Baton
Marjorie Manwaring

Flo—just turned seven—held up the sequined majorette outfit, tasseled baton, told her parents they'd have no regrets. Every day she practiced, feeling her talent glisten like a sunlit wishing pond, that sharp sparkle of carp and nickels. Summer of her twelfth year adolescence blessed her: abundant breasts. Hair dark and thick. But follicles sent out runners like blackberry—sprouting from chest, stomach, chin. Upper-lip. No call-backs from the drill team that fall. But when Uncle Sid, a carnival man, lost his honeymooning sword swallowers to divorce, things changed for Flo, starting with her name—Sid suggesting Esau’s Sister, Flo's mom forbidding it on grounds of sacrilege. She settled on Monkey Girl, wore a long brown braid down her back doubling as a tail. Minnie the Tarot Reader groomed her daily, shampooing and braiding, gently untangling sideburns and beard with a comb tiny as the one used by the Living Doll. A giant banner wooed sugar-dizzy crowds: "For Just A Nickel See The World’s Wild, Weird, Wonderful." Flo danced solo in a pink spangled leotard—proudly bending and arching her bristly back. Twirled her glittered baton, ate a lot of bananas. Only Fish Boy's lines were longer, the barker failing to disclose in his spiel that Fish was a mere half-inch of protoplasm pickled in a jar. Questioned in old age—how it felt to be exploited, a spectacle, Flo said only that her sister Sal was a beauty, a belle, not one misplaced hair, told how Sal cinched herself into girdle, high heels, waited tables at the Lodge, how Daddy's friends, the minister, the grammar-school principal, tipped well with nickels and dimes, her soft girl-ass bruised some nights from all the pinching.

© 2006 Marjorie Manwaring