Betti on the High Wire Read online

  I’m skinny too. My ribs stick out like a skin-‘n’-bones chicken. It’s not pretty when a girl looks hungry all the time. But I don’t complain because some of the other leftover kids have it worse. George is missing an arm and has extra-large ears, Toro’s hearing is messed up, and a couple of kids got knocked in the head so their brains are out of order. Almost everybody has one broken thing or another, but that’s what happens during a war.

  Once I asked Auntie Moo what happened to my eye and she said it was hard to know for sure. Maybe I was born this way. Or maybe it happened in the war, or maybe it happened in the circus a long, long time ago.

  “Maybe the foreigners won’t care if your eye is broken, Babo,” said George. He sighed and looked down at himself. “Maybe they won’t care about my arm.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “It doesn’t really matter anyway.”

  George was having a hard time getting the dirt out of his good shirt, so I took it out of his hand and beat it on the side of a rock. Water flew all over us and we shook it off like wet dogs. George giggled.

  “There.” I grinned. “Good enough.”

  LATER WE WERE all getting fidgety in our special occasion clothes. There was only so long we could wait politely for the Melons. And that’s when Auntie Moo asked me if I would play a quiet game with the leftover children.

  “But, Babo”—Auntie Moo smiled slyly—“try not to get them dirty? Like last time?”

  Last time I made them perform like my dad, the famous alligator man, with flips and flops in the murky swamp halfway down to the village. Hundreds of frogs and bugs bounced on top of the furry algae. That time the leftover kids’ hair was all green for the Melons, which I thought was very, very funny.

  The time before that, I made up a game where black-bottomed circus monkeys took over the world. I told the leftover kids to put a little mud on their faces—just a little—to look like monkeys. Then we hid in the trees and dropped onto my pretend soldiers, Toro and George. We dragged the soldiers into the Hairy Bear Boy’s old skeleton of a tent, where I made them do headstands and we tickled their toes. But that time Toro got a black eye and the leftover kids had a mud fight and soon mud was dried all over our monkey faces like chipped cement. I thought we didn’t look so bad when the Melons arrived, but Sister Baroo didn’t think it was a bit funny. She made me sit on the Mission floor in the village and pray for three hours that I wouldn’t be so bad next time.

  Sister Baroo always wants to help us too, just like the Melons. She runs the Mission down in the village, which used to feed all the poor people. Before the poor people could eat their free meal, Sister Baroo would make them take baths in a big rusty water trough and comb their hair and pray for three hours on the Mission floor. They had to pray that they’d be able to pay for their own food and have cleaner lives in the near future. So the poor people got fed up with Sister Baroo and decided that they’d rather live dirty and hungry in the street. That’s when the circus camp and the leftover children became Sister Baroo’s new mission. Just our luck.

  Sister Baroo wouldn’t like my new game at all. This time I tied an old rag over George’s eyes. “Now, you’re the animal trainer, George,” I told him. “And the rest of us are the circus animals. But we’re mad at you. So we refuse to do any more shows.”

  “Why, Babo?” George tilted his head.

  “Because,” I said, “you make us get clean, and you comb our hair, and you make us perform for the fancy Melons. Every night. So we want a vacation.”

  George pulled the rag off his eyes. “I would never be mean to the circus animals, Babo.”

  “George! It’s just a game!” I pulled the rag back down. “Do you want to play, or not?”

  “Yes, but I don’t want to be the animal trainer. He’s mean.” George frowned. He didn’t like mean people. “What do the animals do to me, Babo?”

  “We run away. And you have to find us.”

  “But—”

  “Okay, GO!” I shouted.

  All of us started crawling around. Crawling around a little couldn’t get us too dirty. We were funny monkeys and rainbow birds and singing lions and hairy bear boys and dancing elephants.

  “Miss Lion?” called George, still standing in the same exact spot. He stretched his arm out. “Bird? Here, Mister Bird!” He twirled in funny circles, while the rest of us covered our mouths so we wouldn’t laugh.

