"ONE OF US"
It was just before dawn when the Callahan Bros. Combined Shows arrived in
Indiana, a day ahead of schedule. The extra day gave everybody some
uncharacteristic breathing room since the show's advance man had already
plastered the area with posters trumpeting the start date. In Lili's trailer,
Norma had long finished her late-night snack and was chafing to walk around
the camp. But Lili sidetracked those plans. Appearing in the doorway, carrying
a tray overloaded with eggs and flapjacks and toast, she waved the tempting
fare beneath the hungry singer's nostrils and let her hunger take care of the
rest.
It wasn't until she got the end of her last plate that her sense
of cabin fever returned. Noticing the way she was eyeing the door, Lili sat on
the end of the cot and put a kibosh on her plans. "We're not that far from
Chicago," she warned, "so it don't make sense to be have you out and about yet
- at least not in the daylight. Stay out of sight 'til we get to Pennsylvania,
and I guarantee none of yer old cronies will recognize you!"
"What'll I do 'til then?" Norma asked, already wishing that she had
another plate of flapjacks to keep her occupied. In answer, Lili reached from
under the cot to pull out a pee-wee Philco radio. Connecting it to a wire that
led out the trailer door, she set it on a stool and turned it on; Fats
Waller's "All That Meat And No Potatoes" began to play in the room. She then
turned and rushed out of the trailer to stop a passing Tastee Treats cart. A
few seconds haggling, and she returned with a plate full of elephant ears.
"Funnel cakes!" Norma hungrily chirped. "Haven't had one of those
since I was a little girl!"
"Well, that's way too long, child," Lili
replied, handing her the plate and a fresh cup of herb tea. As she bit into
her first cake, Norma started humming along with the radio. Savoring the
sugary pastry, she remembered another moment from her childhood, of being sent
to her room after supper that fateful trip to the circus. "You already had
dessert at the circus!" a voice was shouting up the stairs behind her. "A
week's worth of desserts!"
"It has been too long!" Norma
realized, brushing powdered sugar off her capacious breasts with her hand.
"I've got a lot to make up for!" She took another deep bite, scattering
more sugar onto her capacious breasts and letting out a small mew of pleasure.
She thought about the ostentatious chocolate boxes Louis kept buying her - and
that she wasn't supposed to eat - and she reveled in the funnel cakes' humbler
sweet goodness. Lili backed out of the trailer to let her appreciate her
treat.
Across the yard, Lili's trailer was being monitored by Earl and
a trio of performers. First to speak was Freda, the "distaff" half of the
Siamese Twins act Freddy 'N' Freda. Freda was born a boy like her brother, but
liked to dress as a woman - ostensibly to make their act more distinctive.
"Who's the Gilly in Lil's?" she asked Earl. "She the reason we pulled out
early?"
Earl slowly sipped his Coke, taking his time in answering,
shoving the straw into his now-empty pop bottle with a stubby finger. "When
it's time for ya to know, I'll tell ya," he answered. "No one's come to steal
yer place in the show, Freda!
"We pulled up stakes 'cuz Mister
Callahan said to," he continued. "S'all there is to it!" He turned to face the
other show folk, first eyeing Toddy the Tall Man, who was nervously juggling
in the background, than glaring at the twins. "Y'all got work to do," he said.
"Only two hours 'til doors!"
"Play it that way," Freddy shot back in
defense of his sister. "But yer li'l Dona can't stay holed up in Lil's
forever!"
Freda was right, of course, though it was a good four days
before Norma actually showed her face outside. When she did, it was with a
whole different look.
She was no longer a blond, and her now-brunette
locks had been significantly cut back. The Norma who had shown up wearing a
clinging cocktail dress was now in a plain cotton housedress. She was a good
forty pounds heavier; most of the additional weight had landed in her middle
and breasts, though her upper arms and calves also looked sturdier. Her round
face was clearly double-chinned and had been wiped clear of makeup; the
dimples in her cheeks had gotten noticeably deeper. In place of her heels and
nylons, she was currently barefoot and stocking-less. She looked far removed
from the Norma Lesley who'd been a headliner at Louis T's.
