Madame Beauchamp’s Caravan of Mysteries

by Lisa Robertson

Some folks say sinners are born, not made. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do think the circumstances of my birth might have given me a head start on a life of ill repute. My brothers and sisters—all eight of them—have Biblical names. I’m the youngest. I don’t know if Momma and Daddy ran out of ideas or saw something blasphemous in me right from the start. Either way, when you name a girl Ruby in a house full of Levis, Sarahs and Miriams—bad things are bound to happen.

I got pregnant behind the tents at a Baptist revival. They hold them on the outskirts of town, and everyone in the county shows up on Friday night in their Sunday best. The preachers and musicians travel all over the Midwest. There’s something about a different choir and a different pastor that gets everyone in a fervor.

At Mount Eden Baptist, most Sundays nobody answers the altar call. But at a revival, half the sinners in the county line up to praise the Lord and repent every sin they have so much as contemplated.

All that activity made it easy to sneak behind the tents with Billy Fleenor. Billy lived two farms over from ours. My folks didn’t like his family much. They were from Kentucky. Momma felt Kentuckians were trashy. I’m not sure why being born on the north side of the Ohio River in Indiana made us better than them, but according to Momma, it did.

Bottom line? Billy and I weren’t allowed to be together. We weren’t even supposed to sit by each other in church. But I’d loved him since we were ten. Being told I couldn’t just made me love him more.

What happened behind the tents while everyone else was praising the Lord was a whole different type of speaking in tongues. And it had nothing to do with God, Jesus or redemption.

###

I don’t know what I thought would happen when I told Billy I was pregnant, but it did not go well. If there’s one good thing about coming from sturdy farm stock, it’s that I wasn’t one of those stick-thin girls that show right away. But the clock was ticking—and having a baby out of wedlock in Delaney Creek in 1925…well, it’s about the worst thing that can happen to a girl.

I kept thinking that Billy would come around. That we could tell our folks then go ahead and get married—maybe move to town and get jobs at the shoe factory.

Of course, the ladies in the quilting circle at Mount Eden and the men down at Moody’s Hardware would have a lot to say. But it would blow over. I’m not the first or the last 17-year-old to give in to temptation. If Billy did right by me, everything would be fine.

All summer long I waited for Billy to change his mind, but he just seemed more determined than ever to not get “tied down” by me or my condition. Why wasn’t it our condition?

Then, during the last week of August, Momma and I went to Madame Beauchamp’s Caravan of Mysteries, conveniently held in the same field that the revival had been three months prior.

The Caravan of Mysteries had a magic show, séances, hypnotists, fortune tellers—an entire cornucopia of blasphemy and sin. For any good Baptist, buying a ticket to the caravan was akin to buying a one-way ticket to Hell.

But Momma put her religious fervor aside when it came to traveling mystic shows. My brother Elijah died in a foxhole in the Argonne Forest right at the end of the Great War. Momma had been going to séances ever since. She said it was our little secret. Secrets were something I had gotten very good at.

Momma didn’t want me to go into the séance with her, so I walked around the caravan instead. Every few feet, I’d stumble across some new variety of heathen: gypsies, fan dancers, witch doctors, miracle healers…the caravan had them all.

I made my way to the big tent—the one with the magic show featuring Pierre, Gentleman Illusionist. Pierre was a “world-famous sorcerer from fashionable FRANCE,” according to the poster outside the tent. I guess France was the most important part.

Pierre looked pretty lackluster up there. I suppose you can only pull so many rabbits out of so many hats before the thrill is gone.

But he did do his best to keep the crowd engaged. “I need…how you say……a beautiful young mademoiselle from the audience to assist me. Do I have any volunteers? How about you, ma belle. Everyone, please give this beautiful young lady a hand!”

I stood up there scared out of my wits while Pierre threw a half dozen knives at various parts of my body. The audience clapped a little too hard for my liking. But there was something about being on that stage. It was the most alive I have ever felt in 17 years of being alive.

After the show was over, I looked around for Momma but couldn’t find her. I about jumped out of my skin when Pierre, Gentleman Illusionist, sidled up next to me.

“How’d you like the show?”

His fancy accent was long gone. “You sure don’t sound very French, Pierre.”

“I’m not French—but I am from Paris, Texas. Just part of the illusion…mademoiselle.”

I shifted my weight from one foot to the other while Pierre kept talking. “You look like you could use an adventure! My assistant just quit, and you were a natural up there. What do you say—want to be sawed in half six shows a week?”

I was pretty sure that would not be good for the baby.

“My wife is looking to add another psychic tent—you could try your hand at that.”

