"Are you doing it?" I repeated. He blinked and shook his head.

"I never thought of it. Do you think I could?"

"How do I know? I thought you could do anything." I was impatient with him. It was one thing to be eleven years old when you were memorizing geography, but this was supposed to be the region of his gift, the terrain of his purpose.

"Well, I mainly take things apart. I can take anything apart," he said. An amazed wideness settled on his eyes as he stared blankly at the door of the laundry truck.

Watching his possibilities dawn on Chick, I decided to ask the question that I'd been carrying for weeks. Ever since I'd realized how limited my own possibilities were.

"Chicky, listen. Remember how you used to pick pockets? Well, you know the sperm in Arty's b.a.l.l.s?" I had his attention at least. "Could you move that sperm - the wiggly little things - could you move them into me and get 'em into the egg thing in me so I could have a baby like Iphy?"

That, Miranda, was how I came to ask. Chick was hesitant, scared at first. He was afraid of botching the job. He insisted on trying it out on the cats first.

The next week he managed to impregnate an elderly and irritable tigress whom Horst had never successfully mated. She had such a nasty att.i.tude that she sliced up any male who propositioned her. Chick accomplished the miracle of Lilith, the tigress, early one morning while sitting on an overturned bucket in front of the cat wagon. I paced and fidgeted, ready to warn him if any of the Arturans should come along to distract him. He took what seemed like a long time. His hands clenched in a knot at his knees, his face flushed and beaded with sweat.

The male, at one end of the row of cages, slept through the process. Lilith, who had been named after Mama, paced and coughed and glared and switched her tail at the other end.

There was nothing to see. I was getting bored when he finally let out a long, cautious breath and looked at me. He rubbed his eyes with his fists. "Wow," he said, "I think it worked."

I went hopping and celebrating around, patting him on the shoulders and rumpling his hair. I was as happy as if it were my own stunt he'd just pulled.

Chick agreed to be ready to do it whenever my time came around if he could be sure of having both Arty and me still and in the same room, preferably for some time.

"Maybe I could do it without seeing you both, but something might go wrong. It's tricky."

It happened one night in Arty's front room with Norval Sanderson there. Arty and Sanderson were talking their endless talk, Arty drawn up to his desk in the wheelchair and Sanderson stretched out in a soft chair with his legs ending in the loose sandals he wore to accommodate the bandages on his feet.

Chick was lolling on his belly on the carpet, pretending to read a big picture magazine about foreign lands. I was curled in the corner on a built-in bench, listening.

My pulse filled my head as though the heart had punched its way up my throat and was stuck beating between my ears. I couldn't take my eyes off Arty. He was in his wrangling mood. He loved to talk to Sanderson. He seemed to relax and enjoy the winding stalk of argument. Sanderson, the camouflaged hunter, pretended a casual indifference but secretly struggled to catch Arty unawares, skewer him on his own words.

Arty chuckled delightedly, "Such a s.a.d.i.s.t! You go unarmed because you're sure you can make me turn my own weapons on myself! You don't want to dirty your delicate paws with my blood! You want me to rip out my own guts so you can tsk and sigh and write prize-winning features on the tragic flaw. The self-destructive vortex at the core of greatness! You do see greatness in me. Admit it!"

Sanderson, with his head tipped in cartoon contemplation, would tap his lip slowly with his thumb and question, always question: "Is elephant gas great? Is it great in the pain that it causes the elephant? Or in the relief it affords when expressed? Or perhaps it is only great if it is ignited on farting and the resulting explosion is used to power a turbine? Is an elephant fart great in and of itself? Or only in its effect?"

"Ah! So now we're down to fart jokes! But you'll notice that I am sitting here with all I was born with, Norval, my lad, while you are being whittled away. How do you account for this?"

On and on they went, having such a good time. I loved Arty when he really laughed, and Sanderson made him roar. I watched, knowing this was my moment as Arty tipped back his smooth skull and rippled his belly in waves of pleasure that bounced out through his wide mouth and creased his grey eyes shut in the wild dance of his whole twitching, rocking body to the tune of the glitter inside his skull.

