The Wild in her Eyes Read online

  Caroline smirked, obviously sensing Annis’s internal struggle. “The answer is yes. To all of your questions. Yes.”

  Annis felt her curiosity pique. “What was it like?” She’d heard things, of course, but so much of what she’d been told by her parents had proven wrong in recent days that she was willing to accept that this too could have been portrayed with very limited accuracy. Especially having met Caroline, it was hard to associate her with the image Annis’s mother had once conjured up for her, which depicted women who were supposed to be quite unlike the woman standing before her. Admittedly, Caroline was hardly the shy type, and the risqué costumes she wore left little to the imagination. But she was also full of grace and strength. She always held her head high and always met others eye-to-eye when she spoke. There was no shame in her, nor did she conduct herself in a way that would warrant any.

  Caroline finally came to a stop in front of a long, narrow table set up just outside their car, covered in tools and materials, some of which were shiny metal, while others simply shiny. While an overwhelming sight at first, a second glance showed Annis the simplicity of what lay before her. A work table, shared by Homer and Caroline, displayed everything they needed for their act. One half was covered with things he’d likely toss, and the other with garments she’d likely wear. It made for a dazzling scene, the silver blades and the sparkling costumes. Unlike the cold, unyielding metal on Homer’s side, beneath all the silver and gold sequins on Caroline’s side was the soft velvet that clung to her body like a second skin every time she stepped into the ring.

  “What was it like to grow up in a brothel?” Caroline repeated Annis’s question as though she’d never even considered it. “I suppose it wasn’t much different from anyone else’s life.” She dropped her head back, rolling her eyes at her own answer. “I mean, of course it was different than say, your life. I’m guessing, obviously, though I’m doing so confidently,” she said. “But, overall, my childhood felt normal to me. Rather boring at times, to be honest. Not much fun to be had when you’re the only child around and every grown up only concerns themselves with grown up things, which are the only sort of things happening in a brothel.” She paused, leafing through several of her costumes until she found the ones that needed repairing. She handed one over to Annis, who took a seat on the bench that ran along the one side of the table. Once they were both settled with costumes to stitch, Caroline went on. “Don’t get me wrong, there were good parts. Mostly between the hours of noon and three o’clock. That’s when everyone had time for me. Treated me like a little doll rather than a human girl, but I wasn’t bothered by it. There were loads of pretty clothes to wear, always someone around to do my hair or teach me how to paint up my face with all the most fashionable, most taboo colors. You know the sort – colors that drew the eye, that made you stand out rather than blend in and disappear. Then afternoon would grow to early evening and play time would be over. Grown up time would begin. Those were the hours I struggled to pass...Until I became old enough to start to be of use. Not long after that, I decided that life wasn’t for me.”

  Annis was so enamored with Caroline’s tale that she hadn’t even threaded her needle. Caroline noticed and laughed. “Are you going to be helping me with this or not? I was so looking forward to seeing a proper stitch. Mine are horrid, you know. My only saving grace is the fact every inch of velvet is covered in sequins. All the mess of stitches and loose threads gets completely hidden.”

  “Sorry,” Annis apologized, quickly threading the needle. After a pause, she said, “I keep realizing how utterly unlived my life has been.”

  Caroline let out a loud snort. “Annis, dear, you’re far too comfortable sitting here with me, holding a wolf pup in your lap after having spent the night with Maude, nonsense sleep-talking Mabel, and crazy sleep-stalking Francis for that to be even remotely true.”

  Annis chuckled. “To be fair, I haven’t actually seen Francis show up yet, though I’ve heard he does make frequent visits.”

  “Probably scared to come since you’re there. Give it time. He’ll decide it’s not worth you thinking he’s sane and start making the rounds again.” She watched with great interest as Annis began to sew the seam along the waist, which had split during last night’s performance. “You really do have a remarkably steady hand. If Hugh ever stops pecking about you like a mother hen, you should have Homer teach you a thing or two,” she said with a wink. “I bet you’ve got hidden talents you’ve never even dreamed of.”

