Cutting the cake

Third tablecloth of the day and it’s only two in the afternoon —  they get so stained, and all the napkins. So many napkins and all with the Barnum name embroidered on. Neat work. Wonder who did all that? Forks and knives are fine, Irene can just lick ‘em and use again. The plates, not so much.

Wish it didn’t smell so bad. It gets worse when we roll up the canvas at the front but it makes my head ache anyhow. Must affect Irene but it sure doesn’t put her off her food. Thank god.

Time for a dozen iced buns. The frosting comes blue and red, an exact match of the circus colours and it should be, as they’re paying for it. That Barnum name again in edible gold leaf too, nothing but the best but that means the canvas comes up and in comes the smell because we’ve got to let the locals see what we’ve got. Nothing comes for free, not even frosted buns. 

Except to stop and stare. That costs nothing at all.

Looking’s free, come on over and feast your eyes real good. That’s right. Come on closer.

Edible gold, huh? That’s something to think of. And then it turns to... well. Don’t want to be indelicate but it’s kinda the reverse of those fairytales, isn’t it? But we’ve gotten our own fairytale, Irene and me, and we don’t do too bad.

I should eat. Just don’t want to. Kills the appetite, all this. I tried getting down enough to do a skeleton man shtick but jeepers, I ain’t got that discipline. Look at Ike Sprague, he’s 43 pounds and you can’t compete with that. Got some kinda condition though, sipping and sipping at that flask of milk all the time.

Wonder if it’s really milk in there?

Hurry up and finish the buns, Irene. Want to close the canvas again and I’ve got chicken and potatoes ready.

So I’m skinny with all the fetching and wrangling and lugging and cooking and all but I’m nothing special. Not too fat, not too lean. Mister In-Between. Suppose round here, that makes me the odd one out.

Millie and Chrissie have just started their two-headed nightingale thing so eyes on the clock while I’m broiling Irene’s 21 ounce steaks. Four minutes each side should do and then another loaf of bread. Slice it lengthways and some mustard for one helluva sandwich. It’s a nice touch. A little bit of show and the rubes love it.

They’re troupers, Millie and Chrissie. Get backache all the time, who wouldn’t? No private life either but they’re a cut above, those girls. The biggest curiosity about them is how they gotten so well-read. Speak five languages, can hear them at night switching between Spanish then Italian, and then French and then right back to English again. Chattering away to each other. At least those girls, they’re never alone.

And they got plenty to talk about and I mean plenty. They saw the English queen once and they spoke to her in German. She took to them for that. The queen of England speaks German at home and all the little princes and princesses too, who’d have thought? Hiding away in a big house on the small island, that looks for all the world like one of those new insane asylums they have over there, Millie and Chrissie did say. They take an interest in architecture. Nothing like a palace. A sad little fat lady, all in black, but somehow not so deep in mourning that she didn’t want to be entertained.

Ain’t that all of us though?

Need another plate of frosted buns before Irene’s call. Pile those buns high and roll up the canvas quick. Phew! The bigger the cat, the bigger the stink. Just don’t mention the elephants.

No time to take the dirty plates away but we let them pile up. The punters love to see how high the stack goes. Boy, can she eat! See it to believe it! Irene is the real deal.

These buns are the same ones they let kids buy to feed to the elephants. Wonder how Irene feels about that? Feeding the big lady elephant food.

Not much, I expect. They used to laugh at her but who’s laughing now? The agents take their cut of the cake but the money’s still good and Irene’s dedicated. She can always cram down another morsel. She’s come a long way from hiding bread crusts up her sleeve at St. Charles Borromeo Orphanage.

Jeez, that smell. Like the world’s biggest cat box left out to ripen all day long in the Arizona desert. The gazoonies make crude so-called jokes about stinky pussies but I pretend not to understand, that ain’t my kinda humour and Irene’s better than all that.

Whatever names they used to call her, she’s the peerless prodigy of physical phenomena now and that carries weight, if you get my meaning. She’s the one everybody comes to when they’re hard-up and she can afford to lend a helping hand. Sometimes more than that. And we get to travel the world. Never mind seeing the elephant, we’ve seen New York and California and the Tivoli Gardens and the Catacombs in Paris, France.

She’s on after the little guy so not long now. I’m gonna have to haul out the chamber pots soon. Not like the little guy with his big house in the Thimble Islands, we don’t get to have water closets in wagons. Everything that comes in eventually has to be taken out again. And I mean everything. So much food, so much of... the other. I work hard. It ain’t all glamour. It’s worse in the summer.  It all gotta be carried away.

Don’t like to do that in front of Irene. She’s a lady. And it would never do to spoil her appetite.

The little guy’s wife‘s a real lady too. Was a school teacher before, and a damn good one by all accounts. Teaching well-heeled little New Englanders, about as far as you can get from the poor little orphans at St. Charles Borromeo where they got closer to the Baby Jesus by fasting and prayer. The nuns made sure some of those little orphan girls fasted so hard they got all the way up to Jesus and never came back. Not Irene though, she got herself away and never went hungry again.

‘Course Miss Lavinia’s got the silver carriage now and the ermine capes and the Tiffany jewellery but she could get a class of kids twice her size to hush down right away real nice. No arguing, no back chat. She had that authority. You see it wanting to come out when folks pet and pinch and tickle her but she holds it back like a pro otherwise whoops! there goes the box at the opera and the silk frocks by Madame Demorest.

Canvas down and we need a fast change while they can’t see us. Not that anything’s that fast in this tiny sideshow tent but we’re practiced. I button up quick where Irene can’t reach and clean and powder her skin folds so she doesn’t get sores. We mix a little glitter in with the skin powder so Irene sparkles in the light.

Here we go, they’re talking her up now. Time for the big lady to head over to the big top. It takes a boxcar to lug her and four men to hug her! That’s what they say. But we know it only takes one. That’s me, the Fat Lady’s husband.