Butter

She was always popping popcorn; it had become her career. Wearing a paper hat and a jumpsuit with pinstripes, her talents were reduced to aimlessly stirring a large machine full of pre-popped, butter-less popcorn and scooping it quietly into festive little cartons. The butter was in a large tub beneath her feet, hidden from carnival goers. .

Her workdays involved standing endlessly next to a trashcan with a clown head for a lid. Its pasted-on smile had long ago chipped away, and yet, during every move they packed up the old thing and took it to the next carnival location, as if it were some valuable piece of equipment they couldn’t possibly replace. One day a banana peel (who had brought a banana to a carnival?) hung out of the trash clown’s mouth like a soggy, charred end of a cigarette, and she had managed a genuine smile. Years of polite customer service had left the popcorn woman weary of smiling.

            At the end of each synthetic butter-filled day, the popcorn woman retreated to a trailer she shared with an actual clown. This clown was a woman, not a trashcan, and though she took up all the space in the trailer’s miniscule bathroom for her make up brushes and face paint, she was tolerable as a roommate because she didn’t mind the smell of butter that permeated every inch of the trailer and every object in it. The popcorn woman and the clown both smoked like chimneys, and yet you would never know it, for the constant smell of butter masked everything. 

            Inside the small trailer was a hot plate, a microwave, and a mini fridge. It wasn’t much but it was something. In the fridge there were always about a dozen cans of seltzer water. Being originally from central Europe, it was naturally all that the clown drank. At any given time there was always at least one red lipstick-rimmed empty can sitting atop the microwave, or lying crushed against the hot plate.

            Although the popcorn woman was not required to rise early in the morning and get to work, it had become a regular ritual for her and the clown to chain smoke together and watch the sunrise. Because their work schedules left little overlapped time in the trailer, the moments of darkness just before sunlight permeated the gray of the carnival had become moments the two women secretly both cherished.  

One such morning the popcorn woman waited to get out of her bed and get herself dressed. She listened to the sound of the trailer breathing with the wind, tried to synchronize her own breaths with its shuddering. She heard the mini fridge open, waited a beat until she heard the pop of a can of seltzer water. After imagining the first cool sip for herself, the popcorn woman gently placed her feet on the floor of the trailer, stood up, and opened the door.

The clown’s face was bare. She was calmly staring at the can of seltzer water in her hand. It hadn’t necessarily been a private moment, but for some reason the popcorn woman felt intrusive, as if she had seen something she shouldn’t have. As the clown shook her head to get her hair out of her eyes and set down the can of seltzer water, the popcorn woman nudged her way to the front door and slipped quietly outside. There was dew on the ground. She had forgotten shoes.

It took a few moments for the clown to emerge, but when she did, the popcorn woman felt calm again. The clown sat down, and, without being asked, the popcorn woman flicked open her lighter, holding it out to the cigarette she already knew to be waiting. “Good morning.” She said, her voice barely above a whisper.

The clown chuckled. “I suppose it is morning. Though we’re seeing it before the sun.” She turned to blow smoke out of her nose, and accidentally nudged the popcorn woman. They both chuckled in companionship.

The morning’s sunrise was particularly beautiful, in a subtle way. With each new ray of sunlight came the vision of a new tent on the carnival grounds, another glint on the silver of the trailers, another game booth on the horizon. As the popcorn woman stretched out her legs and examined the way her toes automatically gripped blades of grass, the clown sighed, preparing to speak.

“It’s my birthday today.” She said curtly. “My birthday and Katya’s. She will be seven today.”

Not knowing how to respond, the popcorn woman nodded slowly. “How long has it been since you’ve seen her?”

“Almost five years now.” She sniffed. “I suppose if she saw me today she wouldn’t even recognize me. But perhaps it’s better that way.”

The final rays of sunshine had begun to appear at the end of this sentence, and after releasing the last word, the clown began to shift. “I suppose I should begin to get ready, no?”

Without waiting for an answer, she stood, walking into the trailer and letting the door swing shut in what appeared to be one fluid motion. The popcorn woman reached for her cigarettes.  

Every morning the clown took hours to meticulously apply her makeup and carefully put her costume together. The popcorn woman never went inside the trailer while the clown was getting ready. Instead, she walked the edge of the carnival grounds. The outside of each carnival location was different, but the popcorn woman never looked there. The most beautiful thing about the carnival, she thought, was that no matter when you looked, if you look in the right place you would always see the same thing.

