My husband Andrew and I have both been working from home the past few weeks. There have been some adjustments related to space. We’ve agreed all pooping is to take place in the bathroom farthest from where our desks are set up.
It’s funny the things you notice when you spend 24 hours a day with another person. Andrew discovered I have a “work voice.” It’s like a secret identity where my superpower is cursing.
I binge watched Tiger King last week. I’ve decided Carole Baskin did kill her husband, but it probably didn’t have anything to do with them working together. Maybe. There are no tigers at our apartment complex.
We do have squirrels. They’ve grown used to the both of us being home everyday and they march right up to the glass door on the patio. Like they’re ordering food at Jack in the Box. We’re giving them names. I call the one that knocks over my plants You Bastard.
While we’re in quarantine I’m trying new things. I’ve got a sourdough starter going. Everything I’d read made the process sound pretty easy, but I’ve found it’s like raising a third child. I have to feed it twice a day and keep it warm. I’m knitting it a scarf.
When I was seven years old, my parents lost me at the State Fair of Texas. Their last sight of me, I’d slipped into a crowd of folks shuffling into a garish tent on the midway. I imagine them watching as I stood in line, my hair done up in twin pony-tails in the style we called “dog ears” and my sweaty little fist clutching the ticket to the freak show.
You’d be hard pressed to find a decent freak show now. This was 1967, when no one thought it unusual or awkward to put people on display. We have the internet for that now, but in the 60s you had to show up in person. I didn’t know what to expect from the sideshow. A bright splash of colored posters flapped against the outside of the tent and promised many miracles. An alligator boy, a sword swallower, the pincushion man, the world’s ugliest woman—they all waited inside.
The last one on this list drew me in. I’d started wearing glasses, a homely set in thick tan plastic that magnified my eyes to the size of saucers. Coupled with the elastic waisted pants and polyester tops mom dressed me in, from a distance I resembled a short, middle-aged housewife. Add in my under-bite, square jaw, and the nose I grew into, and you’ll get the picture. I couldn’t wait to spot the world’s ugliest woman.
Once inside the tent I fidgeted through the first part of the show. The only audience member shorter than five feet, I faced a solid fence of adult backsides. I hopped up and down, afraid I’d miss the one act I’d wanted to see. I caught the flash of metal as the sword swallower flourished his props, and from the collective sighs and gasps as the other performers took the stage, I understood they had displayed wonderful things.
At last the slick sideshow barker announced we could all move into a curtained off area to the side of the stage. “Only one additional dollar, folks,” he said, “and you will witness a site certain to frighten children!” The barkers gaze skimmed the crowd, measuring the size of our wallets. “Any patrons with weak hearts might want to skip the act.” I dug the last of my allowance from my pocket.
Half the crowd jostled through the curtains to arrive in a roped off space the size of my living room at home. I pushed my way to the front, determined not to miss a bit of the show. We faced a wooden platform, taller than I was, and barely large enough to support the plain kitchen chair placed in the center. Another set of curtains covered the back of this makeshift stage.
“Presenting the world famous…”
I don’t remember the woman’s name, the color or length of her hair, I couldn’t guess her age. The curtains at the back of the platform parted to allow her passage onto the platform where she settled on the little chair and dropped the robe that covered her body.
There must be some mistake, I remember thinking. This was not the World’s Ugliest Woman. Extraordinary designs—red dragons, blue and yellow birds, circles and flowers and bright flourishes covered every inch of her. I supposed the parts hidden behind her bikini top and shorts were also inked. When she smiled the tattoos moved along her face, as though they held a separate life from hers. She perched on the chair, smiling down at us, her supplicants. I wondered what she thought of me, so plain, so ordinary, without a single story drawn upon my skin.
I didn’t notice the others slipping out from the tent as I stood there, entranced until the sideshow barker, with a gentle nudge, told us, “Thanks for visiting folks.”
Released onto the fairgrounds, I wandered out into the sunlight to find my mother and father standing on either side of a uniformed policeman.
“Where were you?” My mother snatched my arm, dragging me away from the dark shadow of the sideshow tent as though it might suck me back in.
For answer I waved behind us, as a new stream of fair goers exited from the front of the tent. This was where most of the group I’d been a part of had left the show, strolling out past my waiting parents. I’d appeared almost twenty minutes later, from the back of the tent.
