Your Freedom, an Attempt
There was one issue, and it was that you were completely normal. So Levi Hampton had to improvise.
YOU are the daughter of two freaks. Which is a fine thing, it’s fine, you were born within a metal cage, and you live among other metal cages, so not to burden society. In fact, you’re quite a gift, being born into a Freak Show — called a SIDESHOW, to soften the blow of knowing you’re a freak. But you know. You were born knowing.
Your MOTHER had a beard and your FATHER was seven-foot-eight. You were the first birth within the Sideshow. Manager LEVI HAMPTON didn’t believe the pregnancy would carry through, but when you landed head-first onto the hay of the cage floor, wailing the sound of life, dollar signs glimmered in his eyes.
There was one issue, and it was that you were completely normal. So Levi Hampton had to improvise.
EXT. SIDESHOW TENT. DAY
A hot July day, Clayton, New York, 1847. There’s a crude sign staked into the grass before the classic red-white striped tent which reads: A REAL SIGHT FOR THE EYES JUST BEHIND THE TENT!
CUT TO: behind the tent. YOU are in a wooden crate as an infant, lying on a thick pile of hay with a cloth blanket over it so not to irritate you. LEVI HAMPTON is joyously counting money off to the side while ONLOOKERS stare at you. They’re confused.
ONLOOKER #1
There’s nothing wrong with it.
ONLOOKER #2
It appears to be a normal baby.
Levi Hampton quickly approaches the increasingly dissatisfied customers, scrambling for an explanation.
LEVI HAMPTON
Well, the thing may look normal, but it’s a product of two freaks.
EXT. FIELD. NIGHT
The sky is clear and full of stars. Infinite. Your MOTHER and FATHER are in two different cages, locked shut. LEVI HAMPTON approaches your mother’s cage, with YOU in his arms. He unlocks the door and hands you to your mother. You’ll remain with her only until you’re able to crawl.
LEVI HAMPTON
Typical of a mistake; you can’t even birth a
freak correctly!
Levi Hampton prayed to his god that you’d develop some appalling deformity, maybe one enlarged limb, or that your knees would bend the opposite way like a deer — you could be DEER GIRL, he thought — or that you wouldn’t grow past three feet tall.
Nothing of the sort ever happened.
You were so remarkably average.
Naturally, this resulted in a biannual inspection; every six months, you would stand atop a pedestal, and Levi Hampton would check for any changes in your normality. Perhaps, one day, he hoped, you would become abnormal.
But soon you became a healthy, coherent four-year-old, who grew at a normal pace, and whose joints bent correctly.
INT. SIDESHOW TENT. EVENING
A June evening, Upper West Side, New York, 1854. There have got to be at least five hundred PEOPLE under the tent — more than you’ve seen in your life. It’s New York City, after all.
This is different, though. None of your walking around the grounds, looking into the cages. These people are seated, looking towards one sole object: Your MOTHER.
YOU peek through the slit where two curtains meet, at your mother who stands on a platform. LEVI HAMPTON is pointing at her with a wooden cane.
LEVI HAMPTON
(announcing)
And here she is… winning by a landslide by you, the voters… keeping with the gift of Democracy… your very own Freak of the Year!
Nobody applauds for this notable achievement. They point, laugh, whistle, and shout insults at your mother. And yet, your mother stands there, this proud grin on her face. You, a seven-year old, conscious, cannot understand why she’d be so happy.
EXT. NYC. NIGHT
YOU lay in your cage and stare at the cold metal roof. Your MOTHER’s cage is beside yours.
YOU
Why were you so happy to be laughed at?
MOTHER
They’re not laughing at me, they’re laughing with me. I’m a freak. They love me. I bring them joy. That’s what freaks are for.
But you know that those laughs were not shared. They were not from a place of love. You want to shout at her for thinking that those people liked her. So you keep staring at the metal roof, and for a moment, you feel a twinge of unbearable heaviness within your soul. Maybe it was just a stomachache. Granted, you were malnourished.
You never viewed your parents or other SIDESHOW EXHIBITS as freaks. Maybe because this was all you knew. This was normal. You failed to see a difference between yourself and the family forced upon you — the TATTOOED LADY, the SHORTEST MAN IN THE WORLD, the WEREWOLF, the CONJOINED TWINS, SKELETON MAN, and on and on. As far as you were concerned, these freaks were your equals.
Then you turned sixteen, and you noticed that you looked just like the other GIRLS that would stare at you through the bars of your cage.
And you began to wonder why you were in a cage. And you sulked as the VIEWERS stood before you, their heads tilted in perplexity, trying to figure out what exactly made you a freak.
INT. SIDESHOW TENT. DAY
A sunny day in May, Bennington, Vermont, 1864. YOU have upgraded from a floor of hay to a floor of hay with a wooden stool for you to sit on. You sit there on that wooden stool, sullen, staring at the floor so not to look in the eyes of the GIRLS who look like you.
You feel them staring.
TEEN GIRL #1
I don’t understand.
The girls come closer to you, wrapping their hands around the cage bars. As if about to pry them open and let you out.
TEEN GIRL #2
Why, she looks like any ol’ regular girl!
TEEN GIRL #3
What’s the big idea? Are they insisting that teen girls are freaks?
Quickly, LEVI HAMPTON hurries to your cage after overhearing their outbursts.
LEVI HAMPTON
No, teen girls aren’t freaks! She’s just a special case. She’s… she’s a lunatic.
Suddenly frightened, the girls release their grasps on the bars and flee from your cage.