I sat very still. Chick had a.s.sured me that the thing in me was ripe and waiting.

There was Chick, on his belly with his bare feet kicking slowly in the air. His water-white hair hung in his eyes as he turned the pages slowly, revealing the mysteries of Tibet and the banner wall of the palace in Lhasa. His head turned slightly, one eye peeking at me. I grinned near convulsions. Do it. Do it now, while he's laughing, I thought. And Chick nodded slightly, turning back to his book as Arty said, "Consider how protected our lives are. Never seen a movie, never set foot in a school."

"But there's no reason for not seeing movies and whatnot," protested Sanderson. "The redheads have a portable set. It's sheer cantankerousness and barbarism," he drawled.

"Early training!" barked Arty. "Hatching habits!"

"Poor feller, try this ... " and Sanderson pulled a flat steel bottle out of his tweed pocket and poured a golden dollop into the drained lemonade gla.s.s on Arty's desk. Sanderson pulled a long swig from the bottle, capped it, and sighed, "Am-f.u.c.king-brosia!" while Arty cautiously nipped at his straw and made wry mouths at the taste.

"If that's your idea of pleasure, it's no wonder you need religion."

Chick was flapping his magazine closed, pulling in his knees, getting to his feet with a stretch and a yawn, twisting to look at me. I stared anxiously at him. He winked.

"G'night," he said to the room.

"You'll start on Miz Z. in the morning? I promised her," said Arty.

Chick nodded and slid over next to the chair, looping an arm around Arty's neck, pulling his face close. Chick planted a kiss on Arty's bare, flat cheek and then went to the door and out. As he closed the door after him, my cap slid down toward my nose and then back up to its proper place again.

That was it. I didn't feel anything. But I believed it. And I didn't want to leave. I wanted to go on watching Arty at play, knowing he would talk for hours longer, until Sanderson's flask was empty and the black sky turned green and fleshy in the first seep of dawn. But I also needed to crawl back into my cupboard and feel miraculous. So I went home.

This, Miranda, is how you were conceived. Don't ever doubt that it was an act of love. Your father was as happy then as he was capable of being. Your uncle Chick, the dove, was delighted to do it, to be able to do it. And I was a seventeen-year-old dwarf, pink-cheeked, rosy-humped, scarlet-eyed. I was beside myself with glory. Understand, child, that my idea of you was as a gift to your father, a living love for Arturo. And that's not bad, Miranda, considered as a motive for your existence.

Eleven days later the twins gave birth to Mumpo. It was a long labor, twenty-six hours, and a difficult delivery. Chick did a lot but Mama and Papa helped. I wasn't allowed in the van. I sat with Arty all night and most of the day. He was sick with fear. I was sick myself. The Arturans were buzzing on the intercom constantly. I took messages and shunted them off. Miz Z. in her proud bandage (one little toe's worth) appeared at the door twice with a sheaf of papers, but I shooed her away. Arty wouldn't eat. He insisted on playing checkers, hour after hour, game after game. He beat me fifty times and he would have gone on forever except that I accidentally won a game and he threw the board off the desk in a fury. He rolled off to his bedroom and locked himself in.

When Papa finally came to the door with the news, Arty wheeled out of his room to hear. A boy. Twenty-six pounds, five ounces. The mothers were doing fine.

Papa looked young again, leaning in the doorway to shout the news; his mustache bristled with power and pride, which, he used to say, "are the same except that pride leaves the lights on and power can do it in the dark."

"Twenty-six pounds?"

