Little Miss 1565
by Krista Madsen
“What can I but enumerate old themes”
–William Butler Yeats, “The Circus Animals’ Desertion”
Sept. 28
Taryn, this is your mom. It’s Thursday around noon. I tried you the other day too. Wanted to tell you I went to the Big E with Bob and his brother and we had a great time. He kind of intervened to get me out of the apartment, since I’m getting a little lost trying to sort things. It was a beautiful fall day. Lots of walking. We had to sit down periodically on benches outside, and we saw the circus. I think it’s something new that they have. We saw the four o’clock showing; I think they have another one at eleven? It’s going on a few more days. I think you and the girls would really enjoy it if you can make it. It was like 45 minutes of old-school entertainment. The woman on the trapeze, somebody on a bike on a high wire. A clown act. Juggling. Then stuff with fiber optics or laser lights or something and the audience was involved. Food was expensive, of course. I managed to find one place with a $5 hamburger with all the fixings, delicious. So anyway, I’m sorry to hear about you and Mark–any clue why? I have plants I got from the garden sale in our complex and Bob can’t keep them in his place and mine is full so I’m hoping the girls might want some now that they have their own rooms, and maybe you too. Let me know. Love to you all.
Oct. 7
Taryn, your mom. You called me when we were at the church service and I let it ring out and when I call you back I just feel like I fill up the tape of this machine every time–is it still a machine with a tape?–I don’t know if it works at all to be honest, can you even hear these? It was too bad you couldn’t make the circus, might have cheered you up. Maybe it was going out in the inflatable boat your boyfriend didn’t like? Wasn’t he phobic about deep water or something? When there might be old rusty things at the bottom of the lake? Where do you work now that you gave up your office for Alice’s room–in your bed? I was thinking about the circus back in the day and the lions, elephants. It’s too bad the animals are gone now. You know what’s missing–the smell! None of the manure and hay on the ground. You know I was two years old when that circus fire in Hartford happened, the deadliest disaster recorded in the state. Almost 200 killed and many hundreds injured. My parents would never take us to any circus after that but I always heard about that fire growing up and to this day feel kind of nervous under any big enclosed tent–so I was happy this show was just out in the open air. Anyway, feel better, bye-bye.
Oct. 21
Taryn, it’s your mom. Did you know the big top in 1944 was coated in wax that was dissolved in gasoline, for waterproofing! I’m still going through everything I brought here–such a huge house, a whole life–where do you even begin to downsize? Your father’s kettle collection, bottles, cans, Lord knows what–and the files: insurance, mortgage, bills, taxes, newspapers, you and your brother’s art and cards, that’s what I can’t get rid of. Paper is the hardest for me. Handwriting. Bob is warning me that they have codes for the building I have to comply with, or else risk inspection by the Fire Marshall. There’s nothing that I own that isn’t flammable except maybe all these plant pots. I actually found a folder with articles my mom kept about the circus fire, a picture of this girl from the Courant I remember. The Flying Wallendas were performing that day, and when the fire started the band played “The Stars and Stripes Forever” as a signal to the workers something was wrong. Like those musicians playing as the Titanic sank. There were the big lions that had just finished performing and they got out, but the chutes they went through to get to the cages were blocking some of the exits. People were circling inside, hysterical, trying to find their loved ones. Thousands of them, mostly women and children since the men were at war. Can you imagine? Well, talk soon, bye.
Nov. 5
Hi Taryn, your mom. Hope you and the girls had a good Halloween, good distraction I’m sure. Happy to help inspire the costumes–your Flying Wallendas sounded amazing, how did you pull that off? Here are some more characters for you, from the article: Frieda Pushnik, the “armless and legless wonder” was rescued. A performer ran to her and carried her out on her chair. Melting paraffin was raining down from the tent, which went up like a ball of flames. I just picture that scene when I can’t sleep at night and I’m missing your father and the sound of the peepers around the pond. It collapsed in about eight minutes. People were trampled, asphyxiated, burned, found in piles–sometimes they found someone alive on the bottom protected by the other bodies. There’s that one little girl they could never identify. They ran that photograph of her with her charred face in the paper so often when I was growing up, hoping some family would claim her, Little Miss 1565, the number they gave her. I’ll never forget those numbers or her face. She’s a mystery to this day and they don’t know what caused the fire. I imagine her voice, what she might say. I’m scared, Momma. Of course she would be, everyone is, but she might be more so because she came alone with the coins she saved up for this special occasion from running errands for the grocer and is pretty sure she will die here alone now too. She wants to call out for the mother she never knew, the future babies she will never nurse, the husband she will never get to love or lose. Summon them all around her instead of this smoke, the terrible heat, the shoving, the screaming. She’s choking on the blackness and she’s also trying to say help me but the words won’t come now and no one will hear her. Oh look at me running amok. Anyway, I’ll keep watering these plants but they don’t get enough light here so I hope you can come unload some soon, unless you think your cat is going to eat them? The animals survive everything. Too bad Mark’s not around to help you hang them from the ceiling. Love to you and the girls.
Krista Madsen, DBA Sleepy Hollow, inK., is a lapsed novelist (kids happened, along with owning a bar, being a reporter, running a writers center). Now she helps people for a living via her post in local government administration and writes the weekly Edge|wise newsletter. Bluesky: @sleepyhollowink, Insta: @sleepyhollowkm, FB: @sleepyhollowkm
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