It was her first experience walking the grounds with no shoes, and the popcorn woman felt strangely freed. The walk wasn’t necessarily pleasant, as most of the carnival lot was rocks, not grass. But the she didn’t mind.

            As she approached the trailer once more, the popcorn woman felt entirely at peace. The sun was gentle on her back, and she felt comforted upon the return to her trailer’s familiar, shuddering breaths. As she pushed open the door to her trailer, a spilled can of seltzer water immediately signaled something strange. When she set her hand down on the counter it felt sticky; looking down she saw the pink end of a now smashed tube of lipstick.

            The clown was at the trailer’s equivalent of a dining room table, staring out the window. Because the window faced an almost empty parking lot, the popcorn woman could only imagine what the clown saw. But she chose not to interfere this time. Instead, she left the clown to her window, and closed herself quietly into her room.   

            As she got dressed in her popcorn-selling pinstriped uniform, the popcorn woman remembered having gone to see one of the clown’s shows once.  Because she had run out of popcorn seeds the day before (thanks to a mistake in shipment reordering) she had closed her popcorn stand early and headed quietly into the clowns’ tent. The tent was the easiest one to spot. It was a completely ridiculous yellow and white striped pattern.

She hadn’t immediately spotted her clown, but when she eventually did she felt so sad for a moment she had to force herself to sit down and take a deep breath. Her clown was sitting on a bench with the audience, bouncing a scream-giggling toddler on her lap and pointing faux-exasperatedly at an elephant doing some sort of trick in the middle of the ring. Every time the child looked up from laughing, the elephant would appear to shrug its ears, sending the clown into another exasperated sigh and the child into peals of simple, uninterrupted laughter.

            She had politely clapped until her clown’s scene was over, and then left briskly, attempting to completely avoid eye contact with her clown. She stopped at her popcorn stand, her back pushed hard against the butter tub. She had feverishly wished the bewildered tears to stop welling up behind her eyes.

            The tragedy of clown work had never been revealed as poignantly as it had that morning. As the popcorn woman had learned her clown’s life story somewhat early in their friendship, she was well aware of how truly sad it is to play with children all day when one’s own child is so far away. The clown’s daughter’s name was Katya. Her ex-husband had taken full custody in the divorce. The clown had only thrown two birthday parties for her.

            Having tied the kerchief and smoothed the front of her popcorn jumpsuit, the popcorn woman slowly peeked out of her bedroom and into the main area of the trailer. Her clown had not appeared to move; she stared with the same sad intensity out the small window. The popcorn woman took a deep breath. She walked straight to the front door and left without a word.

            The day was long. Not many people were at the carnival, and the popcorn woman felt extremely tired. About a half an hour before her lunch break, the popcorn woman found herself distracted by  a man and young child. The little girl couldn’t have been more than seven years old, and yet the man appeared completely at her whim. They rotated from stand to stand, he winning her prizes and buying her cotton candy and getting on the spinning fruits ride that he was slightly too tall for, she jumping up and down and pointing with immeasurable excitement at something new each second. They weren’t unlike any other pair of father and child the popcorn woman had seen, but something about them kept her attention.

            Eventually, the popcorn woman noticed the colorful blur of her clown racing past the popcorn stand and toward the trailers. Turning back to the clowns’ tent, she saw the man and his daughter had just exited and were looking befuddled. She accidentally made eye contact with the father, and he began to approach, the little girl holding his hand tightly and sucking her thumb, eyes wide. When he was near enough to speak to her, she raised her eyes to meet his again, producing a polite “Hello, how can I help you?”

            He said something quickly at first, but she did not immediately understand it because the man had an extremely thick German accent.

            “I’m sorry?”

            “I’m looking for someone. A clown, a woman clown. She was just inside the clown’s tent, performing in the show, but when we tried to find her so we could talk to her when the show was over she was gone. Have you seen her?”

            The popcorn woman shook her head quickly. “I’m sorry.I haven’t.”

            The man and his daughter visibly shrunk, turning dejectedly back to the tent. As they walked away, the popcorn woman wondered if she would regret not sending the two to her trailer where her clown (the only female one in the entire carnival) was sure to be hiding. She shook off the doubt as the the man and his daughter disappeared from view.   

