Hidden Places (41 page)

Aunt Batty looked at me as if she didn’t believe I was capable of lying. ‘‘What did you lie about, Toots?’’

Her faith in me stung my conscience like a hive full of angry bees. I knew it was high time I started telling the truth.

‘‘Everything! I’ve been lying ever since I got off the train in Deer Springs ten years ago. Sheriff Foster says Gabe lied to me in order to steal the orchard from me, and if that’s true, then it serves me right because I did the very same thing. I made Sam think I loved him so I could have a home here. I never told him the truth about myself, either. I’m an impostor, just like Gabe. And now God is paying me back for everything I’ve done....’’

Eliza’s Story

New Orleans, 1904

‘‘We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not
quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in
our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a
strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes.’’

MADELEINEL’ ENGLE

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

T
he clearest memory I have of my mama is the day she took me to the circus when I was the same age as my Becky Jean. We had never gone anywhere before that day—only to the corner store and back, or to the big church on the next block once in a while. That was because my mama was very sick. Most days I would play alone in our room or watch people walk by on the street below my window while Mama slept, and I’d wait for her to wake up and fix me something to eat. She couldn’t eat much herself and she had grown very thin. She would sit propped up in bed sipping her medicine while she watched me eat, and sometimes a big silvery tear would roll down her cheek.

The week before we went to the circus Mama had started having nightmares. She woke up screaming that she saw snakes in our room and horrible creatures crawling up our walls, and she scared me so bad I started having nightmares, too. But the day we went to the circus she got out of bed much earlier than usual and poured herself a glass of medicine and said, ‘‘How would y’all like to go to the circus, Sugarbaby?’’ I never have forgotten the velvety sound of Mama’s voice or her slow, easy drawl.

‘‘What’s a circus?’’ I asked.

Tears swam in her eyes as she held her palm against my cheek. ‘‘My poor, sweet Sugar. Y’all don’t even know what a circus is.’’ She turned away and lit a cigarette, then crossed the room to her old steamer trunk. I loved our afternoons together when she would open that trunk and take out all her beautiful, shimmering costumes. They were made of smooth, silky cloth and covered all over with sequins and glitter and feathers and such. In one of the drawers Mama kept a little silver tiara, like a miniature crown, that glittered with make-believe diamonds. Whenever I felt sad or scared, Mama would take out that crown and let me wear it. She took it out that morning, too, and put it on my head. ‘‘My little angel,’’ she whispered.

One compartment in her trunk held sheet music, all yellowed and brittle with age. Mama’s hand shook as she sifted through the drawer, searching for something. I brushed cigarette ashes away as they fell on the pages, afraid they would catch on fire. When Mama didn’t find what she wanted in that drawer she tried the next one, pulling out a handful of faded programs.

‘‘See here? That’s me, Sugar. Yvette Dupre. The Singing Angel.’’

I stared for a long time at the picture of my mama in a long, sparkly dress. She wore her coppery hair piled high on her head with the little silver crown nestled on top. She had been very beautiful before she got sick.

Mama turned the page to show me more pictures—a smiling man with a top hat and a cane, a funny-looking man with a big wooden doll on his lap. ‘‘I used to sing in the Vaudeville circuit,’’ she said. ‘‘That’s how I met your daddy.’’

I nodded as if I understood, but I didn’t. She exhaled smoke, then dug through the stack of programs until she found one with a group of men dressed in funny-looking clothes.

‘‘That’s Henri—your daddy—right there. Handsome Henri Gerard.’’

I squinted for a better look, but the picture was so tiny I couldn’t make out his face. Mama took another gulp of her medicine, then stared straight ahead for the longest time, her eyes empty and dark, her lips very pale. There was no life in her face at all, and that scared me. Sometimes she didn’t seem to remember who I was.

I touched her hand. ‘‘Mama?’’ Her fingers felt as cold as the bars of the radiator when our heat was turned off.

She finally gazed at me, then at the programs in front of her. She looked as if she just woke up and had no idea where she was or how she got here.

‘‘Mama?’’ I said again, pulling on her sleeve.