  Then I had a brilliant idea. I made the leftover kids crawl behind me into the pig yard. The pigs were drinking at the river, so they couldn’t get us dirty. “Sssss. Sssss.” We teased George like snakes. “ROARRRRR.” We sang like lions, we spoke in funny languages like exotic birds, and George tried to follow us. “Caw caw, cheep cheep, grrrrrrrr.”

  “Here, animals!” cried George. “Don’t run away!”

  We all hid behind the pig trough that Auntie Moo filled with slop. “Don’t touch it!” I whispered to the kids who were dipping their fingers already. “We can’t get dirty! Not now.”

  George heard my whispering and he smiled.

  I’d never seen him move so fast. He marched straight for the trough with his arm out. His bare feet stepped right into a pig pile, but he didn’t care. “Babo?” he called. “Caw caw?”

  The rest of us ducked down, and there was ... silence.

  “George?” I stood up and looked around. He wasn’t anywhere. “George!”

  Just then, from the woods, we heard Sister Baroo. “CHILDREN!” she hollered in her husky, irritated voice. “Babo!”

  George suddenly stood up from the other side of the pig trough and scared me so much that I screamed.

  “Look, Babo! I trained a circus animal!” George proudly puffed out his chest and handed me his animal. Six feet long and thicker than a leftover kid. I screamed like crazy and threw the huge snake into the air. It conked its head on a branch, spun around, and landed in a spooky lump on a pig pile. Then I accidentally crashed into the pig trough, which tipped straight over and covered us all in sloppy slop.

  George plopped down to check on his snake because he was worried about it. And me? I RAN. The other kids chased after me through the woods, leaping over brambles and baby monkeys. I was running so fast that I forgot all about Sister Baroo, who’d stomped up from the village in her black boots and her boring black dress.

  Unfortunately, I tripped at exactly the wrong second and crashed straight into Sister Baroo and her basket of eggs. The eggs flew out of her hand, into the air, and splat. All over her. A piece of eggshell sat on the tip of her nose.

  “Babo, you are clumsier than a pig in mud,” hissed Sister Baroo. “Those eggs were for the foreigners’ dinner!”

  I shrugged. Then I stared at her eggshell nose. I tried not to giggle because that’s when she gets really mad. She started making wild jerks with her head, and then I saw them. The Melons were standing right behind her! Six of them.

  Kids probably never got so dirty in their country. Perfect.

  The younger children pulled on the bottom of Baroo’s messy dress and told her about George’s snake. Her eyes lit up. She stomped with her big feet to the pig trough, where George was petting the snake as if it was his best friend.

  “This is a special snake, children,” said Sister Baroo.

  We all bent over and looked closer. It didn’t look that special to me; a snake is a snake.

  “My mother said there’s only one that slithers into your life,” she continued. “Just one time. And it means good luck.”

  “Really?” I asked. “Who gets the good luck?”

  “It’s hard to say,” answered Sister Baroo, finally flicking that eggshell off her nose. “Actually, it could mean bad luck too. It’s hard to say.”

  Monkeys and Melons

  THE MELONS DIDN’T like the snake whether it was lucky or not. They politely pushed it around on their banana leaf plates as they talked to Auntie Moo and Sister Baroo. They pretended to chew as they nodded and smiled.

  The Melons were dressed in clean clothes and t
hey all wore shoes. The women were fanning themselves with banana leaves and the men’s faces were red and drippy. None of them were used to our heat.

  One of the ladies had hair that rose up on top of her head like a bright yellow tree. She had clips in it so it wouldn’t fall down in a storm, and I kept thinking about all the things that could get stuck in hair like that. Birds could build nests, and weeds could grow from the roots, and monkeys could pick nits from yellow knots.

  One man had a large nose, with a little orange mustache between his nose and his mouth. He had a few strands of flying hair on his head, but mostly he was bald. Another woman had lips painted red, the same color to match her fingernails and her dress.

  But I was most curious about a quiet couple that sat at the very end of the log actually chewing on their snake.

