A Lesson Well Learned

“Hurry up, Sidi!”

The girl smiled to herself and looked back in the mirror, examining her face from every possible angle. Her own charcoal eyes looked critically back at her, searching desperately for something else to fix. Tutting, Sidi reached behind her head and smoothed some of her thick, black hair over her shoulders. She combed through it with her slim fingers, taking deep breaths as she thought about what would lie ahead for her.

“Do you want to dance or not? Get out here!”

Rolling her eyes, Sidi stood up from the bed and made her way over the creaky caravan floorboards towards the open door. The bells on her colourful costume glinted dully in the weak sunlight and jangled softly as she walked. She stepped barefoot onto the dewy grass and, under the pretence of enjoying the fresh air, took another deep breath. Her uncle looked at her, shaking his head with an affectionate smile on his lips.

“Vanity get the better of you?”

“I just wanted to look nice,” Sidi replied, reproachfully.

“You always look nice,” her uncle said, “but there’s no more time for mirrors. People are already coming in.”

He gestured over his shoulder to the group of tents and stalls – his travelling fair. Sidi looked over and saw that he was right; some young children were running from stand to stand, their shrieks of glee just reaching her ears. She spotted a couple minding them, presumably the parents.

“You aren’t nervous, are you?” her uncle asked.

“Maybe a little,” Sidi whispered.

“Well, I thought I’d never see the day! Don’t fret – you are a fine dancer.”

Sidi gave her uncle a tight-lipped smile and quickly ran after him as he began walking. Seeing her next to him, he tried to make light conversation, but Sidi was not listening. She had been waiting for today for weeks, counting the days. Ever since she was little, all she had wanted was to dance in Nano Bakro’s fair, wear beautiful costumes and make the people smile and applaud. She had begged him for years, but finally, just before her fifteenth birthday, he had decided that she was old enough – and good enough – to perform. She just hadn’t expected the nerves.

As they reached the fairground, Sidi’s uncle pointed out the small platform erected for her to dance on. Sidi nodded, said good-bye to her uncle, and went over to it, hardly registering the young Romany man tuning a stringed instrument next to her. Fidgeting, Sidi went over and over the dance she had prepared in her head until finally she found herself up on the platform, a small crowd gathering around her in curiosity and the musician strumming away on his instrument. At that moment, the only thing Sidi remembered was her uncle’s advice – “Smile. Whatever else you do, don’t stop smiling.”

Launching into her dance, Sidi found that she was forgetting the people in front of her; everything became a blur. Completely caught up in the fairground atmosphere, it was no trouble at all for her to keep her wide smile in place. She heard her bells jangling gaily, the cries of the visitors, the strum of various instruments, the whoosh of the fire-stick dancer and the applause at regular intervals. The scent of hot cooking wafted around, luring hungry fairgoers to food stands. Here and there, a man’s cigar smoke would reach her nose as well, making her want to cringe instinctively. But Sidi resisted. She kept smiling.

x-x-x-x

Grimacing, Sidi sat on her platform, massaging her aching feet. Although at the time, she had been convinced she could have danced tirelessly all day, her feet now told her otherwise. By the time the last of the stragglers had left the fair, the moon had risen and its full face bathed the busy area in a cool glow. Dancing bears groaned as they ambled over to be shut back in their cages, men eagerly counted the money they had made, the food stall keepers passed around their unsold treats. It was the end of the first fairground day for Sidi.

“Bring it over here! No, here! Hurry up!”

Hearing her uncle’s voice, Sidi stood up, wincing a little, and walked slowly over to where he was standing on the outer edge of the fair. To her surprise, a new tent had been set up; her uncle’s voice came from inside. Curious, she was about to lift the opening flap to peer inside when her uncle emerged.

“What’re you doing here, Sidi?” he asked.

“What’s in there?”

“In there?” he repeated, grinning. “A new exhibit.”

“What kind of exhibit?”

“You ask too many questions.” Sidi’s uncle glanced around in mock secrecy before leaning over to whisper in her ear. “It’s a monster.”

“There’s no such thing as monsters,” Sidi scoffed.

Her uncle raised an eyebrow. “That’s what I thought, too. Then we found this one.”

“Can I see it?” Sidi was intrigued.

Her uncle laughed harshly. “Not tonight. Let it … get settled.”

x-x-x-x

The days went by as a blur of colour, noise and movement for Sidi. Every day she danced herself to the point of exhaustion, her smile never fading – not even, her uncle joked, in her sleep.

