When I was nine I got invited to a birthday party for one of the girls at school. I had never been to a sleepover before, so I was just geeked. There were about eight or nine girls in total. We ate pizza and chocolate cupcakes. We watched movies and played little girl games. We put stickers on our nails and dressed up in her mother’s dresses and boas and had a fashion show.
I remember we were gossiping before bed and one of the girls had brought up the subject of crushes which caused them all to gush over Aiden. This one girl, Tabitha, told us she wanted to do bad things to Aiden. We were all a bit flustered by her admission though we snickered quite heavily when she said this. Then good girl Marley asked what she would do to him. Tabitha leaned in real close to us and whispered that she would kiss him.
I remember Tabitha dropped her voice real low when she said the word kiss. All the girls giggled and their cheeks got so red. I remember I started giggling too, as I, who was trying my hardest to fit in, asked what she would do to him next. They all looked at me kinda stupefied. So I repeated my question, thinking they just didn’t hear me clearly, still giggling as I prepared for the clincher.
Tabitha said, “what do you mean next, silly? I said I want to…” then she leaned in further and dropped her voice down to barely audible this time, puckered her lips and mouthed, “kiss him.”
The reaction she received the first go round was very much mimicked in the sequel. I remember being a bit confused by her answer. The bad thing she wanted to do to him was kiss him? But I laughed it off with the others, thinking she meant she wanted to kiss him on the penis. Which still wasn’t even that naughty.
Then Sarah, the only other observant one in our little group, noticed I wasn’t as gaga over Aiden as the others so she asked which boy I would like to…she leans in as she whispers…kiss. Oh there was a boy I had liked, Sarah, and I had been dying to share it as soon as the subject came up. I remember just wanting to hug her so tightly for asking because I just knew that my boy was gonna blow Aiden out of the competition and that all the girls were going to go wild in agreement when they heard it. So I leaned in real close to them and I whispered my guy’s name and they all screamed out in unison and laughed.
“EW! Mr. Kolb? He’s oooooooold!”
I was embarrassed and I wanted to go home. It was one of the earliest times in my life where I felt different from everyone; like I didn’t belong. I had always known it to be true, but this time it was confirmed that I would never, ever fit, anywhere. I would always be fucked up. All of my stories would be fucked up. All of my experiences would be fucked up and that I would have to live a complete lie just to get by.
I used to fantasize it was our teacher, Mr. Kolb, when I was with Dad; with his checkered shirt and khaki pants, dark-rimmed glasses and beard. It made the rape so much better. But I couldn’t tell that to sweet, little Tabitha, could I? I wanted to tell Delores in the ninth grade it was my daddy who took my virginity when she was telling me about her first time. But instead I said I was still pure. I wanted to tell Skylar that you get used to the taste after a while after she remarked she tried it with her boyfriend and couldn’t get it down. But instead I told her I wouldn’t know. And I wanted to tell Neveah that I can’t even get off now without being choked or prodded or burned or without his smell on my pillow when she explained that her boyfriend started eating her out without her consent. But instead I threw her a pity party.
I wanted so badly to tell someone the truth. To be able to look them in the eyes and say it out loud without somebody feeling disgusted or sorry for me or trying to fix it or telling me some shit about it not being my fault. That I was innocent and insisting I talk to a therapist. It doesn’t fucking matter whose fault it is and I am not innocent anymore. I am ruined. I am ruined for all the boys I will ever meet. I will never have a healthy, sexual relationship without some weird shit involved. I will never be able to walk down the aisle with my father and feel happiness. I’ll always be thinking how fucked this dude has to be to want to marry me. And I will never be able to have kids, for fear that I will die and leave them with their father.
I would hear the whispers when I first started eating lunch with them. Wondering why I would ever sit with a group so pitiful. I was too pretty. I was too good for them. But the truth is, there was a brokenness in each of them I called home.
Clown is bullied incessantly. The Black guys don’t like him because he doesn’t talk like them. The Black girls won’t even glance in his direction. The White boys can’t keep their fists off of him while the White girls will barely touch him. Still the nicest boy you’ll ever meet.