“Never again!” My mother vowed.
That was my first, last, and only visit to the freak show. Years passed and they replaced the freak show with exhibits of bizarre animals. The two-headed turtle, the world’s largest snake, the sheep with six legs—none of them had the alluring charm of the World’s Ugliest Woman. There was a brief time when the midway claimed to have a girl without a body, but we all knew that floating head trick was done with mirrors.
I went to the fair this year with my husband, Andrew, on a Sunday, a day when the crowds shuffled shoulder to shoulder past booths selling sheets, candles, cookware, and beef jerky. The air smelled of cotton candy, stale beer, and manure from the livestock barn. We left the carnival music of the midway fading and ducked behind a row of food stalls. With Andrew’s help I perched atop a concrete retaining wall, above the crowd as they streamed past. I wore a t-shirt with the smiling face of Big-Tex, the 55-foot statue greeting the crowd at the fairgrounds. His cheeks stuffed with fair food matched mine as I enjoyed my meal. I nodded to those passersby who met my gaze, and waved to the onlookers, the audience at the show.
We didn’t need twenty-five pounds of sugar, but I felt a small thrill of satisfaction as I lifted the plastic bag onto my cart. The sensation could have been a stab of pain from hefting the heavy sack.
“What will we do with that much sugar?” My husband, Andrew asked.
“I’ll use it for my tea and coffee,” I answered. “It won’t spoil,” I added, after calculating how long the hoard would last if I drew out my usual ½ cup per week. I pointed to the back of the bag. “And here’s a recipe for sugar cookies.”
When I first spotted the shiny white package in the clearance aisle at Kroger, I thought it contained pool chemicals. I stepped over the bag where it lay on the floor, snugged against the lowest shelf as though someone had lost the strength to lift it back into place.
“Twenty-five pounds for $4.89! That’s…” My accountant brain calculated the price per pound—“a great bargain.”
If asked to list the features of their dream home, most people would include a lovely kitchen, a spacious backyard, a sparkling pool. My perfect house would contain lots of closets. Closets with shelves, racks, walk-in closets, storage spaces tucked under stairs, coat closets so wide and deep you’d think there’s a door to Narnia in the back. I need space for my stuff.
“It’s not hoarding if it’s something we will eventually use,” I told Andrew as I crammed twelve skeins of mulberry hued yarn into a cardboard box, to stash under the bed. Buy-one-get-one, how could you refuse?
When I was a child, my mother paid for our family groceries with food stamps. We stood in line for government commodities—five pounds of cheese, flour, canned vegetables, and sometimes sugar. Having survived the Great Depression, my folks were certain that economic ruin lay just around the corner. My dad held onto a booklet of sugar rationing stamps from World War II until the 1970s, when he passed them on to me.
I’ve inherited my parents’ insecurity, as sure as I’ve inherited my dad’s under bite and my mother’s nose. Like them, I ease my anxiety over the future with a full pantry. I consider my Costco membership as thrilling as a ticket to an amusement park. There’s a cult of clutter-clearing going around, but I wonder if any of them have experienced the life-changing magic of buying in bulk.
At home, I transferred five pounds of rice into several smaller jars, dumped a pound of beans into a pot to cook for dinner, and repurposed a plastic tub I had reserved for the ten-pound bag of cornmeal forgotten in the back of the pantry. The twenty-five pounds of sugar had landed on the clearance aisle because of a small hole in the package’s top. I discovered this at the store when I lifted the bag onto the register to scan the price tag.
“No problem,” I reassured Andrew while I swept grains of sugar off my clothes. “I’ll put it up in something when we get home.”
“The ants will love it,” he said, as he knocked sugar from the bottom of his shoes.
Safely secured in large tubs, glass jars, plastic totes, and the china bowl next to the coffee maker, I sighed with relief knowing my sugar future was secure. If we find ourselves in an apocalypse before my hoard runs out, drop by. We will have cookies.
Another version of me has dirt under her fingernails
Photo: Geri Lavrov/Photographer’s Choice/Getty Images Plus
If another me exists in another universe, I picture her clad in a red gingham dress or blue denim overalls. She toils on a farm surrounded by corn and cows. This is the life I might have lived, had I followed the advice of a career aptitude test from my high school days. My life’s work decided by the 17-year-old me, while I sat hunched in a high school auditorium coloring in ovals on a Scantron sheet.