‘‘Hmm?’’

‘‘Is this the place we’re going to today?’’ I pointed to one of the leaflets.

‘‘No, Sugarbaby. We’re going to the circus.’’ She suddenly came to life again, remembering, and sorted through all the programs until she found the one she wanted. It had a fancy design around the edge and red letters that had faded to rusty pink. Mama pointed to the picture on the front. ‘‘See there? That’s an elephant, Sugarbaby. I know y’all never saw an elephant before, but they’re just the most enormous things! See how tiny that woman looks beside it?’’

The elephant’s head looked like a snake. I felt afraid. ‘‘Will it eat me?’’

‘‘Why no, Sugar. It’ll make you laugh. And see these clowns? They’ll make y’all laugh, too. And you’ll see men swinging from little bitty swings, way up high in the air like monkeys, and...Ijust know y’all will love it.’’ She took two more swallows of her medicine, draining the glass. When she set it down and crushed out her cigarette, I snuggled up to her. Mama drew me very close, holding me tighter than I ever remembered her holding me before, as if something awful might happen to both of us if she let go.

‘‘You know I love you, don’t you, Sugar?’’ she whispered. ‘‘You know I want to be a better mama, but...y’all understand that I’m...I’m not well?’’

‘‘Yes, Mama.’’ In fact, she sometimes got so weak and wobbly she could hardly walk to the corner store for food or more medicine. The week before, she’d fallen coming up the stairs to our room and the lady who ran the boardinghouse had yelled and yelled at her. Said she would have thrown Mama out in the gutter where she belonged a long time ago if it weren’t for me. I tried real hard to get Mama on her feet again but I couldn’t do it alone. Finally one of the other boarders, a friend of Mama’s, came and helped her up to our room. I didn’t like that man. He had a lot of dark, coarse hair and spoke in a strange language with Mama, and he smelled like fish. But he helped her into bed that day and she slept for a long, long time.

Yes, I knew my mama was very sick. The medicine would make her better, stronger, for a little while. She would laugh and sometimes even sing, just like an angel, but when the bottle of amber liquid was gone, Mama would be sleepy and weak and scarcely able to talk again.

‘‘You know I love you, don’t you, Sugarbaby?’’ she whispered again. ‘‘If I didn’t love you so much I wouldn’t be taking y’all to the circus this afternoon, now, would I?’’

We both got dressed in our Sunday clothes, and Mama put the little crown on my head, fastening it real tight to my golden curls with hairpins so it wouldn’t fall off. I felt like a princess. Mama drank one last dose of medicine for strength, then poured the rest of it into the little silver flask that she carried in her purse. We walked hand-in-hand to the corner where the streetcar stopped, then rode on it for a long, long way. When we finally got off, we walked some more until I saw a huge striped tent up ahead and heard the warble of the calliope and the excited rumble of voices.

The next few hours were the most wonderful ones I’d ever spent with my mama. I’d rarely seen her so happy and full of life, laughing and pointing to all the strange sights along the midway and in the side shows. When she saw how the cotton candy fascinated me, she gave me a nickel to buy some. It was sticky and sweet on my lips, but just when I expected to feel cotton in my mouth, it disappeared. I cried, thinking I must have done something wrong.

‘‘Where did it go, Mama?’’

‘‘Oh, Sugarbaby, I’m so sorry. I should have warned y’all. It’s supposed to melt in your mouth. That’s what cotton candy does.’’ She knelt in front of me to wipe away my tears with her handkerchief. Her smile faded and she got that scary, faraway look in her eyes for a moment. ‘‘And when y’all get a little older, you’ll find out that’s what love is like, too—just like cotton candy. Your mouth will water for it, and it will promise so many things, but when you try and take your fill of love, there’ll be nothing there at all. Only a sweet, lingering taste—if you’re one of the lucky ones.’’

I remember that the circus amazed me that day, but I can’t honestly recall the magic of it anymore. In later years I saw the reality behind the false front—the clowns’ painted-on smiles, the thrills that weren’t thrilling at all once you knew how they were done—and after that, everything about the circus seemed phony and cheap. Even the man-eating tiger, which had frightened me so badly on that first day, proved to be as harmless as Queen Esther and Arabella.

