“Bildungs-NOSE-n”

I pull the skin under my left eyelid and paint a thin, yellow line, connected to a second yellow line. I fill in the lines with quick precise strokes. Every morning, I follow the same routine; yellow triangles under my eyes, orange circles on the apples of my cheeks, red lips stretching across my face. Penelope rolls her eyes as I paint my nose red. She finished her makeup ten minutes ago, black diamonds and dots with a red smile and nose. While she waits for me, she sits on the counter and just watches. Without the makeup, we’re identical. Once the makeup’s on, I am a rainbow and Penelope is a cloud. “Ophelia, I swear to Lecoq…” Penelope’s voice softens as I turn up the Tchaikovsky playing in my headphones and paint gentle strokes of orange on my cheeks. Penelope hops off the counter and storms out and my thoughts swirl.

Lecoq developed contemporary clowning. My mother, Agatha, practically worships him so my sister mocks him any chance she gets. Lecoq used to make his students stand in a circle, push someone in the middle, and force them to “be funny.” When they tried to be funny, it didn’t work. When no one laughed, they became insecure. By exposing those insecurities, they became funny. The heart of clowning is in failure. Everyone laughs at the saddest clown in the room.

I come from a conservative clown family. For the past four generations, my family has never strayed from circus work. When I learned to walk, mom waited with a pie for me to fall in. Most people drive tiny cars as toddlers, I got a tiny car when I got my license. I learned to pull scarves from my sleeves before I learned to read. My family taught me to perform. Lecoq hated performers. He wanted his students to humiliate themselves organically. Stepping on a rake and getting smacked in the face may get a few laughs but comedy comes out of vulnerability. Performing vulnerability, intentionally humiliating myself for an audience, is the opposite of what Lecoq taught.

I honk my nose and squirt flowers like an athlete. When I’m on stage, I soar. Every move I make has been specifically choreographed to make me look like a fool. My great-grandmother taught my routine to my grandmother who taught it to my mother who taught it to me. I try to emulate Lecoq but no one laughs anymore. The critics say I’m too rehearsed. The first time I performed my routine perfectly, I failed. I had become desensitized to the humiliation that makes clowns funny.

The critics love Penelope, though. She hates being a clown. She creates every routine on the spot. I humiliate myself on purpose, Penelope humiliates herself on accident. She’s sensitive and easily embarrassed and the audience eats it up. The more she loathes the audience, the more they love her. The local arts magazine wrote four raving reviews of her performances. She is utterly miserable though, she begs our mother every day to let her quit but Penelope sells the most tickets, so we can’t afford to lose her. I wish I could be her. She clearly doesn’t know how lucky she is.

I wash my brushes in the sink and inspect my pristine makeup in the mirror. I smile awkwardly, my teeth look yellow against the bright white foundation. It’ll have to do. I open the door to Penelope lying on the carpet.

“Ophie, can’t we just skip today?”

I kneel beside her and twirl her black curls with my index finger.

“Sure, why not?” I tease.

“Seriously?!” Penelope sits up.

“No, you know we can’t.”

Penelope slumps back down and picks at a piece of fuzz on the carpet.

“I don’t think I can handle it today, Ophie.”

“C’mon, Penny, don’t you want to see Tiny?” I say.

I hate manipulating her like this but I don’t know how else to get her up. She does this every morning. The baby elephant is the only creature she cares about under the Big Top. I offer her my arm and we walk out to my car to drive to the tent next door.

The gravel crunches under the wheels of my itty-bitty red clown car. I open the door and choke on the dust. The air smells like popcorn, cotton candy, and elephant poop. As we walk to the tent, children run past us giggling and screaming. Hot, July sunlight streams through the Big Top and paints red and white stripes on the ground. An acrobat with blonde hair and a pink leotard waves. The ringmaster nods politely. The tigers and elephants walk their tamers on long leashes. The show doesn’t start for another hour, I like to get to the circus early to soak up the atmosphere.

“Ophie, look,” Penelope squeezes my arm. Leah the Lion Tamer walks towards us, her fresh undercut glistening. She’s wearing khaki shorts, a khaki vest, and a bucket hat and she looks like a sexy Bindi Irwin. The circus hired Leah three months ago and I fell in love with her immediately.

