Hidden Places (45 page)

I felt all grown-up living on my own, and like the other women I bunked with, I began to take an interest in the opposite sex. I kissed a boy, one of the stable grooms, for the very first time one night when he walked me home to the women’s sleeping car after the evening performance. I didn’t think my daddy knew what I was up to any more now that I no longer lived with him, but I learned how wrong I was that night! We barely had time to duck behind the rail car for one little smooch before Daddy came charging around the corner with fire in his eyes. The poor boy took off running and I don’t think he slowed down until he crossed the state line.

Meanwhile, my father dragged me off to his train compartment, corralling poor Aunt Peanut along the way. He was furious and I was scared. I had no idea what I had done wrong. I sat huddled beside Peanut on the banquette seat while Daddy paced the tiny room like one of Gunther’s lions. He roared like one, too.

‘‘What in blazes did you think you were doing? Guys like him are after only one thing, Eliza!’’

He glared at me as if I should know exactly what that one thing was, but I was terribly nai
ve—and quite mystified. ‘‘What, Daddy? I don’t have anything.’’

I was even more mystified when Daddy began to blush. ‘‘Tell her, Peanut,’’ he mumbled.

‘‘Oh no, you don’t! That’s your job, Henry.’’ She hopped off the banquette and headed for the door as fast as her tiny legs could go.

Daddy blocked her path. ‘‘Well, I’m asking you to help me.’’

‘‘No way! I’m out of here!’’ Her voice squeaked even higher than usual.

They went back and forth like this until I felt ready to scream. ‘‘Tell me
what
!’’ I yelled, pounding my fist on the table.

Aunt Peanut finally relented. She booted Daddy out of the car and told me the facts of life. She finished her explanation by saying, ‘‘You see? Most boys won’t bother to buy the cow if they’re already getting the milk for free. Wait for a wedding ring, honey. Wait for Mr. Right.’’

I was disgusted with boys, my daddy, Aunt Peanut, and the world in general for several weeks.

Not long after my eighteenth birthday the circus played in New Orleans. I’d found out from Charlie that he and Daddy had grown up in New Orleans and that I used to live there with my mother. The last performance of a two-day run was about to start when Charlie came racing up to me at the concession booth where I worked. He was all out of breath.

‘‘Where’s your father, Eliza? Have you seen him?’’

‘‘No, not since lunchtime. Why?’’

‘‘The show’s about to start! He already missed the preshow, and he’s supposed to be lining up for the grand-entry parade right now!’’

I couldn’t believe it. ‘‘Daddy’s...missing?’’

‘‘Yes! I’ve searched everywhere and I can’t find him!’’

I was suddenly very frightened. It wasn’t like my daddy to be late for a show, much less miss one altogether. ‘‘I’ll help you look for him,’’ I said. I turned off the cotton candy machine, handed the cash box to the ticket-booth cashier, and took off at a run for the back lot, praying that something awful hadn’t happened to him.

He wasn’t in clown alley. He wasn’t in the pad room either, and the horse he always rode in his stunt act was still tethered inside. The rail cars had been parked clear across the field from the Big Top, but I sprinted all the way over there when I ran out of other places to look. I bounded up to Daddy’s compartment and flung open the door without even knocking, then stopped dead in my tracks in shock.

Daddy was there all right, sitting at the little table. And right beside him sat my mama. She wasn’t dead at all! She looked just as thin and ill as she had the day she left me, thirteen years ago, but she was very much alive!

‘‘Eliza? Sugar, is that you?’’ Mama asked. ‘‘Why, you’re a beautiful young lady, Sugarbaby! Isn’t she beautiful, Henri?’’

Even if I hadn’t recognized Mama’s face I would have known her by that velvety drawl—and by the bottle of amber ‘‘medicine’’ on the table in front of her. I was almost too stunned to speak.

‘‘Mama? You...you’re
alive
?’’

‘‘Well, I think so, Sugar,’’ she said with a little laugh. ‘‘At least I was the last time I looked.’’

I couldn’t take it all in! If Mama was alive, then why had she gone away and left me here with Daddy? And why had my daddy lied to me all these years, making me think my mama was dead if she wasn’t? I looked from one of them to the other, and the anger and betrayal grew inside me until my rage finally exploded.

‘‘You lied to me, Daddy!’’

‘‘I didn’t lie. I never said—’’

‘‘Yes, you did! You knew I thought Mama was dead, and you just kept on letting me think it was true!’’

‘‘Eliza, let me explain....’’

‘‘No! Why should I believe a word you say? All this time you and Mama could have lived together and made a home for me so I would have a mother and a father like everyone else, but you were both too selfish!’’

‘‘That’s not true—’’

‘‘You never wanted me! Neither one of you! Mama abandoned me on the doorstep because she didn’t want me—’’

‘‘No, sugar, I loved you so much that—’’

‘‘And you didn’t want me either, Daddy! You’ve been trying to get rid of me all these years, telling me to leave the circus and go out on my own. Well, you’ll both get your wish! You’ll never see me again!’’ I turned to run out the door and bumped smack into Charlie.

‘‘There you are, Henry!’’ he cried. ‘‘What in blazes are you still doing here? Come on!’’

Daddy bolted to his feet. ‘‘Holy smokes! What time is it?’’

‘‘You already missed the grand entry and it’s almost time for your bareback routine. And look at you! Where’s your face?’’

Daddy’s face was bare. His wig and red nose lay on his bunk beside the stained towel he’d used to wipe off all his greasepaint. He looked from Charlie to me, then to Mama, and I could see he felt torn.

