Mister Boots Read online

  I’ll have to be bold, but magic is being bold all the time.

  But when it comes right down to it, I don’t pick a plain dress, I pick one I like. It looks as if it ought to be mine in the first place. It’s brown with little black outlines of flowers all over it, and little yellow dots in the center of each flower. It has a white, boy-type collar, so it’s not prissy.

  I bring it back to my room to try it on.

  I’m thinner than that girl, so the dress doesn’t look very good. I say, “Hello, Droopy,” to myself. I guess whatever dress I borrow, I’ll look like a clown anyway. My short hair adds to the clown look. Girls don’t have hair like this unless they just had head lice.

  I watch myself in the mirror and practice how to be a girl. It feels funny. Airy. Maybe I’m supposed to have a slip. I practice looking delicate. Except Rosie wasn’t like that. She was even tougher than me. Maybe as tough as Aunt Tilly. The more I think about it, the more I don’t know how I should behave.

  The dress has pockets. I’ll bring along forty dollars and flash paper and the little magic lighter. I won’t take the pistol. The pockets aren’t big enough.

  I don’t want anybody around the hotel to see me, so, although I love the elevator and the elevator man, I take the stairs. There’s nobody. Who would be there when you could ride in the elevator instead?

  I run across the lobby as fast as I can, out the hotel door, and down the street. I don’t look to see who’s watching, I just go and keep on going. Then I slow down and walk—still pretty fast though. Nobody pays attention. Is this all there is to it?

  There’s a nice big park with swings and slides and teeter-totters. I’ve seen it as we passed by on the way to someplace else, but I never got to go there. I wasn’t heading for it now, but here it is. Since it’s Sunday morning there’s nobody around. I sit on the bottom of a teeter-totter and wish Rosie were here to get on the other end. I think how my skirt goes up and my underwear shows, which is boy’s underwear.

  Then I put my skirt under me and slide the slides, all of them, even the baby one, and then I swing. (It’s the opposite of the dressy tails of my costume. Those you have to not sit on. If I don’t put the skirt under me the seat is scratchy. That’s another girl thing you have to find out.)

  It’s a wonder I even know how to swing, but I catch on fast. I feel scared and embarrassed even though there’s nobody here, except I feel good, too, but then I start to feel sad. It isn’t that I want to wear dresses so much, I don’t; it’s more that I can never be the truth about myself. And when I think how I’ve hardly ever been in a playground and how Rosie is my only friend and I had to say good-bye to her forever.

  All of a sudden I have to swing really hard and high. I go so high the ropes of the swing get loose at the top of the arc. I wonder if you could go all the way around. I wouldn’t like to do that, but I keep on, swinging hard.

  Somebody has been watching me all this time, and I didn’t even know it—all this time that I’ve been looking at my boy’s underwear and pulling down my skirt.

  I don’t see him till he gets up and starts toward me. I’m still swinging to beat the band, and I keep on. He’d better not come too close or I’ll kick him in the jaw. “Right on the button.” That’s what our father says.

  Except he does come close. He’s angry already, and I haven’t said a single word. It’s as if he already knows everything about me and doesn’t like any of it.

  I can smell him, even though I’m swishing back and forth making my own breeze.

  He says, “If you were good, you’d be in church.”

  I keep swinging hard. “So would you. Besides . . .” (More lies. Why not?) “My mother and my father and my two big brothers . . . They’re there. That counts.”

  “If you don’t go to church, you’ll think there isn’t any hellfire. You’ll go bad.”

  “What about you then?”

  That’s when he grabs me. It stops the swing so fast I nearly fall off. My skirt is up around my waist. He pulls me all the way off and pulls my skirt even higher.

  “You can’t fool me. You’re really a boy.”

  I try to get away. He hangs on and laughs. “Boys like you go straight to hell. You can struggle all you want, it’s hellfire top to bottom. All the way down.”

