One night the door to my bedroom opened. There was my father. He’d been at a tavern, and he carried the smell of rum, which reminded me of formaldehyde. It was not a pleasant odor, and afterward I could never drink rum, even when it was disguised as buttered toddy in the holiday season. I had been reading by candlelight, and I quickly hid the volume under my quilt when I heard his footfall upon the stairs. I couldn’t trick my father however. He reached beneath the bedcovers and brought forth the book. Fortunately it wasn’t Poe or Bront? but the tragedies of Shakespeare, great literature of which my father approved. That is not to say he wasn’t angry with me. He told me he had been walking down the street and had seen a light in my room. He’d run the rest of the way. He quickly snuffed out the flame of the candle between his fingers. When he told me I must never burn a candle while in bed, I thought and hoped his speed in coming home was because he feared for my safety. But that wasn’t his worry. He scolded me terribly, telling me I would burn down the museum if I weren’t careful. I could destroy everything just by being a selfish, thoughtless girl. I needed to pull my weight, to work harder, otherwise the museum would not survive the onslaught of newer, more modern entertainments. He took my wrists in his hands as he berated me. I couldn’t help but think of the trick for which he was most famous. In my thoughts I gave thanks to Maureen for her warning to stay at home. I was grateful it was not a bundle of clothes my father had discovered in my bed. As it was, there were bruises on my wrists the next morning.
I stopped going to Dreamland. It was the end of the season anyway, and the crowds at the hotels and the parks were beginning to disappear, leaving behind the local residents to get through the dreary autumn and the winter, isolated from the rest of the world. But at night I still dreamed I was walking along Surf Avenue. I walked through the gate of that wondrous park my father feared would make us poor, and once I did the whole world was before me, strung with a thousand lights. In my dreams I took off my black shawl and my gloves. I stood in the center of the ballroom and listened to music. There was no one to tell me everything I did was wrong. When I woke from these dreams I lay in bed in the dark. I told myself only foolish girls cried. Sometimes I crept downstairs, hoping to catch the night-blooming cactus in our parlor in flower. I thought I would then believe in miracles and find some sort of faith. I sat in the dark in an overstuffed chair, but nothing marvelous happened. There was nothing but sticks before me.
I had already begun to doubt the truth of my father’s tales.
OUR FORTUNES continued to fade. Last summer was the worst any of us could remember. Some days we had only eight or ten customers, some days no one appeared at the museum. My father had not yet come up with his plan for a monster that would galvanize New York, but he was planning all the same. That fall was cold and dark. The leaves in November clung to the trees, then shivered into the streets. One evening after supper, after Maureen had left for the day, everything changed. Perhaps I lost my faith that night. Certainly I lost my innocence. The Professor told me to bathe, not in the tub upstairs where I usually took my baths, but in my tank.
We were forced to close two weeks early, for we couldn’t afford to pay the living wonders. They needed to retreat to their off-season lives. Some would travel with circuses in Florida, others moved in with family members in Queens County or New Jersey, some remained in their cramped quarters in Coney Island, where they did their best to survive the winter. Once the season was officially over and our windows were shuttered, we only went past the velvet curtains that divided our home from the museum in order to feed the animals and birds in their cages. At the time we had a small baby goat with two faces that was billed as the Devil’s Pet. We kept him outside tied with a rope to the pear tree until there was ice on his hooves. Then we brought him inside, tied to the kitchen sink during the day, in the cellar in the evenings. But he lasted only a few weeks, and the liveryman buried him out in the yard.
My father’s demand on this evening was so strange that I faced him, and, with all the courage I had, I asked why he wanted me to go to my tank. He ignored me and told me to hurry. As always, I did as he requested. That is not to say I did not hesitate. When the museum was closed to the public, there was an eerie cast to the rooms. I made my way through the curtains into the chilly exhibition hall. The tank where I was displayed had been uncovered, and in the gloom the water appeared murky. When my father came to check on me, I was standing in my long muslin undergarments, shivering, so puzzled by his request I had not yet obeyed. I could hear the tortoise slowly pacing in its pen, as well as the chatter of parrots and cooing doves. There was the soft fluttering sound of the wings of the many tropical birds we kept. Some would die of the cold in the winter months, and the most delicate ones would be taken into the parlor, their cages set near the fireplace so that they might manage to survive. Maureen always complained there were too many feathers to sweep up, but when no one was looking she fed the birds nuts and seeds that she bought at the market with her own shopping money.
