Fiction by Peggy Newland
Clowns
When Mama couldn’t have another
baby, I knew I could ½nd her one.
“Going out,” I told Mama that ½rst
tiempo, but she said nothing as usual, en-
ly staring out the kitchen window at the
empty ½eld in the back lot. And Daddy,
he was never home back then. He knew
to stay away until early evening. Y
then he’d sit in the garage with the ra-
dio turned low until Mama screamed
for him.
I ½lled my pockets with stones from
the river, just in case, and then I took
one of the burlap sacks from the shed
because that’s what I’d seen on televi-
sion shows when you didn’t want the
person knowing where he or she was
going. I even got my room ready. Mi
bed shoved away from the window so
Peggy Newland is the recipient of a 2005 Nuevo
Hampshire Council for the Arts Fellowship for
½ction and a fellowship at Southern New Hamp-
shire University’s mfaprogram. Her short stories
have appeared in “Conte,” “Chelsea,” “Northern
New England Review,” and “Mississippi Review.”
She also coauthored “The Adventure of Two Life-
times” (with Brian Goetz and June Meyer New-
land, 2001). Currently she is at work on a collec-
tion entitled “Jesus Girl.” She teaches ½ction at the
University of New Hampshire’s Literacy Institute.
© 2007 by Peggy Newland
nobody would jump out, chairs piled in-
to a corner, and some stolen jars of pea-
nut butter, jelly, and crackers in my clos-
et. Because you’d never know what the
kid would want. And I always wanted
peanut butter and jelly. But not on crack-
ers. Bread gets black gunk on it once it
gets old so the kid would have to do with
crackers until he was ready to be intro-
duced to the family.
Those stones in my pockets, that sack
under my tee shirt. And soon you’ll be
happy, I wanted to say to Mama as I
watched her from the shed. But I didn’t.
I just went.
“One, two, tres . . . ” I whispered in the
park.
“Four, ½ve, six.” In the supermarket
where Mrs. Johnston told me to go
home, stop hanging around by the shop-
ping carts.
“Seven, eight, nueve,” I yelled through
an abandoned junkyard where the
stream ran yellow and purple from the
paper company.
And I picked up one of the dead birds.
And I brought it back and put it in that
closet with the peanut butter and jelly,
but then Mama found it a week later
and told me no more dead things in the
house. Ever. And she stayed in bed for
the next two days so I didn’t even go
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Fiction by
Peggy
Newland
to school at all. I watched more of the
crime shows, twisting the antenna my
way so the fuzz would disappear and
I’d see a clear picture.
But then Daddy made me go back.
And Jimmy Richards smeared some
dog shit in my hair at recess and no-
body did nothing about that. They’re
just used to me smelling.
My ½rst sister stayed alive for one
day and twelve hours. I saw her once on
Mama’s bed and she had pink lips and
black hair and tiny ½ngers that looked
like tiny bicycle spokes. Mama whis-
pered to her chest Liza, Liza, Liza, cuando
they took my sister away, because they’d
named her after my grandmother Eliza-
beth. And Daddy drank a full bottle of
whiskey and pulled the refrigerator door
off of its hinges.
The second and fourth babies died
right in Mama’s belly.
And the third was deformed so they
had to throw her away.
They only had me.
And that wasn’t a family, my Mama
told me.
I had to look harder. The circus, I
pensamiento, all kids love circuses, especialmente-
cially the Tallahassee Shriners Circus,
all those clowns on race cars and min-
iature trucks. All those animals in line.
The popcorn, the peanuts.
I saw one easily. Followed him for
a while. Grabbed him just when the
mother had had enough, turning away
to get herself a Coke at the stand. Ella
wanted to hit him I could tell. Porque
she’d balled her hands into ½sts just
like Daddy.
That kid and I scootched under the
circus tent and I covered his ears when
his Mama screamed for him.
He was an ugly kid, real snotty and
blowing bubbles out of his mouth until
I gave him one of my stones from the
river to suck on. Then his eyes got real
big and blue, and he stared at me like
he knew what I was up to.
