Mothers, Tell Your Daughters Read online

  Stan hasn’t contacted you since that night two weeks ago, and you haven’t called him. You think about what it might take for you to be reassured that your daughter is safe. A definitive No every day, from Stan and from every man within driving distance. A definitive Yes, I understand from Mary every day to let you know she sees there is danger, that you’re not crazy. That would be a start.

  You heat the oven for fish sticks for the boys, something you give them when their sister isn’t here, and you slice potatoes to bake alongside. You liked cooking for Stan, who was appreciative of a homemade meal of any kind, even fish sticks once when that was all you had. Sometimes when you were watching TV after dinner, Stan patted his thighs and invited you to sit on his big lap and relax. Sitting that way with his strong arms around you, with his belly pressing into the small of your back like a support cushion, made you forget about the day’s appalling customers, the aches from negotiating washing machines into place, made you forget even about the way the passing years have thickened your body and lined your face. When you allowed your head to fall back against Stan’s shoulder, the warmth and size of him made you feel small and pretty, like a girl again.

  The Greatest Show on Earth, 1982: What There Was

  There was the long silver whip of the circus train stretched out on a side rail, heating up in the Arizona sun, and inside train car number seventy-eight, behind the closed pocket door of a steel cabinet, two people inhaled each other’s breath and sweat. There was Buckeye, a hundred-pound ditchwater blonde, according to her ma back in Akron, and Mike Field, six feet tall and then some, skin as black as coffee, both sitting in Mike’s blue-painted steel coffin of a bedroom with no AC. Coming down the hallway was Red, short, solid, with homemade tattoos on his freckled arms and knuckles (L-O-V-E, H-A-T-E, eagle, naked lady, et cetera), stomping closer in work boots, banging on the metal door of this corner room, saying, “Buckeye, girl, get out here, now!” Pausing to light a cigarette, then saying, “I’m coming back in five minutes and you’d better be ready to go.”

  There was Buckeye’s bare thigh pressing against Mike’s thigh in black chinos, her hip in short shorts touching his hip, her body filled with desire, filled with more than desire, her body and heart and mind all full up with Mike from loving him on his bunk last night, ready to love him again despite the heat, despite Red showing up. A week ago Red had explained why they had to do what they had to do this morning, Wednesday morning, first morning in Phoenix, how she was going to have to recover in one day, how they wouldn’t have any other time because there were three shows on Thursday through Sunday, and the candy boss wasn’t going to be happy with his number three candy butcher laid out in her room instead of hawking her racks of pink and blue cotton-candy clouds. This was Phoenix, a big sales town, where everybody was supposed to make enough money to get by and even save some for busted towns like Fresno, though nobody really saved.

  “You going with him?” Mike asked.

  “I got to.”

  “You sleep with him ever?” Mike was four years younger than her, had just turned twenty-four.

  “I told you, it’s not like that. Red’s like a big brother.”

  “Yo! I hear you guys,” Red said. “I know you’re in there.” Red was talking through the door in a mad voice, though Buckeye didn’t think he was really mad yet. Buckeye was getting caught up in the way Mike’s big hand spanned his own thigh, how his spread-out fingers could as easily be curling around her shoulder or holding the back of her head. Like always, he wore his blue uniform shirt buttoned down over his wrists, and the veins across the tops of his hands were almost clean, just a few needle marks. Buckeye had never shot up anything, didn’t even have a tattoo. Her ma had always said tattoos on girls showed the world what whores they were. Only her ears were pierced, one hole each side.

  There was Buckeye putting her finger to her lips as Red hollered, Buckeye studying the side of Mike’s face, which was sweating. She reached up and touched a V-shaped scar under his eye, healed since two months ago, when a couple of Bulgarians beat him up for not paying their money back fast enough. They bloodied his cheek and his mouth, and he just stood there and took it. While they were punching him, she was imagining herself kissing his swelled-up face, telling him she loved him and saying how he shouldn’t leave the circus, how they could get through this together. During the show, those Bulgarians helped make a tower five people high with a little girl in pigtails on top, but at other times, the men could be brutes.

