I am standing alone in the light and the big bodies have fallen back from me. The college girl, dumbfounded, is still pumping away with her mouth open, her knees and arms still following an old order to dance, as her mind is pummeled by what I am, and what they have done to me, and wondering if I am in on it. The crowd is standing up and beating the tables. The laughter is fierce and the band is loud, but barely loud enough, as I lift my thin arms and waggle my huge hands and bob to the light, and my knees begin to shift in what my body calls dance, waving my hump at the crowd, the light warming my scalp and burning into my unprotected eyes. My big shoes thump at the ends of my little legs, and I am proud with my arrow tits flapping toward my knees, and the fat lady standing on my coat is staring, with spittle across her cheek, and the fat man with his electric G-string pumping at his invisible crotch and laughing, and the shouts coming up, “Christ! It’s real!” The twisting of my hump feels good against the warm air and the sweat of my bald head runs down into my bald eyes and stings with brightness and the spirit of the waggling hump moves over the stage and catches red pants, hairy bellies, and all, while I stamp on my buttonless blouse, slide on the tangled elastic harness, and open my near-blind eyes wide so they can see that there is true pink there — the raw albino eye in the lashless sockets — and it is good. How proud I am, dancing in the air full of eyes rubbing at me uncovered, unable to look away because of what I am. Those poor hoptoads behind me are silent. I’ve conquered them. They thought to use and shame me but I win out by nature, because a true freak cannot be made. A true freak must be born.
There wasn’t any graceful way to end it. The band stopped, the bald man shouted, “Let’s give ’em a hand, folks.” There was a surge of catcalls. We all scrambled around for our clothes, clutching them to our chests as we hurried down. Of course there was no dressing room. The restroom was on the other side of the club, so we huddled down in front of the stage tugging awkwardly into clothes. I slid my blouse on inside-out, as I discovered later, put on my coat and wig and glasses immediately, and stuffed the chest harness into a pocket.
The bald man was doling out five-dollar bills like stale cookies. He handed two to me. The shame had already started icing up my valves, and those five-dollar bills were the clinchers. It had been a long time since I had blushed, not since Arturo, maybe. But the hot blood scorched me then.
“What’s your name? Can we get you to come down regularly for audition nights? That’s a lot of potential you’ve got. We could work up a nice set using you. We’d up the ante a bit, make it twenty bucks for a turn. We do two auditions a night between the regular acts. You could pick up an easy forty.” He was being perfectly pleasant about it. My wig wasn’t fitting and I couldn’t make out why. I kept pulling at it until I noticed that it was on backward. I turned it around and made for the door. Sidling through the crowd, I crammed my brain with static to prevent myself from hearing what they were saying. Run hide quick, I thought, scuttling down the street.
I paced and thumped up and down my room all night. I couldn’t lie down at all for fear of Arturo and Papa and my own terrible pride.
3. NOTES FOR NOW: Meltdown, Diving into Teacups from the Thirteenth Floor, and Other Stimulating Experiences
Miranda is talking on the phone as I come in from work. She lolls against the wall, one long bare leg jutting out through her green kimono. She has a towel turbaned over her fresh-washed hair and she hangs up the receiver as I close the door behind me.
“Hi. Got time to come up for tea?”
“No. Thank you.”
Miranda is a student at the Art Institute. Her aim is to illustrate medical texts. She wants me to pose for her drawings. I never accept her offers of tea. I proceed toward the stairs while scrabbling to hang on to my books and papers. She purses her mouth elaborately.
With a grip on the banister and one foot on the first step I can’t keep from pausing, from looking at her. She drops her lids halfway and eyes me in a deliberately speculative fashion. A small glitch in my gizzard warns me that Arturo used his eyes this way. His eyes were, like hers, long, slanted almond shapes, though of course Arty didn’t have the lashes and brows that Miranda does.
Smiling weakly — does she know or is this just her usual badgering revenge when I refuse her invitations? — I climb the stairs with her eyes following me.
• • •
Olympia Binewski, aka Hopalong McGurk, the Radio Story Lady, is hunched over a book in the glass-walled recording booth at Radio KBNK, Portland. The molasses voice that has earned her living for decades pours into the sponge ear of the microphone and is transformed into silent, pulsing waves that radiate over a hundred miles. She is deep in a dramatic rendition of that speculative classic “Pit Might.”
In the story the mind-souls of three theoretical physicists find themselves reincarnated (after dying hideously during their search for Schrödingers demon cat) in the bodies of itch mites inhabiting the pubic hair of a particularly obtuse Los Angeles policeman.
McGurk’s eyes twitch up from the book regularly to check the engineer on the other side of the soundproof glass. He watches meters and the clock. He signals two minutes left and McGurk storms into the climax. The theme music comes up and McGurk signs off, “Until tomorrow …” Falling back from the microphone, McGurk stretches to ease the ache in her neck and looks through the glass.
Miranda is smiling in the engineer’s booth. McGurk drops the book onto the floor instead of into her briefcase. The engineer is propped on the control panel sporting a paralytic grin, his eyes clamped on Miranda’s thorax.
Miranda waves and Hoppy McG. nods, forgetting to put any expression on her face.
I, Hoppy-Olympia, the invisible mom, sit frozen, watching as the engineer talks to Miranda. His hands in the air make typing motions and jerk a thumb in my direction. Miranda nods. The engineer turns to me, walking two fingers in the air. They slip away through the door.
The engineer gives Miranda a tour of the station while I type up the royalty credit for that day’s program. My skull oozes sweat. A vacancy behind my eyes makes me nauseated. What is wrong? Why is she here? Why would she suddenly appear at the workplace of a neighbor who barely acknowledges her “Good mornings” in the hall? Could that senile slut of a nun have broken her word after all these years and told the girl the truth?
I’m in the front office buttoning my coat when they come back. I’ve just remembered reasons she might be in this radio station that have nothing to do with me. She is visiting a friend, applying for a job, or taping an interview as guest stripper on the Night Train Hour. It is coincidence, I decide, and I am getting old and batty, thinking the universe revolves around me.
“I’m taking you to lunch,” she chirps at me, as though we did this all the time. I slide into the elevator and lean against the back wall. She follows me, saying, “Thank you so much,” as the doors snuff out the engineer’s anxious grin.
Miranda turns her brights full on me. “I hope you’ll excuse my showing up here. I knew where to find you because I listen to your program. I recognized your voice when I first heard you talking to Looney Lil in the hall. I knocked on your door this morning but you’d already gone. I need to talk to you.”
The phrase ricochets in my skull. “Need to talk.” All these years of silence. I have intended, and do intend, to dog Miranda until my dying day, but I never meant to talk to her. My heart tries to climb out through my ears. She pinks up — flustered at what must be a mild glare behind my blue lenses.