Best In Show
It was the musical humming at first that Katie could discern through the darkness. She cuddled closer to her Aunt’s arm and squeezed her teddy bear tight. Katie wasn’t afraid of the dark. The sad purring voice hidden by the shroud of darkness had a disturbing hint to it—a beautiful disaster type of song.
A siren’s song, like that of the stories her mother read her nightly. One that pulls you in steal your soul from an adventurous dreamscape.
The black curtain lifted, and Katie blinked from the flood of light from the sudden center stage. It reflected off a single golden cage as it lowered from the ceiling. She was creating majestic rainbows of pearly rays cast on the silent audience. The cage swung, teetering on the edge of crashing the stunning woman cramped on the inside to the ground. Yet, she continued the harmonious humming as if undisturbed by the dangerous sway.
The circus tent was in awe as the coop lowered further to the dirt floor beneath. Sad, heartbroken notes shattered the deathly silence of the crowd and drew an eerie tone over the dazzling gold cage.
Katie sat in the front row. Her brown eyes grew large as she examined the long train of tail feathers that hung from the woman’s costume, out of the cage like a waterfall of color emerging from an impossible corpse. The skin-toned bodysuit covered the woman from neck to toe. On her head was a peacock bonnet adorned with feathers of heart blood red, fresh bruise purple, and deep vein blue.
“Auntie,” Katie got a shiver of fear from the black kohl painted around the woman’s eyes. The lashes so long they kissed the pink dusting on the woman’s cheeks.
“Shhhh,” Aunt Jocelyn corrected the girl gently and stuffed another handful of buttery popcorn into her mouth.
Katie needed her Aunt to understand, “It’s a woman,” she exclaimed and motioned to the center, causing her over hugged beige teddy Bear over the divider. Katie cried out as her bear landed fearfully, alone and out of reach on the dirt floor. Her wailing drowned out Aunt Jocelyn’s hushes, and it drowned out the humming that had demanded attention from the audience. It even drowned out the bright lights as Katie’s eyes slammed solidly shut. It wasn’t until a hand touched her shoulder that she sniffled, wiped her nose, and opened her eyes. Her vision blurred before focusing on the same astounding brown eyes of her own.
Without little Katie realizing, the woman had emerged from her cage, plucked the bear from his loneliness on the floor, and produced herself a breath length away from Katie.
The Teddy Bear was smudged from his dirt landing but safe, and Katie smiled, retrieving her friend the bear and hugged him tight as the woman spun back to the center. She was cascading a delightful show of colorful feathers and scents of jasmine incense over the girl and her Aunt.
“Thank you,” Katie muttered, snuggling further into her teddy bear. She was no longer interested in the show from her near loss of her teddy bear friend. Losing him forever would have been devastating.
The trapeze artist returned to her routine. She was humming to herself to drown out the stares of the hundreds of people in the stands. Penelope didn’t care what tune came from her painted lips, and although the ringmaster had complained about this nervous act and how it distracted the sullen beauty of her act, she continued.
Penelope grasped the cold bar and swung herself up. She was swinging gracefully in the air, from perfectly placed bars to silk ropes to steel hoops. The act made her look as if she genuinely flew like a bird through the stuffy tent air.
A smooth peach cap blended the black of her hair into the rest of her body, but it was so tight it made her temples scream in pain. It might well as have been glued to her scalp since it left dark bruises once removed. Calluses on her palms tore and left bloodstains on the bars that she would have to scrub off after the show. Her production team dreamed up her costume. A caged caterpillar froze in a golden cocoon of a cage wanting to burst free to become an exotic butterfly flying about the center stage with elegance.
The trapeze act down, she climbed back into her cage. She was moving purposely slow to make it appear a part of the show and pushing the heavyweight of her tail feathers out the back of the cage.
Penelope looked down through the cage bars as it rose out of sight. She could still see the little girl who transfixed on the giraffes and elephants marching in for the next circus act. Her Aunt’s arm wrapped around her lovingly.
Although the girl’s eyes had been the same color, Penelope’s didn’t shine with innocence any longer as hers did. The sparkle died when she’d moved out of the foster home. Turning nineteen was a blessing for most, only a curse for Penelope. Nineteen meant there was no longer a safety net.
Several stories above ground now, the steel cable stopped her ascent and began to move her horizontally along the tarped ceiling. Grateful for the lack of wind on the west coast, Penelope held onto the cage bars and prayed it traveled to the grassy exterior safely.
She trusted the golden cage, not the cables it traveled on. Like the love of her birth mother, it could prove to break under its inconvenience.
Penelope could still picture the social worker’s freckled face when she would return from another failed foster family. The social worker would joke that her freckles were kisses from sandman’s sleepy dusting.
Yet, when Penelope developed body covering freckles from puberty, doctors called them skin melanomas. Not kisses.
Scalpels removed them quickly, but potential fosters feared her scars. Penelope could cover the jagged marks with makeup, but no number of cosmetics concealed the pain of her memories.