She still
was a looker, though. First time she stepped out in the light, she caught the
whistling attention of one of the big tent's clowns. The sound startled her at
first, but she quickly recovered. Her first day out in the yard, she took a
job cleaning dishes at the cookhouse. "Long as you stay away from the
towners," Lili had said, "you'll be safe."
Norma took her
at her word. Working in the cookhouse, she was given permission to snack as
she carried on her chores - an unusual arrangement that Lili had worked up
with management - so she wasn't often without a half-eaten plate of food by
her side. As the weeks passed and the show got deeper into high grass, she
quickly settled into her new role. Before Lili took her in, if you'd asked her
if she could be happy working in a circus mess tent, she'd have loudly derided
the idea. Now, just the scent of it was enough to get her mouth watering with
anticipation. Though she occasionally missed the spotlight, all she had to do
was remind herself of that night, of the feeling of Jerry's knife at her
throat, and it quickly passed. If the memory made her too jittery, she pushed
it away by grabbing another bite to eat.
"Gotta hand it to ya, Lil,"
Earl said, watching her from outside the tent in her second week working as
she carried a large pot of stew to the serving table, holding it away from her
developing pot belly. "Never would've thought you'd get that girl to do wobbly
work."
"So long as it involves food, Earl," Lili said, "s'no problem
at all." After two more weeks of round-the-clock eating, the girl's form had
gotten positively matronly. Her always-ripe frame had clearly become pudgy,
especially around the much-expanded waistline. The buttons of her dress had
started to gap a bit, revealing more cleavage; her face was now more
emphatically double-chinned; her elbows had grown dimples to match the ones on
her face.
"Girl has got a healthy appetite," Earl observed.
"Makin' up for a lotta missed courses in her life," Lili replied.
"Cook sez every morning she comes into work, she acts like a kid at her first
show: 'Never have any leftovers since she's come on.'"
"Beats throwin'
it away!" Earl said with a grin, resolving at that moment to catch up with
Norma once she got off work for the day. When he got to Lil's trailer, he
heard her singing through the window, then cutting off mid-chorus. He dashed
into the trailer and found her standing in a daze with a cake knife in her
hand. Before her was a small two-layer cake with a note propped against it
reading, "An After-Work Snack." Quickly, Earl grabbed her hand and brought her
back from wherever her mind had temporarily taken her.
"You okay,
Norma?" he asked, taking care to remove the knife from her other hand.
"Huh? Yeah," Norma answered, noticing him for the first time. "I was
just rememberin' things."
"From the look on yer face, I'd say it had
somethin' to do with how you got here."
Earl was right. For an
instant, the sight of that knife had brought back the night in the Studebaker
- Norma begging with Louis' hired man, who was driving and pointing a much
more deadly knife at her throat.
"I swear, Jerry, just let me go, and
you'll never see me again!" Norma could still hear herself pleading.
"No can do, sister!" Jerry had replied, turning his attention back to
the road long enough for her to reach and grab the steering wheel, sending the
speeding vehicle into a spin from which it would never recover. She was close
to re-feeling the vertigo of that spin when Earl brought her back to the
present.
"You're lookin' for Lil; she's not here!" Norma said.
"I wasn't," Earl responded. "You're the one I wanted to talk
at!" As she sat her ample end on the cot and helped herself to her first piece
of cake, he launched into his pitch. It was the first time the midget and her
had spoken one-to-one. His voice, she heard, was lower than she'd expected it
would be.
"Was listenin' t'ya sing a few minutes ago," he opened.
"'Minnie the Moocher," wasn't it?" Norma nodded with her mouth full of cake.
"You've got a fair set a' pipes!"
"What's it to ya?" Norma asked,
suspiciously. Recognizing her skittishness, Earl sat a moment to let her
finish her piece of cake, then deftly cut a second slice and handed it to the
plump Norma. She stared into his eyes a moment, then accepted it with a smile.