"Thought it was twins, did you?" He chortled. "Fat little! A natural! Twenty handsome inches long and twenty-six of the babiest pounds! What do you think, uncle? Cheeks like, a politician! Ten chins right out of the oven! That Iphy! Took one look and says, 'Mumpo.' His name, see? Lily went to lay him on Iphy's breast and she like to die! Couldn't breathe, he's so heavy. Got to tell Horst; he's been sucking the bottle for two days worrying!" Then a sudden change, a confidentiality, a secret wondering, near whisper as he put one foot inside to keep it among us. "That Chick, Great Christo, he's good. I would have popped it with a knife myself after so long. I was scared to death with the kid so big. Not Chick. He pumped in air somehow, don't ask me. That baby breathing easy for hours and still inside. That Chick, sweet lollyb.a.l.l.s of the prophet!" And he was gone, thumping down the ramp, hailing people in the line, hollering, "A boy ... Fine ... All fine ... A boy! Yes! By the bouncing melons of Mary! I'm a grandpa!"

Arty sat petrified in his chair, staring through the open door. Miz Z. appeared, heading for us, a clipboard in hand.

"Scare her off," said Arty. He looked deflated and a little damp. "Then go get the baby, will you?"

"What for?" I felt a fist of fear in my gut.

"I just want to see him!" He spun his chair away with a last look at my face. He disappeared into his room. I had hurt him. I tried to feel the little thing in my own belly. Nothing. But it was there. I'd make it up to him.

Mumpo changed peoples names. Suddenly Iphy was Little Mama to all the redheads and wheelmen, booth rats and artistes. Lily and Al were Gramma and Grampa. Even uncle and auntie jokes made the rounds along with Papa's licorice-marinated stogies and the bottomless keg on tap in Horst's van. But Mumpo himself lay like a big sagging pumpkin in the blankets. He was a bottomless craving and he was cunning. Arty saw it immediately. Iphy knew. I knew. Lily and Al refused to notice. Chick knew and didn't care. Chick loved the big glob.

That first day I poked my head through the twins' bedroom door and saw everything covered with white sheets and smelling of disinfectant. Lily hunched over the baby where he lay, naked and huge in soft, unmoving mounds on a wheeled metal table, as she sponged him, cooing. Chick was watching Iphy. He sat on the edge of the big bed and held her hand and Elly's pale useless hand, the arms overlapping so he could hold them both.

"How are they?" I whispered. He grinned the kid grin at me as though he'd walked on his hands or found a frog.

"Bushed. p.o.o.ped out. Beat." They were asleep. Iphy as bloodless as a rain-drained worm. Elly with her mouth ajar and a thin trickle of saliva shining on her jaw.

"I could have made it quicker but Mama said it was important to labor. It didn't hurt them, though. I didn't let it hurt them. Did you see him?" His eyes glanced toward the flesh mound. I shook my head and moved over to where Mama could smile at me. She reached out an arm and hugged me. "Isn't he amazing?" His eyes were open, filled with black. The eyes blinked and squinted suspiciously.

"Could you take him over to Arty? Arty is anxious to see him." Chick said it was O.K. and Lily chirruped and twittered excitedly, wrapping the baby to travel fifty feet, and exclaiming over his weight when she hoisted him across her chest.

In Arty's van she laid the big clump on Arty's desk and Mumpo's eyes went sharp and narrow, looking at Arty, and Arty glared at Mumpo and the two male things looked at each other with hate. Lily claimed that Mumpo couldn't focus his eyes yet but it was wonderful how he seemed to look right at you, though he's only an hour old and ought to be so tired he'd sleep, and she laughed at how excited Papa was thinking up "Mumpo the Mountain" and other fat-man tags for Mumpo's show, though you couldn't be sure with a baby and for all we knew he'd be skinny by the time he was two.

Arty stared at the flesh that oozed from the blankets and finally broke in. "O.K. Take him away. He needs to sleep."

Lily took him out and that was the last time Arty ever looked at Mumpo.

The stick hit my ear and I yelled into the blanket as I woke up. My right arm jerked and the stick jabbed my elbow and the sting from my ear and my elbow pulled the plug on my nose and eyes so I looked wildly through the swimming murk of my watering sinuses as the white beam from a flashlight in the dark blinded my naked eyes and the stick whapped out of the blur again. "Waa!" I yelled.

