It wasn’t bad. Even the peeping wasn’t bad. Aunt Sizzy wouldn’t allow any touching, and it was only women on Nela’s side and men on Bertran’s. Bertran would unzip and unbutton, showing the hair on his chest, the genitals, small, but masculine-looking. Nela would untie, showing her androgynous chest (depilated the night before by Aunt Sizzy) and her own organs, unmistakably nonmale. Then the audience would leave, men asking their wives and girlfriends, “Was she?” Women asking the men, “Was he?” Each assuring the other that he was, she was.
The school authorities caught up with them, of course. Aunt Sizzy, who had been meaning to phony up a birth certificate to make them two years older than they were, had to lay out a bribe plus enough to buy an acceptable curriculum, and they had to study it enough to pass the semi-annual tests, but it was nothing. Nothing! They could pass the tests without half trying. Whoever laid out that curriculum had never been to parochial school under Sister Jean Luc!
That first year, when they went into winter quarters, Sizzy arranged for Nela to have breast implants. Not very big. Too big, said Aunt Siz, and nobody would believe it. Kind of small ones. Just right for a teenage girl. Nela had electrolysis too, to get rid of the beard and the hair on her chest and to straighten out the line of reddish-blond pubic hair across the bottom of her belly, so it would look more feminine. Aunt Sizzy put them both on a diet, so they wouldn’t have a lot of what she called “unattractive podge.” Bertran dyed his hair dark, all over, to emphasize the difference between him and Nela, who stayed blond. After Nela healed up, she and Berty visited back and forth with the other circuses, the big ones, where there weren’t any freaks who were called freaks, and the little ones like theirs, where there were. They made a lot of friends.
Also, starting in Florida and continuing everywhere they went, they frequented the bargain counters in bookstores, always leaving with an armload of books. In their trailer at night they lay side by side in the double bed, each with a night-light and an eyeshade and a book. Nela read romances and natural history, reveling in love and zoology. Bertran read history and math texts and biographies. Both of them read about religion, fascinated by it, not as a belief but as a subject. Though the matter had never been discussed with them by their parents or the priest or any of the nuns, they both realized that religion had paid no small part in letting them be born as they were. Sometimes they even talked about that, wondering whether, if they’d had the choice, they’d have been born this way at all. Sometimes, when it had been a good day, they thought they would. Other times, despairing, they were sure they wouldn’t. Aunt Sizzy, who overheard one of these conversations, told them everybody felt that way. Some days, she said, everybody wished he or she hadn’t been born or wished he or she could just die and be finished with everything. The smart thing to do was wait and see if a few days didn’t change things. If it didn’t, well, then it was up to people to do what they had to do, and she didn’t believe anybody went to hell for suicide, not as overpopulated as the world was, but, she emphasized, usually a few days was enough to change a point of view.
Sometimes they thought she might be right. Other times, the few days stretched to weeks and they despaired. It was possible, they told one another, to be so depressed by what they were that they were incapable of doing anything about it even though they wanted to. That’s why they went on, they said, sometimes capable of laughing about it. They went on because they were too depressed to kill themselves.
Sometimes they mitigated depression by holding long involved conversations about Turtledove, how he was doing at school, how he was doing at Little League, whether it was sensible for him to keep up his lessons on the violin.
“So expensive!” said Nela.
“But his teacher says he has genius,” said Bertran. “What would we think of ourselves, years from now, if we denied him his chance at genius.”
Meantime, no matter how they felt, they took dancing lessons from one of the Mangini girls, and learned elocution and comebacks from Matt Mulhollan, owner and ringmaster, and picked up a few sleight-of-hand tricks from one of the clowns. Their act was fine as it was, but as Sizzy said, mere titillation was limited by both prurience and credulity, while entertainment had no boundaries. “If you entertain people well enough, they don’t care you’re a fake,” said Aunt Sizzy. “Most people don’t give a damn about the truth, anyhow.” She mentioned some politicians, including a recent president, as examples. “The world’s biggest phonies, not very bright, but they entertained people, so nobody cared.” The others in the show agreed, helping the twins practice their routines over and over, until the two of them oozed charm at every pore.
It helped that they were bright. No one, not even themselves, had ever doubted that. They turned their minds to the task, realizing their own welfare depended upon it. They worked on their voices, Nela raising hers, Bertran deepening his. They developed a sharp line of patter and a clever way with hecklers. They made the magic tricks sparkle.
“It’s not easy being a power sander,” said Bertran. “Not easy being a polisher.”
“Don’t tell Turtledove,” said Nela. “He’d be so embarrassed if the other children
