worry hummed in the air. My
parents had come down to find out what the fuss was about, and Phoebe had
joined her ma and pa there. The people present were as firm a part of my
home as the furniture: midgets, dwarfs, fat ladies, one of the giants on
tottery legs, and Apollo holding on with hairy hands to two of the
pinheads, who wanted to dance. They were proud of their skills and defiant
about their appearance. I loved them all, but for the first time in my
life I felt different – and alone.
“What’s wrong, pretty boy,” said Archie Crum, “you never seen freaks
before?”
The laughter around me was meant to be harmless and friendly, but this
evening it placed me across the universe from them. I hung my average
head, clenched my commonplace fists, and marched myself to my room.
That night I dreamed that I stood beside a garden fountain tiled with a
design of lotus flowers. A dusky beauty barely dressed in white linen, the
reflection of water sparkling in her eyes, slipped a scarab ring on my
finger. She uttered words in a strange language that flowed and clicked;
yet I knew what she said. “Wear this to remember me always.” My heart held
the heat of the red clay garden walls. The pungent fragrance of flowers
and spices enveloped us, and our lips touched in a soft kiss that melted
me with desire.
I woke short of breath and smiling, with an ache in my loins.
Where would I find a girl like that? I wondered. Not at home, I was sure.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Freaks
by Annette Curtis Klause
Copyright © 2006 by Annette Curtis Klause.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Margaret K. McElderry
Copyright © 2006
Annette Curtis Klause
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-689-87037-X