Then I heard the unmistakable rasp of Arty, angry, sputtering behind the stick, "c.u.n.t! ... Slimy! Twisted b.i.t.c.h!" as the stick wavered toward me and I curled in my cupboard with my arms shielding my eyes, yelling, "Arty!" and the stick kept coming and I got a foot tangled in Mama's old white satin robe, which I used as a top blanket, and Arty's voice screeched in the light-smeared liquid blackness, "I'll break you, you stinking ... " and the stick was on its way again and I grabbed for it, s.n.a.t.c.hed at the end as it pa.s.sed my eyes and was amazed as the whole stick came loose in my hands with a slight tug and Arty wailed "Shiiit!" and I saw the rubber bulb at the other end of the stick and felt a laugh trying to choke its way past my thumping heart because Arty was. .h.i.tting me with a toilet plunger.

Then the lights went on and Papa was there, hairy-bellied in his pajama pants and Mama blinking and fuzzy behind him. I scrambled for my gla.s.ses and jammed them on so I could see Arty crying naked in his wheelchair with the blue veins pumping through the fine skin on his head and the flashlight on the seat beside him with its lens glowing a feeble yellow against the ceiling light.

"What the f.u.c.k?" Papa was gasping, and Mama fluttered and I stared through my safe green lenses at Arty, gibbering with frustration in his chair because he couldn't keep a grip on the stick with his flipper even though his belly rolled in crevices of muscle, though his chest was a plate of bronze, though his ribs jutted with wings of muscle, though he could lift a hundred and fifty pounds with his neck, he still couldn't hold the stick to hurt me when he needed to.

"She's knocked f.u.c.king up!" howled Arty. Papa had his gentle hands on the smooth gold skin of the Aqua Boy, holding him against the back of the chair, saying, "For Christ's b.l.o.o.d.y sake, son," and wouldn't let go.

Mama brought a blanket to put around Arty. I crouched deep in my cupboard with the old white satin robe pulled up to my eyes because Arty knew. But he knew and was angry. The stomach thing happened, as though the baby, the tiny frog babe, Miranda, was trying to crawl out and escape by any route possible from his fury. I sat there holding in everything, clenching my a.s.s and my c.u.n.t and my jaw and my eyes and praying the broadcast prayer of the G.o.dless, "Please, please, no, please."

Arty got his jaw back in order and resigned himself to draining his anger in words. He told them. "Ask Chick. He told me. She's stuffed. Knocked up. The stupid traitor."

Then I saw that Chick hadn't told him everything. Arty was leaning back in his chair and Papa sank down on the bench by the door trying to get it straight. "Oly, what's he saying? Is this true?" I never opened my mouth but sat there, curled in amazement at Papa being Papa again for this one groggy moment. "But that's no reason! There is no excuse," rapped Papa, "for attacking your sister physically!"

Arty rambled bitterly, "That hunchback b.a.s.t.a.r.d redhead guy, the Pin Kid. Moving in on the s.h.i.t-sucking show, knock up the boss's daughter ... work his way in ... get his claws on the money."

I saw Arty shaking in his blanket, so hard that the wheels of his chair squeaked in minuscule quivers on the floor as he talked.

"He's drunk or stoned," came Mama's voice.

"Drunk? Have you been hitting that stuff?" Papa wheeled Arty away through the door to his own van and I lay down and watched the door close and pulled the white robe up to my chin as Mama folded up on the floor beside my cupboard and looked in at me. Her soft face was crumpling with weakness and the loosening of her fiber, but her hands reached in and touched my face, long, cool fingers stroking my cheeks as she whispered, "Did he hurt you, dove?"

When I shook my head she took a deep breath and went on, "Tell Mama now, are you pregnant?" and I nodded, staring at her through my green lenses, and she nodded seriously back at me. Her pale hair floated raggedly around her head. "Are you glad, dream? Or is it something you don't want?" Her whole body smelled of cinnamon and vanilla as she leaned forward, asking.

"Glad," I croaked, and she leaned in to lay her cheek on mine.

Papa came back and patted my head and took Mama back to bed. I lay in the dark listening but they kept their voices low and I couldn't make out what they were saying. It was probably my roaring blood that drowned them out. I was happy.