The test, sponsored by a branch of the armed services, revealed I should go into agriculture. Growing up in town, pulling weeds in our family garden was the closest I came to life on a farm. I imagined the work would be the same, only on a much larger scale. Mechanical aptitude came in second place, suggesting the possibility of a career in helicopter repair. I am certain my doppelgänger can both plow a field and fix a broken tractor.
They taught neither farming nor tractor repair at the school I attended. Girls were shuffled into Home Economics and handed a spatula while boys were enrolled in carpentry courses and awarded a hammer. Young ladies learned to bake a cake, sew a skirt, and type a note — all the useful skills we needed in the 1970s. What would I be when I grew up? I wanted to be a doctor, an author, an actress, a missionary, a teacher, or a scientist. Not a farmer.
I fumbled along as a waitress, telemarketer, stay-at-home-mom, carpenter, bookkeeper, and accountant — as though I were working my way backward through the alphabet. The alternate-universe me took the advice from the aptitude test and ran with it. She moved to sunny California and joined a commune. Far from the capitalist demands of a 9-to-5 job, she rises with the sun and feeds the chickens. She bakes her bread, sews her clothes, and types poetry on her Royal typewriter.
This woman exists on a different plane from me, but the older I grow the closer I feel to her. As my husband and I look at houses we might buy and towns where we might retire, I judge each option on whether there might be a spot for a garden. The places earn bonus points if there’s room for a small shed where I can set up a typewriter. Multiverse me would approve, I’m certain. Like parallel lines in a drawing, we’ll meet at the vanishing point.
This story was published in response to Human Parts’ Weekend Writing Prompt, “Give us a snapshot, a moment, an experience from a life you could’ve had. What are you up to out there in the multiverse? What would Multiverse You think of the life you have right now?” To receive prompts like this one every weekend, subscribe to our newsletter by following Human Parts.
I hadn’t planned on sharing the 650 square feet of space I called home. Andrew and I had reached the point in our dating life where he kept a spare toothbrush at my place and I had cleared out a shelf in my closet for him. I could barely fit all my shoes in the closet, so this was a sacrifice on my part.
Dovey didn’t move into the apartment. She and her mate Lovey took over the hanging basket on the balcony. When they first showed up, they strutted around cooing at the potted plants. They reminded me of an old married couple scouting out real estate, sashaying around wing to wing, nodding their little bird heads and inspecting the soffit for dry rot.
“They’re looking for a spot to nest,” Andrew warned me as I commented on how sweet they were.
“If they’re moving in, I guess I should name them,” I replied.
When I first settled in my apartment, I decided against owning a dog or a cat. The complex required one fourth of my salary for a pet deposit. And the additional pet fee with each rent payment would mean I might have to give up bathing, since I wouldn’t be able to afford the water bill while paying for a pet. I didn’t plan on adding any animals to my household, but a pair of mourning doves decided my place fit them just fine.
I discovered my home had passed the mourning dove inspection and Dovey had moved in when I went to water my petunias the next day. Even standing on tiptoe I couldn’t see past the flowers blooming in the pot, but with the first stream of cold water she burst forth, scattering blooms and whistling bird curses.
She perched on the gutter above my landing to shake off the water droplets, then roosted there to fix me with the stink eye. I took this opportunity to peek in the basket. A single white egg lay cushioned in a mashed down mat of limp petunias. Two twigs tossed to the side of the egg and some dried grass blades stuck on the edge of the basket made up what passed for a nest.
When I described the nest to Andrew, he told me that doves are bad builders. Dove are the trailer trash of the feathered world, living in what amounts to a tornado-ravaged mobile home.
“They’ll set up anywhere, and patch together the bare minimum for a nest. Most of the eggs drop right out.”
I was horrified, and glad Dovey had chosen the hanging basket for a nursery. After I apologized to the petunias for sacrificing them, I stopped watering the flowers.
Mornings I eased open the back door and announced my presence before I stepped out, so as not to startle the little bird.
“Okay, it’s just me. No reason to get scared, I’m coming out now.”