“I’m not psychic.”

“You don’t have to be psychic to be a psychic.” He winked and pointed to his poster. “Take it from me—Pierre, Gentlemen Illusionist.”

Turns out Pierre’s name was really Fred. I found that out when he introduced me to his wife Madame Beauchamp, AKA Edna Mae Perkins.

Fred excused himself to finish packing up while Edna and I got acquainted.

“I joined a mystic show when I was about your age,” Edna said. “Now, 20 years down the road, I own one. I’ve been all over the place, made some money. Anything keeping you here?”

I thought that was a pretty good question. Leaving sure would solve a lot of my problems. No one would ever know I was pregnant. I wouldn’t have to live my life as Ruby Grayhorn, Town Tramp. I wouldn’t have to watch Billy go on with no consequences. When you got right down to it, there really wasn’t anything keeping me in Delaney Creek.

“How old are you, Ruby?”

“Eighteen.” The lie rolled right off my tongue.

“We leave for Evansville Sunday night. Be here by eleven. Your baby’s daddy won’t be following us?”

I put my hand over my belly as a reflex. “How’d you know?”

“I’ve got psychic powers. And you’ve got a baby bump. See you Sunday.”

Friday to Sunday wasn’t a whole lot of time to decide if I wanted to abandon everything I’ve ever known and strike out on my own with a bunch of devil-influenced blasphemers and my unborn child. Fortunately, I was comfortable making rash decisions. One of those got me into this mess in the first place.

Still, I owed it to the baby to give Billy one last chance to make it right. I begged him to make a go of it with me. He talked about joining the military; how he didn’t love me; how he didn’t want me or a baby.

He said a lot of things, but not a single one of those things was “yes.”

###

I had zero regrets about joining the caravan. I missed the farm and my folks, but if they had found out I was pregnant, things wouldn’t be the same. I would be an embarrassment. The baby would be a burden. The more I thought about it, the more I knew I made the right decision.

I started working with Fred right away on how to become a good magician’s assistant. To be honest, I was never much for learning. I liked eighth grade so much I took it twice, and when it became clear to me that nothing could ever top it, I just quit school altogether. But I tried hard to absorb everything that Fred said about magic.

I had to learn all about sleight of hand and misdirection. There were a lot of props and gadgets and gizmos. But by far, the best part of being Fred’s assistant was the costume.

I was pretty good at sewing. We always made our own clothes on the farm, mostly out of flour bags. But as a magician’s assistant, sparkle and shine was required. Edna had some beaded red fabric, and since my name’s Ruby, she thought that would be perfect. I sewed myself a flapper-style dress with lots of fringe plus a big old fascinator with feathers and netting. All of it itched like crazy, but it was the fanciest thing I have ever owned.

My boobs were getting fuller and rounder the more pregnant I got. Fred said that creating a diversion was a big part of being a successful magician. He said you had to give the audience something interesting to look at, so they wouldn’t pay too much attention to what you were really doing. My boobs were just the something interesting to look at that the act needed.

Those first few months were probably the happiest of my life. I didn’t have to keep any secrets, and I was surrounded by people who were unlike anyone I had ever met before. They didn’t care who I sat next to or what I wore or what I did or didn’t do. I could be exactly who I was, even if that was a pregnant teenage runaway.

Everybody in the caravan was running from someone or something. They’d all managed to do stuff they were not proud of (or could be prosecuted for), and they were trying to make something better for themselves.

The way Edna told it, we were just giving the public what they wanted. Like Fred and me in the magic show—we filled people with wonder. The faith healers? They brought hope to sick people. The mediums gave people peace that their dead relatives were in a better place. Everything we did helped people—even if there wasn’t a bit a truth to any of it.

It all made sense to me. Especially when I was doing the magic show. Pretending to be sawed in half didn’t hurt anybody. And it made me feel important. Little girls in the audience would run up after each show, wanting to be just like me. Not once in my entire life had anyone ever looked up to me.

But the closer I got to my due date, the harder it got to be Fred’s assistant. My feet hurt something terrible. My costume barely fastened in the back. I couldn’t even fit in the box he used to saw me in half anymore.

Edna decided to swap me with one of the psychic girls until I had the baby. Learning how to be a fake psychic was a lot easier than learning how to do magic. There were only three rules: keep things vague; ask leading questions; pay attention to body language.

People generally don’t go to psychics because things are going great for them. I would start off saying things like, “I sense you are having some challenges in your life” or “The spirits are telling me your heart has been broken.”