  I couldn’t see so well, but I thought that the snake-eating lady smiled at me. I hid my face behind George.

  “What’s the matter, Babo?” George whispered. “These foreigners seem very nice.”

  I didn’t answer because my mouth was full.

  The Melons didn’t even know how to speak our language. The quiet couple tried a few words—how are you, are you hungry, what is your name—but the leftover kids had no idea what the Melon couple was trying to say and the Melon couple had no idea what the leftover kids were trying to say. Auntie Moo was trying her best to translate everyone’s messy language, but really I thought they all should’ve stayed quiet and eaten their snake.

  I spoke English pretty well and understood a lot of it, just like Auntie Moo.

  She gave all of us English lessons three times a week, because she thoughtit might be important someday. But the kids with out-of-order brains couldn’t pay attention, and Toro couldn’t hear, and most of the others couldn’t understand that our language wasn’t the only language in the whole world.

  I practiced English with Auntie Moo almost every night after the leftover kids fell asleep. We practiced speaking to each other, and we practiced reading and writing from an old English book that was donated to the Mission, and we practiced new important words like “nation” and “war” and “bananas” and “soldier” and “ghosts” and “eye” and “independence” and “broken” and “pig.” Auntie Moo said that I passed her up in English a long time ago.

  George studied very hard, but he still wasn’t nearly as smart as me. He always tried to speak English to the Melons. But me? I didn’t have much to say.

  After dinner the Melons got a tour of the circus camp. It started with me in the ticket booth—basically a tiny falling-down shack—at the entrance. I stood in the window and asked for donations for the tour. The Melons always opened their moneybags and gave me money, even though Auntie Moo hated it when I asked for money from the Melons. But I told her that the leftover kids deserved to get something because we always got clean for the Melons and we never got anything back. I whispered to each Melon to be careful because our circus camp was haunted. Then I gave each of them a banana, which Toro took back again as their tickets.

  I loved the Melon tours.

  Old Lady Suri from the bean stand told me everything I needed to know about how the circus used to be. And I, of course, told the important stories to the leftover kids.

  Exotic birds greeted the audience as they walked through the ticket booth and down the path to the elephant ring. The birds knew words in three different languages and there was even a Bird Woman with a beak, who flapped her wings and laid large exotic eggs in front of the audience.

  The elephant ring was in the center of the camp. The famous elephant named Fifi wore an extra-large fancy suit and did tricks in the ring, like somersaults and backflips. Circus clowns with red hair rode on Fifi and sometimes there was a tower of clowns standing tall as a house on the elephant’s back. As a special treat Fifi would pick up a log where five audience members were sitting and raise it high into the sky.

  There were all sorts of other things happening at the circus too, so the audience never got bored. On one side of the circus camp they could view all the circus animals.

  Monkey People in tall hats twirled sticks of fire and then chomped on the sticks until their black faces and their black bottoms turned red. They swung back and forth from the trees by their feet, sold snacks, and asked for tips in their hats.

  The audience could walk straight into the pigpen, where there was a special pig with five heads. The audience got to pay money to feed sloppy slop to all of her two-headed piglets. The lion named Cindi was a favorite too. Mostly Cindi roamed around the audience and nuzzled them like a kitten, but at night she’d go into her lion cage. Instead of roaring, she’d sing love songs to her lion mate who was lost in the jungle.

  The Snake Lady lived with all of her snakes in a tree house behind the circus animals. Her hair hung down to the bottom of the tree, so all the snakes lived in her hair and in the tree, and you couldn’t tell the difference. If the audience was lucky, and if the Snake Lady was in a good mood, they’d see her do a special dance. Her snakes all moved back and forth to the same rhythm, rattling out the beat. The Snake Lady didn’t speak any words. She just spoke snake: Sssssss. Sssssss.

  The circus people lived on the far side of the circus camp, along the path that went to the river. There used to be lots of tents, red and yellow and green. Now there were just ratty pole branches that leaned, with pieces of dirty cloth blowing from the tops. The fire circle was in front of the tents. That’s where all the fun happened, said Old Lady Suri, after the audience had gone away late at night.

