My beard has grown attached to me...
'Nay, faith, let me not play a woman; I have a
beard coming.'
– FLUTE, (1.2.307) A Midsummer Night’s Dream
“The original
American Pallas Athena, wonder at her visible wisdom and masculinity! Step this
way ladies and gentlemen, the great Pallas Athena this way!” Francis could hear
Johnnie trying to attract the punters outside the display tent. Bless him, it
was a tough job and it was a miserable night. The rain splattered wetly against
the heavy canvas, and the wind crept in to set the candlelight flickering. It
wasn’t the weather that kept them away though. It just wasn’t the same anymore.
The freak shows had lost their shine, become tarnished by their familiarity and
the dawning realisation that its inhabitants were genuinely human. She’d only
been with the Biggins & Biggins Company for a few months, she’d thought it
would be her big break, but even in that time she’d noticed the decline in
visitors. It worried her; there wasn’t much call for her kind around.
Francis Amelia Walker was a bearded lady
and used to be one of the strongest draws for travelling shows across the
Eastern seaboard. But not now. Not even Job and Daniel, the identical brothers
joined at the hip, were enough to pull people inside the dank ring of tents that
they’d pitch sporadically on the outskirts of towns.
“The great
Pallas Athena, come and have a gander m’am, sir! Only a dollar a time…”
Francis sighed. There was something a
little sad about her job now. She used to like putting on costumes and the
theatrical makeup. She’d spend hours brushing and oiling her beard, waxing the
ends into elaborate curlews and using the hot iron to make her hair into a
frighteningly shaggy mop of auburn ringlets.
But in this moment, with a distracted, flirting couple sheltering from
the storm and only the gormless eyes of one snotty-nosed bespectacled child in
front of her, she couldn’t help feeling pathetic, and the loneliness of it made
her shiver inside the ridiculous Grecian dress. She felt the beginnings of
tiredness prickle her neck, which made her sit up that much straighter. The boy
sniffed and she started gurning at him to try and raise some kind of reaction. He
merely repositioned his glasses, wiped his nose on his sleeve, swallowed once and
then became slack-jawed and still again.
As she twisted the ends of her impressive
facial hair idly between her fingers, Francis dwelt on her predicament. Without
her livelihood she had nothing. No family, no home and nowhere near enough savings
to sit back and rest on her laurels. She could apply to be a shop girl; she was
clever enough with numbers, sailed through her arithmetic classes at school.
But they’d never hire her as she was, and she couldn’t bring herself to be
parted from her beard just yet. It wasn’t just her living, it was a part of
what made her herself, part of her identity.
Johnnie’s voice brought her back to the
present. The boy had gone, and Johnnie was trying to urge the lovebirds out
into the rain. She sighed at the way they clasped hands, the way the man sheltered
the woman under his jacket, the adoring look in her eye. Johnnie lolled towards
her, the lanky frame making his movement awkward, making the too-short sleeves
of his jacket noticeable. Francis grinned at him. He reminded her of a brother
she once had, before the cholera epidemic hit her hometown. Johnny looked
nothing like family though. His tall, boyish blondness earned him a few
catcalls now and then, but it was nothing compared to Francis’ visage. Her beard
spread downwards, a thick and full five inches from her chin. Above this was
pale, clear skin and an aquiline nose. Dark brows sat above dark eyes, brown
and deep and brilliant. Her form was on the broader side, but her expansive
bust was hidden beneath the beard and if she were to dress in a suit she could
pass for a portly man. The hands gave her away though. They were small and fine
boned, and soft as velvet. Johnnie grinned back at her.
“Good work tonight Frannie” Only Johnnie
called her Frannie, she didn’t seem to mind it when he said it.
“Don’t pull
my leg love, it’s not detachable like Janet’s is.” Janet was Francis’s caravan
mate. She’d lost her left leg to frostbite when she was small and had
accumulated a collection of detachable appendages. They got progressively
bigger as she’d aged and she’d display them whilst visitors listened to her
stories and examined the stump of her thigh. As customers sought out bigger
thrills, however, she’d learnt to perform acrobatics with the troupe the
younger Biggins had picked up in Russia. She claimed that seeing a cripple fly
through the air was more impressive, but she kept all her prosthetics. Some
sentimental value still clinged to the things and they were wrapped up and
stored underneath her bed.
“Well, you can’t expect too much on a night
like this one. It’s so damned bitter.” Johnnie helped Francis down off the
small stage and they stepped towards the exit. “Mr Biggins wants to see you
Frannie, he said to bring you right after closing. And not to take no for an
answer neither.”
“All right
Johnnie, I guess this was coming. Lead on Macduff.” He looked at her
quizzically, his brows drawn together. “It’s Shakespeare you cretin.”
“No it’s
not. I think you mean ‘Lay on Macduff’.”
“Oh ho, not
so soft headed after all! Better make you mine before some other gal gets to
noticing what a brainbox you are.” She took his arm and snuggled in at his
shoulder.
“You
couldn’t stand me. I snore.”
“Oh is that
right, well, the other ladies can have you then. Can’t be putting up with a
snorer, even one as clever as you.”
They
chuckled and trod boldly out into the swampy clearing. Some of the crew had put
palettes down to form a make shift walkway, but even so the bottom of Francis’s
dress was three inches soaked in mud by the time she knocked on the door of
Wallace’s caravan. The door was painted a beaming yellow that seemed to shine
in the dark, and glistened where the raindrops clung to the gloss.
“I’ll leave
you here Frannie, I’ve got a date with a bookie.”
“Alright
love, see you tomorrow all being well.”
“G’night.”
And with a swift peck on the forehead, he disappeared into the darkness beyond
the pools of lamplight. Johnnie always kissed her on the forehead. He’d
explained once that he found the scratchiness of her whiskers disconcerting,
but she liked the affectionate gesture, there was something sweet and brotherly
about it.
She knocked on the door again and, hearing
a muffled indication to enter, she stepped over the threshold into the relative
warmth of the cabin.