Spring 1928
Outside Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin
Isabelle said you could be afraid of anything you wanted to, except the horses. “Imagine you’re a tiny kitten, held in the palm of their hands. You have to trust them that much. And they have to trust you that much, too.” Cecily didn’t point out that horses didn’t have hands; she just agreed. That was what she did, whenever Isabelle said anything at all.
Isabelle also said that the winter always seemed to last forever, but that this one might not last long enough. Cecily—whom Isabelle always called “Jacqueline”—didn’t think that made any sense, but she accepted it as true, nonetheless. She was not yet eight years old.
They were spending the winter outside of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin, at the Sax & Tebow winter quarters, which was really a farm owned by Mr. Sax. Cecily had never even met Mr. Sax until the circus train arrived at Sturgeon Bay in November after the season, because Mr. Sax, besides being part-owner, was also the circus’s advance man. All season long, he traveled one stop ahead of the show, making sure that the posters which had been plastered all over every town by the publicity men (who traveled two weeks ahead of him) still dominated every wall and billboard; confirming food and hay and ice deliveries for performance day; and laying out the route from the trainyard to the site he’d selected for the tents, plus the parade route, too, with his trademark red arrows.
On the farm were four enormous barns with stone foundations to house the animals, two big bunkhouses—one for women and one for men—a cookhouse with a dining room, and a huge equipment shed. Another building provided tiny apartments for married couples, including Janey and her aerialist, Ralph Robinson; the Bearded Lady, Lorraine LaPointe, and Little Red; the Fat Lady, Ursula Eve, and the lion tamer, Harrison West; the snake charmer, Madame Genevieve, and Vince, the clown who trained the seal; plus, the tiger tamer, Mavis, and her clown, Ron.
An uninsulated plank building approximated the Big Top. It was here that the Robinsons practiced their aerial routines, and Catherine LeGrande and her husband, Buck, who rented a house in town and came to the farm only to rehearse, practiced on the trapeze. Here, too, Mavis worked with her tigers, Harrison West with his lion, Vince with his seal, Geoffrey Jones with the camels, Paul Giacometti with the seven black liberty horses, and Isabelle with Wyatt, Doc, and Virgil. (The Arabian riders had scattered for the winter, and those horses, plus the gray and black Percheron teams, were allowed a winter of relaxation, with only a skeleton crew to care for them.)
Cecily would’ve liked to stay with Isabelle in the bunkhouse and take meals in the cookhouse with her and the other performers, too. Instead, she was assigned to stay in the white frame house with Mr. Sax and his family, which included a girl, Nonie, who, like Cecily, was seven, and a boy, Ted, who was nine. She and Nonie had become fast friends—Mrs. Sax was forever yelling up the stairs at them to quit giggling and go to sleep—and together the three children walked to school one mile each morning and one mile back in the afternoon, Ted tossing sticks and snowballs and making up stories about wolves while Nonie steadfastly ignored him and Cecily repeated that she wasn’t afraid. Ted boasted he was going to be a ringmaster like Tebow, once he got old enough—“Because we own the circus, see, and I can do what I want”—and Nonie was secretly practicing on the trapeze, though her mother, who, as far as Cecily could tell, hated every last thing about the circus, would’ve killed her, if she’d found out.
Cecily loved school. There were eighteen kids in six grades in one room. The teacher, Miss Johnson, was harried but kind, and there were shelves and shelves of books to read whenever Cecily completed her assignments. She and Nonie together had made up the entire second-grade class until Miss Johnson promoted Cecily to third grade, then to the fourth, where Cecily and Ted made up the entire class. Cecily still finished her work long before Ted did, so she continued to get in plenty of her own reading.
Even more than she loved school, though, Cecily loved the afternoons, when she would find Isabelle on the farmyard and they would train together for their act. Isabelle said that Tebow, who was off traveling to set up next year’s schedule, had written that they should plan to have Cecily standing on Isabelle’s shoulders as Wyatt cantered them both around the ring.
Before they could so much as try that, Isabelle said, Cecily had a lot to learn.