As she took up her place on the platform once again, Sidi assumed that it would be a normal day. It certainly appeared no different from the others. And for the most part, it was normal. Midday passed, dusk began to fall, and nothing out of the ordinary happened. Sidi kept dancing and Sidi kept smiling.

Suddenly, she felt a sharp pain on the underside of her foot. She inhaled sharply, fighting the instinct to stop and examine her injury. The musician next to her stopped playing as he noticed Sidi pause and he raised an eyebrow questioningly. Sidi bit her lip, raised her chin defiantly and nodded. The music began again and Sidi resumed her dance. In all honesty, her foot did not hurt too badly. It was probably just a splinter of wood. She kept smiling.

It was not long before Sidi felt somebody tap her on the shoulder. She twirled around to come face to face with her uncle.

“Nano Bakro?”

Her uncle smiled. “Yes, Sidi. Step down for a while. Putsha thinks you’re limping.”

“I’m not,” Sidi replied, wondering how her cousin had managed to sneak away from her own stall to watch her.

Bakro frowned and tugged on his niece’s arm, and Sidi reluctantly stepped down. “Show me your foot.”

Sidi sighed and obeyed, allowing her uncle to examine it. He squinted, studying the hardened skin, before grasping something Sidi could not make out between his thumb and forefinger. Her uncle squinted harder and, with a deft tug, pulled out a wood splinter before holding it up for Sidi to see.

“Not serious,” he said, flicking it away, “but if I’d let you dance for the rest of the day with that in there, it wouldn’t have come out so easy.”

“Should I have stopped?” Sidi asked.

Her uncle smiled. “I’m proud of you, Sidi. You did the right thing.”

“Can I go back now?”

He paused before leaning close to her ear and whispering surreptitiously, “Take a rest – a quick one. I remember you refused to take your last one. Walk around for a bit.”

“Yes, Nano.”

Sidi left her uncle and began to saunter around the fairground. She chuckled to herself as she noticed the expressions of incredulity on the visitors’ faces – she herself had grown up amongst these human oddities, and found them more normal than novel. Nearly everyone in Sidi’s family worked somewhere in the fair. Every corner she turned, Sidi would be met with an especially large grin from a performer, which she returned gladly.

It was a few minutes before Sidi came across the new tent. Curiosity peaked, she wandered over to it, still anxious to see the exhibit her uncle had talked about. A man outside was yelling for an audience – who was brave enough to come face to face with a monster? A fair crowd had assembled outside the tent and the man began to usher them in, eagerly taking the money pushed into his hand. With a knowing wink, the keeper smiled and pushed Sidi inside.

The tent had a strange smell – a mixture of smoke, sweat and urine. The dim light made it difficult for Sidi to see where she should push through in order to see this exhibit, but the gasps from the frontmost members of the crowd provided a solid auditory aid. Impatient, Sidi slipped in and out of the people before finally, she, too, could gaze upon this monster. She half-expected to be frightened, but the more honest part of her knew she would more likely be amused – ‘monstrosities’ were not new to her.

Sidi reached the front of the crowd, and her eyes fell upon the beast. Her anticipatory gasp caught in her throat. She felt neither fear not amusement.

She was horrified.

A half-naked youth was tethered between two poles. He was visibly shaking, straining against his bonds, but to no avail. He began to slump, but a lash from the keeper’s whip brought him back to a fury. Panting, he stared at his audience, his one eye filled with contempt. They stared back in curious apprehension.

The young man was painfully thin, every rib visible through his discoloured skin. The skin was covered in angry scabs, as if parts of his body were covered in flaky, oozing scales. His hair was long and matted and fell over his face, obscuring the broken nose and sparsely-toothed mouth. Finally, his torso appeared twisted, contorted, as if it were a half-sculpted lump of clay. His shoulders were hunched and the hump on his back, covered with criss-crossed scars, was clearly visible to all.

Sidi shoved her way through the still-agape crowd, her young mind brimming over with frustrated confusion. True, she had always been around these human freaks, but whenever she had seen the bearded ladies, the contortionists, the knife-swallowers, they had all been happy. They smiled at their audiences. They wanted to perform. They wanted to show themselves to be oddities. It was normal.

But this was not.

“Sidi! There you are!”

