Day 47.

First Person: A character that dreads something

I paced the shrunken room. There wasn't enough space for my head so I sort of slumped over, tossing my phone between my hands, which weren't working quite right. When I finally picked up the nerve to call, it dialed, rang, and Mama's voice came through like thick flannel sheets.
"Hello?" she said, and I near put my head through the ceiling of the trailer.
I couldn't do it. Six blocks away from the house I grew up in, and I couldn't do it. Through the paper-thin walls, I heard Andrew practicing his whip routine, and Suzy and Mary arguing while getting into their Siamese twin freak show costume. The show was in one hour, so why was I wasting so much time with pacing?
Roy, my complete asshole of a boss came in and threw my makeup bag at my face. "Where's the sword?" he demanded.
I pointed under the bed, trying to breathe like a normal person instead of a water buffalo. Would my family come to the show? Would they recognize me? Did I want them to? I transformed from Sarah, the small-town runaway, to Lulu the Sheath, trusty knight's sidekick. The joke was that Joey (stage name Gregorio) had lost his scabbard and had to use me, the sword swallower. Joey/Gregorio would toss the sword to me; I'd swallow and walk around. Sometimes, I bent over and he slowly inserted it; a lot of the audience liked that, although I did get several phone calls that were not approving.
It was a living, and in twenty years, I pictured myself using it as an icebreaker. Fun fact about myself? Well, when I was nineteen, I ran away and joined the circus, does that count?
The show started with me not even thinking. I batted my eyes out of habit, posturing with hands on hips.
It looked like everyone from town was in the crowd, milling around, killing time under the uneven stripes of light and accordion music. The air tasted of salt and smoke.
"Joey," I whispered, "this is my hometown."
"No shit?" His eyes widen, in sympathy, but he's a pro. "Just flaunt it girl, they see what they see. Remember how you rehearse." He winks, like a slick bastard.
I pictured my father coming in to talk to Roy, looking around at the campy circus scandalousness, heard him shouting "my daughter, biggest slut in North America," as my mother wailed.

It's funny, I read a book on great burglars once, and in all the heists that went wrong, the thief does everything right—up to one point. They get cocky, right, and they forget about the guard in this corridor, or the security camera there, and it all goes to infamous, glorious pieces.

I was thinking about what I'd left behind, not the sword. I was thinking about the time I stayed out late and my parents stayed up to wait for me, drinking the neglected liquor in our cabinet and talking about me. They were more than tipsy as I crept up the porch and listened to them.
"Remember when," my mom hiccupped, "she spit out everything you fed her except green beans?"
"I was about ready to stop feeding her," he laughed. "You were a saint."
"I was a bottled-up-emotions kind of saint though."
"That's the only kind of saint there is."

I was only half brought back to reality when Joey tossed me the sword. I hoped they were there to see how easy I made it look. And then the sword slit the inside of my throat.
And in the brief second before shock set in I thought: who's going to know I'm not faking? It's like getting a heart attack during charades.
A woman rushed up from the audience, I couldn't see who through the strange haze. My daughter, she yelled. That's her. And then my mother's familiar skirt was swishing over my legs, my arms, and I was remembering how she used to sweep the hair off my forehead and tell me to call her when I would inevitably run away, how abruptly her contemplative and loving moods came on.