  “Oh, Lord, I do hope so. As far as I know, I haven’t got any. And that’s not really going to take me very far here, is it?”

  Caroline shrugged as though she weren’t worried one bit about Annis and her supposed lack of circus talent. “You’ve got some. Everyone does. Don’t think I showed up here ready to bend my body in half, forward and backward.”

  Annis stopped mid-stitch. She was surprised by this revelation. “Really?”

  Caroline nodded. “Honest to God. Couldn’t even do a split.”

  “What made you decide this was what you wanted to do?” Annis asked, picking up her needle work again.

  “Must have been here at least three weeks or so, keeping busy, learning, much like you are right now. Then, one day, Hugh sat me down and asked me two simple questions. The answers to those turned out to be the answers to everything.”

  Annis stared at Caroline with wide eyes. “What were the questions?”

  Caroline smiled. Her face took on a dazed expression as though she were traveling back to that moment. “He asked me what I thought people saw when they looked at me. And then, he asked me what I wanted them to see. It’s what he asks everyone. He’ll ask you too. And, Annis, it’ll change your life when he does. Changed mine. And Homer’s. Changed all of us.”

  Annis gulped. Not because she found those two questions to be particularly significant, but because she found she had no answer to either. And that, she felt, was very much significant. And worrisome.

  Caroline reached her hand out to pinch Annis’s side, bringing her back to the present. “No need to ponder it just yet. Answer will change a hundred times over if you do, and you won’t get it right anyway. Not until it’s time. And only Hugh ever seems to know when that is.”

  “Magic Hugh,” Annis whispered.

  “Indeed, he is,” Caroline said with a chuckle.

  “Caroline,” Annis began, tentatively searching for the words she wanted to use to ask the question she had. She wasn’t sure if it was something she was even meant to ask. Maybe it was a personal question too intimate of a topic to discuss. After all, Caroline had not revealed or hinted at it, and she very well could have if she had wanted to.

  “Go ahead,” Caroline encouraged, almost as if she knew what Annis was about to say.

  “What were your answers? To those questions. Or are they secret? Because I’d completely understand if they were. You’ve already shared so much with me, and I’ve shared nothing about myself. I just sit here, soaking in everyone’s stories without ever contributing. It’s rude, come to think of it, to expect everyone to be an open book when I‘ve slammed the covers shut and bound them tighter than tight.”

  It was Caroline’s turn to stare at Annis with wide eyes. She looked as though she might explode, but when she did it was into a burst of giggles. “My, you really do worry an awful lot! And that rambling thing you do...I think you reveal a great deal more than you realize every time you let that mouth of yours run off the rails with a random train of thought you clearly have no control over.” She laughed heartily. “And, for the record, it’s not a secret. I’m happy to share what my answers were. My life really is an open book and you’re welcome to flip through the pages any time you like. Any lessons you can glean from my experiences, I count as a job well done on my end even if I fumbled my own parts in the story.”

  Sitting here with Caroline, so strong, so sure of herself, it was hard to envision her fumbling at anything. “I didn’t used to ramble,” Annis sai
d quietly. “Didn’t used to say much at all.” She wasn’t even sure why that was. Had no one ever listened? Or had she simply never had anything to say?

  “I wasn’t much of a talker either,”’ Caroline said with a soothing calm in her tone, as though she understood more than Annis was knowingly letting on. “Wasn’t exactly what people were looking for from me.”

  “What do you mean?” Though Annis had an inkling, she knew Caroline would put it into words, into fully formed thoughts she could then understand for herself, because maybe, just maybe, their reasons would be the same.

  “You’re a pretty girl, Annis,” she began, the calmness in her voice laced with a weary sadness. “We’re both pretty girls. Pretty girls don’t need to do anything else, do they? If you’re pretty, you’re not expected to do hard work. Or get dirty. Or think. Or be smart. And if you’re not smart, or thinking, there’s really no point in talking, is there?”

