squints when she hands out tickets. She talks fast and Kewpie-doll squeaky. Between customers she slips on the glasses hanging from the red ribbon around her neck and reads a nurse book. She never looks directly at anything outside her booth.
She never looks toward the trailers behind her.
The carnie grub lights a Camel. ’Bout that time, he tells the ticket girl. She nods uh-huh. He scratches himself sleepily, decides to take a break. You watch him as he goes. There is an unlit passageway inside the trailer, leading to the exhibit. The trailer is too crowded, too low, too hot. The crowd breathes in each other’s air. The crowd smells its own sweat. You feel like part of them. Maybe you have lost yourself. Suddenly the carnie grub has reappeared in the dark— his cigarette glows ahead of you like a firefly. He makes his way through the people and to the room at the end of the trailer.
A teenage girl pulls at her husband’s hand. Her hair is pinched behind the ears. Her eyes are tired. She looks very young but somehow you know she is old in other ways, married— when she falls back from the group anyone could tell she is pregnant. Her belly protrudes from her unbuttoned smock, round and burnished as an apple. She pleads in a raspy whisper to leave. Her tall, freckled husband does not say a thing. He sucks in his cheeks. Draws her back within the group. She closes her mouth and eyes tight. Two farm kids are trying to remember the words to a song playing over the Spin-a-Rama’s speakers. They are off-key, and their girlfriends laugh little nervous laughs.
The carnie grub sniffs loudly to get everyone’s attention. He points to a framed page of newsprint hanging on the side of the passage. This, he says, tells all ’bout the frog baby. The whole truth, nothin’ but. ’Case you’re interested. This here’s a picture of its mama.
A blurred photograph in a separate frame shows a fat Chinese or Mexican woman. A black shawl like a nun. Tired face. The caption could be Spanish, maybe not. The light is too weak to read by. Another faded photograph shows the newborn baby. It is held before the camera by a pair of enormous bloody hands. The baby, too, is covered in blood, or what looks like blood. The baby’s eyes are open wide, staring at death. No one looks at the photo for long.
And here is the jar. Here is the baby. Look here, now, this hot, worn-out night. The jar sits before the spectators on a metal shelf. A single hot brilliant light illuminates the jar. Mormon flies hover around the light and on the drape behind. No part of the frog baby is a secret. A blonde with very browned skin coughs. Her shorter blonde friend gasps slowly. A kid stops in the middle of a joke. You feel a part of it all. The teenage girl tugs at her husband’s hand again. He does not blink. She won’t look.
A big Mexican woman, probably a migrant worker from downriver, gives the jar an impudent push with her finger. The carnie grub spits. Look, don’t touch, lady. The baby has been set in motion by her action. It spins. One toe touches the bottom of the jar. It spins slowly to the loudspeaker music. Then it is buoyed back up by the fluid. The baby bobs sluggishly for a while. The big Mexican woman looks pleased with the performance. The baby is still once more.
Something that remains of yourself wants to leave, but the crowd has hemmed you in. There are no more than ten people here, but it seems like more. Science experiments, horror movies, ghost stories come to mind. It’s not the baby, either—it’s what the baby means. You knew the missing link and snake girl were fakes. Still, they were hard to forget. Still, maybe you wanted to remember. This one you don’t know. You don’t know if it’s a fake or not. You don’t know if you want to remember.
A little boy with lips blue from the blue cotton candy he’s been eating glances up from his blue fingers. He giggles at the frog baby’s nudity. The frog baby appears to be sexless. The boy’s older sister does not laugh. She wants to see the baby ride its trike. Or catch a fly. Can’t it catch a fly? Her brother agrees. The carny grub taps his cigarette. Blows his nose into his rag.
The teenage girl turns away from the jar. She has seen without wanting to. She splays fingers over belly. Her husband seizes her by the wrist. Pulls her hand away. Christ, girl.
How we know that ain’t just a doll? A voice in the back, a bare-chested farmer with a flaming red back, just out of the beer tent, probably. He bats a mosquito away with his seed-corn cap. What d’ya s’pose its ma got for it? Who’d pay for a damn thing like that?
The carny grub scratches an armpit. Then the other. Don’t rightly know. Read that there spic story.
