La Petite Acrobat With Her Wrists of Steel
The acrobat was born with wrists of steel. Her mother had not envisioned this though later, with hindsight she will recall the afternoon her lover -the acrobat’s father- lay beside her on the living room couch, affixing fridge magnets to the dome of her belly. She’d sensed a certain umbilical tug as he peeled and positioned them to form a belt. She had assumed this feeling normal. This was her first baby after all. Perhaps all infants were magnetic. Perhaps she had a sticky womb.
Giving birth was a painful process. The hands came first and then the wrists. This felt so much like expelling a cheese grater, the poor woman passed out from the pain. She woke ten minutes later to find herself the reluctant mother of a pink-faced girl with metal wrists. Delirious from the trauma, and the gas and air she’d been sucking on, she looked down at the baby’s fists and demanded that, “someone, anyone, a locksmith ideally, take the bloody handcuffs off my girl.” When she finally realised these were her daughter’s actual wrists, no more removable than a foot or head, she howled for twenty four hours straight. Then bundled the baby up in a blanket and placed this parcel in an orange crate and asked her husband, (who was not, nor ever had been, the baby’s father), to leave the crate outside the circus with a note reading, “this one belongs with you.”
The husband was not as bold as the lover. He always did as he was told. He gave the baby to the circus and never spoke of her again. The woman went on to have four more children. A girl with telephones for ears. A boy with a retractable snorkel in place of a nose. And twins, (one of either sort), whose middle sections were completely see-through, as if they’d been blown from a sheet of glass. Her husband, having acquired a rake of orange crates, donated his children respectively, to the telephone exchange, the Royal Navy and the aquarium which had recently opened next to the pier. The couple never attempted children again. Just to be on the safe side, they made a point of sleeping in separate beds.
Meanwhile the girl with wrists of steel was growing up in her circus home. She was small for her age but very determined. The steel made her strong and this strength was good. It helped her say no, when they suggested she belonged with the sideshow freaks. It gave her the grit to persevere when her trapeze career simply wouldn’t take off. Her wrists of steel were far too heavy to float and fly through the air like the beautiful bird she needed to be. And when her juggling went sideways -fiery clubs flying off into the crowd- she understood her wrists were a bit unwieldy but could not bring herself to curse them. Surely there should be some place in the circus for a girl with wrists of steel.
And there was. There is. She’s now blissfully happy in her new position as petite acrobate, apprentice to the Great Grandini, whose specialities are contortion and elaborately-sequined leotards. She turns cartwheels round the ring for hours, never succumbing to the slightest twinge. She holds the Guinness world record for the longest handstand and the longest handstand on one hand and might, next year, wrists-permitting, make an attempt on a third world record, the longest handstand underwater. She’s currently undergoing rust proofing but hopes to be match fit by March. She also likes to hang off things. Ladders. Beams. Window ledges. One handed. Two handed. By her fingertips. She loves the feeling of total abandon which comes with standing on thin air. Some would call her steel wrists are shackles. The girl would disagree. She knows they’re the very thing which makes her free.
Based on Agatha Christie’s novel, Murder on the Links
Dropped at Square de L’Ile de France, Paris, France on 15th January 2020
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