The Life She Was Given

Merrick keeps Lilly locked in his sleeper car for three days. When it’s time for Lilly’s first performance, she meets the other sideshow performers: Dina the “Living Half Girl,” “The Monkey Girl” named Hester, and Ruby and Rosie, the “Siamese Twins.” Glory explains to her that many of the acts are gaffs, or trickery achieved through makeup; however, even though they aren’t real, Lilly should pretend they are. Lilly’s act will be “Lilly the Ice Princess From Another Planet.” Her stage and princess costume are shades of white and gray, with pearls, crystals, white cotton, and stars adorning her small booth.

In the row of sideshow stalls, she feels far from Blackwood Manor and her attic, and as much as she longed to see the outside world, “in all her fantasies of escape and imagined journeys, she never pictured herself ending up like this—a freak in a circus sideshow” (108). The sideshow act takes place an hour before the show at the big top tent. Lilly is scared to find out how the townspeople, whom the performers call “townies” or “rubes,” will react to her: “Would they recoil in fear? Would they cry? Would they laugh? Would they be sick? Would they jump onstage and try to hurt her?” (111).