Clown Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

work that way.” Then he asked again, “Tell me, are you bleeding?”
    “You tell me—when are my fluids no longer your business?” I was barely bleeding. Nothing to mention. There was no dead baby cradled between my hips. Not anymore.
    He said, “Dear, we’re in the body-fluid business. You don’t have a fever…cramps?”
    I said, “I came in for help a while back, and that’s over now. I’m here again, sure, but it’s a new show. Act One.” I didn’t even want to think about the last round in the ER: pregnant, then not pregnant, and the drama was over. Curtains closed. There would be no tiny Mr. Galore. No miniature Rex. No granddaughter to my lost mother, grandson to my once-present dad, our tightly pruned bonsai of a family tree.
    Soon enough I’d tell Rex about the trip to the ER, but I’d tell him when he came home. And until I told Rex, why tell anyone else? I was two months pregnant when the blood started. Rex was one week out of town.
    The cardiologist nodded and wrote on his chart. “Any pain now? Bloating?”
    I shook my head, a slow side to side.
    “In a miscarriage, you can lose a lot of blood. Become anemic, have complications. Maybe we should get someone in here to do a pelvic.”
    I said, “It was my heart this time, right? A whole different issue, different tissue.” I didn’t have claws digging into my sciatic nerve or the wrenching in my gut. I wasn’t sifting through blood clots brown and gelatinous as chicken liver, looking for the blue tint of the birth sac. “You can’t reach my heart through my hoo-ha—and you’re not the first man I’ve warned that way.”
    “Your hoo-ha?”
    “No pelvic,” I said. I looked around for a balloon to tie, a way to ease my nerves. “Can I have one of those rubber gloves?” I’d make the five fingers into a tiny Madonna of the Rocks .
    The cardiologist nodded, a meaningless gesture, and didn’t hand me a glove. He said, “OK, well. There is one more test I’d like your help with.” He lifted my sticky hand, looked at my fingernails. Each nail was painted a different color, like a box of crayons.
    “For clowning,” I said.
    He put my hand back on the bedspread carefully, as though my hand were breakable. “We’d like to check your adrenals.” He patted the back of my hand. His own hand was laced with a rope of veins, like rivers drawn on a map.
    A nurse came in with a paper bag. She said, “Excuse me. Your friends brought this.”
    “Friends?” I repeated, hopeful, and took the bag from her. Rex was my friend. He topped the list, my only friend at times.
    Inside the bag was one juggling ball and an envelope of twenties. No rubber chicken. In blue pen, on the outside of the envelope, it said, They docked you for leav’n early. Otherwise, it’s all here.—Crack .
    Matey and Crack. They were co-workers, not friends. I put the bag beside the bed.
    The doctor wrote a note on a prescription pad. “The adrenal test is simple. And it’s precise. But we need you to collect twenty-four hours of urine.” He gave me the note. “Take this down to the lab, they’ll explain the process. You’re heart seems OK. Today’s EKG looks good.”
    Still, I could point to a place in the front of my skull where my head was full of the hum of bees, an incessant and displacing rattle that moved in over thoughts I might’ve had. If this were a clown act, I’d hold a hand to one ear. Bees would fly out the other side.
    I asked the cardiologist why an electrocardiogram was called an EKG, instead of an ECG.
    He said, “Nazis. Nazis invented the machine.”
    After he left, I found a napkin on my breakfast tray and wrote that down: EKG = Nazis .

3.
    Hide and Seek; or, Love in the Ruins
    I WALKED HOME FROM THE HOSPITAL DRESSED IN THE mismatched stripes of yesterday’s sweaty news. The squirting daisy was pinned to my lapel. The wolf whistle rattled in my pocket. I carried the pink vinyl bag of tricks over my shoulder, and the hospital had added a