Some still stick out to me. DonDon wearing a red-crocheted hat that looked like a pith helmet and staring out at the viewer with his black-triangle eyebrows above streaks of blue eye shadows and the tips of arrowheads tattooed on his temples that touched the corners of the eyelids as if pointing to an inner knowledge of a mysterious pratfall. Pance sporting a white cone hat tipped upside-down toward his right ear and garish red lips cranked open in a smile above a collar of stiffly pleated white fabric. Limbah’s tousled purple hair and mournful eyes sagging through his pancake makeup as he toots a tiny saxophone.
And the instant masterpiece that gave birth to her Clown Period: a pale-white baby clown wearing a hat shaped like a paper party horn colored yellow, two red polka dots planted on the ridges of its egg-shaped skull, light blue triangles over dimpled eyes, and a slash of red paint across the cheeks and over the smiling mouth, agape to show two sharp teeth like those on a shrunken bat.
“It’s so you, son of mine,” she told me.
“So me?” I said, shrinking away from the very sight of it.
“I would give it to you, but I will keep it to always remember you by.”
“Ha, ha, mother,” I thought.
Months later, it seemed as if she had planned my birthday party with the same artistic flair as a celebration of her emerging clownish works.
In the backyard of our home, rainbow-hued streamers of crepe paper twisting elegantly around poles and ribbons curling around nets of coloured paper strands hanging over the picnic table. Balloons hovering in the air in precise floating flight patterns. None of the usual paper plates and cups and plastic forks and knives you see at your typical kiddy outdoor birthday party, no, for Mother it was nothing less than the family china and the most silver of wares gracing the linen-and-lace tablecloth she had spread over the table without a fold or crease. My statuesque birthday cake was the centerpiece, rising in layered splendor, coated in orange swirls and filagrees of red frosting flowing into a script on the top in crisp Apple Chancery font:
Happy Birthday, Son of Mine
Like children will do at outdoor birthday parties, my guests probably wanted to laugh and run around the lawn, chasing after stray balloons and playing games. Instead, they seemed overwhelmed and cowed by the immaculate settings and my mother’s stately presence in her sweeping gown when she made her entrance and stood over them with arms akimbo and a sliver of a smile, admiring her work. Although she never commanded them to behave and stay still, the children sat at the table like a miniature reenactment of The Last Supper, sensing what she sought out of them — and me.
But what Mother never expected was somebody crashing the party. From the kitchen door leading out to the lawn, a wildly laughing clown launched himself out toward us, prancing around and waving his arms in the air. He wore a billowing red, white and blue costume with flapping white ruffles on the wrists and oversized floppy red shoes that wagged at us as he did high kicks. Shaped like starched wings, crimson hair stuck out from both sides of his head and his red ball of a nose bobbed with the joyous whoops out of his thick, red-lipped mouth.
The children came alive. They squealed and mimicked the laugh of the clown and then stood as one from the table to run to him so they could cavort around him, waving their arms in the air without a care.
“It’s … it’s Blabbo,” I said.
Mother groaned and threw her arms to the sky. “What are you doing here?” she said to the clown.
Blabbo pointed at her. “Hey, hey, hey,” he said. “I’m here to laugh and play.”
“You’ve come to ruin my party, you have.”
The clown guffawed.
“I forbid clowns,” Mother said. “This son of mine suffers from coulrophobia. Ever since I told him about that clown who showed little boys rope tricks so he could tie their hands behind their backs and cram them into a basement grave in his crawl space.”
“No, no,” I said. “He’s my favorite clown! There’s nobody like Blabbo.”
“Yeah, come on, Moms, loosen up,” Blabbo said. “Let’s dance. Nobody does the Boogaloo, like I do, nobody does the Philly, like I do.”
“Your foolishness must end,” Mother said.
That stopped him dead. He frowned and started quivering. Then, with a gasping spasm of hectic laughter erupting out of him, Blabbo lunged toward the birthday cake to grab the slicing utensil.
“Kiss this, Moms, he said. He turned to wave the utensil toward Mother and shouted “rock and roll all night, party every day, rock and roll all night, party every day.”
But before he could go at her, he looked down at the utensil and saw it was too blunt for him. Crying with laughter now, he threw it to the ground. “Darn, darn, darn,” he said, “you spoiled my best trick. Just for that, I’m running away to the circus!”
And with that, with his floppy shoes pounding the ground, he made for the hedges surrounding the lawn and jumped over them and landed in the back alley where he took off, dancing all the way.
We never saw Blabbo again.
Clowns shadowed my birthdays even after I left her house: Mother made sure to mail me a clown portrait every year so it would arrive exactly on my special day. I always found it waiting for me, in a mailing tube leaning against my front door, gift-wrapped in black crepe paper covered with the busts of clowns smiling idiotically and a black stick-on bow. Just the clown, no letter, no note.
They never filled my walls. I crammed them into a closet or I stuck them under furniture. Still, I could always sense their presence as my hidden gallery grew every year, as if playing an inside joke on me that I could not escape, could not throw out, haunting me with their stark fun.
In the end, I suppose I should feel sorry for Mother. There was no knitting a shawl or a comforter for her, rocking away in her chair like Whistler’s Mother. No constitutionals in the garden, clipping roses and basking in the glow of the sun spotlighting her golden years. No teas with friends as they exchanged histories of gossip, maybe sipping a hot toddy or two on the side.
All that remained for her were her clowns. Keeping her company in her basement studio, smiling for this woman who could barely smile herself. Overseeing her last work as she sat there focusing on her easel, making sure each bright and colorful detail was exact, masterful, on the clown she sent me before her passing.
This one did carry a note. Happy Birthday, Son of Mine, Forever More. This painting of Father Blabbo.
No comments:
Post a Comment