“You don’t know,” I whispered to
those eyes of his as I watched the clown
feet flipping past us in their large painted
shoes. “Red, azul, yellow,” I told that kid
as I tried to get him into my burlap sack.
But he was strong, that one, pushing at
me with his arms, kicking me with his
fat boy legs. So I ½nally just held him
tight against my stomach behind those
bleachers as the clowns got their unicy-
cles ready and the elephants were taken
afuera. This shut him up.
The worst thing about Mama losing
all those babies was that we had to go
to church a lot. I never liked kneeling
on the wood floors or having to wear
socks with my shoes. And Mama’s face
always scared me when she bit through
the flesh of Christ at communion: it’d
go all waxy and peaceful, and she’d look
dead like my sisters. Mama didn’t want
me to pinch her, but I couldn’t help it,
I’d pinch her over and over again. Y
some father, usually a man behind us,
would run his hands down my spine
to calm me and say come on now, son.
Which I didn’t like.
I only have one daddy.
That kid squirmed in my lap so I
rolled back and forth behind those
bleachers until he lay limp again in my
brazos. The elephants still paraded past,
and the dust rose in that flesh-colored
luz, so I held that baby’s nose closed
for a minute so he wouldn’t breathe up
the dirt.
“There’s nobody coming in here to-
día,” one clown said. His painted red
smile couldn’t hide his frown as he
clicked his teeth and propped his hat
on his head.
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“Fuck ‘em,” another said. “We’re still
“Yeah,” the girl clown said. “But just
Clowns
getting paid.”
“But I like having lots of people,” a girl
clown said, and she was just in front of
us so I gave that baby another stone to
suck on because I didn’t want him mak-
ing any noises.
“Yeah, you do,” two of those clowns
laughed, and they elbowed each other
and stomped their flapping feet, haciendo
even more dust than the elephants. Pero
I didn’t hold the kid’s nose closed this
tiempo. I didn’t want him to make those
buggy eyes again.
“Shut up, tú,” that girl clown said,
and she swished her polka dot skirt
around and around until I could see her
red lace bloomers through the slats of
those bleachers; and one of those clowns
grabbed her right on the ass, holding his
hand there while she giggled, los demás
hooting and shouting at them with their
white faces and orange wigs and open
red mouths.
I covered that kid’s eyes because he
shouldn’t be seeing stuff like that.
“You want to be my baby brother?” I
asked real quiet.
He chewed on those rocks and didn’t
answer me. So I told him about Mama
and how lonely she was for another baby
and how our house was real nice, con un
backyard and everything but no swing
set just yet, and how Mama could make
good cookies in the oven when she was
feeling up to it. Which wasn’t often now.
If ever. “But maybe that’d change if she
had you,” I whispered because two of
those clowns were getting closer. I held
my hand over the kid’s mouth.
“How about it, Lucy?” the boy clown
asked, that girl clown still twirling and
then the boy clown coming closer to
her, pressing her against the squashed
bleachers. His black eyebrows arched
up and down as that kid and I stared up
at them.
do it fast.” And he pulled off his big
white gloves and got his hand down her
shirt, and she let him, and then they
were on the ground, her bloomers down
past her knees; and I had to use the bur-
lap sack this time, put it right over the
kid’s head, because I’d only seen this in
the magazines my daddy kept behind the
workbench in the garage, girls doing all
sort of things with carrots and others
girls–never anything like this, that boy
clown holding her down and both of
them with their smeared smiles. “Shhh
. . . ” I said to that kid, and when I tried to
put another stone from the river into his
mouth, he bit me. It hurt so bad. Y yo
couldn’t hold it in any longer.
Mama used to let me sleep with her,
but now she sleeps with her doll that
the pink ladies at the hospital gave to
her two months ago. That doll is called
a Cupie Doll, and it’s naked and has a
dimpled face and a plastic curl on her
forehead, and when you turn her up-
side down, she giggles at you. Almost
like she’s alive but she’s not. They say
it helps with her memory, makes her
quiet in the late afternoons when I go
out for my walks. But sometimes noth-
ing helps.
