Touch of the Clown Read Online Free Page B

had these diseases. They were handicaps that everyoneunderstood. Then I feel guilty. After all, there are times when Livvy can go for several days with no accidents at all, just as if she were a normal person. Just as if she’d never had one kidney removed, never had a bathroom problem.
    The doctors can’t seem to decide how to fix Livvy. They put her on special diets. They give Daddy bottles of pills for her to take and charts to keep. But Daddy loses track. I tried to make Livvy take the last bottle of medicine until it was finished. Livvy kept spitting the pills out, muttering, “Yuckee, yuckee.” For awhile we had diapers for her to wear, but Livvy made such a fuss about putting them on that we quit trying.
    Mr. Graydon watches me chew the pretzels.
    â€œAnd how is she getting along? Livvy?”
    â€œThe kids tease her. Hold their noses. Call her names. Stinky. Livvy Le Pew.”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œI don’t know. Just kids.”
    Mr. Graydon sighs and shuts his eyes for a minute.
    â€œLivvy uses the F-word on them,” I add. “I’ve been telling her not to.”
    â€œMaybe she needs to.”
    I look at him sideways and notice he’s not smiling.
    â€œHow about your dad? Has he been working lately?”
    â€œHe needs to stay home to look after Livvy,” I tell him, “and he hasn’t been well.”
    â€œOh.”
    â€œHe has bad nerves. They tried to fix them in the hospital.”
    Mr. Graydon looks at me. “The nerves?”
    â€œHe has medicine but it ran out.”
    â€œI see.”
    Sometimes when Mr. Graydon starts asking about things at home, I close off his voice. I read the posters on the wall behind him. Most of the posters have slogans. Things like “I will is more important than I.Q.” Or I look out the window and count the houses that have black roofs, and then the green.
    Ms. Billings, the drama teacher, doesn’t seem to be interested in our families. She’s too busy with other things. We do a unit on mime, lifting imaginary boxes, being mirrors of one another’s actions, playing robots and mannequins and marionettes.
    One day she asks me, “Are you taking dance somewhere?”
    I shake my head.
    â€œPity,” I hear her say before she moves away to another group. Later, we try some dialogue from plays. She likes the way I speak. One noon hour during Drama Club she has us read parts from a play called
I Remember Mama,
about a new family in America, with a father and a mother and children, three girls and a boy.
    â€œYou can read Katrin,” she says to me. “Of course she needs to be older in the play, but you sound older, Barbara.”
    If Livvy and I lived in the
I Remember Mama
world, we would be coming home to a house with supper simmering on the stove, and Mama sitting by the kitchen table, counting out the money Papa has brought home from work in a little envelope, and the people in the family would be joking and teasing one another and thinking about what it would be most important to spend the money on.
    Our kitchen is definitely not an
I Remember Mama
kitchen. There is no family chattering. Nothing is simmering on the stove. Through the doorway to the living room comes the sound of the television.
    I have told Livvy exactly what she can tell andwhat she can’t tell when we get home from Cosmo’s. “You can tell that you were hit by a bike and a man put some Band-Aids on the places where you got hurt. You can’t tell that the man did juggling for us and took us to his place and gave us lemonade. If you do tell, we may not be able to go and see him again. You must promise me Livvy.”
    Livvy promises.
    â€œIs that you, Barbara?” Daddy calls from the living room.
    â€œMhmmm.”
    We’re no sooner in the house, of course, when Livvy barrels through into the living room.
    â€œLook, Dad-dee,” she dances in, trying to display all of her