“Just the one, eh?” He sighed, turning back to his press.
“I only need one,” I assured him, hoping it was true.
I thought for a moment, picturing lines and shapes in my head, and then I folded the paper in half, in thirds, and in half again. I glanced at Bear to gauge the width of his head and cut out the paper’s center, then made careful slits and shapes along the sides.
“Watch this, Rosie,” I said.
I pulled open the folds with as theatrical a flourish as I could muster. It probably wasn’t very theatrical at all (no matter what Mama says, I just don’t have it in me), but thankfully my work did the amazing for me.
It was an elaborate crown, with jewels and stars made out of negative space between its peaks and frolicking bears between the jewels.
Rosie gasped with all the zeal of an infatuated audience. “Oh, Ivory, it’s perfect!”
She lifted the crown in her strong, callused hands—acrobat’s hands, even then—and placed it delicately on Bear’s head. When she stepped back, it stayed balanced, as I knew it would. By folding the paper evenly, I had made the design perfectly symmetrical.
“Now,” said Rosie with great contentment. “Now she is a perfect princess.”
I frowned. “A prince, maybe,” I said. “Bear is a boy bear.”
Rosie gave Bear a long, searching look. “Bear is a princess. Definitely.” She made Bear the same elaborate curtsey that she gave the audiences at the circus.
Bear lumbered up off the ground and arranged his hulking body into the same polite pose in return.
Rosie nodded resolutely, as if that settled matters. “Most definitely.”
This rankled something that had been bothering me for a long time, but that, at only nine years old, I was still struggling to articulate. “Rosie, you can’t just . . . This isn’t the show. We pretend things there. Here, outside the big top, they’re—they’re not pretend. We’re not performing now. We’re real.”
Mama told me so every night, during the private little bedtime talk that was just for me, after Rosie had drifted to sleep on the wings of a bedtime story. Stories had never been enough to help me slip out of the day. I needed to talk, seriously, about things I knew were true. Facts. How long it had taken to break down the tents; ticket sales; or any little thing that had worried my small, serious heart during the day.
Mama always knew that. Always understood. And when the scarier acts in the circus frightened me, as they often did, she would hug me backstage and ask me to remind her what she told me every night.
“We are what’s real,” I’d whisper, echoing her.
“That’s right, love,” she’d reply, the same words every time. “The circus acts are just stories, pretty pretend gifts we make up because we like to give them, to make people happy. But the circus is not the real part of us. Who we are outside it—that’s who we really are. Rosie might be onstage now”—for even then, Rosie loved the spotlight and was a born performer—“but who is she really?”
“My sister.”
“And who are you, no matter whether you’re onstage or no?”
“Ivory. Rosie’s sister. Your . . . your daughter.” I tried not to hiccup, tried to pretend I was definitely through crying.
“And who am I, first and always and forever? Who is that?”
“Mama.”
“That’s right. More than anything, more real than anything, my cloud-haired babe. I’m Mama.”
And I would nestle into a hug and feel her beard brush my forehead, and I would know exactly what was real. What was safe.
Bear might be a princess or a prince or a dragon or a griffin or any number of dangerous beasties during the show. But here, at the fireside, at night, he was just what he seemed to be. Just Bear. So solid and sure, he’d become one of the cornerstones of my life. The circus troupe members came and went, Mama adored us but had so many obligations, Rosie went far away inside her mind sometimes, and our fathers never . . .
But Bear was always, always there. And always Bear. Exactly what he was.
I tried to be generous with Rosie, tried to remember how much she liked playing pretend. “Or a king. Yep. My crown is fit for a ruler.”
Rosie’s lips, I was horrified to see, began to tremble. “Can’t you see? Can’t you see the princess?”
I felt a knot tighten in my gut. I didn’t know why I was getting so angry. “I don’t want to pretend with you, Rosie! I made you the crown because—because I knew I could make a better one and I wanted you to have it and be happy, but I won’t—I won’t pretend Bear is anything but Bear!”
My stomach hurt. My head hurt.
Bear’s head cocked slightly to the left. He lifted one huge paw and held it out.
I rushed into his embrace, grasping fistfuls of fur and letting my tears run into the ruff of his neck. “Just Bear, just Bear . . .”
Faintly, I could hear Rosie weeping too. But that just upset me more.
“Over here.” I heard Vera’s voice, and I knew she’d brought Mama back from our caravan, where she’d been doing design work with Apple.
“Girls, girls, what’s wrong?” Mama said, her voice firm and authoritative. “My goodness!”
“Rosie says—” I hiccupped, already embarrassed that I was crying over something so silly. “Rosie says Bear is a princess, and she won’t take it back.”
Bear rumbled deep in his throat, a soothing sound, and he reached his other paw around Rosie. Mama came and hugged us too, and Rosie and I quieted, safe in the arms of the two beings we loved most in all the world.
Rosie never did take it back, though.
I learned to ignore her. She’d always carried her pretending a little farther than most.
I never did. Never even enjoyed playing make-believe like other children. I think that’s why I learned to love building so much and why engineering school became such a precious dream. I wanted to learn how things worked, to take them apart and rebuild them myself, so I could understand the inner workings of a thing just by looking at its outside.
School was the exact opposite of a circus. No illusions. Just facts.
After that night, I learned to keep a place inside myself that was just for me.
Where everything was only what it seemed.
Rosie
What was the circus like, without Ivory?
Was I some half a thing?
It was never that way. My act
has always been my own.
The first day without her,
true, was hard.
A day on the road.
No show, not even
a rehearsal—just traveling,
earthbound, no open-armed air to
catch me, hold me, make me
live. The first night,
I was sure,
would be harder.
No sister to pillow
my limbs with her own.
Just one fourteen-year-
old girl in a world
all at once far too grown.
Just a floor for a bed
in a caravan
so small Ivory’d called it the Tin Can,