  Buckeye put her hand on Mike’s head. She liked the way his hair felt strong, the way it pushed back against the pressure of her hand. He made her think about a tomcat she used to have, brave and fast and scrappy, killing mice and birds with a swipe of his paw, bringing those busted little bodies to her and then brushing her leg gently with his tail. She’d loved stroking that tiger cat’s rough head, torn up from old fights, but one morning he didn’t come back, and after that he was gone for good.

  “I know you’re in there.” Red rattled the door latch.

  Mike pushed her hand away from his head.

  “Open the door, Black Mike, you black son of a bitch.”

  She’d tried to explain to Mike when he first arrived how there was already a Mike in the show. Really there were already two Mikes. Regular Mike from Sells Floto, second in charge of concessions, and Spaghetti Mike, who had black hair and looked like he could’ve been Italian and ordered spaghetti in the pie car on the first day and leftover spaghetti on the second day, and asked for it again on the third day when there wasn’t any, so the name got stuck on him. Buckeye had been the first white person to befriend Mike when he joined six months ago—first, the King Charles Unicycle Troupe had to figure out what they thought of him, and right away King Charles didn’t like Mike; they complained that he acted ignorant by wearing long sleeves in the summer, that his hair was nappy, and that he listened to death metal. The Mexican and Bulgarian troupes got around to noticing new people about the time the new people wanted to borrow money or buy meth.

  “Damn it, Buckeye,” Red shouted through the door. “Black Mike, you let her go.”

  Buckeye whispered, “I don’t like the way everybody’s got to call you black all day long.”

  “I am black, if you didn’t notice.”

  “You should’ve told them your name was Mick or Mitch. If I could start over, I’d come into the circus with a beautiful name.” Buckeye sighed. “I’d say my name was Rosella. Or Annabella. Or Margerina.” Though it made no kind of sense, all week she couldn’t help but think of beautiful girl names. “Marmalada,” she added.

  “Why do you want to be called something you put on toast?” Mike asked, as though he meant to laugh but couldn’t manage it. “My mom made marmalade by cooking orange peels instead of throwing them away. She didn’t believe in throwing things away,” Mike said.

  Buckeye thought the sound of some names could carry a person away. Marmalada. Rubelina or Rosemaria. When she heard the snow boss’s wife was named Becky, she should have said she was Rebecca or used her middle name, Jo, or Josephina, maybe. And she should never have told them she was from Ohio.

  “If you had some fancy name, you wouldn’t want to be with me,” Mike said.

  “That’s not true,” Buckeye said. She took his big hand in both of her smaller hands. He’d had a couple of his fingers broken, and they’d healed crooked, and she had the idea she could straighten them if she kept caressing them day after day. She squeezed the hand until she felt his electricity running through her. He was just waking up, getting his blood flowing through his big heart. He’d told her that when he was in high school the wrestling team doctor wouldn’t let him compete, said he had an oversize heart, and Buckeye thought that sounded just right. Mike hadn’t shot any speed yet this morning, so he was talking slow and relaxed. The snow boss knew about the speed, but liked the way it made Mike run up and down the stadium stairs selling snow cones faster than anybody else. A lot of times it was the new butchers like h
im who sold the most, and he was famous for sales in the six months since he’d been here. If he hadn’t spent all his money on drugs, he’d’ve been half rich by now.

  “I’d be with you no matter, even if you were in the animal car and I was a showgirl,” she said. Saying the truth like this felt nice. She was glad he wasn’t in the animal car, number seventy-six, where the men who took care of the ring stock lived. They slept in bunks stacked against the wall, with no privacy except a taped-up sheet, if they had a spare. Some of the men smelled like the animals they cleaned up after. Buckeye was number three in candy sales because she kept herself showered and smelling nice, because she scrubbed the stains off her uniform shirt right away. Nobody would say she was pretty, but she wore her hair pulled into a neat, short ponytail, and there were some white people who would only buy candy from a girl like her, from somebody who looked like she could be a girl who lived next door to them.