At first, Isabelle had her practice on a balance beam. Within days, she was doing front flips off the end, like she’d modeled for Tebow at the Home. Next, she had to try to vault onto a barrel that was supposed to approximate a horse’s back. She quickly got strong enough to do it, if the barrel was low enough. Once the barrel was placed at the height of the Percherons’ backs, though, she failed and fell again and again, no matter how many times Isabelle demonstrated. Cecily was just too small. And, if she couldn’t vault onto a stationary barrel, she was not going to be able to vault onto Wyatt’s back when he was cantering around the ring.
And, if she couldn’t do that, riding on Isabelle’s shoulders was decidedly out.
Nonie said Cecily shouldn’t worry that she was going to be exchanged for another orphan girl, but Cecily guessed Nonie had never been bought or sold, either.
And then, a beautiful white pony was delivered to the barn.
“His name is Prince,” Isabelle said. “Tebow bought him for you, and he wants you two doing your own act by the time we set out in May.”
“He’s mine?”
Isabelle grinned and ruffled Cecily’s hair. “Consider him your Christmas gift.”
Prince was friendly, easygoing, and, with Isabelle’s help, easy to train. Cecily got up before sunrise every icy morning to feed and water him and muck out his stall, snow crunching under her feet as she walked from house to barn. He was always awake, waiting for her. She went straight to him after school, too.
She learned from Isabelle the proper way to clean his hooves, curry his coat, comb his mane and tail, check and clean his eyes and ears and nose and dock area. She learned to halter him and lead him at a walk around the frozen yard.
Then, she learned to ride him without a saddle, without Isabelle even leading him. Round and round the ring they went, at a steady pace Isabelle had determined and which she timed with a small, strange device she called a metronome. If Cecily ever got excited and urged the pony faster, Isabelle would shout to slow down. They rode so long at this pace that Cecily felt it in her dreams, the rocking of her body in tandem with Prince’s, the coarseness of his mane in her hands. Sometimes, overcome with love, she would lean in, hugging his neck, and he would toss his head and puff air out his nose, which she thought was his way of saying he loved her, too.
She could easily vault onto the barrel when it was positioned at the height of Prince’s back—Isabelle still made her practice over and over—and soon she could do a front flip straight from standing on the balance beam. Isabelle showed her, also, how to hang off the side of the beam, using just one arm, the other extended for show. Cecily wasn’t quite strong enough to hold the position, but she was working up to it. Isabelle hung from rings and pulled herself up; she hung by her legs and sat up into the air, the way the aerialists did. Cecily tried to do everything Isabelle did. Most of it, she couldn’t, but she knew she was getting stronger.
Isabelle brought her to the costume designer, Margie, whose sewing room, piled high with costumes under construction and repair, was at one end of the women’s bunkhouse. Margie measured Cecily and made notes in pencil in a tiny notebook while Isabelle talked. “Blue is her color. Look at those eyes. Sapphire. A lot of swing in the skirt. Plus, white trim and sequins. A tiara with fake sapphires. And a blue headdress for Prince to match.”
Cecily grinned. She and Prince were going to look like a million bucks, and she told him so that night while she mucked out his stall. He stomped a foot and nodded; she was sure he understood. She just had to learn the tricks in time.
That night, Nonie whispered to Cecily in bed, “I wish I was a star like you.”
Mrs. Sax appeared in the doorway. “Girls? Are you sleeping?”
“Yes, Mommy,” Nonie said, feigning a yawn and snuggling deeper into the pillow.
Cecily’s thrill at imagining how she’d look on Prince’s back in her new blue costume cracked like an egg. She wished she could be a normal girl, with a mother who cared if she was sleeping.
The circus had been through Iowa last fall, but Madeline hadn’t come.
