Then the lights went on and Papa was there, hairy-bellied in his pajama pants and Mama blinking and fuzzy behind him. I scrambled for my glasses and jammed them on so I could see Arty crying naked in his wheelchair with the blue veins pumping through the fine skin on his head and the flashlight on the seat beside him with its lens glowing a feeble yellow against the ceiling light.
“What the fuck?” Papa was gasping, and Mama fluttered and I stared through my safe green lenses at Arty, gibbering with frustration in his chair because he couldn’t keep a grip on the stick with his flipper even though his belly rolled in crevices of muscle, though his chest was a plate of bronze, though his ribs jutted with wings of muscle, though he could lift a hundred and fifty pounds with his neck, he still couldn’t hold the stick to hurt me when he needed to.
“She’s knocked fucking up!” howled Arty. Papa had his gentle hands on the smooth gold skin of the Aqua Boy, holding him against the back of the chair, saying, “For Christ’s bloody sake, son,” and wouldn’t let go.
Mama brought a blanket to put around Arty. I crouched deep in my cupboard with the old white satin robe pulled up to my eyes because Arty knew. But he knew and was angry. The stomach thing happened, as though the baby, the tiny frog babe, Miranda, was trying to crawl out and escape by any route possible from his fury. I sat there holding in everything, clenching my ass and my cunt and my jaw and my eyes and praying the broadcast prayer of the godless, “Please, please, no, please.”
Arty got his jaw back in order and resigned himself to draining his anger in words. He told them. “Ask Chick. He told me. She’s stuffed. Knocked up. The stupid traitor.”
Then I saw that Chick hadn’t told him everything. Arty was leaning back in his chair and Papa sank down on the bench by the door trying to get it straight. “Oly, what’s he saying? Is this true?” I never opened my mouth but sat there, curled in amazement at Papa being Papa again for this one groggy moment. “But that’s no reason! There is no excuse,” rapped Papa, “for attacking your sister physically!”
Arty rambled bitterly, “That hunchback bastard redhead guy, the Pin Kid. Moving in on the shit-sucking show, knock up the boss’s daughter … work his way in … get his claws on the money.”
I saw Arty shaking in his blanket, so hard that the wheels of his chair squeaked in minuscule quivers on the floor as he talked.
“He’s drunk or stoned,” came Mama’s voice.
“Drunk? Have you been hitting that stuff?” Papa wheeled Arty away through the door to his own van and I lay down and watched the door close and pulled the white robe up to my chin as Mama folded up on the floor beside my cupboard and looked in at me. Her soft face was crumpling with weakness and the loosening of her fiber, but her hands reached in and touched my face, long, cool fingers stroking my cheeks as she whispered, “Did he hurt you, dove?”
When I shook my head she took a deep breath and went on, “Tell Mama now, are you pregnant?” and I nodded, staring at her through my green lenses, and she nodded seriously back at me. Her pale hair floated raggedly around her head. “Are you glad, dream? Or is it something you don’t want?” Her whole body smelled of cinnamon and vanilla as she leaned forward, asking.
“Glad,” I croaked, and she leaned in to lay her cheek on mine.
Papa came back and patted my head and took Mama back to bed. I lay in the dark listening but they kept their voices low and I couldn’t make out what they were saying. It was probably my roaring blood that drowned them out. I was happy.
Arty was hurt. I imagined him clambering through the door alone in his chair with the flashlight and plunger to punish me. To hurt me for hurting him. I swelled with enormous love for him. See, I thought, how he has scared us all these years, and he can’t even grip the plunger in that strong, awkward flipper. He needed to hurt me and couldn’t.
He must love me, I thought, amazed. A faint whiff of nausea hit me at seeing pain as proof of love. But it seemed true. Unavoidable.
Afternoon. The midway music clanking faintly nearby. Everybody at work but me. I was alone in the van, sick in my cupboard. I was swamped hot and cold with the vicious swim of nausea. The cupboard doors hung open so I could see the gleaming linoleum. Orange brick pattern. I wanted the floor to be blue or grey so it would cool me. The white sunlight through the window hit the bricks with a terrible heat splash that burned through my dark glasses. If I closed my eyes, my head spun and my stomach did its tumbling act. If I rolled over to face the back wall, I smothered. I hugged my knees over my cramping belly and felt sorry for myself. I was almost dozing when I heard a step outside. Chick came in quietly.
“Should have told me, Oly.”
I grunted and stared at his bare, dusty feet kicking the bottoms of his ragged coverall legs. He pulled the curtains and the light greyed mercifully. “You seen Arty?” I asked as his legs reappeared. He crouched on the floor beside me. He stuck out a grubby hand and touched my forehead. “That’s better.” I felt cool and quiet suddenly, as though I’d been floating motionless in a pond for hours.
“He’s working. Still mad.” Chick looked down at me curiously.
I put my hand on my chest where mad Arty had left a ball of sick snakes knotted and jabbing each other poisonously. “This too, please.” Chick frowned at me and the pain narrowed to a single vibrating spot like a bee sting. I tapped my fingers on the pained spot, impatient. “Go on. Keep on. Do the rest, please.”
“I could put you to sleep. Want me to?”
“No. Did you tell him?”
“He didn’t believe me. He thinks I’m just trying to smooth him down. And the Pin Kid is gone.”
• • •
I got up right away and went to the swallowers’ stage, dragging Chick along. We poked our heads in through the rear flap and watched the scuttling shadows on the backdrop as the swallowers went through their act. Their chatter was marked by silences as the swords went down. The swallowers’ oldest girl finished her turn and came rushing out, sweating. I snatched at her arm. “Where’d the Pin Kid go?”
She shrugged, reaching to scratch under her sequined vest.
“Gee, Oly, I don’t know. Daddy’s mad at him. They were supposed to do a turn together. They’ve been rehearsing. But he was gone this morning when we got up. He took his knapsack and bedroll but left his trunk.” She rolled her eyes, perplexed. “He’ll have to come back for the trunk. And he knows we’re breaking down tonight. Maybe he’ll be back before we leave. Maybe he’ll catch us in St. Joe?”
I could see the buckled trunk, drab in the dusty grass against the tent wall with swords and torches collapsing against it. The swallower’s girl tossed her hair back and waved as she made off to the other side of the stage for her second entrance.
Chick was staring at the trunk. I could feel him thinking. The trunk looked abandoned, like letters in an attic, to and from the dead.
“We better go see Arty,” I muttered. Chick nodded, still looking at the trunk.
“Tell them to come back tomorrow.” It was Arty’s voice seeping through the door crack. The bald novice who answered the bell left us waiting so he could see “if the Master has a moment for you.” The shaved head appeared again, smirking consolingly. “I’m afraid the Master …” he started. But I jumped forward, shoving the door wider, hollering, “Arty! You pig shit! Arty!” bursting past the gasping novice with Chick behind me, trotting toward Arty’s desk while I watched his face set in anger and his voice boom, “Get her out! Out!” and the novice’s three-fingered hands closed on my arms, but it was really Chick who lifted me. I knew by the softness, the easiness as I sailed back out through the door and landed on the deck. Chick leaned out and looked at me. “I’ll talk to him. Wait,” he said. Arty’s door closed and I stood waiting. Angry myself, for a change. It was a relief from feeling sorry for myself.