Sometimes a neighbor would pass by walking their dog, and give me a curious look as I stood there, poking my head out the door and warning the plants of my approach. I must have made an even odder sight a few days later, standing on a chair on the back porch and talking baby talk to the dead, wilted flowers in the hanging basket.
“Oh, what’s you got there? Is you got a baby?”
I would lean forward, toward the basket but not too close to the edge of the railing, since I am not known for my sense of balance.
Dovey puffed up and glared at me while trying to stuff the hatched chick back under her wing. I could understand why she tried to hide him. Every parent is proud of their child, but Baby looked like he was missing feathers from his scrawny neck. I did what most people do when confronted by someone else’s homely offspring — I lied and told Dovey what a cute chick she had hatched.
The first hatchling grew up and left the nest while I was out of town on a business trip. My neighbor Lisa kept me informed by text message. “B is out of the nest?! OMG! Cute!”
I was sad to have missed this baby’s first steps until Andrew reminded me most likely Dovey would be back. She returned, even though by this time the basket was bare dirt, with brown, withered stalks dropping off the sides. Dovey felt this was adequate, without adding twigs or grass to the nest inside.
Photo by Andrew Shaw
This time there were two eggs, and I got to watch them from hatching to when they left the nest and spent three days stumbling around on my balcony like drunken sorority sisters. I read on the internet that dove fledglings “stay around hedges and bird feeders, begging for food from adults.” Sort of like human teenagers, I thought, hanging out in front of an open refrigerator and asking “What’s there to eat in here?”
After the second set of chicks moved on, I took down the hanging basket. I thought I had had enough of running a rookery, but Dovey had other plans. She and Lovey returned and placed a few dried blades of grass on top of an empty ceramic planter balanced at the top of a rickety wooden shelf on the corner of my porch and called it their new home.
“You will need to put that basket back up,” Andrew said.
Since I had already thrown away the old pot, there was only one thing to do. I went shopping, and returned with one of those coconut husk liners and an assortment of bright orange, artificial hibiscus flowers. Andrew and I lined the new basket with trimmings from the coconut fibers, carefully arranged the large fake flowers, and transferred the new nest to the balcony. This arrangement suited the happy couple, and soon after Dovey was raising another pair of chicks in the tropical atmosphere of the new pot.
Dovey left now and then, but she always came back to my balcony. She appeared to be satisfied sharing my porch. I was content too, living in a place where the fake flowers bloomed and I had room for most of my shoes, even if I had to share my closet space. At the end of summer Dovey took off for vacation. While she was gone, I planted a tiny American flag in the basket and added a small wooden plaque to welcome her return — one that read, “Home Sweet Home.”
Who comes up with those password security questions? I recently had to update the ones on my bank account, and I had a devil of a time finding five that I knew the answer to. Really, questions about the middle name of my oldest female cousin on my father’s side? Does anyone ever answer that question? (Not counting people whose hobbies include genealogy; or the members of the Church of Latter Day Saints).
The original questions were bad enough; I could never answer the one about my favorite ice cream because there wasn’t enough room to write “Whatever is in the freezer right now.”
I can’t possibly pick a favorite color. Won’t the other colors feel left out? Does anyone ever pick grey?
I have trouble remembering where I was last week, let alone where I spent New Year’s Eve 1999. Just because Prince wrote a song about it doesn’t necessarily mean most of us will remember what we were doing that evening, unless you were arrested and spent the night in jail.
And the question about my first prom date? What if I didn’t ever go to prom? I never expected my financial institution to bring up unpleasant memories of teenage angst. These questions seem to belong to some bizarre trivia challenge designed to point out my failings in personal relationships.
If you really are bent on selecting questions that would be difficult for a hacker to guess the answers, I would like to suggest including the following five questions:
1. What is your favorite spider?
2. If you were in a Starbucks and they were out of the Venti Caramel Macchiato with soy milk, what would you order instead?
3. If you were invisible, where would you be most likely to walk around naked?
4. Which zoo animal can you most closely impersonate? (Do not pick lion, anyone can produce a passable “Roar!”).
5. What color underwear were you wearing on Super Bowl Sunday, 2001?
Feel free to leave your answers in the comments. By the way, my favorite spider is the Bird Dropping Spider (Celaenia excavata).
Photo by the Author
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