  She’d never known a man so broad in the shoulders and slim in the hips as Black Mike. He was built like an oversize trapeze artist. As soon as she met him, she wanted to swing all over him, and pretty soon she told him so. The quiet way he talked made her know he wouldn’t hit her, and that was something she’d never been wrong about. Her ma, back in Akron, got bruised and beat up by every man she ever went with, and some of those men had knocked Buckeye around, too. Her friend Red wouldn’t hit a person, either, but one time he’d shaken her shoulders so hard it made her neck hurt, the way you’re not supposed to shake a baby. Red did that to her the day after she’d made love with a man in the animal car with the other men listening from their bunks. Red didn’t believe in putting love over everything else the way she did. Red got his name because he used to have red hair, but that was mostly gone now, and he always wore a hat or bandanna. Buckeye used to know his real name, but she couldn’t remember it now. Jim something, or maybe Alan. The heat was messing with her brain. She blew her ditchwater bangs out of her eyes.

  “It’s too hot sitting in here with the door closed,” Mike said.

  She pulled his hand to her lips and kissed his crooked fingers and needle marks, kissed his fingernails, which she had filed smooth for him yesterday during the slow ride from Oklahoma City.

  “Just one more minute before we open the door. Please,” Buckeye said.

  He squeezed her hand, pulled the back of her hand to his cheek, which was beaded with sweat. His sweat soaked into her skin like it belonged to her as much as to him.

  “How come you don’t ever sweat?” Mike asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re probably sweating on the inside.”

  This single room was only a little bigger than the bunk, so Mike’s kneecaps about hit the metal door. Buckeye rested her bare heels on the army canvas duffel bag containing all Mike’s worldlies, which he kept packed at all times, as though he might just grab the bag and run. He had nothing else but a stack of empty cassette-tape cases on a ledge and a Metallica poster. He’d duct-taped black plastic over the Plexiglas window. The canvas bag had the name McIntyre stenciled on it, though that wasn’t Mike’s name. If Buckeye married him, she’d be Mrs. Field. Her soft cloth purse was nestled on top of the duffel. She’d put her ChapStick, army knife, wallet, everything she would need at the clinic, in her pockets. If Mike noticed the purse there, he’d tell her to go put it in her own room, he didn’t want to be responsible if she left it here.

  Buckeye wondered what if she didn’t go with Red, but stayed here. This afternoon she and Mike would go to the stadium together like they did in every other town to help set up concessions. They’d step inside the stadium doors together and get blasted by the air-conditioning, a cool comfort after two hot days riding from Oklahoma City.

  “I’m going to open the door,” Mike said.

  As his fingertips touched the handle, there was a bang. A fist smashed against the metal door from the outside and sent a shock through the space. They both sat up straight. Buckeye lifted her feet onto the bed and wrapped her arms around her bare legs.

  “I’m taking you now, Buckeye, or I’m not taking you at all,” Red said through the sheet metal door. “You got two minutes and I’m saying forget it.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to him,” Buckeye whispered, even though she herself was scared of Red, not for fear of him hitting her, but something like how you’d fear your father, if you had one. Red had lasted in this circus for twenty-some years, longer than anybody. In the seven years since she’d joined the Greatest Show on Earth, Buckeye had found Red lying drunk on the railroad stones all across America, a few times beat up, a few times with a new scabbed-over tattoo, and she’d cleaned him up and gotten him into his bunk on the train. Mostly, though, Red got by without making trouble for anybody else.

  “I don’t know if I can live on this train anymore,” Mike said. “This room’s making me crazy. It’s so small.”

  “It’s just the heat that’s making you say that. And you ought to be wearing a short-sleeved shirt, not long sleeves.”