Arty was hurt. I imagined him clambering through the door alone in his chair with the flashlight and plunger to punish me. To hurt me for hurting him. I swelled with enormous love for him. See, I thought, how he has scared us all these years, and he can't even grip the plunger in that strong, awkward flipper. He needed to hurt me and couldn't.

He must love me, I thought, amazed. A faint whiff of nausea hit me at seeing pain as proof of love. But it seemed true. Unavoidable.

Afternoon. The midway music clanking faintly nearby. Everybody at work but me. I was alone in the van, sick in my cupboard. I was swamped hot and cold with the vicious swim of nausea. The cupboard doors hung open so I could see the gleaming linoleum. Orange brick pattern. I wanted the floor to be blue or grey so it would cool me. The white sunlight through the window hit the bricks with a terrible heat splash that burned through my dark gla.s.ses. If I closed my eyes, my head spun and my stomach did its tumbling act. If I rolled over to face the back wall, I smothered. I hugged my knees over my cramping belly and felt sorry for myself. I was almost dozing when I heard a step outside. Chick came in quietly.

"Should have told me, Oly."

I grunted and stared at his bare, dusty feet kicking the bottoms of his ragged coverall legs. He pulled the curtains and the light greyed mercifully. "You seen Arty?" I asked as his legs reappeared. He crouched on the floor beside me. He stuck out a grubby hand and touched my forehead. "That's better." I felt cool and quiet suddenly, as though I'd been floating motionless in a pond for hours.

"He's working. Still mad." Chick looked down at me curiously. I put my hand on my chest where mad Arty had left a ball of sick snakes knotted and jabbing each other poisonously. "This too, please." Chick frowned at me and the pain narrowed to a single vibrating spot like a bee sting. I tapped my fingers on the pained spot, impatient. "Go on. Keep on. Do the rest, please."

"I could put you to sleep. Want me to?"

"No. Did you tell him?"

"He didn't believe me. He thinks I'm just trying to smooth him down. And the Pin Kid is gone."

I got up right away and went to the swallowers' stage, dragging Chick along. We poked our heads in through the rear flap and watched the scuttling shadows on the backdrop as the swallowers went through their act. Their chatter was marked by silences as the swords went down. The swallowers' oldest girl finished her turn and came rushing out, sweating. I s.n.a.t.c.hed at her arm. "Where'd the Pin Kid go?"

She shrugged, reaching to scratch under her sequined vest.

"Gee, Oly, I don't know. Daddy's mad at him. They were supposed to do a turn together. They've been rehearsing. But he was gone this morning when we got up. He took his knapsack and bedroll but left his trunk." She rolled her eyes, perplexed. "He'll have to come back for the trunk. And he knows we're breaking down tonight. Maybe he'll be back before we leave. Maybe he'll catch us in St. Joe?"

I could see the buckled trunk, drab in the dusty gra.s.s against the tent wall with swords and torches collapsing against it. The swallowers girl tossed her hair back and waved as she made off to the other side of the stage for her second entrance.

Chick was staring at the trunk. I could feel him thinking. The trunk looked abandoned, like letters in an attic, to and from the dead.

"We better go see Arty," I muttered. Chick nodded, still looking at the trunk.

"Tell them to come back tomorrow." It was Arty's voice seeping through the door crack. The bald novice who answered the bell left us waiting so he could see "if the Master has a moment for you." The shaved head appeared again, smirking consolingly. "I'm afraid the Master ... " he started. But I jumped forward, shoving the door wider, hollering, "Arty! You pig s.h.i.t! Arty!," bursting past the gasping novice with Chick behind me, trotting toward Arty's desk while I watched his face set in anger and his voice boom, "Get her out! Out!" and the novice's three-fingered hands closed on my arms, but it was really Chick who lifted me. I knew by the softness, the easiness as I sailed back out through the door and landed on the deck. Chick leaned out and looked at me. "I'll talk to him. Wait," he said. Arty's door closed and I stood waiting. Angry myself, for a change. It was a relief from feeling sorry for myself.

