yourself, dear girl. We shall not disturb you any more today.”
The two women took the manuscript pages I had finished typewriting into the kitchen, where I could hear Elizabeth reading them over slowly and articulately to Susan, who, now and then, would disagree with a word or phrase. They bickered until they remembered themselves—or rather, they remembered the cause that was their common ground and source of amity. Then they would eat a piece of strudel.
Not caring for accounts of other people’s lives unless they’re made up by a wizard like Mr. James, I found the ladies’ History dull. Having fixed my gaze on the machine for nearly three hours, my eyes were tired. I closed them and saw the keys in the darkness behind the curtains of the lids, arranged like a constellation whose stars had assembled into nothing legible.
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 - ,
Q W E . T Y I U O P
Z S D F G H J K L M
A X & C V B N ? ; R
I went out for some air. Underneath its freshness, I caught the unsavory odor of the tidal strait released by the unseasonable heat of a September afternoon. I walked along Forty-second Street, my thoughts not yet my own after toiling at the two women’s prose, until I found myself beneath towering plane trees in Bryant Park, not far from the site of the Colored Orphan Asylum, which immigrant and nativist hooligans had burned to cinders during the draft riots twenty years before. I chose an ornamental iron bench placed in the shadow cast by the Sixth Avenue elevated railway. The person sitting opposite, half-hidden in the gloom, whom I had taken for a girl of six or seven, turned out to be—on close inspection—a little person unkindly called a “midget.”
I observed her discreetly, with sidelong glances, to satisfy my curiosity without causing offense. She was perfectly formed. Her round face was pretty, her dark hair thick and done à la mode. When she turned her head toward the chittering of a squirrel, her movements impressed me with their grace and elegance. Had she been of ordinary height, she would have been the object of a young man’s greedy eyes. Anger arose in me at God or—if He was disinterested, as Deists claim—at the mill of destiny, which will grind human beings into dust. By now, my furtive glances had settled into a stare.
“I’ve been admiring your hat,” she called from across the walk that separated us. Later, I would admire the tact with which she had spared me embarrassment by making herself out to be the one who had been staring. “It’s becoming to your face.”
“Thank you.” Inclining my head, the green felt hat waved a garnet and a sage plume at her.
“I don’t think I could wear such a hat half as well as you,” she said graciously.
“I’m sure that’s not so. It would suit you. Am I mistaken, or are your eyes green?” I asked, feeling that we had exhausted the subject of hats. I don’t know why I remarked on the color of her eyes. I couldn’t rightly make them out, because of the shadow cast by the brim of her straw bonnet. An awkward silence ensued, which I felt obliged to put to an end by crossing over to her bench. After a moment’s hesitation, in which I considered whether to sit beside her or a little apart, I decided on the former as being the less likely to embarrass. I did not want her to think that I was shy of her, as one might be in the presence of an anomaly.
She smiled, gave me her little hand, and said, “My name is Margaret Fuller Hardesty. Father was a Transcendentalist until he followed Mother’s example and died. I often wonder what became of him and his philosophy. Having no relations, near or distant, at least no one willing to acknowledge the connection, I came to New York to find employment. I suppose it was small wonder that I found none”—she smiled archly—“until Mr. Barnum happened to see me in the Central Park. I was walking on Sheep Meadow, my eyes intent on the ground, in the hope of finding the remains of a picnic lunch, when I was startled by a lumbering shadow on the grass, accompanied by heavy footsteps. I looked up and there, like a maharajah, sat Mr. Barnum astride Jumbo the Elephant, together with the Milo Brothers and, languid within the curve of its trunk, Miss Adelina, the famous high-wire ascensionist and juggler.”
“‘How do you do, little lady?’ I couldn’t have guessed that his voice—he had addressed me in the most cordial way—was able to reach the last row of seats in the Hippodrome, over the din of beasts and human beings come to gloat—or so it always seems to me, who has never felt at one with them.
“‘I have not had lunch,’ I said, hopeful that a banana or a bag of peanuts might be among the paraphernalia carried on the elephant’s back.
“‘Where do you live?’ he asked. ‘I don’t mean to pry, but if we happen to be traveling in the same direction, I can give you a ride home.’
“‘I am presently stopping at a gardener’s unused shed.’
“‘Very resourceful.’
“Barnum grew thoughtful while Miss Adelina scratched the elephant’s huge leathery ear and Mr. Marsh, a renowned trombone soloist, blew spit from the mouthpiece of his instrument. He had been playing circus ‘screamers’ in the van to advertise an engagement at Madison Square Garden.
“‘I think you’d be happier with us,’ said Barnum, smiling radiantly. He let down a silken ladder and, lifting his high hat in welcome, bade me join him.”
“And you accepted his invitation?” I asked, fascinated by her tale, as anyone would be.
“I most certainly did!” replied Margaret, who had been alone and, like other pariahs in the world’s richest city, destitute.
A multitude beyond a miracle of fish and loaves to feed is packed into tenement houses, choked by stench, freezing or sweating according to the season, and famished for light and air, from the Five Points to Hell Gate. And a great many more of their predecessors lie in paupers’ graves on Ward’s, Randall’s, and Blackwell’s islands—infinitely beyond the reach of Barnum’s screamers, in an eternity of silent waiting for the promised recompense.
“Was Mr. Barnum kind?” I asked, hoping that he had been.
“He was and still is,” replied Margaret, smoothing her skirt. “I’ve been with him since that afternoon in 1862.”
“And are you happy?”
“I am.” She regarded me a moment. “It is not for you to be angry.” She took note of my perplexity. “Earlier, I saw it in your face. Your anger at whoever or whatever made my friends and me is as unwelcome as your pity.”
I bit my lower lip and frowned. I did not tell her that the anger and the pity had been for myself.
“We are not mistakes,” she said, modulating her tone into a softer register. “We are, as Mr. Barnum says of us, ‘nature’s eccentricities.’ And I am ‘La Belle Excentrique.”’
I looked at this miniature human being, remarkable in every aspect, and felt a surge of affection and—strange to say—gratitude. I admired her courage, knowing instinctually that she would have considered my admiration demeaning because it implied a sympathy—a pity, even—for the difference between us, a difference she would have vigorously denied. There she sat, her short legs dangling above the pavement, her head reaching only as far as my shoulder, endowed by nature, as though to compensate her for having fashioned her thus, with a ferocity—a strength of will—that carried her proudly past the rude stares, which might be contemptuous or kind, and the constant insult of a world not suited to her needs and dignity. There she sat as if I and not she were to be pitied for having been born “normal.”
“I invite you to tea,” she said, and for a dreadful moment, I pictured the two of us sitting in a Fifth Avenue tea shop, inviting careless stares in which I would be implicated. Before I could accept her invitation regardless of the tearoom she might choose, she said, “My rooming house is not far.”
I watched her clamber down from the bench as unselfconsciously as a child would have done. Not wanting to embarrass her, I did not offer my hand. We left Bryant Park, which had been a potter’s field until, in 1840, the nameless graves were