“Now!” Isabelle said, holding Prince by the halter, and Cecily ran, focusing on his back, where she’d put her hands to vault up—
She crashed into him, fell back, and landed in the dirt. Prince shook his mane. He was used to standing still. Isabelle had had Cecily standing on his back for half an hour at a time, not letting either of them move. After days of this, she’d begun leading him around the ring at a slow walk as Cecily stood on him, balancing, wearing a safety harness that was suspended from the ceiling. Now out the big open door was the drip, drip, drip of melting snow, the sun at a late-afternoon angle. It was March; they had only two months to get ready for Cecily’s first show.
Isabelle fed Prince a carrot. “Try again,” she said.
Isabelle said that the premier bareback rider May Wirth didn’t use a blanket on her horse’s back, nor any handles to grab on to, so neither did Isabelle, and neither would Jacqueline DuMonde.
Cecily dreamed it, day and night: the feel of Prince’s rippling muscles and coarse hair beneath her feet; the rhythm of the canter; circling her arms above her head, the way Isabelle had shown her. The front flip from standing, as Prince circled the ring.
She dreamed it, but she couldn’t actually do any of it. Not yet.
She slid her Saint Jude card under her pillow and held it secretly in her hand while she slept. Make me as good as Isabelle, please, she prayed, or I don’t know if they’ll keep me.
“I don’t like it, I’m telling you,” Mrs. Sax told Isabelle. The sun was setting on another melty-muddy, late-March day, and she’d appeared in the doorway of the practice barn and called them over. She’d never come out to the circus yard before, that Cecily had seen, and she seemed to have come in a hurry, because she wasn’t even wearing a sweater over her thin cotton dress. “I don’t like it one bit. This girl is smart. And so young. And now I get a letter from Miss Johnson that you’re pulling her out of school to make sure her act is ready in time?”
No more school? Cecily’s stomach lurched. She looked to Isabelle to gauge how she should react, but Isabelle was just coolly lighting a cigarette.
“For God’s sake, doesn’t this circus have enough acts?” Mrs. Sax said. “Can’t she be added later in the season?”
Isabelle blew out smoke. “All due respect, Mary, take it up with your husband and Tebow. They think she’ll be a huge draw. Nobody’s got a kid this young who can do stuff like this, not even Ringling.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Mrs. Sax crouched in front of Cecily, the hem of her skirt brushing the mud, and grabbed Cecily’s arms. “Cecily, what do you want? I thought you loved school!”
Cecily had no idea if Mrs. Sax knew about the money that Tebow had paid Mrs. H. for her. Would Mrs. Sax understand that Cecily felt obligated to prove she was worth it? That she still worried about getting left on the side of some railroad track in some place she’d never heard of?
She felt Prince coming up behind her. His breath was warm on her neck, like he knew she needed soothing.
“Mary, we both know it’s not up to her,” Isabelle said quietly, and Mrs. Sax stood and brushed off her skirt.
“Well. You can better believe I’m going to take this up with my husband,” she said. Then, she frowned at Cecily like she was mad at her, too. “Supper is in one hour. Don’t be late.” She shot an extra-angry glare at Isabelle. “And, no, this child is not coming back out after supper. She needs to get some sleep.”
“She needs to take care of her pony.”
“That can be done before supper,” Mrs. Sax said, and she turned and marched back toward the house.
Isabelle sighed and slumped back against the barn, smoking. Cecily stroked Prince’s nose, which made her feel better, though she hated to be the cause of so much discord. But she felt her suspicions confirmed: that it was only Mrs. Sax who insisted Cecily live in the house and go to school; that, otherwise, she’d have been thrown in with the grown-up performers to spend all day training, with no objection from anyone. She didn’t know what to think about that.
“You know, you’re lucky, kid, to have her in your corner.” Isabelle blew out smoke and pulled her sweater tighter. She dropped her cigarette into the mud and ground it out with her shoe. “All right, back to work.”
After Cecily stopped going to school, her tenure in the house didn’t last much longer. Mrs. Sax said that, if she was going to be out so late with Isabelle every night, she’d better stay in the bunkhouse. Nonie was losing sleep, she said.
There were pros and cons to all this, as far as Cecily was concerned.