  Then he grabs me right there and says, “Well, well, well,” surprised, and pushes me flat on my back, pulls my underpants to my knees, and takes a long look. (How long does it take for him to see that I’m a girl?) And then he takes a feel.

  He’s so smelly I can hardly stand it. But I can’t stand any of it. Not for a single minute more.

  “I have money.”

  At least that makes him feel for my pockets instead of me. He pulls out my two twenties and then my flash paper, which looks to him like a little nothing tablet. He takes the money and throws the paper down beside us.

  “A lot of money for a little whore like you. You’ll burn in hellfire for what you do.”

  He holds me down with his knee across my stomach and tries to put the money in his pocket, but that pocket has a hole in it so he has to find another. He keeps mumbling about how I’ll burn in hellfire. Hellfire is his favorite word.

  He can’t find a pocket without holes. He even keeps trying the same pockets. He’s got me pinned, but he’s not watching. I get out the tiny magic lighter that fits on the tips of my fingers.

  I never did light a whole tablet before, but I always wanted to.

  It makes a big, big flash. It burns my face and I’ll bet his, too. More so, because I threw it right at him.

  He gives a screech and yells, “Hellfire!”

  It’s as if I had looked straight into the sun. By the time I can see again, he’s way, way, way across at the far side of the park and still going, stumbling like he’s blinded even more than I am.

  I pull my underpants up and dust myself off. I’m a mess. I’m crying, but everybody would cry after this sort of thing, even boys.

  I run all the way back. All the way up the stairs. I just want to be by myself and wash off the smell from that man.

  And there’s Aunt Tilly—coming out her door just as I’m going into mine. I try to escape and shut my door on her, but she grabs it and comes right in. I’m still running—to the far corner of the room and then it’s as if I’m running still but there’s no place to go. She grabs me and holds me tight. She’s a strong lady, and I don’t really want to get away.

  Pretty soon she pulls back to look at me. At the dress. It’s torn. It’s dirty. I’m dirty. I know I smell bad, too, just like that man.

  I don’t say a word. I couldn’t if I wanted to. First I look down because I don’t want to look at her face, and then I do look, and after I’m looking into her eyes, I stay like that. I don’t even dare move my eyeballs. Aunt Tilly looks like she doesn’t dare either. She’s perfectly still, but I can see her thoughts are going round and round inside her.

  She says, “My poor . . . Oh, my poor . . .” It’s as if she just this minute realized she doesn’t know my name, which she doesn’t.

  She’s wearing Wilhelmina. She takes her off and wraps her around me.

  “For you. For forever.”

  Suddenly I realize my fingers are burned and my face feels sunburned and my feet hurt from running in my shoes that are too big. . . .

  We go down on the floor then, both of us, Aunt Tilly as big as she is. She leans her back against the bed and holds my head to her big . . . first I’m thinking what Rosie called them: “lung warts” and “knockers.” She’s squashy all over. I always was thinking before how she should be slim like Mother was, but I don’t think that anymore.

  I try to tell her things, but I can’t, and she says, “Not now. Just cry. Poor little girl.”

  I do cry. And, even though I’m ten, it doesn’t matter being called little.

  Aunt Tilly gives me a bath, and I’m in it utterly naked. The real me. She washes me everywhere. She bandages my burned fingers. (She puts unsalted butt
er on them and on my face.) She dresses me in my boy pajamas and helps me into bed. And all the time she keeps shaking her head as if everything is, no, no, no, no, no. Then she brings hot milk with vanilla and nutmeg, and she sits next to me while I doze. Every time I move or open my eyes a little bit, she pats my hand.

  She says she’ll wash and repair the dress but she’ll not give it back, so we’re in this together now. Then Aunt Tilly says, “Who else knows about you?” and I say, “Just my sister.”

  “So we’ll keep it that way for now.”

  She sits with me until we hear our father calling her. He’s knocking on her door and yelling, “Dear!” His stage voice as always.

  I’m thinking he wouldn’t dare walk right into her room. He doesn’t dare anything against Aunt Tilly, and now she’s on my side.