A habit now, Sidi forced a smile as her uncle approached her and began to usher her back to her platform. Her musician grinned at her as she stepped up once more and Sidi, guiltily pushing what she had just witnessed to the back of her mind, put on her brightest smile and began her familiar dance.

x-x-x-x

It was pitch black as Sidi stealthily made her way across the fairground, moving as slowly as possible, terrified the keys she held would clink. She carried no light, using only the moon and the warped shadows to guide her to her destination – the monster’s tent. Shivering, half from nervousness, half from cold, she let herself inside and began to approach the curled-up figure on the ground, his outline visible from the moonlight seeping through holes in the worn tent fabric.

Biting her lip, Sidi reached over and gently tapped the youth on the shoulder. It was an instant reaction. His eyes snapped open and he gave a yell of surprise, snatching Sidi’s wrist in a forceful grip.

“What do you want?” he rasped.

“Please,” Sidi replied, trying to pry his fingers away, “let me go! You’re hurting me!”

“What do you want with me?”

“Let me go!”

The youth gave a loud, barking laugh and shoved Sidi to the floor. She slid away on her backside, massaging her wrist and taking quick, shallow breaths.

“Did that hurt, Romany?”

Sidi stayed silent, keeping her eyes downcast. The young man before her watched smugly, but as the silence continued, his expression hardened.

“I asked you a question, Romany.”

“I came to help you,” Sidi muttered. “I can let you out.”

The same loud, barking laugh came again. “Look, Romany, I may be a monster, but I’m not stupid. It’s a trap.”

“It’s not.”

Sidi gasped as two strong hands gripped her shoulders and winced as the stench of his breath hit her. “I know your type, Romany,” the youth muttered. “I’ve been in your damned circuses since I could stand up. Always the same. You’re no different. Who’s paying you?”

“Sidi!”

Sidi could just make out Nano Bakro’s shape as he burst into the tent, striding towards his niece. Incensed, he boxed the young man hard about the ears before taking Sidi in his arms and kicking the emaciated figure on the ground once more.

“Nano, I –”

“I heard noises in the tent. Sidi, you idiot! I told you he was a monster! What in the blazes were you thinking?” fumed Sidi’s uncle as he carried her out into the open air again.

“I – I –”

“You what?”

“I just wanted to help him,” Sidi managed to splutter out, blinking furiously to keep back frightened tears.

Her uncle frowned, puzzled, and slowly set Sidi on her feet again. The awkward silence stretched on and on, Sidi’s face burning a brighter red with every new confused contortion of her uncle’s features.

“Help him,” he repeated, slowly. “Help him.”

“Yes, Nano,” Sidi confirmed, quietly.

“But … why?” The anger was gone from his voice, only utter surprise remaining.

Sidi wet her lips quickly and stared determinedly at her hands. “He’s not a monster, Nano. He’s a boy. You can’t just keep him locked up like that. It’s not fair.”

“Not a monster? Didn’t you see him, Sidi? He’s terrifying!”

“But he’s just a boy!”

“He’s an oddity.”

“That doesn’t mean he’s not a person!”

Sidi’s head finally snapped upwards as she glared at her uncle defiantly. She blinked in surprise as his eyes softened and he placed one broad hand on her shoulder.

“Sidi,” said Bakro, slowly, “you are a compassionate soul, but you must understand. You had good intentions, I know, but things must stay the way they are. That thing was born a monster, and he will be treated as such.”

Sidi bit her lip, shaking her head. “He couldn’t help it.”

“Dammit, Sidi!” growled Bakro, straightening up and running his hands through his hair. “When are you going to learn the ways of the world? Nobody gives a damn how much you are to blame for what you turn out to be like, you hear? Nobody! All those people who clap for you when you dance? Do you honestly think they’d treat you so nice if you tried to walk down their streets with them? Of course not! Can you help your dark skin? Do you think they care?”

“I – I just wanted to do the right thing.” The tears of fright had turned to tears of frustration and finally began leaking down Sidi’s cheeks.

Her uncle sighed. “I know, Sidi. But we all have to learn our place. We can’t help where we end up. All we can do is make the best of what we get. Keep a smile on your face and try to enjoy what you’ve got.”

x-x-x-x

Days melt into weeks, which slide into months, and finally the years begin to tick over. Sidi dances wherever she can, wherever the fair takes her. Every day, over the joyful hubbub of onlookers, she hears strains of a monster yelling out in pain. It used to be hard. She used to falter when she thought of him. But now she’s forgotten how to falter.

She never stops smiling.