She had lost Nonie and Mrs. Sax. But now she got to watch Isabelle rehearse in the mornings. Isabelle would line the horses up outside the barn, then vault easily onto Wyatt’s back. At a slight click from her, they would thunder into the practice ring, Doc, Virgil, then Wyatt with Isabelle, her arms high, smiling like there was a whole crowd there, and not just Cecily, cheering.
Cecily never tired of seeing Isabelle’s incredible flips and maneuvers, nor of being the small audience for other acts. She especially loved watching Mavis—who looked like an average woman these days, wearing pants and a heavy coat rather than the spectacle of her bright pink dress—put the tigers through their paces, the power of their limbs as they climbed ladders and leapt through hoops.
Another pro: nobody ever made her go to bed at night. After dark, if Cecily wasn’t feeding popcorn to the monkey or sardines to the seal, she was watching Don and Vince and the other clowns walk on stilts or juggle, or listening to the grown-up talk and laughter around the bonfire. The World’s Tallest Man, Henry Thompson, would fold himself into a too-small chair and play harmonica. Little Red would dance with his wife, the Bearded Lady Lorraine. Janey’s husband, Ralph Robinson, teased Isabelle that she had a shadow, because Cecily barely made a sound, and, when Isabelle would yawn and stretch and say she was going in to bed, Cecily would just get up and follow. Isabelle had fixed it so that Cecily had the cot next to hers; she’d even had a man in the shop burn a wooden sign to read jacqueline dumonde, and hung it above the head of the cot, so it looked permanent. “Hey, she’s my kid sister, what do you expect?” Isabelle would say, grinning and ruffling Cecily’s hair. And Cecily felt the hum of a pleasure she’d never known.
The aches and bruises she had from falling would fade with time, Isabelle told her.
Then, Tebow came for a visit, and he wanted to see her act.
She’d put on her new blue costume, including the sparkling “sapphire” tiara, and, in the cool spring air, she was shivering, trembling with nerves. “Don’t worry, kid,” Isabelle said, stroking Prince’s nose as they stood outside the barn. “Just do what you do.”
So, Cecily vaulted onto Prince’s back. He shifted his weight slightly as she gained her balance, and she was able to shift with him.
“Here we go,” Isabelle said. Cecily circled her arms above her head and smiled the way she’d seen Isabelle do, and Isabelle led Prince over to the door. When Isabelle clicked, Prince trotted into the barn, into the ring, and Cecily stood smiling on his back as he ran round and round at the practiced pace, Cecily feeling his muscles as if they were an extension of her own, the way Isabelle had said to do. This was her first time working without the safety harness.
Tebow stood with his hands clasped in front of him, and, from what she could tell out the corner of her eye, was not as pleased with her as he once had been.
She geared up her mind and body for the front flip, letting Prince’s steady movement ripple through her. She counted for herself: One, two, three—
She didn’t do it.
All right, then.
One, two, three—
She flipped—landed on Prince’s back—and kept her balance! She raised her arms, triumphant, but Tebow did not look pleased.
She heard him and Isabelle arguing afterward. She’d made her exit, leapt down from Prince, and led the pony back around to just outside the door, so she could listen. “That’s it?” Tebow said.
“She’s a little kid! She’s doing amazing!”
“In months, this is all you’ve managed to teach her? She needs to be spectacular!”
“She is.”
“Not nearly enough. Not nearly enough.”
Cecily didn’t make a sound. She stroked Prince’s nose and leaned on him, knowing her heart would break if she had to leave him and Isabelle.
But there was no rule against her heart being broken. She knew that, too, from experience.
That night, Isabelle stayed out at the bonfire longer than she ever had. Tebow had left before supper, headed for Milwaukee, and, all night, Isabelle had been staring into the flames, looking so melancholy that Cecily had forgotten her own upset and only wished for Isabelle to talk and laugh as usual. Tonight, the older girl hardly glanced up, even as her friends began, one by one, to say good night.
Mavis and Ron were the last to go in. “You all right, Belle?” Mavis said. “You’ll put the fire out?”
