Clown Girl - Monica Drake [2]
I passed the camel and the needle to the dirty fist of the highest bidder, an anonymous reaching hand with a five-dollar tip crushed in it. Bingo! A five-year-old with a five-spot was rich enough for the temporary kingdom of balloon heaven on earth. I shoved the cash in the sleeve of my striped shirt, pulled out another balloon.
Once balloon tying starts you can’t get away. There’s always a river of kids. I was hired as a roving clown, but no way could I rove. Kids had me corralled, pushed to the side of the Do-Your-Own ceramics place, what used to be the Wishy Washy Laundry with all-day breakfast and off-track betting. Next door was the Pawn and Preen, our little local hockshop salon, but the P and P had been turned into a dog biscuit bakery, and for this King’s Row celebrated. Street fair vendors filled the air with the grease of Wiggly Fries. I whistled, tra la la, and tried to sidle. Kids blocked my path like little sentries, hands up, demanding balloons.
Matey and Crack were team-juggling. Crack balanced on a fire hydrant. I waved a hand. Ah, yoo-hoo! I pulled an automated plastic wolf whistle from the sleeve of my shirt and gave it a go. With the press of a button, the whistle let loose the loud up-and-down bars of a sexy call.
They looked my way. I waved again.
They stopped juggling and froze. Matey drew fast from her old Creative Incompetence routine; she turned to Crack, looked over her shoulder, past the purple stuffed parrot sewn there, and made herself comic-style confused, head tipped, one hand scratching. Crack leaned back and shook a long, striped, stocking-covered leg at me, a floozy on the fire hydrant in her version of a high-wire act. They mirrored each other’s shoulder shrugs and went back to juggling.
I was on my own. There was no room for sidling, running, sneaking off. No way out but on with the show. To tie a wise man, start with yellow, a knot at his neck like a collapsed artery, head like an engorged penis. Yellow is all about wisdom. It doesn’t say that in the Christian book, but Buddha was yellow, every good Buddhist knows it, and in the nineteenth century some big psychic seer announced that a wise person’s aura is mostly yellow too. The Hopi Indians, they believe in the wisdom of yellow clowns. I tied a skinny sheep for a greasy-haired kid and another took his spot like water rushing in.
With the tip of the toe on my oversized shoe, I pantomimed a line on the sidewalk, a place not to cross, and the kids crossed it.
Hands to my hips, balloons in a fist, I drew the line again. One kid pushed three others over the line, and they laughed. I squirted the squirting daisy pinned to my frayed lapel. A spit of water hit a child’s face. “Hey!” he said, and wiped a hand down his cheek. Another kid pushed him forward.
I squirted again, still smiling.
Those kids, the beasts, vigorous in their balloon lust, were God’s constant audience, according to Balloon Tying for Christ. But for the moment they were my audience, my bread and butter, and they grabbed my clown pants, my shoulder bag, my hot, limp balloons.
The rubber chicken fell out of my prop bag. I dove for the chicken, chased off a pudgy dumpling of a child, got up and fast pantomimed the line again.
The problem was, by my own self-imposed rules I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t yell. I don’t believe there is a good clown voice except maybe a helium breather or some loud, fake Italian braying. Any human voice spoken from a clown face ruins the illusion. My kind of clown says nothing. If we were the Marx brothers—Matey, Crack, and me, I’d be Harpo. If we were in mime gear, what I do might look like mime. The result? Kids don’t listen, but on the up-side—I’ve never been asked on so many dates in my life.