“Hey, Ophie! Hi, Penelope!” Leah smiles at us and I get so nervous a little bit of vomit comes up.

“Hello, Leah. How are you?” I force a smile to hide the nausea.

“Honestly, I’m stressed. George isn’t being cooperative today,” Leah nods at the baby Lion on the leash. I was so distracted, I hadn’t noticed him at first. He growls playfully.

“Well, do you need a laugh? I could show you part of my routine?” I ask.

“Wait, yes! That’d be amazing!” Leah sits on the ground and George crawls into her lap. She watches expectantly. I regret offering and inhale for five seconds. My stomach gurgles. I throw a banana peel on the floor and pin a flower to my polka dotted lapel. I play Flight of the Bumblebee on my phone. My routine goes flawlessly, I slip and fall on the banana peel during the crescendo of the song and my flower gently squirts Leah on the last note. Leah smiles warmly but she doesn’t laugh.

“That was fantastic, Ophie!” Leah gives me a friendly high five.

“Dude, that looked incredible, I’m so proud of you, sis!” Penelope says.

“Thanks.”

“No, seriously, I’d kill to look as graceful as you,” when Penelope compliments someone, she means it.

“You always get the laughs though,” I say.

“That’s just because nothing ever happens when I want it to. I can never get my flower to squirt at just the right moment,” Penelope fiddles with her flower and it bursts and soaks Leah. Leah laughs. She laughs a bit harder. Penelope is absolutely mortified and tries to dry Leah’s face with her sleeve. Penelope’s face is three inches away from Leah’s. Leah’s mascara drips and Penelope smudges it all over her cheeks. Leah laughs till her face turns cherry red and tears stream down her face.

“Thanks, Penny, I needed that,” Leah hugs Penelope and lingers for a few seconds. George purrs. I seethe. I work on an elaborate routine for months and get friend-zoned and Penelope makes an idiot of herself and the only out lesbian in the entire circus throws herself at her.

Penelope is as straight as a tight rope, she can’t see Leah’s flirting with her. When Leah came to our birthday party last month, she spent the entire time talking to Penelope and offering private lion taming lessons and tucking Penelope’s curly black hair behind her tiny ears. Meanwhile, I’m an anal retentive with anxiety and I spent the entire party making sure the decorations stayed in place. If an orange balloon popped, I blew up another orange balloon so the color scheme remained balanced. Penelope is adorably oblivious. She tries to hype me up to Leah but it never works. I’m not the twin she’s interested in. I don’t get it. We’re identical and I’m the gay one, so why is she obsessed with Penelope?

Leah starts to ask Penelope a question but I yank Penelope away from her.

“We’re performing in ten,” I say.

Leah waves goodbye to us and George snuggles up to her leg. I ignore how cute she looks.

When we get to our ring, our mother is waiting expectantly. Her pursed lips look like a raisin. She gently twirls Penelope’s black curls with her index finger. She doesn’t look me in the eye.

“What in Lecoq’s name took you so long?” she asks.

“We were just showing our routines to Leah,” I reply.

“Well, since you’ve had the extra practice, I expect you’ll get laughs today,” Mother always knows what not to say.

“Her routine looked beautiful today, mother, I was so proud of her,” Penelope winks at me.

“Beautiful isn’t exactly what we’re going for,” mother replies, still stroking Penelope’s curls. When we were kids, she used to twirl my curls too. Penelope and I both inherited her copper curls but Penelope dyes her curls black now.

“Alright, you girls better get in the ring.”

I walk into the ring and see a mountain range of fluffy, whipped peaks. Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker underscores us. The roaring audience hushes with anticipation. I tiptoe around the ring and delicately pick up a pie. I smash it into my face. I pick up another pie and smash. I time every smash with the music. I hear scattered chuckles in the audience. A teardrop-shaped dollop of whipped cream rests on my nose. The rest of my face is in pristine condition, I didn’t even smudge my makeup. I spin around the ring as the music crescendos, preparing to step on the rake with the pie at the end of the handle but before my grand finale, Penelope trips and falls into ten pies at once, coating her in whipped cream like a delicious abominable snowman. She stands up disoriented and hyperventilating and steps on my rake, which smashes another pie into her face. Penelope starts to shake uncontrollably, her tears making clean tracks in the whipped cream and makeup. The music stops and the audience roars. They give her a standing ovation. Her. She doesn’t even want the applause. Her performance was completely accidental, my routine went perfectly, and yet, she gets the credit. Again. She stands still for a moment, then runs from the ring dripping whipped cream onto the sand. I run after her. I know she’s going to see Tiny.

