Circus Parade by Jim Tully

Author:Jim Tully
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kent State University Press

VIII: The Strong Woman

VIII: The Strong Woman

SHE weighed four hundred pounds. Her neck, shoulders and arms bulged with muscle. Her torso was set on hips far broader than her shoulders. Her small head was covered with short curly flaxen hair that seemed continually damp. It looked as out of place on her mountain of body as a small knob on an immense potato. Her feet were usually spread apart as if in readiness for some impending shock. They were covered with pink sandals and fastened with silk ribbons about her giant ankles. The circus billed her as “The Female Hercules, The Strongest Lady in the World.” The flamboyant posters showed her as a young Juno with a face as placid as Queen Victoria’s.

Her face was not without attraction. Her eyes were blue and beautiful. They stared sadly at a world without understanding. She had a red moist underlip that trembled with suppressed hurt. She would toss her head saucily as if to show the world that she was feminine, with the hopes and dreams and longings of her sex.

Twenty-five years before she had first opened her eyes in a Hanoverian village. She was christened Lila. Life laughed at her kindly parents when the baby grew out of all proportions. At the age of twelve she could carry her father and mother. At thirteen she began to support the entire family as a weight lifter.

She came to America at the age of sixteen and first appeared in a Chicago Museum on South State street. After investing heavily in photographs, which did not sell, she broke her contract. The manager, a waspy little Greek, objected. She twisted his neck until he yelled for mercy in Greek and English. She then tore through the Museum like a raging elephant and left demolished paraphernalia all about her.

She joined out as a side show attraction with a traveling circus, and soon prospered. It was not long until she began to clothe herself in the fluffiest of dresses and the widest and most beribboned of hats. She imprisoned her body in the strongest of stays, and did everything to make herself as dainty as her little sisters.

Longing for love, she became an omnivorous reader of romance. Always scattered about her were paper-backed novels in German and English. They were worlds into which her tired soul escaped. Her lips would move constantly as she read. Every now and then a little sigh would escape her. It would be followed with a heavier sigh at the end of each chapter. She would wipe her blue eyes often at the impassioned words uttered by the hero. She would be out of patience at the vacillations of the heroine who could not recognize true love in the first few chapters. When the book had been finished and hero and heroine had been united in joy forever, she would shake her perspiring flaxen head slowly and wipe her eyes, then pat the cover of the book as if it were the cheek of a child.

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