  “I suppose not,” she kept her eyes down, focused on her needle work, questions mounting inside her mind that she didn’t want Caroline to see.

  “But that’s their mistake, Annis. They’re the ones who aren’t smart enough to see past the pretty face, beyond the surface. It’s not our shortcoming, it’s theirs. And it speaks to their faults, not ours. So, don’t you let that be your story, Annis. Your story is yours to tell and no one else’s.”

  Annis nodded, appreciating the sentiment. “Is that what your answer was then, to how people saw you?”

  Caroline reached into the stack of costumes and pulled out a bright red one with golden flames engulfing the torso. “Well, unfortunately, I think we both know pretty isn’t all people see when they look at a girl with my background. Men, women, both see different things. Neither of them are ever right.” She threaded a new needle and began to mend a hole that looked large enough for one of Homer’s daggers to have sliced through it. She caught Annis watching and shrugged. “Accidents happen. I’d rather the skirt than my thigh, you know?”

  She nodded, though she most certainly did not know and preferred to keep it that way.

  They worked in silence for a few minutes, both of them moving into a steady rhythm with their stitching, before Caroline went on. “What no one ever tells you is how truly empty you’re perceived to be on the inside when you’re appreciated only for what’s on the outside. And how you start to think it’s true. When all the value you believe you possess is tied up in being pretty, it’s the most demeaning feeling in the world. There’s no value in something you have no control over. I should be no less important, because I was born with a perfectly pointy nose and bright blue eyes, than any other woman born without those traits. Nor should they lack value because they don’t meet some standard of beauty no one really understands anyway. So, one day, I grew tired of being limited by what I couldn’t change. And I left. And I found Hugh. And he gave me the freedom to be anyone I chose. And so, I walk out there every night and wear the tiny costumes like I used to. I hear the murmurs of admiration from the men and the slanderous words of the women. And then I begin to move my body, the body they are certain they know all about. I show them my grace. My flexibility. My strength. My courage. And, slowly, they forget about the shameful opinions they had tried to brand me with and instead they see someone new. They see me, for the first time. And that’s who they remember.” She smiled, the corners of her mouth curving softly. “The woman I want them to see remains and the woman they believed me to be ceases to exist forever.”

  Annis ran a finger across the mended seam, checking it for bumps, but her mind was still on Caroline’s story. “Hugh’s a bloody genius.”

  “Yes, he bloody well is.” She nodded, leaning over to check Annis’s work. “As are you with a needle, my friend. That’s beautiful work.”

  Annis took note of her near-perfect stitching. At least she had one skill she knew she could make use of, though she was certain she didn’t have the faintest desire to build a life around becoming a seamstress.

  “How do you think he became that way?” she asked, folding up the colorful leotard before sifting through the pile for another in need of stitching. “Hugh, I mean.”

  “If I had to guess, and I do because he won’t say, it probably started with being told his whole life he was one way when he knew in his heart that he was another.”

  Annis understood. “Babe.”

  “Exactly. We see them together and it seems like the most natural thing in the world, but outside, beyond where our bubble reaches, the world sees them in a completely different light. They skew reality into a story of their own making, turning love ugly, making it unnatural, some even say unforgivably wrong. They see horrible things. Things we know not to be true. Because we have Hugh. And he teaches us how to see ourselves honestly and, more importantly, how to see others.” She looked up from her work and Annis followed suit, both of them hearing the sound of approaching footsteps. “You wouldn’t know a thing about that though, would you, darling?” she said as Homer came to a stop at the edge of their table.

  “Seeing things?” he asked, a crooked grin peering through the dark scruff on his face. “Not really my area of expertise, no.”

  “Have you always been blind?” Annis asked, hoping he was as welcoming of personal questions as his wife was.

  “Indeed, I have,” he answered without skipping a beat. She realized it probably wasn’t the first time he’d been asked that question.