            Upon return to her trailer, the popcorn woman found her clown sitting on the grass and nervously attempting to light a cigarette as the one in her mouth shrugged up and down with her rapid breathing. The popcorn woman then knew she had made the right decision in keeping the man and his daughter away from her clown; the woman was a nervous wreck and she hadn’t even spoken to them.

            Taking the lighter and second cigarette from the clown’s shaking hands, the popcorn woman lit and inhaled in one fluid motion as she sat down.. Respectfully, after the first inhalation (which was generous) she moved the cigarette to a position in her hand that implied holding it for her clown rather than smoking it for herself. Cocking her head to the side gently and letting a strand of hair come between her and the clown to block some of the tension, the popcorn woman asked quietly, “What’s wrong?”

            The clown looked quickly into the popcorn woman’s eyes and immediately burst into tears. “My-my husband is here,” she began desperately. “He brought Katya. On her seventh birthday, and she’s here. Almost five years and it’s the first time I’ve seen her. I barely even recognized her. My own daughter and I barely even know what she looks like”

            The popcorn woman wasn’t sure what to say. They sat in silence for a few moments, until the popcorn woman finally asked, “Do you want to talk to them?”  

            The clown was quiet for a moment. Slowly she nodded her head. “Yes, I think so. Can you go find them? Do you know what they look like?”  

            The popcorn woman nodded. “They came to my stand looking for you, so I know what they look like. I’ll find them.”

            After three rushed cigarettes the popcorn woman set off to locate the man and his Katya. She found them almost immediately, lurking sadly at the popcorn stand. As she approached, she put on her friendliest tone, and explained that she had seen found the woman clown and could take them to her now if they wished.

            The man and his daughter brightened quickly, nodding emphatically with smiles so wide it hurt the popcorn woman’s own mouth to see them. On the short walk to the trailers, the man and Katya chattered quietly as if the popcorn woman was invisible. As they approached the trailer, the popcorn woman pointed slowly, and nodded. She watched Katya tumble like a puppy up the stairs of the old unit and turned to smoke another cigarette as the door flung open and she heard an emphatic “MAMA!” ring out from the child. She didn’t see the door shut behind them, but she began to hear voices speaking quickly, and she rounded the trailer to a side that would give the family more privacy.

            After about an hour of waiting, the popcorn woman heard the door to the trailer open. The clown began calling for her, and she walked into view.

“Come inside, meet my family!”  The popcorn woman tentatively walked inside the trailer. Katya and the clown’s ex-husband were seated at the dining room table. Each had a can of seltzer water in front of them. The clown rushed around the room anxiously. Half of her makeup was painted on her face.

            “Hello!” Katya chirped. “My name is Katya!”

            The popcorn woman smiled.

            After a few minutes of light conversation and several cans of seltzer water, the clown exclaimed, “I have big news! Mikhail wants me to be moving back home. And Katya wants me there too!”

            The popcorn woman felt her heart sink. She wasn’t sure whether it was because she immediately knew the news to be too good to be true, or whether she was terrified it was and her clown would leave. But she forced a smile. “That’s wonderful news!” Katya clapped her hands.

            “So that’s why I’ve been packing my things. We’re leaving tonight!”

            The popcorn woman shook her head. “Oh, so soon! Well, I’ll leave you to packing; my lunch break is over in five minutes anyway. Stop by the stand before you leave!”

            After closing up her popcorn stand for the night, the popcorn woman walked slowly back to her trailer. She wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, but still found herself somewhat surprised to discover that it was half empty. All the makeup was gone and the mini fridge was sadly empty. The popcorn woman sadly closed herself into her room.

            Unable to alter the fact that she was a creature of habit, the popcorn woman awoke suddenly the next morning before the sunrise. Unable to fall back asleep and unable to stay inside the trailer, she walked outside to sit on the small patch of grass and watch the darkness turn to light. She had left her shoes inside again.

            As the last few rays of sunshine shone their way over the carnival, the popcorn woman took a deep breath. So much had happened, and yet the carnival still looked the same. She stood up and brushed the dirt off her legs. Had she not stopped to look one last time, she might have missed the one thing that was different about this sunrise.

            Faraway on the horizon, on the hilly road behind the farthest tent, she saw a small woman in what appeared to be a clown’s outfit. She struggled with a large bag, pulling it down the road toward the carnival. The popcorn woman smiled. But she did not rush to help. Instead, she shut herself quietly into the trailer.