My father told me I must quickly remove every stitch and get into the tank. I noticed he had recently poured a few thimbles of India ink into the water so that it might look fresh, and that my breathing tube, usually packed in cotton batting for the winter, had been reinserted.
“Do you understand all we do is theater?” he said. “What is real to our audience is mere show for us, and what is done here is no different than what actors do upon a stage. Remember that tonight.”
When he left the room, I did as I was told, dropping into the water.
I had an inkling that the events about to unfold would change my current outlook and my life, and yet I would have to pretend as if they had never happened. I had a fleeting thought that because of our failing finances my father might wish to drown me and be rid of me. As it turned out, that was not the case.
When my father returned he had three gentlemen with him, although gentlemen was clearly not the correct term. These three wore bowler hats and black coats, and one of them carried a cane. I dove to the bottom of the tank and wrapped my arms around myself to hide my nakedness. I was so mortified I thought I might pass out. I nearly forgot to take a gulp of air from the breathing tube and was close to fainting, but my father tapped on the glass and gestured for me to swim and pose. I told myself I was in a dream, and the men in the room were figments of my imagination. They began to cheer when I moved through the water, exposing myself, and soon enough they grew rowdy. I heard the echo of their delight, and I could see one of them make a rude motion to me. The men were drinking, and my father pulled up chairs so they could make themselves comfortable during their viewing. They were so close to the glass I imagined I could feel the heat of their cravings. I hadn’t known it was possible to cry while underwater, but it was. Still, it was a dream. The men in the room weren’t real to me.
When they had gone, my father rapped again on the glass to indicate that he was leaving the room as well. It was a signal that I would now have privacy so that I might exit the tank and cover myself once more. After such a violation, I did not know how to proceed with my modest life. I thought for a moment of not rising to the surface. It occurred to me that it might be best to leave my existence, and all the woes to come. But I learned it was not so easy to drown oneself. My spirit revealed its desire to live. I came up gasping, wanting air. I climbed out of the tank, my breathing ragged. I was still sopping as I pulled on my undergarments. I felt so alone that I went to the tortoise’s enclosure and stepped over the low wall to sit in the sand beside my old friend. I was no different than this beast, a captive. I wondered if on cold nights in Brooklyn the tortoise wept and hungered for another world, if it didn’t view its long life as a curse.
After the events of that night, I did not dare to look for the keys to my father’s workroom again. I was afraid to know any more of his past or his intentions for the future. At every turn, I held my breath. I knew I was on a precipice, and sooner or later I would have to make a leap. I did not tell Maureen about the nights when the Professor brought in men, and I certainly never confided any of the disgusting things they did while they watched me, nor did I disclose that several of them offered my father cash for me. In the echo of the water I had overheard nasty snippets of conversation, and I was aware of what they wished to do to me, how they would like to take me by force if need be, dragging me onto the couch my father had recently brought in so that they might be even more comfortable during their viewing.
None of what they did or said mattered; their boasts and vile notions turned to air, for these men did not exist. I always entered a dream when I was submerged in the tank. My dream was blue and I was alone in it. Still I did as my father said on those nights. When he left me a list of how he wished me to behave underwater, touching myself so that the men might become even more excited, acting in a variety of coarse, immodest ways, I did this as well. I continued to follow his directions.
Soon after, he hatched his new plan and I began to swim in the Hudson. It was there that I had the freedom to be truly alone. I fell in love with the Hudson; because of the nights I swam there, I no longer was forced to perform, and so I began to think of the river as my savior. I longed for it, as I soon longed for the man I had spied in the woods. I thought of him as a sort of savior as well, someone to whom I might reveal my truest self. I had felt the first pangs of love, and because of this I found my faith in the world, despite my current situation.
This changed after my last swim in the Hudson. The river that had always offered me solace had brought me grief in the form of the drowned girl. As we traveled back across the bridge to the museum, I thought again of the madwoman in the attic in Jane Eyre. The imprisoned Mrs. Rochester had burned to death before she could manage to flee. Wait too long, and you might be tethered forever, leaping when it was too late. On the night we returned to Brooklyn with the body of the young woman in the carriage, I was told to go directly to my room, and I did so. I looked out the window into the yard. I was shivering in my sodden clothes, my damp hair hanging down my back. But inside, my blood felt hot. I was burning up. It wasn’t fever but a slow-burning hatred. I saw my father and the liveryman carry the body down the cellar steps. In the morning the floor would still be wet with pools of dank river water that I would mop up without a word of complaint. All the same, on that night I was able to see the truth about my future and my fate.
I was born to disobey him.