Juggler’s daddy is the janitor and all these rich kids look down on him because he is Hispanic and gets free tuition. They all, somehow, feel that he hasn’t earned the right to attend our preppie-ass school so they feel entitled to walk by our table and yell, “build the wall.”
Tort is abnormally skinny. It’s no secret amongst those of us who have been blessed with the gift of sight that she purges her food. We all know it’s to make her weight but kids still find it necessary to walk by her and dry heave.
Ring spent a lot of her elementary and junior high years dirt poor. She wore the same clothes for days, smelled like piss and B.O. Her dad lost everything in the housing crash and they started living in his car. Her mother decided not to stick around after that. So he worked odd shifts at thrifty places to get by. Then he taught himself to code, invented a social media app for losers and became a millionaire overnight. No matter how many designer labels Ring wears or how much she scrubs her skin raw she still can’t erase what she used to be in their minds.
The Twins are up each other’s asses so much that everyone calls them Cersei and Jaime. The things they say in disgust about their, “incestuous,” relationship makes me feel like I am the very definition of because for me it is actually true. And we are not even going to get into the things they say about Ms. Lady.
Sometimes I want to burn this world to the ground. I would hear religious people talk about God on YouTube. About how they couldn’t stand to read the book of Genesis because they didn’t understand how the guy who gave up his only begotten son could be so vengeful and that it was utterly devastating for them to read about some of the things he had done. And as I would listen to them, I would grow insecure because I actually understood. Flood the shit and start over. The things we do to each other, we don’t deserve to see the sun.
But I felt a lot less of that understanding when I was with them. I felt a lot more forgiving. Especially after Ring found out my secret. They made me see the goodness that can still exist in this world again. Something I hadn’t felt since Callie died and I began to wonder if the things that were happening to me were survivable.
I could joke with Ring that he, “fucked me so good last night I could barely walk,” without it being weird. She just got me like that. She knew I was never gonna be the girl who sat around and cried about some shit I couldn’t change but that I was a girl who would sit around and laugh as a way to endure the tough shit until I figured out a way to make it stop for good. And it was why she would always reply that she would happily fuck him off my hands for me, free of charge. Then we’d cackle like the jilted hens we were.
These were the kinds of things I longed to tell you when I would sit in your vinyl chair on our Mondays together. The same kinds of things I wanted to tell you not too long ago when you came knocking on my front door. Out of all the girls that have ever loved him, you really are my favorite.
I know you snuck away from the precinct without his knowledge and came over to get the rest of the tea on the story I started in Dr. Cherie’s office. I was a little peeved at you and I know you felt it. As I stared at you for quite some time, I was thinking of all of these things I had wanted to say since I got home but kept reminding myself that it had been five days since I last saw you. Five whole days. I only gave you seven and you waited five days to come hear the rest.
You knocked on my door and then stood on my front porch as though my dad would come home any second. You were on the edge. You seemed nervous. You kept saying you were fine every time I would crack the door wider and offer you in. I could tell being in our house without his consent made you uncomfortable but did you ever stop to think how I must’ve felt all alone? Then you made small talk, hoping I would broach the subject for you but I wanted you to work a little harder, to stay a little longer. So I sat back and answered the ten different ways you would ask me if I was okay, in between extended pauses.
Finally, when you mustered up the courage and asked, I took the grit out of my voice that had accumulated over five days because I really was happy you risked Daddy’s wrath just to come ask. I even hugged you, I mean I really squeezed you tight, then I succumbed to the fact you weren’t going to come inside, leaned against the door frame and told you the end. I kept hoping you would stay afterwards, maybe ask me some questions, or that we could just talk. I really didn’t want to be alone today. But then you were gone. So I closed the door behind me and tried to do the same.
I picked the story up several months later. I told you the group had gotten more and more like family. All of us except for Man, of course. I told you we would still meet every day for our breakfast, and that Magi even joined us regularly now. Clown still cracked his jokes. Ms. Lady still sang. Dirt still flirted endlessly with Magi, except now she would, at least, talk shit back.
One afternoon, Ring saw Magi and Man at the table talking alone, so she strolled over and joined them. Ring remarked that there were so many women who adored Man and that her seats were filling up because of him. She then slyly mentioned that she never sees him go out at night with any of them. That the only girl he ever sees him with is Magi and that a real man must get lonely.