What I do remember about that first trip to the circus was that there was so much going on all at once in those three rings that I didn’t know where to look first. I didn’t want to miss anything so I kept asking, ‘‘What are you watching now, Mama? Which one are you looking at?’’

I remember the brassy music and the relentless excitement and my mama’s beautiful laughter. I remember how she gasped when it seemed that one of the aerialists might fall, and how we both covered our eyes, then peeked between our fingers to discover that he hadn’t really fallen after all. But what remains most vivid in my mind is the eerie way my mama kept looking at me with her sad, gray eyes, and touching my hair or my cheek with her ice-cold hands and saying, ‘‘You know that I love you, don’t you, Sugar?’’

When the show ended we sat on the bleachers listening to the band play until the tent was nearly empty. Mama’s bottle of medicine was empty, too. I had seen her tip the little silver flask up real high so she could get the very last drop of it. Then she pulled out her compact and a tube of lipstick and she painted her lips scarlet, blotting them on a square of toilet tissue from her purse.

‘‘Here’s a kiss for you to keep, Sugarbaby.’’ I tucked the fragile square into my pocket and kept that imprint of her lips for a long, long time—until it finally fell apart.

As soon as the music stopped, the roustabouts streamed into the tent, causing a great ruckus as they began dismantling the bleachers and circus rings. Mama stood and took my hand in hers.

‘‘Eliza Rose Gerard, it’s time for y’all to meet your daddy.’’

We walked across the empty circus rings, and when we stepped outside I was surprised to see everything stripped down already. The sideshow tents, the cotton candy booth, the tent with the animals, even the ticket booths had vanished leaving a bare, trampled field where all the magic had been. Mama led me around the back of the Big Top to a smaller tent where a group of circus performers talked and laughed as they changed out of their costumes into ordinary clothes.

Then Mama pointed to the man who was my daddy.

He had bright red hair that stuck out in all directions and a bulbous red nose to match. He wore baggy plaid trousers with polka dot suspenders and a pair of shoes that seemed a mile long. He was a clown. A foolish buffoon with the Bennett Brothers Circus.

Daddy sat on a little stool in front of a mirror, talking quietly to another man as he wiped the white makeup and exaggerated smile off his face. But he stopped—froze is really the right word for it—when he looked up and saw my mother.

‘‘Hello, Henri,’’ she said. Mama was the only person I’ve ever heard pronounce Daddy’s name the French way. Everyone else called him Henry.

‘‘Yvette?’’ He sounded astonished and not at all sure it was really her. I remembered how different Mama had looked when she was called the Singing Angel, before she got so sick and needed bottles and bottles of medicine. No wonder Daddy didn’t recognize her, thin as she was now.

Mama poked at her hair as if she could push it around and make it beautiful again, as if she wished she still wore it piled high on her head like in the picture. ‘‘Don’t you know your own wife, Henri?’’ she said with a tiny laugh. ‘‘Or your baby daughter?’’

Daddy glanced at the other man, then back at Mama before looking away. His cheeks turned nearly as scarlet as his hair. The other man quickly stuffed his costume into a trunk and disappeared like some kind of magic act. Daddy fumbled to pull off his nose and wig, then wiped off the last of his makeup with a towel before finally looking up at me. He tried to smile.

‘‘She...she’s grown since I saw her last.’’

‘‘I should think so. Y’all have been gone more than two years, Henri. She’ll be five years old on her next birthday, won’t you, Sugarbaby?’’

I didn’t answer. I simply stared and stared at this stranger who was my daddy. Now that he’d taken his makeup off, I thought he was the most handsome man I’d ever seen—so different from all the men who came to our boardinghouse to visit Mama and bring her medicine. He had shiny black hair that he wore slicked back beneath his wig, and his shoulders looked very wide, his torso ramrod straight and muscular beneath his outlandish outfit. He still hadn’t moved from where he sat when we first approached.