My thumb was bloody when that kid
got done with me, and he looked all
proud of himself in the bottom of that
burlap sack so I tied it up with my rubber
banda. I also kept those around, también, rub-
ber bands, because they are so useful in a
pinch. But then that kid started wailing,
real high and screeching, and there was
no way to shut him up so I screeched
right along with him.
And then those dirty clowns found us.
“Jesus Christ,” the boy clown said,
and his teeth were crooked and wrong-
looking as he swatted at me. “What the
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Fiction by
Peggy
Newland
hell . . . ” His gloved hand got me, twisted
my neck around, and I rolled into a tight
ball like I do with Daddy.
“Stop it, Rayo, ” that girl clown said,
and she jumped right on his head, cual
he didn’t like, because he shrugged her
off and she fell in the dirt, her legs all
akimbo, and there was a rip in her
striped pantyhose things but no blood.
Ray the clown just humping himself up
and out of there. Which I was glad at.
He left his gloves though, and I couldn’t
stop staring at them even with that kid
in the bag rolling around by my feet.
“What are you doing back here?” the
girl clown said, and she had kindly eyes
although you couldn’t see them so good
through all the black eyelash stuff.
I couldn’t say too much because I
was still crying from that kid biting my
thumb so hard.
and her face would light up; y luego,
because she was feeling so good, she
might make some chocolate chip bars
in celebration, and then Daddy would
come home because he’d smell that
sugar and cream from the kitchen, y
his stomach would rumble right along
with mine. We’d eat all those choco-
late chip bars in one sitting because we
would ½nally be a whole family. Y
then we’d get that swing set.
But that kid ruined it. He shit himself,
and it came out the side of his little sail-
or suit onto that girl clown’s polka dot
skirt, but she didn’t care, her face all
puckered up with her smudged eyes as
she smelled his head. Her not caring that
his yellow shit was sliding down her
clown out½t, and him with his mouth
wide open like that dead bird’s.
“You can have him,” I told that girl
“It’s okay, honey,” that girl clown said
clown.
as she came close, and when she bent
encima, I could see down her clown dress;
and she had brown nipples like Mama so
I knew she was probably nice. But also a
little bit sad. The girls in Daddy’s maga-
zines all have pink ones and they’re smil-
En g, so I guess if you’ve got pink, you’re
happy, and if you’re brown, you just get
sad.
I showed her my thumb.
“Where’s your family?” she asked.
And her hands were smooth when she
held my hand.
“I’m looking,” I said, but I was having
trouble with my lips as usual. And then
that kid kicked his leg out, and the girl
clown touched the bag so I pushed the
bag toward her, smiling. “Here,” I said.
And she opened the bag. And that kid
looked up at us and spit the last of the
stones from the river out of his mouth.
“Holy . . . ” And that girl clown lifted
that kid into her arms. And I thought of
how happy my Mama would be holding
another baby, how maybe she’d smile
But she wasn’t listening to me. Ella
wasn’t even noticing me. She stood
in that dust and sighed over and over
again as that kid kicked and swatted;
and even when I pulled at her orange
clown sleeves, even when I kicked my
boot at her clown foot, she just stayed
in the broken light of that empty tent
and rocked that kid like they were the
only things left in the world.
Maybe our family didn’t really need a
baby.
Maybe someone a little bit older.
So instead of bringing home a baby for
Mama that day, I stole that boy clown’s
gloves. And kept them underneath my
bed with the bird nests and ½shing lures
and a couple of Daddy’s magazines.
Our house sits at the end of a dirt road
next to the old fairgrounds. A veces
I run around the track where they used
to have horse races, but usually it’s too
much for me now because I lose my
breath and I always have to get back to
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Clowns
Mama because you never know what
she’ll get into next, turning on the stove,
trying to push her hand through the
plate glass. There used to be so many
cars and trucks and animals coming our
way, up our road, during Kinstown Days,
but now it’s just brambles and ivy over
the oaks and brush mostly hiding our
little pink house. That’s why I like it. Ser-
cause we’re hidden now, Mama and I.
No one coming around anymore.