"Like ya to think about leavin' the back yard and becomin' a
performer," Earl said once she started savoring Lili's cake. "We could do with
a good voice."
"Dunno what you know about," Norma answered, but not
before finishing Earl's offering. "But I can't exactly show myself in
public!"
"Think I got the answer to that," Earl replied. "You
ain't been on the Midway - or been to our Kid Show. But it's not just some
rummy collection of human oddities. Every one of us is a talent!" At
this point, Norma had dispensed with cutting off any additional pieces and was
just forking mouthfuls off the cake itself. The sight encouraged Earl to
continue with his spiel.
"I'm the m-c, but I also juggle," he
continued. "Toddy the Tall Man and I have a knife act we sometimes do
together. Freddy 'n' Freda are hoofers. None of us are warblers, though! We
could use you in the tent."
"Ain't you forgettin' something?"
Norma responded. "I'm not an oddity!"
"That's easy enough to
gaffe. Come with me!" With that, he headed for the door of the trailer. "You
can bring the cake," he added, so, of course, Norma did.
They made
their way across the grounds, several performers grinning to see the tiny man
leading the still-eating Norma as she followed him to a wagon labeled
"Storage."
"Had a Dona in the show who took sickly," Earl explained,
as he reached up to insert a key into the padlock. "Stayed on longer 'n she
probably should've - and she lost a lot o' what made her special. For a whole
season, we had to fill in with a special wardrobe." Pulling open the
rough-hewn door, he climbed the steps and invited Norma inside. She didn't
enter until she finished off her cake, then she followed him to see Earl
standing by a large open trunk. On its side was the legend "Katie Kewpie."
Earl pulled a large bulky dress from the trunk and held as much of it
out for display as he could. Without a body inside it, the dress was wider
than a queen-sized bed. Immediately, Norma knew who Katie Kewpie had been.
"A Fat Lady?" she scoffed, torn between dismay and amusement. "This
ol' gal was a sideshow Fat Lady?"
"Not just any Fat Lady," Earl
said, "but the Queen of 'em in her day! Wasn't enough to keep her from
gettin' the consumption, though. . ."
"And you want me to play Katie
Kewpie?"
"You've got a full enuff face," Earl replied. "With padding
and the right amount of makeup, you'd make a convincin' Circus Fat Lady.
Nowhere near the greats, of course, but then none of 'em can sing like you!"
He spread the dress out over the trunk and lifted the hem to show the padding
underneath.
"I dunno, Earl," Norma said skeptically. "Whole thing
sounds pretty loopy to me!"
"Just think about it," Earl replied,
reaching into one of his vest pockets with a stubby hand. "You don't wanna be
doin' gazoonie work the whole season, do ya?" He pulled two candy bars out
with a showman's flourish. "You wouldn't have to bunk with Lili anymore, if
you didn't wanna. You could get yer own trailer. And mebbe make enuff dough to
get a few extra treats or somethin'!"
"You tryin' to woo me with
Baby Ruths?" Norma asked, her big eyes fixed on the candy treats.
"Depends. Is it working?"
"Maybe," Norma admitted, as
she eagerly snatched both bars from his hand. "Haven't had one of these in
years!"
"I'll leave you to 'em," the ten-in-one manager decided.
"Give ya a day to think about my offer." Norma toddled back to her trailer,
quickly polishing off her candy bars, where she saw Lili waiting for her.
"Earl ask you to become part of the show?" she asked.
"If ya
knew he was thinkin' about it," Norma responded, a little peeved. "Why didn't
ya warn me? I thought he was gonna kick my big ol' derriere outta here!"
"Sideshow's been light since Katie passed on." Lili handed Norma a
plate of cookies as she settled onto a stool by the steps. Her "big ol'
derriere," the palmist noted, was beginning to droop on both sides of the
stool. "What's he got in mind for you?" Lili finally asked, though she already
knew the answer.
