The Magnetic Girl by Jessica Handler

Author:Jessica Handler
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781938235498
Publisher: Hub City Press
Published: 2019-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

IN NEW ORLEANS, MOMMA bought the sheet music for a song called “Tarantelle” by a composer with a French name. We asked the pianist at the Varieties Theater to play the music through so we could hear it, and we all agreed Momma’s choice was better than fine. I’d have my own music now, fast as a gallop and mysterious-sounding, too, a song that would excite every audience. Daddy sent Momma to the music store for several copies in case we lost the one booklet.

Backstage, I wasn’t a girl with hovering parents. I was a performer, the same as Miss Marie or Fyodor Dubrovsky. The stage was called the “boards.” A disinterested crowd was “cold.” I polished these words like stones, collected them like treasures.

When Aerialist Angela Feathers fed her trained cats on butcher’s scraps, I pet their knobby backs while they wound around my feet, growling at each other to show off for me, but purring to their food. A juggler in tights winked at me. I couldn’t help but blush, but I looked at his revealing tights. In the dressing room, I dipped my fingers into someone’s open pot of rouge and patted what I’d heard girls call the “apples” of my cheeks. The mirror made clear that while my hands could grip a chair or a cane hard enough to fool an audience, Momma was right about me not having a delicate touch. I looked scalded. Scrubbing the red away, I vowed to observe the other performers’ face routines at the mirror.

We three never ate supper with other artists on a bill. Daddy’s rule. Momma followed his orders, although I saw her look longingly into the slender windows of Commander’s Palace and the little shops. We ate in the hotel. A hotel was as good as our home, Daddy said, private and peaceful. After the vivid noise of any opera house in full swing, the silence in our room was dense and woolly as a tomb.

“You’re too good for those people,” Momma said, passing the bread basket.

“They’re a bad influence,” Daddy added, buttering his bread. I wondered if he’d seen me looking twice at the actor’s tights.

To change the subject, I told a story I’d heard about a strongman named Bruno who was all washed up because of his brush with John Law. I loved “all washed up,” same as I loved how picture-perfect it was to call a cowboy actor a “roper.”

Before I could make clear that I hadn’t heard what the strongman had gotten into with Mr. Law, Daddy slammed his fist into the table. I jumped, splattering my soup on my sleeve. While I wiped up the mess, Momma said, “I told you so,” to my father. I looked up from my spilled bowl. My parents sat rigid.

“I will not hear that language from you,” Daddy said, angry enough to spit.

“Don’t listen to any talk about a Mr. John Law,” Momma said, trying to get in front of Daddy’s agitation. Daddy patted her shoulder.

“Your momma’s right,” he said, handing me a clean napkin.

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