I grabbed a two-year-old from the
Kinstown Days Fair once and kept him
in our basement for three days. Pero él
wouldn’t eat the peanut-butter-and-
jelly crackers, and he cried so much
Mama thought she was hearing ghosts
of her dead babies so I had to take him
atrás. Because Daddy didn’t like it when
Mama got that way, scratching at her
face and tearing through the kitchen in
just her underwear. I gave him a ½shing
lure, one without a sharp hook and left
him in the oxen barn, sleeping in a pile
of hay like baby Jesus in the manger.
Only older. And the next day, it was all
in the news. A miracle had occurred at
Kinstown Days, and that boy was given a
parade and everything. But I didn’t care
because Mama kept her clothes on and
just got back to staring out the window.
And Daddy came back to his shed again.
Then I met Sherry. And she was real
pretty. Three years younger and new to
our school, and no one liked her because
she had half a burned face and had to
wear an eye patch. But she had a nice
voice, and she’d tell me her secrets and
so I’d tell her mine, about Mama and all
those dead babies and how we didn’t
have a full family yet, and she told me
that her uncle had three wives and she
might get to be the fourth if she stayed
quiet and followed the rules of doctrine.
I nodded my head along with her, y
she patted my back about the dead ba-
bies, and she liked peanut-butter-and-
jelly crackers just as much as me.
I invited her home one day and Mama
tried not to scream, but a little bit came
out anyway.
“It’s okay,” Sherry said, and I was real
proud of her because Mama settled just
hearing Sherry’s nice voice and poured
her some juice in the Sleeping Beauty
cup she kept for just this purpose. Pero
Mama wouldn’t look her in the face.
Sherry stayed for dinner and Daddy
even came in from the shed, and it was
like we were a normal family, the table
set for four instead of three.
“Sherry’s from Utah,” I told Daddy,
but he was handing Sherry a napkin,
telling her to put it on her lap and smil-
ing real big. Mama was still at the table,
which was good because usually after
Daddy came in, she left for her bed-
habitación.
“Where you from?” Daddy asked
Sherry even though I just told him.
And she explained that they’d moved
to be closer to family and that they liked
it here in Florida except for all the trees.
“There’s too many here,” Sherry said,
her words so soft that Mama looked up
and touched her elbow to go on. “They
almost swallow you up.”
And Daddy laughed at that one, bend-
ing down to the ground when Sherry
dropped her napkin on the floor.
Mama likes me to cream her beef and
stew her prunes, and so I do both with
the clown gloves on. It keeps the heat
away and also gives her a little laugh be-
cause I can act the part so well. Being
that I’ve had a lot of practice. I take extra
special care of them, putting them in my
locked cabinet in Daddy’s old shed.
“Now you see it, now you don’t,” I tell
her, hiding a dripping prune inside one
glove, and she throws her head back be-
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Fiction by
Peggy
Newland
cause she likes it when I make things dis-
appear.
“Where’d you put it?” Mama asks.
But sometimes I don’t show her, como
hoy, because I’m a little tired of Ma-
ma’s games, and I have to have my se-
crets too.
“I don’t have nothing,” I tell her. Y
I wave those gloves in her face, and she
tries to grab one off of me and so I tell
her no, Mama, No.
“Don’t you do that,” Mama says.
And our kitchen clock ticks, y el
siren sounds at the mill, and her face is
wrapped up tight in her bright red lip-
stick and pink blush. Then she throws
her plate of beef on the floor so I have
to get the mop out.
“Why you’d go on and do that?” I ask.
But Mama’s back staring into her
manos, and it’s almost time for my walk
to school where I help clean on carnival
días.
Sherry let me kiss her on the cheek.
She let me touch her kneecap. But she
wouldn’t let me peel back her eye patch.
"No,” she said in that voice of hers.
So I pressed my face to hers, and she
opened her mouth, and I could feel her
tongue on my teeth in tiny circles, y
it made me have goose bumps down
my arms and up my legs. "No," ella dijo
when my hand went down the backside
of her pants, and it ricocheted in echoes
down my throat, No, No, No, until it was
like I had part of her inside me.