"He wants me to sing, and play the freak show Fat
Lady."
As Norma began to nosh on her cookies, as Lili oh-so-casually
asked her the follow-up question. "Wot'd you tell him?"
"Told him I'd
think about it," Norma replied, her mouth full of oatmeal cookie. "But I've
gotta admit, I miss singin' in front of an audience . . ."
"Then you know what your answer's gonna be, don't ya?"
Norma did know what her answer was. The next morning, she was
back at the cookhouse, eating like there was no tomorrow. The cook had been
given orders to give her as much as she asked for - and then some. As she sat
by herself at a picnic table, plowing into plates that she would have been
cleaning the day before, the ten-in-one performers observed the process of her
transformation with interest.
"So that's our new fat lady?" Toddy
asked, as they watched Norma dig into her third towering pile of flapjacks.
Though the show folk were all considered family, the ten-in-oners were an even
more close-knit group, so the prospect of a new tent act had them all more
than curious.
"Singin' sideshow fat lady," Freda corrected. "Word has
it she's got a fair set o' pipes. And you can see she's workin' hard to get
ready for the part!"
"Looks to me like she was born to it!"
Toddy said with a smirk.
"Aw, she's alright," Freddy said, and the
twosome rose to join Norma at her table. "Hear yer gonna be a part of the show
soon," the male half of the conjoined duo opened, which brought a smile on
Norma's chubby face. She paused between bites long enough to get out a simple,
"Yup," than went back to stuffing herself. After another minute passed and she
was done with her most recent plate, she spoke further. "Please don't think
I'm bein' rude," she explained, "but I have to build myself up to get into
Katie's dress. Earl wants me ready by the end of the month, and I don't think
I'm gonna be big enough."
"You'll make it," Freda reassured her. "Way
you've been chowin' down." And in that moment, another memory from her
childhood came unbidden. She was standing before a mirror in a too-tight
church dress. In the reflection she could see part of her mother's large
frame.
"You need to make this dress last you another year," her mother
was nagging. "No desserts 'til you lose ten pounds." It was a long time, she
remembered, before her mother had let any desserts pass her lips.
"Wot's yer moniker gonna be?" Toddy asked back in the present.
"Betty," Norma said going at her scrambled eggs with redoubled effort.
"Betty Bulge."
So it was that Norma Lesley adopted her new stage name.
She ate and ate and ate - and by month's end, she was comfortably full-sized,
readily able to fit her 240-pound frame into the padded Katie Kewpie outfit.
Her plain work dress was replaced by a more colorful summer dress that did
nothing to hide her belly-centered body. Her face had grown clearly
double-chinned and fully cheeked, which helped to support the gaffe, though it
was pretty clear to Earl and the rest of the performers that Betty's expansion
was still only just beginning. Over the weeks since her first appearance,
she'd grown so accustomed to round-the-clock eating that even her once-limited
sense of restraint was gone for good. She was eating for pure pleasure now -
not out of fear or a desire to get back at the people who'd once controlled
her - and she had no intention of turning back.
She was, it
should be noted, able to calm her demanding belly enough to get her voice back
in shape, much to the delight of the other performers who would regularly
shout out tunes that focused on food and eating for her to sing. When she sang
a requested number like Memphis Minnie's "I'm Gonna Bake My Biscuits," Wallace
would quickly show up afterwards with a tray full of the title food. The
association between singing and feeding brought an added touch of yearning to
her vocal style. As her body softened, so did her singing voice.
When
it finally came time for her to make her ten-in-one debut as Betty Bulge, her
former life seemed like it belonged to someone else. She enjoyed sitting in
the cookhouse, chatting with the other performers, listening to their stories
of life on the road as she continued to expand her growing belly's capacity.
Norma loved being Betty, but though she looked forward to performing again,
she still couldn't avoid having some serious second thoughts. Ever since her
arrival, she'd spent all her time in the back yard - without even venturing
out into the Midway crowds - so her stage fright was understandable.