  The Teeny-Tiny Puppet Man acted out all sorts of roles for his comical puppet shows in one of the old tents. His little head would bop up and down on the puppet stage as he changed characters and voices. Somehow, said Old Lady Suri, he made stories about the war very, very funny.

  The Hairy Bear Boy told fortunes in another tent to anyone who would listen. The trouble was that not many audience members wanted to listen because the Hairy Bear Boy didn’t exactly like being so hairy. He was a bit sour and beat his chest a lot. All of his fortunes had to do with people getting smooshed or eaten or stomped on in life.

  Of course the Melons visiting the circus camp nowadays didn’t get to see or know anything about the real circus. The leftover kids gave the tours and they couldn’t even speak English. They just pointed at things. They also tried to act like Cindi the lion in the lion cage, and the Hairy Bear Boy, and the Teeny-Tiny Puppet Man, and the Snake Lady, even though the Melons had no idea what they were watching.

  I’d only taught the leftover kids the important English words. Toro liked to point out where the soldiers got smooshed and swallowed in front of the fire circle. He stated proudly: “Soldier eaten here,” and “Soldier stomped by FiFi,” and “This was soldiers’ bad fortune. They were bad.” Some of the little kids acted out these dramatic events too, which I thought was very funny and not a bit cute.

  Most of the Melons’ eyes grew enormous and one lady’s face turned ghost white as if she might faint into the dirt. The orange-mustache man scrunched his face and another man flicked dirt from his shirt as if he was afraid that the circus camp was giving him a disease. The yellow tree-haired lady just shook her head sadly throughout the whole tour and made tsk tsk sounds. Obviously they’d never want to live here, which was fine by me.

  The quiet couple seemed to be trying hard to understand things. They were looking into the Snake Lady’s tree and looking closely at the Hairy Bear Boy’s skeleton tent and looking at the fire circle where the mean soldiers had been eaten; they spoke quietly to each other as they held hands, and looked a little disturbed about the lost circus and people being smooshed.

  They even tried to ask questions: “But what happened to the circus people? Where did they go? What happened to all the animals?”

  I was the only one who understood. No Melons ever asked these questions, so I didn’t even know what to say. It was a long story.

  I didn’t let the leftover kids act out anything from Ol
d Lady Suri’s best story: the story about how my dad, the Green Alligator Man, was in love with my mama, the Tallest Woman in the World with a Tail. Old Lady Suri said that my mama was so tall that nobody could even see her. Not really. You only saw her thick tree legs and the tip of her tail because her head was somewhere in the sky. Only special people could see her face; like me, when I carefully walked the line up through the trees and through the clouds as she smiled at me. And my dad could see her face, of course, when he climbed up her tree legs and put his scaly arms around her and kissed her nose.

  The Melons never would’ve understood it anyway.

  Old Lady Suri said that she understood everything because she’d been to the old circus at least a hundred times in her hundred-year-old life before it became haunted. She said that there were all sorts of other interesting circus animals and circus freaks. She just couldn’t remember exactly because her brain was a bit blurry and slippery.

  That’s why, Auntie Moo always says, it’s really hard to know what is true and what is not true about the old circus. But I know that everything’s true.

  Sister Baroo clapped her hands together, which meant that it was time for the leftover kids’ real performance. It wasn’t nearly as interesting as the old circus. Still, she’d made us practice at least twenty times. Toro started the show by standing on his head for ten whole minutes, and some of the little girls did a shy, giggly dance next to the fire circle. George did a funny act with a monkey on his shoulder. He said something to the monkey and the monkey screamed back and the foreigners laughed.

  Then all of the leftover kids sang a very long, sad song about how terrible the war was and how it never stopped. Melons liked singing. Even though they couldn’t understand a single word, they all smiled and clapped. I was supposed to be singing and I was supposed to be the final act too. Sister Baroo wanted me to recite an entire cracker box written in English. She wanted the Melons to see how smart we were.

  But I had already snuck away.