“I love you,” I told her, and she
kept nodding her head as I walked her
home, trying to hold her hand. But she
wouldn’t let me. I hugged her tight just
before we got to her yard but she whis-
pered that her daddy would see us so I
stopped and watched her walk away.
There is one picture of me in the house.
It used to sit on Mama’s bureau, Mama,
a mí, and the sister I found us, pero no
Daddy. Then one day she threw it at
me and I don’t know where the pic-
ture went. Mama won’t tell me. Incluso
though I’ve asked her many times.
And this makes me mad.
I don’t like it when I get mad because
then I do naughty things.
Daddy always wanted to be around
Sherry whenever Sherry came over, y
he’d drape his arm over her shoulder
and push her in a new tire swing he’d
just put up, and he’d take her out for ice
cream some nights. Even after Mama
made her chocolate chip layer bars and
her macaroon cookies, Daddy would
take Sherry out for that ice cream. Y
he’d never bring any of it home for Ma-
ma and I.
“Mama, when they coming back you
think?” But Mama just stared off past
the littered ½elds to the highway and
shrugged her shoulders. “When you
think?"
“Hush,” she told me. And she left the
porch. To throw the cookies away.
One afternoon, I hid in the back of his
truck, covering myself up with a blan-
ket that smelled of hay and dirt and old
milk, and I heard Sherry singing her
songs. Her voice like some angel’s even
with the wind howling and Daddy’s
muffler belching out its exhaust as he
drove off down the highway. Her voice
coming over me so much that I felt
raised up in the sky with the clouds and
the sun and trees swishing past, almost
like I was in heaven. And then, cuando yo
sat up to sing along with her, I saw Dad-
dy kissing on Sherry, and Daddy saw
me and pulled over and said for me to
get out, get out of his truck, and Sherry
didn’t do anything except stare back at
me from the rearview as they drove off
down the road. For their ice creams to-
juntos.
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Clowns
They picked me up ½fteen minutes
más tarde, this time with ice cream cones
for Mama and me. But Mama wouldn’t
come out of her room. Even with Dad-
dy pleading with her. Banging on her
door. And ½nally stomping around the
cocina. Mama’s ice cream melted on
the kitchen table until I licked it up like
a dog just to make Sherry laugh.
“What the hells wrong with you,"
Daddy yelled when Sherry couldn’t
stop laughing at my face covered with
chocolate and fudge ripple. “Fucking
reject . . . ” And he banged the kitchen
door off its hinges, and that’s when
Sherry started crying. Tears soaking
that patch.
told, as she turned around the mirrors
and piled Daddy’s clothes on the porch
and got her Bible out. I cried for two
hours straight, de 6:00 p.m. until 8:00
p.m., and didn’t even eat the supper Ma-
ma set out on the floor of my room.
“Eat your biscuits,” Mama said when
she came in to kiss me goodnight, y
her face was raw and pink, her nose es-
pecially. She pulled my covers back, y
we huddled underneath Nana’s quilt.
Just the two of us.
“Too old,” she whispered directly into
my ear.
And that made sense to me.
We had to ½nd one just right. Not too
viejo, not too young. Just right.
I chased after her when she ran home
And then they’d let Daddy come
but she was faster.
home.
Mama says the babies are screaming
at her again. And that they’re spitting.
And taking her food away. And that their
faces are dirty and that their breath
stinks. I tell her that I’m not seeing any
de ellos, and I hand her that Cupie doll
but that’s not working anymore. Just last
night, she tore its head off and there was
that doll baby head in my closet and Ma-
ma in the corner, and I tried to comfort
her the best I could. But she told me to
go away, just get away. And that made
me cry.
“I’m trying, Mama,” I tell her.
And she turns her back on me because
it’s been so many years and nothing has
changed. We’re still not a family.
They came and got Daddy. Three po-
licemen and a sheriff, and they locked
his hands together and pushed his head
down when they got him into the flash-
ing cruiser and they drove away.
“Sherry told on him,” Mama whis-
pered.