‘‘Fill in for me, Charlie,’’ he begged. ‘‘I’m in the middle of something—’’

‘‘Are you crazy? I can’t do that bareback routine, none of us can. We’ll kill ourselves.’’ He snatched up Daddy’s wig and clown nose and shoved them into his hands. ‘‘Come on!’’

‘‘Eliza, please wait here for me,’’ Daddy begged on his way out the door. ‘‘Give me a chance to explain. Talk to your mother for a while. I’ll be back in half an hour, tops.’’ He took off with Charlie, running across the field toward the Big Top.

I waited until they were out of earshot. ‘‘Good-bye, Mama,’’ I said quietly.

‘‘No, Sugar, wait!’’ She tried to stand but she was too wobbly— too drunk—to chase me.

I calmly walked back to the women’s sleeping car, packed up everything I owned that wasn’t already in the baggage car, and gathered all the money I’d saved from working at the concession stand. Then I left the Bennett Brothers’ Circus for good.

The circus train was parked in a freight yard, so I had to walk almost a mile up the track through the rail yard to get to the passenger station. It was a huge, cavernous building, with so much space up by the ceiling that they could have had three or four trapeze acts and a couple of high-wire walkers up there at the same time. After living in cramped rail cars and tents all my life, I couldn’t understand the waste of such a building. It made me feel very tiny, the way poor Aunt Peanut must feel all the time, living in a big person’s world.

The station was a busy place, all lit up and bustling with people. Porters hauled huge carts of luggage to and fro, uniformed soldiers milled around looking lost, and exhausted families sat waiting on crowded benches, their babies wailing. I surveyed it all, wondering what to do, until I saw the window labeled ‘‘ticket sales,’’ and a knot of people lined up in front of it. My feet made a sharp tapping sound that echoed on the marble floor as I walked over to the window.

‘‘When does the next train leave?’’ I asked when it was finally my turn. The harried-looking agent behind the little window seemed distracted.

‘‘Uh...The next train to where, miss?’’

‘‘Anywhere! I don’t care. I just want the very next train.’’

He looked up at me for the first time and stroked his walrus mustache. ‘‘Listen, you look like a nice young lady. If you’re think-ing of running away from home, I’m sure that your family—’’ The word
family
made me cold with fury. ‘‘I don’t have a family,’’ I said. ‘‘I’m not a child, I’m eighteen. Now please do your job and tell me when the next train leaves.’’

I realized after I had kids of my own that the man was just trying to keep me from making a big mistake, but at the time he seemed like a busybody. He took his time answering my question, stroking his mustache like he was petting a dog.

‘‘Well, the train sitting on track five leaves in ten minutes,’’ he said slowly. ‘‘It’s northbound for Memphis, Louisville, Indianapolis, and points north.’’

I laid some of my money on the counter. ‘‘Kindly give me a ticket for as far as this will take me.’’

The ticket agent did not look happy. He kept glancing up at me as if memorizing the details of what I looked like and how I was dressed in case someone sent the police after me. But I knew my daddy wouldn’t do that. The circus train would probably be in Arkansas before he even figured out I was missing.

‘‘Do you have any baggage to check, miss?’’ the agent asked.

‘‘I’d like to keep my suitcase with me, thank you.’’

I had already decided that I would watch out the window until I saw a town I liked and then just step off the train when it stopped there. It might be any one of the thousands of towns I’d traveled through over the years, towns I’d begged Daddy to settle down in. My dream house would be in a quiet little village where all my neighbors knew me and greeted me by name.

As soon as the agent handed me my ticket, I hurried down to track five and climbed aboard. I found my seat in the coach section and set my suitcase down by my feet, glad to see an empty seat beside mine. Five minutes later the train lurched forward, then slowly rolled out of the station. We passed The Bennett Brothers’ Circus train on a sidetrack a few minutes later and quickly left it far behind.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I
think deep down I’d always known the truth—that my mother hadn’t died, but had abandoned me like a litter of unwanted kittens along a country road. I hadn’t wanted to face the truth. To admit what I was finally forced to face would have meant facing the why of it—why had she abandoned me? What was wrong with me that had made her turn her back and walk away from me when I was only four years old?

As I stared out of the train window that long, lonely afternoon, I was determined to put the past behind me forever. I would begin a new life and never look back. I convinced myself that I was just like the brave heroines in Betsy Gibson’s books. They were often orphaned and stepping out in the world on their own, but I had a big advantage over them because I had ‘‘been around the block,’’ as they say, having traveled with the circus. It didn’t scare me one bit to travel by train across an unknown land. And I couldn’t get homesick for a home I never had, could I? I didn’t know the name of the town I was searching for, but I was sure I would recognize it as soon as I saw it.

I searched all that first afternoon with no luck, then slept on the train that night, the motion rocking me to sleep as it had for most of my life. I kept watching out the window all the next day, too. Then late in the afternoon on the third day, we finally began passing through little villages like the one I had dreamt of for years. In between these towns were farmland and fruit orchards and fenced pastures with dairy cows. I saw trees for my children to climb someday and country lanes to stroll down with the man I loved on Sunday afternoons.

When the train rolled into Deer Springs, I grabbed my suitcase and stepped off. I later learned that the passenger train only stopped there twice a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so it was really my lucky day to be on one of the very few trains that stopped. The little town looked perfect, even before I saw the ‘‘help wanted’’ sign in the window of the diner across from the railroad station.

I didn’t waste any time at all crossing the street and heading into that diner. I walked right up to Ethel Peterson, who sat at the cash register, and said, ‘‘I see by the sign in the window that you’re looking for help.’’