“What does a man do with all that fire?” Ring said directly at him.
Well Man didn’t like that question. So he made some snide remark before leaving the table and slamming the door to his trailer behind him. Now alone with Magi, Ring asked her what’s to stop her from packing up her things and leaving now. Magi tried to explain that she did leave once but that her granddaddy found her. Magi then said that she thinks when he finds a nice girl, which she thought shouldn’t be too long now with one of his regulars that was coming to the show, she would be able to leave the circus for good too, just like the others.
Ring shifted in her seat when she heard Magi say this. I think as a way to delay the full impact of her aggression. Ring was quite rude in her response. Ring told Magi, flatly, that she just doesn’t get it. She called her a stupid girl. This caused Magi to pull back a bit shaken.
Ring then described, bitterly, that years ago Juggler did leave to pursue his dream. He even had a child but managing the day-to-day was just another form of juggling. The store, his wife’s illness, his young child, it all took juggling. Eventually his wife died and Ring picked him up in Suite County. Juggler left his daughter to be raised by his sister. He sends her all the money from his third of the cakes he sells. Hasn’t left the circus since and doesn’t much mention it either, except every now and again when he gets nostalgic.
Ring crisply continued down her list. She said to Magi that a couple of years after he left, she picked up Clown in Blax County one evening. He was beaten and bloody when she found him. He never would talk about what happened but she knew already. The creased photograph he pulls from his trousers and stares lovingly at when he thinks no one is looking told her all she needed to know.
Then Ring explained how she picked Tort back up sometime later in Bend, after an injury ended her career. Tort never did perform in front of royalty but she did make it onto the main stage and had minor success. She never really had any dreams outside of contorting, so she settled back here with us happily. She takes drugs to get by now, but she can, at least, say that she is doing what she loves.
Both the Twins and Fat Lady never left but that was to be expected. The Twins never saw themselves as two individuals capable of more and Fat Lady never would get skinny enough to walk. Ms. Lady still says she will make it out there one day but we all know by now that isn’t true.
Ring then revealed that Dirt had been with them since he was a teen. It was her daddy who found him one day on the street alone, begging, and that he brought him home, cleaned him up and gave him a job and a bed.
“Dirt has seen a lot of pretty girls in his 27 years,” Ring explained, “but he still hasn’t found a wife yet.” Ring then divulged that he did come close to leaving once. She even helped him buy a place in his hometown so he could settle down and find a good girl he doesn’t deserve. He quit the circus for two days and then came back.
Magi was quite, expectedly, humbled as Ring went on to explain to her that this wasn’t her first rodeo. That years ago, she had met a Magi, just like her, before. And like her, she too was a beautiful girl with a heavy secret and that she even arrived into town with a handsome and charming man. Ring explained that, in the beginning, she wasn’t a freak but that the emotional slashes of that girl’s father eventually scarred her pretty face to the point that when she looked in the mirror that was all she saw. Damage. It was what Clown sees. It was what Juggler sees. It is all any of them sees now.
“There is a big world out there…” Ring began to a stunned Magi, “but for our kind it chews us up and spits us out. We are outcasts. So my father created a world just for us. The normies will always come along for a laugh or to throw us their spare change in order to feel better about themselves. Juggler and Clown and Tort and Ms. Lady and the Twins, even the original Magi, they all had dreams to be someone better, but sometimes the dreams you pick can be the very prison you are trying to avoid.” Then Ring stood up, told Magi that she must pick her own prison, then left her be.
Later that night Magi came back and told her she wanted to run away. Ring tells Magi that, next week, she will have everything set up to go. That they are coming up on Dirt’s hometown and that she will pay him to take her back to his house and keep her hidden until the circus moves on.
The plan was for Dirt to wait two days until the attention had died down. Ring will give Dirt the old truck, Man will think Magi ran away and won’t stay in town too long looking for her. After two days, Dirt will give the car to Magi so she can travel as far as she can in any direction she chooses. A week later, everything goes off without a hitch. Man isn’t aware his granddaughter left until it’s too late to track her movements and she is gone.
This work is created by, written by and belongs to Aecko and shared here for entertainment.