  “What if you have the baby?” he asked. “Like my ma did. She said people thought she was crazy to have me all by herself.”

  “You and me, we aren’t settled down like your ma. And like my ma. We have to take care of each other, not a baby.”

  “But if you did have a baby,” Mike said, “what would you want to call him?”

  “Well, okay. If it was a boy, I’d name him Mitch or Mick, something simple, but something nobody would take away from him.” Funny, but she hadn’t even been thinking of boy names.

  “Mitch. That’s a name for a white kid. My baby’s going to be black.”

  That was true, Buckeye knew. Black Mike was blacker than anybody in the King Charles Troupe, way blacker than the two black showgirls, who wouldn’t talk to him and wouldn’t talk to Buckeye, either, or anybody living below the pie car, which was car number eighty-two.

  “Maybe that’s why you don’t want to have him,” Mike said. “Maybe you don’t want a black baby.”

  “That’s not why.” Buckeye imagined holding a baby the color of Mike’s face against her pale breast. She’d thought of it about every hour of every day these last few weeks, and the thought still took her breath away. Holding that baby so nobody could hurt it.

  “How about Mary for a girl?” Mike asked. His voice was no longer a whisper. “My mom’s name was Mary. Mary Sarah Field.”

  “You don’t hear what I’m saying,” Buckeye said. “A name like Mary, somebody else’ll have it first, and you don’t want your daughter to always be Black Mary, do you? How about name her after a flower, like Marigold? We’ll call her Mary for short, you and me, but she would tell other people she was Marigold, and they’d call her Goldie, maybe.”

  Mike pulled down his sleeves so they covered his wrists, something he did when agitated. Buckeye felt sad and sometimes a little crazy at how Mike always kept himself covered except in the dark. He wouldn’t let her turn the light on until he was dressed. He begged her not to steal a look, not yet, he always said, not if you love me, and she hadn’t gone against him.

  “We could have an apartment,” Mike said, looking down at Buckeye’s legs, “you and me and the baby.”

  Red was lying low outside, but Buckeye could hear the floor creaking, so she put her finger to her lips. Mike ignored her.

  “I’d like to have a baby sitting on my knee, bouncing, knowing I was his daddy.” He patted his own knee through the chino fabric. “He’d know I loved him.”

  Buckeye dressed the opposite of Mike, because she wanted Mike to see her body all the time so he would want her more. From climbing stairs with cotton candy every afternoon and evening, her legs were as shapely as a showgirl’s, and when she wasn’t wearing her work uniform, she wore the shortest skirts and shorts, kept her legs shaved smooth.

  “You couldn’t do meth no more, then,” Buckeye said. “Or coke. You’d have to give me all your money.”

  “All of it? Why?”

  “So I coul
d feed the baby and buy diapers and pay the rent. And you can’t stay covered up all the time. You’d have to get undressed like other people.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can see you. So the baby can see you.”

  Whomp! There was banging on the door again and Red’s voice. “Get out here, Buckeye. Open that door, Black Mike. It’s been five minutes.”

  Her circus ID card still read Becky, but she’d more or less gotten used to “Buckeye.” Sometimes she used an ink pen to decorate the palm of one hand, drawing a deer with horns, a buck. On the other she drew a big watchful eye with an eyebrow and eyelashes. She always scrubbed the ink off at night.

  “It’s just weird that I’ve never seen you naked,” Buckeye said. “You’ve got to see how it’s weird, don’t you?”

  Mike had a tattoo like a collar on the back of his neck that read FIELD in big Gothic letters; Buckeye tried to make out other tattoos in the night, tried to feel them on his skin like Braille, but she found only welts and gouged places, lines of needle scars, and a swath on his arm that was a grid of tiny bumps. She sometimes imagined swirls of ink covering his body, beautiful cursive words circling his scars, telling his true story that would end happily ever after with her. She imagined that if she could keep taking care of him, someday his skin would heal and be smooth.