“Where’re they taking him?” I asked,
but Mama just kept saying she told, she
Some days, I walk right past Sherry’s
old house and I see the bush I waited in
for her. Mulberry, and it’s dying now,
the leaves just falling off on the ground
around my boots. But I don’t kick at
a ellos. I watch them settle on the grass
and think about how her face felt in
my hands and that she loved my mag-
ic tricks, the one with the Queen of
Hearts the most. The windows to her
house boarded over now, and I’m still
sorry I did that back then. With the
rock. Smashing that glass so it fell in
bright colors around my feet and then
running off because Sherry wasn’t
there and wasn’t ever coming back
de nuevo.
I scrubbed the toilet and threw the old
plates in the backwoods. I hid the news-
papers under the bed and banged on the
couch cushions. I combed back my hair
and took down the fly traps from the
kitchen ceiling. Because Mama said a
social worker was coming and that social
worker was going to take me away if we
didn’t watch ourselves. That I’d have to
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Fiction by
Peggy
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live with the Fosters family if I said one
word about anything bad.
“She’s here,” Mama whispered in
her good red dress with her shoes laced
arriba, but I didn’t want to go answer it.
“I’m scared,” I told her, but she
pushed me to the door anyway.
The social worker was real pretty with
a yellow skirt and brown shoes and her
hair in a bun just like Mama’s when she
goes to church. I told her that I liked her
hair, and when I reached over to touch
her bun she backed away.
“I love my Mama,” I said.
“Of course you do,” the social worker
dicho, but she wasn’t smiling any longer,
and she wasn’t drinking the juice Mama
gave her in the Cinderella cup, and she
wasn’t sitting down on the couch I just
dusted off.
“I miss my Daddy.”
“I’m sure you do," ella dijo, but then
the cats started crying in the basement,
two of them in heat, and I was afraid
she’d look down in there so I clapped
my hands over my head and pointed out
the window at a starling chasing a band
of crows around.
“Watch,” I told her. And soon those
oily crows circled around and attacked
that tiny starling, and she disappeared
from sight. I threw Mama’s leftover
toast out the door, and we all watched
the crows ½ght over the scraps.
“It might be better . . . ” the social
worker started to say, but Mama told
her to get the hell out of her house this
instant, that she would smack the shit
out of her if she didn’t leave this very in-
stant. And that social worker did. Incluso
with the cats screaming real loud in that
basement and with the crows biting at
each other over the bread and with Ma-
ma pulling at my hand, she left, y el
house was quiet and gentle again, Mama
even getting back into her bathrobe and
slippers.
“Here comes that starling again,” I
told Mama after I’d changed out of my
church pants.
And she took that as a sign.
They let me volunteer on carnival days
at the school because I have my clown
out½t and I wear my gloves, which all
the kids like. Especially when I do mag-
ic tricks on the edge of the playground
and the kids line up, but they’re not pa-
tient, No, they scream about being ½rst,
and hurry up, and they push, they push
the ones in front.
“Okay, kids,” I say to them, pero el
one on my lap pokes his ½nger into
my makeup, and I don’t like it at all.
“Stop that.” And I stare into his face
and frown, which makes him cry. Su
mother pulls him off my lap, and she’s
got that look I don’t like, her eyebrows
all knitted together, her lips sucked in-
side her mouth.
"No, I don’t want to go . . . ” that kid
screeches, and I cover my ears, cual
makes the other kids laugh. I scoop
another one into my lap and show him
the quarter trick.
“Look, it’s been here the whole time,"
I mumble, and he doesn’t care what I
decir, he just wants my quarter. “Here.”
The kid grabs it and runs. When he gets
far enough away, he sticks his tongue out
at me, but I know enough to look away
from him.
“I’m next,” a little girl says, as she
stands in front of me with her hand
abierto.
“Here,” I say as I pat my knee.
“Just the quarter.” Her eyes are the
color of an abandoned garden, weedy
and yellow, and she balances ½rst on
one foot, then the other.
She reminds me of my sister.
“What’s your name?” I ask her, como el
other mothers pull their kids away, también,
because a Jesus band is singing on the
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Clowns
main stage and there’s soon to be a raf-
fle for a homemade quilt and a free roto-
tilling.