As we moved that night in the dark toward St. Joe, Papa drove with Mama in his co-pilot's seat. Chick and I huddled in the dining booth and he told me.

"O.K. Now he really does believe me, kind of, because he talked to Horst about the tiger being pregnant and Horst told him it couldn't happen because she hadn't been in with anybody. But he's still pretending he doesn't believe me. He won't admit anything. Besides, he's scared his juice isn't good. He's afraid he can't plant babies. But he says he's sick of the novices sliming around and he'll let you come back to work for him."

"But what about the Pin Kid?"

I couldn't see Chick's face in the dark. He waited a few seconds before he answered. A dozen heartbeats.

"He just says, 'What Pin Kid?' and then won't listen. That's another thing. You're not to mention the Pin Kid or your baby or any of this to Arty. He wants you to act like always."

I took Arty his breakfast in St. Joe. I cleaned and dusted and carried messages and shut the novices out of his van completely. I rode on the back of his golf cart to his show tent and waited behind the tank listening to the big St. Joe crowd roaring and sighing like the tide. I scrubbed Arty after the show and rubbed him down and painted him for the next show. I did all the usual things. He was sullen and moody at first but then he forgot and was just like always.

The Pin Kid never came back for his trunk. We never heard anything more about him. When I did think of him it was a pleasure - a fool's pleasure - that Arty had got rid of him, run him off, scared him away, for fear of losing me. I don't think Arty had him killed.

Elly was coming back. Iphy tried to hide the change but I sat for hours watching Mumpo twitch and Iphy crooning over him. I saw the differences. When Iphy used both hands to change Mumpo, or to turn him or wash him, Elly no longer collapsed like a spent balloon. She was holding herself upright without Iphy's arm supporting her. There were also moments when I could have sworn that Elly's eyes were focused, looking at Mumpo, looking at me, or following the movements of Iphy's hands. Elly's mouth stayed shut for longer periods. She drooled less. Once I saw her hand lift deliberately to her swollen, seeping breast.

"I use this little pump on Elly and put the milk into the bottle," Iphy was explaining. Mumpo lay beside her on the bed sucking noisily at the rubber teat on the bottle. The pale blue milk sloshed and bubbled in the gla.s.s as the pull from his mouth drew the level down fast.

"He's so hungry all the time. It takes both of us to feed him but it's so awkward holding him and Elly so he can nurse straight from her t.i.tties ... "

Iphy stole a look to see if I believed that she still had to hold Elly. Elly's mouth opened and she said, "Greedy, greedy, greedy."

It was as clear as pizzicato. "Ha ha," said Iphy, staring at me intently. "She's been making more sounds lately. Ha ha. Sometimes they're almost words."

Perched at the foot of the bed with my feet over the edge so my shoes wouldn't dirty the sheets, I nodded and said nothing. The bottle ran dry and the deep voice of Mumpo rocked out an echoing belch. The lips of Elly closed primly and her eyes wandered again, soft, not looking while Iphy looked at us all so fast that her eyes must have ached with the whip of their nerve stalks.

Papa ordered signs painted for "Mumpo, the World's Fattest Baby" and tried to talk Iphy into arranging a schedule so the baby could nap in a show booth and tickets could be sold. Iphy insisted on waiting until his first birthday. Papa was indignant. "This is a working outfit! No moochers! No parasites! And what about yourself, young lady?" he demanded. "How about a turn in the variety tent? You can work around Elly. There must be some way!"

Iphy bristled and reminded him of all the money she'd made for him the years she worked with Elly. She told him to wait. Papa left her alone. Iphy wasn't worried about it.

"Papa's just trying out old reflexes. He's not the boss anymore."

My belly grew. It hung at an odd angle and gave me a lot of back pain. The veins in my legs threatened to rupture until Chick took care of them.

I spent time with Iphy and became convinced that Elly was almost all there, almost all the time.

"She's lying doggo, Iphy, don't lie to me."