  “Is that why you’re so good at faking it?” Annis carried on, letting her curiosities fall off the tip of her tongue and out of her mouth.

  Homer laughed. “Faking it? Seeing, you mean?”

  “Well, yes,” she said, peering back and forth between him and Caroline, who seemed to be exchanging secret glances, though Annis knew that was impossible.

  “Not really faking anything,” Homer explained, reaching out his hand to pull over a chair he clearly knew was there. “Just happen to be quite comfortable with not seeing. And, provided my surroundings stay the same, carrying on with regular things isn’t all that different for me than it is for you.”

  Annis stopped mid-stitch again. “But...Your surroundings change all the time. You’re in a new campsite nearly every day.”

  “True. But all the things that look different to you are not visible to me,” Homer explained as he picked up one of his long blades and a rag and slowly began polishing the silver. “Everything I depend on to get around stays the same. Or, rather, becomes the same everywhere we go.” He turned his head to indicate the camp beyond their small station. “Every time we set up camp, we do it exactly the same way. Everyone’s tents and wagons stay in order, everyone counts their paces making sure the distance between each remains the same. Momma T lines up the tables in the exact same rows every time and the big tent is always the same distance from the main camp, entrance always on the same side, performers flap always on the other, nearest the animal tent, which is always at the far-right corner of camp. Everyone sees to it everything remains where I can find it without struggle or guesswork.” He turned back to face them, though his stare was set on nothing in particular as he spoke. “In our car, Caroline sees to it that everything is always where I can find it with ease. She’s my eyes in there, in the ring. Wherever we go, she sees for the both of us. She makes the world around me tangible.”

  Annis fell quiet for a long while after he spoke. She’d never much considered love to be as grand as the sort in fairy tales. Her own parents had been cordial with one another and, while she knew there’d been little romance in their courtship, she’d believed them to be happy together most of her life. Marriage, as she’d known it, was simply an arrangement, one made for the good of all involved. She’d been told from an early age of the boy she’d been meant to marry. His name was William Perrine and his family owned a great deal of orchards back home. He was set to do well in life, according to her mother. Annis had met him, of course, and had even thought he was suited perfectly fine to be her future husband. Now the sentiment
seemed ridiculous. Who would marry for the sake of a comfortable life when there was love such as Caroline and Homer shared to be found?

  “Biscuits and gravy are done,” Sawyer announced in passing. “I can smell them all the way from the animal tent.” Before anyone could answer, he was out of sight again, rounding the corner and likely making a beeline for Momma T’s.

  “Was he running?” Homer asked, chuckling as he set down his dagger, which now sparkled in the sunlight. Annis nodded and then, remembering that was not a suitable response when conversing with a blind man, added, “He was. Momma T’s biscuits and gravy must be as good as her hotcakes.”

  “Not even close,” Caroline said, bunching up the material of a skirt that, from her expression, she deemed beyond repair. “But Sawyer has a very unbiased approach where food is concerned. He loves it all, and he wants it every second of every day.”

  “I think it’s ’cause his stomach’s small. Can’t hold much, so he needs to be fed every few hours,” Homer said.

  “Mine’s not too different,” Annis said, clutching her belly, which had been grumbling quietly all morning. “I never should have given my leftovers to Jacob yesterday. It set me back on my food intake the rest of the day,” she mused as they all stood and began to head to Momma T’s tent.

  “It’s always the tiny things that eat the most,” Caroline said, hooking her arm in Homer’s to subtly guide him and help him maneuver the occasional unexpected obstacle along the way: a ladder left behind, probably abandoned for the sake of breakfast, and a few rolled up tarps they’d used to cover equipment overnight. All in all, the path was notably clear, which Annis was taking in now from a new perspective. She’d be more conscious of her surroundings from now on and keep in mind how much Homer depended on things remaining the same to get around.

  “I’ll have fresh biscuits in just a minute,” Momma T hollered as soon as they stepped inside her tent. “Bess and August just got the last of the first batch.”