Then, it was off to the races. People want to tell you their stories, and—if you pay attention—they’ll tell you more than they hold back. I liked the fact that I could do the job sitting down, but I didn’t like that I had to take advantage of people.

I joined the caravan to stop living a lie, now I was doing it again. These people I would lie to…they just wanted to be loved. Or to give their family a better life. They wanted the same things I did. But instead of telling them the truth, I told them what they wanted to hear.

I felt as low as dirt on a worm’s belly.

I don’t claim to be perfect. I haven’t always done the right thing, whatever that means. But I’m a good person. And up until I joined the caravan, the worst thing I had ever done was believe someone who said they loved me. It seemed to me that the consequences I faced were a lot worse than the sin we committed.

I made my mind up to leave the caravan after the baby was born. Not to go back home, but to strike out on my own somewhere I could make a good, honest life for us—one that I didn’t have to hide or be ashamed of.

###

As March turned to April, farmers all over the Midwest planted their spring crops, and the Caravan of Mysteries set up in Cape Girardeau, Missouri for a week’s worth of shows.

I was due in a couple of weeks and could barely get shoes on my feet because they were so swollen. The last thing I wanted to do was sit in the private psychic tent and lie to people all day. But there aren’t sick days at the caravan—if they were working, you were working.

The sun had already gone down, and I was in the middle of my last reading. The woman was crying—they almost always did. Her husband had left her. He was living with another woman a couple towns over. And—believe it or not—this lady wanted to know if she could get him back.

I told her the spirits said it was likely, then suggested she visit the witch doctor to buy a vial of his love potion which was guaranteed to make anyone fall in love with you. I got an extra 50¢ for every referral.

That’s when God finally had enough of me. It started with a big old jolt. The tiny table that I did my readings on started to shake. The tent fell around us, white sheets billowing in the air. A dull roar filled my ears then got louder and louder, and the earth underneath my feet started to vibrate and buckle.

“Earthquake!” It looked like the woman was yelling, but I could barely hear her between the ringing in my ears and the sounds of people screaming.

And that’s when my water broke. I was going to have my baby while the world collapsed around us. I begged the woman not to leave me alone in that tent.

When she first walked in, I’d noticed the expensive fabric of her dress and that her shoes and purse were real leather. She was just a mark. But now, when I really looked at her, I saw kindness in her eyes. She was probably Momma’s age and a little thick across the middle. She started gathering up the tent material and making a palette on the floor for me. She was calm despite all the chaos around us. “My mother was a doula. I can help you.”

Nothing prepared me for giving birth in what was left of a dirty psychic tent in the aftermath of an earthquake. But I was learning that I could do more than people thought I could. Having this baby wasn’t any different.

The woman—Kay—held my hand and wiped the sweat off my brow. She told me everything was going to be ok. And unlike me, I didn’t get the feeling she was lying. The longer it went on and the harder it got, the more I wanted to make up for lying to her. “I’m not really psychic,” I sputtered out after a hard contraction. “And I don’t think your husband is gonna come back to you either.”

It felt like a demon was being ripped out at me, but it wasn’t a demon—it was an angel. My angel. She had a bright fuzz of red hair like my Momma. She didn’t look like Billy at all. Praise God.

###

After the baby was born, they put me and the baby in the back of a wagon to rest. The earthquake left everything in shambles, but I felt peaceful. I don’t know how I knew everything would be alright, but I did.

When I woke up, the first streaks of daylight were on the horizon. Kay was there. “You gave me quite a scare young lady.”

“I can’t thank you enough for what you did.”

“Have you decided what you want to name the baby?”

“If it’s alright with you, I’d like to name her Kay. She wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you.”

Kay smiled and said she’d like that. We sat for a few minutes then she asked, “What are you going to do now? Does little Kay have a daddy?”

“Not much of one.”

“My husband was the only family I had left. I reckon I’m about as alone as you.”

“You deserve better Miss Kay.”

“So do you Ruby.”

We sat in silence for a few minutes until Kay spoke, “Ruby, I inherited a little hotel and café in town. It’s not much, but I can’t keep up with all the cooking and cleaning. I could use some help. It’d give you and the baby a roof over your heads.”

Life sure is funny sometimes. When you feel like you’re alone, someone sits next to you. When you feel like there’s no hope, a new day dawns with the promise of something new. And, when your heart is broken, someone can come along to mend it in the most unexpected way.

I ran away from home once before—that didn’t work out. But this time, it feels like I’m running to something, not away from it. This time, I’m making a home. For me and for baby Kay. And not just for now—but forever. If that’s not redemption for all my so-called sins, I don’t know what is.