“Yes, fine,” Isabelle said. Mavis and Ron exchanged looks, then walked off in the direction of their apartment.
Cecily watched the dancing flames, wishing she had done a better job today. She had done the best she could, but it wasn’t enough, and she finally saw what Isabelle had meant when she’d said the winter might not be long enough. Cecily thought of her little suitcase, stowed under her cot. Would she be packing it soon? She remembered the prayer card, which she’d replaced inside the suitcase’s pocket when she’d moved to the bunkhouse. Please, she prayed.
“Can you keep a secret, kid?” Isabelle said.
Cecily looked up. “Yes!”
“My name’s Betsy Cahill,” Isabelle all but whispered. “I’m from Providence, Rhode Island. Nobody else knows, so keep it quiet, all right? Don’t ever call me by that name.”
Cecily nodded quickly. “Where’s Rhode Island? Did you have to take a boat to leave it?”
Isabelle smiled, shook her head, and put a finger to her lips. “It’s way out east, and it’s a state, not a real island. We’ll get there someday, probably.”
An island that was not an island didn’t make sense, but Cecily believed Isabelle, anyway. “Why did you leave?”
Isabelle’s lips pursed. “My mother died when I was eleven, and, when I was twelve, my father married a woman I couldn’t stand, and who couldn’t stand me. I didn’t last a year in the same house with her. When the circus came to town, I stowed away on the train, and I didn’t come out for three days. When I finally did, we were in Cleveland, and Tebow asked me what I could do. I said I was good with horses. Which was an utter lie. I’d ridden one once, at the home of a friend of my father’s.”
This was a lot to take in, but Cecily had picked up especially on the catch on the last word. “I never knew my father at all,” she ventured. “What was yours like?”
Isabelle grabbed a stick and poked the dying fire, then dropped the stick in and let it burn. “He kept pennies in his pocket and would pretend to pull them out from behind my ear. Before my mother died. Then, afterward, he grew old overnight. I almost didn’t recognize him, you know? It was as if he was driving a car and decided to give up on steering.” She gave a short laugh. “And then the car went into a fast river and bobbed away on down it. The woman he married was only twenty-two. I knew she was just after his money. She didn’t even bother to deny it to me. She was about to have a baby when I left. I guess she thought that would make her seem serious.”
Cecily couldn’t help feeling a bit wounded at that news. “You might have a real sister, then.”
Isabelle waved that off. “Not really. Anyway, my father was hoping for a son and heir. He owns a mill that produces worsted wool. ‘Cahill Woolen Mill.’ Very high-quality stuff. For suits and things, you know? I guess he thought a baby boy would solve all his problems. William, Junior, I suppose.” She pulled out her cigarettes and lit one. “I’ve never written to him once to tell him I’m alive. I think he would be fifty years old now.”
Fifty years old! Near death! “Well, you should write to him right now! Don’t you know how lucky you are? To have a father?”
Isabelle’s eyes narrowed. She smoked, then shrugged. “He knew it was a choice between her and me, and he chose her.” She brushed invisible dust off her pant leg. “Anyway, there was a rider here with the circus called Suzanne, and she taught me everything she knew, like I’m doing now with you. And then Suzanne left the show to get married.” She smoked again. Cecily didn’t know what to say. Would Isabelle leave her someday? To get married?
Then Isabelle smiled. “So, kid, you’re the only family I’ve got. Don’t you forget it.”
“Oh, Isabelle!” Cecily had had no idea: Isabelle really needed her, just as much as Cecily needed Isabelle! “I’ll learn any new tricks you show me, I swear I will, don’t worry!”
Isabelle reached over and patted her hand. “It’s a rough road, kid, this life, but you and me are going to be all right, aren’t we? Sisters.”
“Yes!” Cecily said, and she meant it as a promise, and she’d go over Niagara Falls in a barrel before she broke it. She hadn’t kept her oath to Flip and Dolores, but that hadn’t been her fault, exactly—they’d been just kids, without any choice in things. Now she was grown up, almost eight—and she was Isabelle’s sister.