  Aunt Tilly says, “There’s my hippopotamus of a lover.” She pats me again. “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Now I am.”

  She kisses me, a big loud smack, and then she kisses Wilhelmina just the same way. “I’ll check on you when I come up to bed.”

  Things change. Not only do I get a rest because of my burned fingers, but suddenly I get to have toys, and not just boy things—kind of half and half. I get to have a little green felt elephant. I get to have a great big Puss in Boots. I get to wear Wilhelmina all day long. I get to have licorice sticks. Our father doesn’t like it, but he has nothing to say about it. When Aunt Tilly puts her foot down, it stays put down.

  Sometimes it seems our father really is in love with Aunt Tilly and she really is in love with him.

  I don’t understand love at all.

  Me being a boy is the most important thing there is in his life. Aunt Tilly said he won’t let go of an idea he needs as much as this one: his son and heir, to carry on the name and the profession. Aunt Tilly said that’s what my mother was for. When Aunt Tilly told him she wasn’t about to have a child for him, let alone keep on having them until there was a son or two, he went off to find somebody who would.

  She said, “If he hadn’t, you and Jocelyn wouldn’t exist, so two good things came of it.”

  And then she warns me. “If he finds out! Having a son is what his whole life is about, though he doesn’t like children.” Then she says, “Any more than I do,” and kisses me—again one of those loud comedy kisses, but I can tell those are real.

  “But, Aunt Tilly, he didn’t ever come around back home. I didn’t even know him. Once he tried to teach me things for the show, just once, but then . . . Aunt Tilly, you know how he twists people’s arms up behind them? I think he broke my arm. And then he left for years and years.”

  “I suppose that scared him off for a while. He’s not as sure of himself as he seems.”

  chapter eleven

  Then the Depression hits, and it doesn’t take long for us to get poor along with everybody else, because nobody can afford to go to shows like ours. We lower the price to the absolute lowest we can, to just a nickel. But I don’t care how poor we get, I still have almost all my secret money.

  We still perform, but in smaller places and not so often. Sometimes in parks, except we have to be careful nobody gets behind us and finds out things. There’s some tricks we don’t do because of that. Sometimes our father and I go off alone and perform on street corners. I pass my top hat. We’ve come down that far. I guess it’s down—our father says it is—but I like it.

  We go to that very same park and there’s that very same man. I see he knows me even though I’m in my dress suit, top hat, and everything. We’re on the back of a rented truck. Everybody watching has to stand up or sit on the grass. This man stands right in the middle and right in front of everybody. I’m scared. I don’t stick to our plans. Before we even get started, I throw fire, three quick batches right toward him. I’m wasting flash paper. It costs a lot.

  This time the fire doesn’t scare the man. I’m not close enough to blind him like before. He ducks but then comes right up, grabs my leg, and pulls me off the truck. “You little bitch. Whores like you end up in hellfire. I say hellfire!” And he starts to shake me really hard.

  This man is tall and our father isn’t, but, like Aunt Tilly said, our father’s pretty much all muscle. I always think fat, but she’s right, it’s not. He’s one of those people all chest and shoulders and gorilla arms. He jumps off the truck, grabs that tall man, and tosses him away as if he was as small I am. The man picks himself up and leaves, but he keeps on yelling back at us. “You’re nothin’ but a girl. She’s a girl, everybody. You’re wasting your money. She’s not worth shit. She’s not even worth hellfire.”

  Our father hears it, but it washes right off him. I guess it washes off everybody, or, girl or boy, they don’t care. Our father gives me a hug. (That’s the first time for that. I thought he didn’t believe in hugs for boys.) Then he lifts me up to the truck.

  It’s lucky I don’t have my pistol; I’m so mad I would have shot that bum.

  Then we really do run out of money. Aunt Tilly doesn’t have her bracelets halfway up her arms anymore. (Some of those were real gold.) Her fuzzy red hair has whitish roots that aren’t curly. My sister begins to knit the way she used to. I help some, but I’m slow and I’m still not good at much more than scarves, except Mister Boots likes his, just the way it is. Mine is the first and only scarf he ever had.