Sure as hell a fake. Some kinda wax model. The sunburned farmer heads for the exit. Damn waste.
The two kids and their girlfriends leave, too. No longer talking, joking. One begins to whistle the melody reverberating throughout the fairgrounds before he is out of the room. His girl swats at a mosquito with her monkey-on-a-stick. The other girl stretches her bra strap through the neck of her t-shirt. Her boyfriend follows, idly picking his nose. Part of you leaves with them, part of you is expanding beyond this time, this place, this hot night.
A boy about eleven points to the jar. He might be someone you have known all your life, which is a very long time. Or a very short time. Looks like, he says to his twin brother. Looks like it was about to yell out something before they stuffed it in the bottle.
That baby never made a peep, the big Mexican woman says. She is pressed close to you, seems to surround you, to absorb you. She has filled the trailer with the smell of green tomatoes.
That poor baby was stillborn. It was born stone-cold.
The boy’s twin approaches the jar. Spreads his palms over the cool glass. The barker draws menacingly on his cigarette. The twin ignores him. His face is illuminated by the lamp. His eyes are wide beneath silky bangs. Don’t know, he says to his brother. Don’t know, but it does sorta make me feel all empty inside. (Maybe that was you-maybe you were the twin boy with the silky bangs. Maybe you did feel a sickness inside. Could it matter now, a long, long, long time later?)
Poor thing, the big Mexican woman says. She slaps a bug against her big thigh, winces. Poor thing. You should pray, boys. Pray for that baby’s soul.
One twin—your twin, maybe—hunches his shoulders. Stares at his bare feet. The boys laugh at something unsaid between them and go out the door. Maybe you left with them, as one of them, and then again maybe you are still here. Maybe you are dreaming and can’t leave this dream. You think of waking in the night, to the cold moon, the wet pillow. A voice outside the bedroom door asking if you are all right. But you hear the little boy with blue lips giggling. His sister joins him. She reaches her hand down the front of her pants to scratch herself. Dumb old baby. Yeah, dumb baby, her brother repeats. Dumb old baby.
The big Mexican woman hushes the children as if they were her own. The brownskinned blonde frowns. The carnie grub is watching her. She licks her overbite with her tongue. Her shorter blonde friend digs at her fingernails. Leans on her friend. The teenage girl has turned away again. Her husband shakes his flat-top, hums low. They lock hands and leave. You hear him out there, still humming.
Everyone else leaves, too. The carnie grub steps aside, crushes the cigarette under his boot. The big Mexican woman flaps her hands before her face for air. These things just not for me, she moans. I’ll have nightmares, you bet. The carnie grub smooths back his greasy hair. He hastens the little blue-lipped boy and his sister out. He winks at the brown-skinned blonde. You and your friend come back, y’hear? She wets her lips with a fingertip. Oh sure, she says flatly. Sure. Her friend stifles a shriek of laughter with her hand.
The midway lights seem much brighter now. Maybe it is because the sky above seems so much blacker and the air cooler. The Spin-a-Rama’s speakers rumble, vibrating the ground. The double Ferris wheel has stopped revolving. The grounds are nearly empty. Even the beer tent looks vacant. The carnie grub watches his customers fan out across the sawdust. Toward the Rubber Man, the two-headed calf, Chita the Gorilla Gir
l, the House of Mirrors. He sees the big
Mexican woman pausing before the gorilla girl’s trailer. The two blondes get on the Tilt-a-Whirl. They hold hands like lovers and scream. The two farm kids and their girls are daring their strength on the electric chair in the arcade. The little boy with blue lips and his sister run down the midway to beg their tired, drunken parents for more money and candy. Some of the others have stopped at the beer tent before going home. A different snake girl from the one last year has stepped out and is leaning against the side of her trailer. She watches the teenage girl and her husband as they pass, arguing softly between themselves. The twins are nowhere in sight.
You could be them, any of them. You could be getting shocked on the electric chair or whirling on a ride until you’re sick. You have expanded out over the fair, out toward the town and the homes and the dark bedrooms and above into the starry sky. Expanded like smoke, and disappeared. But you are still just yourself. You haven’t really lost yourself to the crowd and the night. You are you. Tired, wishing for bed. Thinking of that yellow porch light in the distance, the voice calling you across the night, nighthawks swooping over the fields. Their