Medical bills prevented full adoption. Foster parents wouldn’t take Penelope for longer than a one-month prescription fill. The nurses at the oncology department became family more than she had ever known.
Penelope wiped the tears and thoughts away as the cage creaked along the sky-high roof-track. She reluctantly swallowed the glycerin smeared on her teeth (to force a sparkling smile to sparkle) as it had begun to thin and make her gag. Any sound now would be disastrous for the show, which would bring the end to her measly low funds. Ashamed, she hung her head and allowed it to drip from her lips.
Penelope’s muscles burned from exhaustion and the cramped space inside the cage. The cage halted suddenly, before exiting the tent and she watched from above the crowd. She felt forgotten in the dark. Muffled voices grew excited as the elephants marched in a circle, as they had trained. And as Penelope was instructed, she sat silent.
Lions followed the wild beat out of them, meowing gently as kittens. Petrified of the ringmaster like Penelope felt petrified of the ringmaster.
The metal cable jerked to a new start, cloud-high. Penelope exhaled and leaned her head against the cold bars. It creaked as it moved along the track, the white light of the exit grew closer. The picture of the little girl’s face stayed in her mind. What was it that made her so drawn to the girl? The Teddy Bear. Penelope never had anything that was loved to near death and still survived. No possession that had ever been hers long enough.
She strained her eyes to see the little girl with her Aunt. Penelope never had one of those either. She didn’t know the love of a family member that would love unconditionally. Love towards was always given depending on a government-issued cheque. And when those didn’t cover medical bills, back to the group home she went.
The cage finally jerked out of the pop-up circus tent and swung dangerously over the five-story naked drop to the gravel parking lot. Her request for safety nets answered with an offer to dock it from her minimal pay.
The closest to a family she had known was from a reluctant piece of information. And that’s at best calling it news. As promised, her social worker, Kathryn, had divulged her birth mother’s mental status. That was the most she would agree to, and it gave Penelope no solace.
It was followed by, “now let it go. Don’t bother looking for your mother. She can’t help you.”
There was no blame, just pain.
Decrepit group homes, reluctant foster parents, cold hospitals, and full shelters put Penelope to beach sleeping as a way of life. When the weather faired for the warm sands, otherwise, she slept folded behind a garbage dumpster.
The traveling circus was a blessing to her.
The cage suddenly dropped several feet at once, causing Penelope to bite her tongue and cry out in agony. Lurching and swaying treacherously, Penelope pinched her eyes closed tight. Her only thought was a hope it wouldn’t hurt when she fell, nothing could cut as much anyway. Could it? Then the cage resumed its descent smoothly to the grassy field beyond the parking lot.
Penelope put her palm upward to stop her head from hitting the top when the golden cage bumped down. Late evening dew settled. The air carried a coolness, not unlike her foster families. Performer’s trailers staggered to prevent unwanted socialization. Just as her upbringing was staggered to avoid unwanted questions, here, she was the star of the show, the blossomed butterfly. In life, Penelope was the forgotten child, the fallen woman.
No one would come to assist Penelope with the heavy, spray-painted steel cage as she dragged it through the dark sheet of night.
Out of breath, when she arrived home (decrypted trailer home), she silently cried when she saw the door handle broken again. Penelope couldn’t afford to fix it, not when a gentle breeze could break the whole of the trailer. The door squealed open, and Penelope stepped into the darkness. Her only friend. Black spaces. She hated this part when there were lights on.
The tail feathers and wings removed at the door.
Penelope peeled the cap off her head and dropped it into a wicker basket. The hair that she still had grown in small, misshapen patches and ached at the roots from the lack of oxygen under the cap. She peeled a cloth off the pile that she left ready dampened and began wiping the makeup off her body.
It was itchy and claustrophobic under the layers of skin-toned concealer. Penelope hated applying the makeup but despised removing it more. Where they had surgically removed, the larger melanomas had never appropriately healed—subpar medical treatments from government payments. Ridges and welts were left, for the show, they looked faked and suitable for the costume. In the dark of her trailer, they were sorry reminders of her miserable medical life and emotional pain.
Mirrors covered with old newspapers prevented Penelope from having to watch the horror show of her pearly milk skin turn to her patchy grey flesh. Near black settled between her fingers and toes, but on the nooks of her elbows and knees was a gnarly festered green. The ashy tone faded darker to a shadow of a soul around her heart.
The charred bits that were left behind after no one wanted to adopt her due to medical bills. The murky pieces stitched together by being a permanent ward. Sparkles and eyeshadow couldn’t hide her anguish.
In a tattered, unloved body, Penelope would trade all the beauty of makeup to have an aunt hold her hand, kiss her cheek.
Penelope cut the bodysuit off, glancing begrudgingly at the box full of fresh ones ready for every day to come. It was too painful to take them off. Better to cut it away.
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