  Boots has always worked on our packing and loading and setting up, but now he works for other people, too. He does all kinds of things, but what he likes best is to work with animals. He shovels out stables and paddocks. He loves to curry and hose down horses. He loves the smell of the bales of hay. Lots of times I go with him and help. I want to, because I worry that he’ll let the horses go or get himself in trouble some other way. I work hard when I’m with him, but they don’t pay me except a nickel now and then. They always say I’m too little to do a good job. Mister Boots doesn’t think that. He’d give me half what he earns, but I tell him to give it to Jocelyn for more oatmeal and beans.

  When he’s working at the racetrack and watches the horses practice, I’ve seen him look as if he’s going to change to Moonlight Blue right then and there in order to race with them. He gets covered with sweat just from watching. I’m surprised he doesn’t run out on the track even as a mere man. When I see Boots like that, I know why people always say, “Hold your horses.” I say it. I take a tight hold on his arm. “Hold your horses, Mister Boots.”

  There’s another reason I like to go off to help Boots. Our father is getting mad at everything. He’s not a drinker, but you’d think he was, the way he rages around and slaps his hand against doorways and tables even when everything seems perfectly fine to me. Aunt Tilly says she might be the only person who can take care of us.

  She could leave. She can take care of herself. She said, “I’ve earned my living from the age of twelve, mostly by getting myself sawed in half or raised up in the air. And I did all those same important things you do while people have their eyes on Robert. Can you imagine? Buxom at twelve? Nobody guessed how young I was. Can you imagine me getting in that box and getting myself sawed in half again now? Imagine the box he’d need!” And then she throws back her head and laughs her big laugh.

  At last we go back to the tent place. We go up the way we did before, a motorcar for us and a wagon for our tents and boxes of magic stuff. All the way there I’m so happy I can’t sit still.

  (I think Houdie got sold a long time ago, but our father won’t say. He gets angry even if I just look like I’m going to ask about him, but I think it was Houdie money that paid for us to come up here in a car.)

  Because of the Depression, the tent place is different from before. It’s full up, but not with many circus people anymore. We sneak in and share a spot with another family. We pay them two bits a week for taking up half their space. Lots of people are doing that.

  I look all over, but Rosie isn’t there, and the place where Rosie hid me—with the old tent and the broken-down cart beside it—is
completely changed. The bushes are cut down to make more room, and there’s two families crowded in there.

  Did Rosie’s family get too poor for even two bits’ worth of space? They never took up much room. They could squeeze in with us. I’d pay.

  A few days later, after I’ve given up, I do find Rosie—down the road a piece. I find her by mistake. Our father and I are looking for a good and cheap space to give one of our shows, like a barn where we can charge admission, not a park where I have to pass the hat. Our father likes to take me any place that involves exercise and fresh air. He says, “A healthy mind in a healthy body.” As if he hasn’t told me that dozens of times already.

  He always walks me out as fast as he can go. Same reason. Every single time I’m with him I have to trot to keep up. So here I am, trotting along, and I see Rosie’s tent, small and raggedy, and no sign of a car or a horse or a wagon. There’s a piece of an old tarp propped sideways against sagebrush for a little bit of shade. It’s just behind an irrigation ditch that doesn’t have any water in it. There’s a runty little half-dead tree making a few more sticks of shade. Rosie is under it, washing dishes in a pail and basin. I wonder where she gets water?

  Since I’m with our father, I don’t let on to Rosie that I see her. I wiggle my fingers behind my back. Last thing, I try to kiss my elbow. When I turn around, I see she’s laughing so hard her head is practically in the dishpan.

  Our father and I find a good barn-dance barn not far from where Rosie is camped. I’m happy because she’ll get to see me. Before we perform I’m going to tell her I’m a girl, so she’ll know girls can do it just as well as anybody.