EXT. WILMINGTON, VT. NIGHT
A wide open field. The cages are parked along the tree line that begins the deep, dark woods. The sky is clear. So many stars that it’s impossible to count them all. It’s endless, infinite, beckoning.
The moon is full and shining down upon the cages and the dark green grass, adding a blueish hue to the earth. YOU stand behind your cage, upon a pedestal, for your biannual inspection of anticipated abnormality. You’re in only your cotton nightgown as LEVI HAMPTON inspects you. He becomes aggravated as he realizes that there will never be anything visibly wrong with you.
LEVI HAMPTON
(muttering)
Leave it to two freaks of nature to create a perfectly normal child.
He gives up and paces around, and you look upwards, half expecting the cold roof. Instead, your floored by the stars that swallow you. One of them moves, flying away to a different place.
Something in you changes.
You wonder where the star is going.
That was your last inspection. Levi Hampton knew that you’d never develop a freakish trait. Of course, that meant that you were virtually ignored by him — you had nothing to offer for his sideshow.
But you could dance.
You found out one summer night by the fire, when all of the freaks gathered around to sing and play instruments, congregating behind the cages for their few hours of false freedom. It was after you saw that shooting star that you began figuring out the capacity of your existence.
Frankly, you were the greatest dancer within a fifty mile radius, everywhere you went. You could move to any rhythm and keep up with any tempo change, waving your limbs, twirling and relinquishing your free will to the music. Perhaps your abandon was freakish in itself.
And your forced family would howl with joy, encouraging you to keep moving, liberate yourself through movement, feel something for those couple of hours. They might have been freaks, but they loved you.
It didn’t matter, though. You didn’t love them back. You couldn't.
For nights, particularly during travel, when Levi Hampton was at the front of the cage train, you practiced picking the lock of your cage. At first, you figured you’d pick everyone’s locks, and you’d all escape the captivity and forced spectacle that Levi Hampton imposed. Becoming increasingly aware of how much of a non-freak you were — of how disgustingly average, how nauseatingly ordinary you were — you decided that you were the only one who deserved to break free.
The freaks were the idle stars in the sky, while you were the one flying to an undetermined location.
In the June of your seventeenth year, you decided you’d escape. One time — this memory you had repressed — the WEREWOLF made an escape in the middle of the night. Levi Hampton heard the ruckus of it all, stepped out of his wagon, and shot him dead. Werewolf was buried in an unnamed field in Rochester.
You backed into the corner when Levi Hampton arrived. He gave you a stern look as he turned the key.
When he stepped into his wagon, you picked the lock. Carefully you stepped out, the dewy grass coming in contact with your warm skin.
EXT. CAGES. NIGHT
A warm — not humid — June night, Cranston, Rhode Island, 1865. YOU are quietly about to step away from this misery for the rest of your life.
MOTHER
(shout-whisper)
Oh! You, there!
Annoyed, you go to your MOTHER. She’s holding onto the bars of the cage. By the light of the moon can you see her pleading eyes.
MOTHER
Take your mother with you.
YOU
Keep quiet, I can’t get caught.
MOTHER
(increasing volume)
You cannot leave me here. I deserve to be free, too!
YOU
(becoming distraught)
Be quiet! Please, be quiet!
MOTHER
(shrieks)
You will really abandon your own mother?
LEVI HAMPTON steps out of his wagon, gun in hands. You look him directly in the eyes.
LEVI HAMPTON
I knew you were up to something.
He points and shoots. You duck and survive. You look at your mther, who does not feel remorse for being so loud that you almost get shot in front of her. Dormant resentment surfaces as you narrow your eyes at her — all of this in a moment, but what felt like a lifetime.
YOU
(sincerely)
I hate you, you freak.
Levi Hampton has reloaded his gun just as you take off into the woods.
You’ll never see these people again for as long as you live. You are free.
Despite your newfound freeness, something was wrong. PEOPLE were looking at you strangely, and you began to look around desperately for a reflective surface, fearing that some deformity developed between the time you escaped and the time you arrived in Downtown Providence, Rhode Island.
You were probably receiving odd looks because you had strictly a cotton nightgown on, no shoes, and severely knotted hair. You never assumed this. You always assumed that there actually was something wrong with you.
You landed in a VAUDEVILLIAN THEATER. The stage was vacant, and the HOUSE MANAGER was allowing people to go up and present their talent. Naturally, for the desire to be accepted by normal society — and to prove something to yourself — you timidly stepped up, requested music, and began to dance.
At first, the THEATERGOERS didn’t pay much attention to you. You gestured to the band to speed up the tempo. The faster it got, the more you flailed, the better you felt. The thought of becoming accepted left your mind. All that mattered was the music. You had no idea that EVERYONE was watching you, worried that you’d become possessed, until they realized you were keeping time with the music. You stopped, swiped your hair from your face, and looked out into the CROWD.
Silence. Painful, prolonged silence.
Then, applause. A wave of cheers, howls of delight, whistling, all for you. Your face began to ache; you’d never smiled so hard.
These were not jabs at you; this was a shared moment. You were not a spectacle, but instead, a work of art.
In a moment of bashfulness, you looked down. At your feet lied a single rose.
You got picked up by BRIGHAM JOHNSON and his traveling TROUPE of VAUDEVILLIANS. They were ordinary, but overwhelmingly talented people, like yourself. Perhaps you were not so sickeningly ordinary after all.
That night, you took off with the the troupe in two shared wagons, with no locks, and no cold metal. Though under a canvas, you stuck your head out of the wagon and stared up at the night sky. Infinite. You really were free.
But you were still a freak. You would always be a freak.
Raisa Norberg is a comedy writer and history major. She lives in Rhode Island.