"Maybe we should wait another week," she told Lili in the trailer, as
the prognosticator held her dress for her to wiggle into. As she shifted to
get her now 300-pound body into her padded costume, Norma's belly swayed and
quivered excitedly. "Gimme a chance to become even less recognizable!"
"Not to worry!" Lili replied. "With yer new hair color and these extra
pounds, even yer mother would have a hard time recognizin' you!"
"Not so sure about that!" she said, as she examined herself with her
hand-held mirror. "Ma always warned me that I'd grow up fat!" In response,
Lili handed "Betty" a plate of brownies and some tea. Each night - at Lili's
prompting - she drank two cups of the special blend: it helped her sleep and
wake up every morning with her healthy appetite.
"You say that like
it's a bad thing," she said, as the Callahan Bros.' newest attraction took her
first fresh bite of brownie.
"I've done worse things with my
life," Betty answered, before going at her plate in earnest.
In her
dress, she looked more like a would-be opera singer than your typical circus
fat lady - or perhaps a fat lady from the previous century in the way it more
"modestly" covered the giveaway parts of her body. Her sleeves, for instance,
covered her upper arms and half her forearms, while the lower hem of her dress
kept even her fulsome calves from view, though she was not averse to showing
them provocatively while singing. They hugged her padded hips and belly -
which unfortunately didn't jiggle as much as her real flesh did. The days of
that kind of fakery were decades down the pike, though keeping her full
breasts unsupported and her well-chinned face singing or engaging in patter
provided enough moving fleshiness to convince the audience the rest was real.
Betty's gaffe may not have passed too close an inspection, but it
worked well enough for her audience. The tent show performers were all
strategically placed on a series of platforms of varying heights, and Earl had
ensured that Betty's platform was the highest. It was an effort to climb the
steps, particularly as she grew heavier, but it kept her out of reach. She had
to use Earl's shoulder to steady her as she stepped up to the platform, but
once there she settled onto her sturdy-seeming stool, her well-padded belly
looming ahead. Lili, who had followed behind, handed her a cone of pink cotton
candy, which she immediately started nibbling to get her strength back up.
"Lil," she asked between bites, "'fore you head back to yer booth, do
you think you could get me another helping of this floss?"
"Be
my pleasure, Betty!" Lili answered, and she left the tent with a knowing smile
on her face. As the rest of the performers made their way to their respective
stages, Earl climbed up onto Betty's platform, first checking the phonograph
that was within reach of his singer, then grabbing her soft hand comfortingly.
His small hand felt surprisingly reassuring to her, and she felt herself
growing warmer within her costume. In the background, the other sideshow
performers watched with varying degrees of amusement - or in Wallace's case,
befuddlement - on their faces.
"You'll knock 'em out, kiddo!" Earl
said, before turning to announce the show was ready for the public by loudly
shouting, "Doors!" He leapt off the platform and rushed over to the
tent's entrance. As the first rush of towners entered the ten-in-one, he
launched into his spiel.
"Welcome, one and all, to the only collection
of Talented Human Oddities in the World! You're in for a real treat today! For
the first time anywhere, Ladies and Gentlemen - we bring you our bounteous
beauty Betty Bulge! Her voice soars through the air while her too, too
solid flesh stays rooted to the platform 'neath her none-too-dainty
feet!!!"
Betty licked the last of her cotton candy off her fingertips,
then cranked up the phonograph. As she began to sing, a crowd of yokels of all
ages gawked and joked about her on-stage.
"She's as fat as Cousin
Bessie!" one rube noted in a voice loud enough for Earl to hear.
"You
kiddin'?" his companion responded. "Bessie's nowhere's near that big!"
"You were on the money, Lil," Earl muttered to himself, moving
on ahead to begin his spiel for the next act. On her stage, Betty Bulge was
shaking her enhanced belly as she winked and sang her way through a Memphis
Minnie blues song:
"Big fat woman with the meat shakin' on her bones . . .
Every time she shimmies makes skinny woman weep 'n' moan . . ."