1
Rosie
And now!
Ladies, gentlemen, and Fey!
Ivory
Rosie and I are twins, but half sisters.
It happened just how you’d guess, of course. Mama loved two men at the same time, and she slept with them both in the same month.
When our fathers wanted her to choose between them, she left them both before she even knew that we were coming.
We might as well have the same father, though, for all we saw of either of them as children. Two absent fathers are the same as one.
But they’re different men, and people do insist on being shocked.
Mismatched, half-sister twins are one thing. But our mother also being a bearded lady who had worked in what she lovingly called “the freak circuit” ever since she was a wispy-whiskered lass of fourteen years old?
We’re circus through and through, Rosie and I. We never had a chance, not a chance, to be anything else.
Rosie’s born to the performer’s life, though, in a way that I never was. I think she always feels a little cold without the heat of a spotlight on her skin. When she walks the tightrope with her arms outstretched, that wide, easy smile on her face, it’s as restorative for her as sunbathing. She floats between trapezes like a mermaid through a sunny sea, without a thought that the air would let her fall. And even when she’s simply dancing . . . oh, she shines.
She shines, and the world basks in her light.
I stick to the shadows.
I switched teams, stepped out of the spotlight, and became a stagehand as soon as I realized I could. Mama, thank goodness, was kind about it. She killed off her double-act dreams without complaint, at least to me, and she asked the stage crew to show me the ropes, in both senses of the phrase.
So I got to be behind the spotlight, and Rosie in front.
Even then, of course, we shared it.
Rosie
Children of all ages!
Ivory and I
are twins, but
half sisters.
You might call us
a sideshow act.
Presenting,
But here’s a
truth, and no
mistake:
for your
entertainment and pleasure:
a great performer
is a double
act
The Rose of the Circus Rose!
all by herself.
Ivory
By the time I was old enough to hold on to memories, Mama had assembled a troupe of about a dozen performers. She’d always wanted the Circus Rose to grow, to become the biggest act of its kind on the three continents.
There was no crew, though, just her and Vera and Toro, frantically stage-managing between their own acts. Everyone worked triple duty as cast and crew and babysitter for Rosie and me: we played and ate and slept under the watchful eyes of contortionists, conjoined twins, albinos, acrobats, equestrians, lion tamers, clowns, dancers.
Finally, in exhaustion, in desperation, Mama admitted she needed a stage manager.
The circus had set up in Esting City, but Mama had been forced to shut down performances when, after opening night, religious protesters blocked the ticket booth. Exactly which part of the circus had offended them was never clear when Mama told the story later, but when she and Vera went out to confront them, things quickly became physical.
No one has ever told Rosie and me the extent of what happened. But a Brethren priest in the crowd grabbed Mama by the beard and would have—
I still don’t know. No one will say.
A huge man who had hoped to buy a ticket for the show got between Mama and the brother. When the priest still wouldn’t let her go, the man pulled out a knife and cut her free.
The big man’s name was Apple.
“It took me months to grow my beard back,” Mama always said. “I only forgave him because of what else I might have lost if he hadn’t been there. And because of all he’s done for us since, of course.”
Apple would always duck his head when she praised him, when anyone praised him, to hide his smile and his ruddy cheeks. He was the first person I ever met besides myself who was quiet. Is it any wonder, in a circus?
Apple was a carpenter by trade. He offered to help Mama and Vera repair the ticket booth that had been damaged in the protest.
When the circus left town, he left with us; nothing to keep him at home, he said. He became the stage manager, the foreman of a crew that slowly grew along with Mama’s roster of performers.
I admired him: his silent strength, his bashfulness. I started following Apple around backstage as soon as I was old enough not to get into mischief, which was earlier for me than for Rosie. I watched him and the crew building their sets and handling the ropes, and I learned to help them.
I wanted to build things, to stay behind the scenes, like Apple did. I think he was the first person I’d ever seen who found a way to shine outside the limelight.
Rosie
Mama started
her circus
without us—
so she thought.
Double pearls,
someday girls,
held blood in
her belly,
while we
waited in
the wings.
Mama, lone,
both lovers gone,
found a new
dream to romance
instead: a circus,
a living, a life.
She hired Vera
first, strong-
woman from
the freak
circuit they’d
both worked
as just-past
girls. As women,
they had found
lives far apart.
But Vera always
says time
doesn’t matter,
nor distance, to
a true friend’s heart.
Hers remembered
Mama right away.
(And Vera’s name,
don’t you know,
means the truth.)
What a glorious start
to a circus of roses:
a bearded woman and one
who can throw,
without the slightest
effort, any
man to the ground.
By the time
we made
our presence known,
Mama had Vera
and Toro, too,
the brilliant clown
who was more
brilliant still
with the books.
A business born
with us, a triplet
who shares
my name. More
like me than
Ivory,
the sweet, quiet
sister who thinks,
only, always,
in straight
lines.
Ivory
When I was fourteen, the same age Mama had been when she ran away and joined the circus, she let me enroll in the Lampton Girls’ School of Engineering outside of Esting City. I’d been pulling things apart to see how they worked ever since I was old enough to control my hands, and at that school, girls and women of all ages came together to learn the workings of machines for themselves. I had dreamed of becoming an engineer all my life, and the story of Nicolette Lampton—Mechanica, the girl inventor who’d won our king’s heart but chose to open the Lampton School instead of becoming his queen—had enchanted me ever since I’d first heard it.