But she just keeps her hand out.
“Sherry?"
"No, it’s not Sherry.”
“Becky?"
“Give me the fucking quarter, Clown
Man.”
“How old are you?” I pull out a dol-
lar. And smile at her. Then I pull out
otro.
And she looks sideways toward the
crowd before she snatches my money.
“Let’s go to Disney World,” Mama said
that night, and she was already dressed
and holding a suitcase and a big plastic
garbage bag.
“But . . . ” I was confused. The house
was dark and my clock said 3:25 a.m.,
and that was too early to be getting out
of pajamas and heading out the door.
“Now.” And Mama’s face meant
business so I got up and gave Mama
some underwear and some socks and
two shirts and my white gloves, y
she stuffed them into her garbage bag.
There were no stars in the sky and the
trees shook their branches when we left
in Daddy’s truck. Mama’s mouth stayed
closed the whole time, and she didn’t
once look back to the house. Incluso cuando
I told her I’d left my turkey feather and
my ½shing lures in the closet.
Her name is Nita and she hates Flori-
da.
“Give me another dollar,” she says so I
hand her another. She sticks it down her
pants.
“It’s sunny here today,” I tell her, pero
she laughs in my face.
“You’re a retard.”
“I know,” I say as I look down at my
flippy shoes, the ones the school donat-
ed to me last year because my sneakers
wore out. The Jesus band is gone and
the stage is empty. Garbage is every-
dónde, and I know I have a long night
ahead of me because the school likes
the ½eld neat for the next day. Y yo
don’t mind picking up. Because you
never know what you’ll ½nd left. You
never know what people throw away.
“You like Disney World?” I ask.
“Loser World?"
“Mickey Mouse is not a loser,” I tell
her.
“You’re a loser.” And when she laughs
esta vez, her face cracks wide open and
her braces shine in the late-day sun.
“You’re pretty,” I say, and this stops
her from laughing, which makes me sad.
I like it when everyone is smiling and
having a fun time.
"No, I’m not.” And she rubs her el-
bows with her hands.
Everything was so bright and colorful,
and there was music coming out from
the plastic trees and garbage cans and
streetlights and even the teacup ride that
went around and around and around.
Mama didn’t want to go on rides any-
more and just wanted to sit on a bench
with her Sleeping Beauty cup full of
soda.
“Please,” I asked her, but she waved
her hand at me and covered her eyes.
The princesses scared her, Tigger made
her scream, and there were too many
people in bright tee shirts. Ants, she
called them, ants. Mama wasn’t doing
so well, and we hadn’t even gotten to
Fantasyland yet.
“Go.” And Mama lay herself down
on the bench, her drink balanced on
her belly.
I drank Coke after Coke and went on
ride after ride, especially Space Moun-
manchar, which whizzed you around in the
dark and shot you through holes in the
universe. But soon, I had to pee, y yo
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Fiction by
Peggy
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didn’t want to but knew it was a good
idea.
Nita follows me into the ½eld even
when I tell her no again and again. Pero
she thinks she’s so funny, skipping right
along with me.
“So you live with your mother?” she
asks. But I’ve already answered her.
Many times. “How old are you?"
“You should go home.”
“My parents suck.”
“That’s not very nice to say.” And I rub
my eyes until there are spots of white be-
hind my eyelids.
“I’m not very nice.” She throws a can
toward my garbage bag, but it misses
so she throws another. This one goes in,
and I make the mistake of looking up at
her to congratulate her basketball shot.
Her eyes make my knees tremble.
“You haven’t been on Space Moun-
tain yet?” I asked that boy, but he was
still pulling at his sister’s hand as she
screamed and hollered about getting
an ice cream and wanting to see Snow
Blanco.
“Snow White will kill you,” he said to
his sister, and she glared back at him.
“Shut up, Nate.”
“Quit being a fucking bitch,” the boy
dicho. A father coming into the bathroom
with his son scowled at me like I’d just
cussed.
“Control that kid,” he said to me as he
pulled his son outside.