Tiny is a six-month-old Indian elephant and other than Leah, is the most beautiful creature I’ve ever laid eyes on. Penelope and I have taken care of her since birth. Penelope buries her head in Tiny’s wrinkly tummy and sobs.

“I don’t get it,” I say.

“What?” Penelope says with a face full of elephant.

“Every day I go in the ring, I try to do what you do.”

“Why?”

“People love you, Penny, didn’t you hear them?”

“I was totally humiliated, Ophie.”

“That’s literally the point.”

Penelope pulls away from Tiny, leaving a white imprint of her face on Tiny’s tummy. She stares at me with red eyes resembling my own. I want to comfort her. I want to soak up all of her pain. Then I remember the way Leah looks at her. I remember the way mom twirls her hair. I remember the roar of the audience. She has everything I want to have, she is everything I want to be. She doesn’t deserve to feel sorry for herself. Bitterness and jealousy gurgle in my throat like acid reflux.

“I wish I was more like you, Ophie,” Penelope whispers.

I snap. Years of repressed emotion escape my lips in a deep, visceral howl. I chuck my phone against the wall and fittingly, O Fortuna begins to play. The world slows as I storm towards her, rage emanating from every limb like flame. I raise a flat palm to slap the makeup off her face and I make the mistake of looking at her. She’s shaking. I breathe through my teeth and raise my palm again. Her eyes, my eyes are welling up with tears. The second my palm touches the whipped cream on her face, I yank my hand away and hot tears begin to flow. I suck in dusty air with shallow breaths. I start to dry heave with the guilt.

“What the hell is wrong with me, what am I doing?”

I cling to Tiny’s side and weep into her soft skin. Penelope pulls a scarf from her sleeve and silently wipes the rest of the whipped cream and makeup off her face. Then, she walks to me, gently lifts my chin, and wipes off my makeup. She smiles as she stares at my blank face.

“It’s like looking in a mirror.”

Tiny tucks her legs under her body and lies on the ground. Penelope and I lean against her, Penelope takes a copper curl and twirls it around her index finger.

“Do you remember when we used to play superheroes?” I ask.

“Of course, we always used to fight over who had the power of flight,” Penelope giggles.

“Do you remember what we used to say to each other?”

“It’s us against the world.”

The silence and nostalgia churns our stomachs.

“When did we turn against each other?” I ask.

We don’t have to answer out loud. Ever since our mother threw us in the ring, we’ve had to compete. Being a clown is lonely. We’ve grown up being scrutinized and laughed at. Performing tore us apart.

“I don’t think I like being a clown,” I realize.

“Me neither.”

“Wait, no, I don’t mean that,” I stutter, “I love being a clown, I love the circus but at the same time, I’m miserable here.”

“Do you actually love it?” Penelope asks

“I just, I don’t know anything else.”

“There’s more than one path for us, Ophie.”

“I feel like it’s too late for me to be good at anything else and I’m not even a good clown,” I say and my throat tightens.

“You won’t find your worth in the circus,” Penelope says.

I sit with this for a moment, trying to unravel the knots of years of emotional trauma.

“Do you want to run away from the circus?” I ask.

“When?”

“We can leave tonight.”

Penelope nods solemnly. This feels right.

We get back to our house around 7:30. Our mom falls asleep around 10:25. Once we check to make sure she’s fast asleep, we dig through our drawers. We throw away our tubs of face paint, our red noses, and our big shoes. Then, we pack the rest of what we own in the trunk of our tiny car. We make shoddy plans and drive until midnight. We sleep in a motel. The room smells like chlorine and mildew. We share a twin bed. I feel Penelope lying awake beside me. I force my restless body into stillness. We breathe together. It’s going to be a long night.  

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