“Don’t cuss or else I’m telling Dad,"
Nate’s sister said.
“He’s not here now, is he?"
But his sister just ignored him and
asked me, “Snow White’s nice, isn’t
she?"
And of course I said yes. Everyone
loves Snow White and the Seven
Dwarves, and everyone loves Cinder-
ella and Sleeping Beauty and Ariel
136
Dædalus Spring 2007
and all of those princesses in their cas-
tles. “She’s beautiful,” I told her and
she nodded right along with me.
“Come on,” her brother said. “Go
pee.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Go or else I’m gonna . . . "
Two men flushed and left, y el
bathroom was silent. Except for Alad-
din’s “A Whole New World” coming
out over the speakers.
“Gonna what?"
“Gonna . . . "
“When you go on Space Mountain,
try to sit in the front because that’s the
fastest seat,” I said, standing between
him and his sister because Nate had
just balled his ½sts up and he had yel-
low eyes that reminded me of a wolf.
“I don’t want to go to Space Moun-
manchar. Mom said I didn’t have to and I’m
not doing it,” his sister said, banging
her sneaker down on the floor.
“Yes, you are, Becky.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Dad said he wasn’t going on with
tú, he told me . . . ” And she smiled a
pockmarked smile, her eyes swelling
up bright blue. “So tough luck.”
And Nate kicked her in the shin.
“Screw you,” he said, running out the
door. And Becky and I just stood there
waiting for him to come back. Pero él
never did.
And so I helped her.
“I have to go home now,” I say.
“Back to your Mommy?” She jerks her
neck around.
I nod my head yes.
“Back to your Daddy?"
I shake my head no. And I give her the
last of my money.
“Are you a pervert?” she asks. Y
that’s when I take my hands out of my
pockets and hold them to my chest.
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Becky drank all my milk. She ate all
the cereal. She started calling me names
and running in circles, hitting me with
her wooden spoon, and Mama didn’t do
cualquier cosa. Mama clapped her hands and
pounded her feet on the floor and urged
Becky to run faster and faster around
a mí, and Becky did.
“She’s perfect,” Mama said, and Ma-
ma would comb her hair and line the
stuffed animals up for her in our trail-
er and they’d have tea parties until all
hours of the night. She didn’t need
sleep, my sister, and she never tried to
run away. She sat in Mama’s lap and
twirled her ponytail into circles, y
Mama made her chocolate layer bars
and vanilla cream pies, and she’d let
my sister eat whatever she wanted.
When Mama bought Becky a swing
colocar, I started looking for Daddy. Every
day I’d sit at the window just waiting
for him to round the corner, but he nev-
er did.
“We’re ½nally a family,” Mama said
one night.
“But Daddy’s not here.” And she
looked at me as if I was gray and rot-
ten. Something to be thrown away.
“He’s not coming back.” And she
rocked Becky back and forth. “Not
coming back, not coming back . . . "
“But Mama,” I said.
“Don’t ‘but Mama’ me," ella dijo,
and Becky nodded her head and sucked
on her blanket. “Go.” And she pointed
to the screened-in porch. Where the
Florida beetles waited and the crickets
chirped and the heat came at me all
night even with the breeze. There wasn’t
room in her bed no more. She wanted to
sleep just with Becky. Because I was too
big.
And when I heard Mama snoring, I
got the burlap bag out and some Flori-
da seashells. And I took Becky away on
a bus. I used my clown gloves.
Clowns
When I get home, there’s the nurse
and she’s got a policeman with her,
and they’re standing on the porch, y
Mama is howling out my name but she
knows I’m not home. She knows I don’t
come back until late because I always
go for the ½reworks this time of year.
They’ve started up Kinston Days again,
and I know the place to sit. I told Nita
all about it, how the colors just explode
right in front of your eyes and flutter
down around you, but still she ran off.
They all run off, don’t they, if you let
a ellos. It’s just a matter of knowing
cuando. And how they’ll do it. But other
veces, it’s just being resourceful enough
to keep them. For a while.
I walk right past the house and into the
bright lights.
And traf½c is lined up both sides of the
highway.
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