Touch of the Clown by Glen Huser

make you think of any-thing?” Cosmo asks.
    â€œUh–I’ll t-take this.” Nathan picks up the balaclava. “I 1-lost mine after I robbed the S-Seven Eleven last week.”
    The sunhat makes me think of an old movie called
Gone With the Wind
that Daddy and Grandma watch every couple of months. There’s a beautiful girl in the movie and she goes to a barbecue in her hoop skirts and a big sunhat. She flirts with all the young men and makes their girlfriends jealous. Maybe if I take the sunhat I can turn myself into the beautiful lady.
    Cosmo smiles at me and nods.
    I take the sunhat over behind a pillar where nobody can see me. What do I do with it now? Do I just put it on and become a beautiful belle?
    There needs to be something more.
    Sometimes, when we had a few minutes left at the end of a drama class, Ms. Billings would pop a tape of Carol Burnett skits into the VCR and we would watch them. What would Carol Burnett do? I think of her cleaning lady act and I decide that’s what I’ll do, be a cleaning lady who’s working in a theater prop room where shefinds the hat and then turns into a gorgeous lady. Besides, I’ve done the cleaning lady twice already in drama skits at school.
    When it comes time for people to show what they’ve come up with, everyone goes before Nathan and me. The girl who looks like she’s a ballet dancer does a dance, like a Japanese geisha, with the paper fan she chose from Cosmo’s trunk. The boy with the ponytail tucks his hair up under a black beret and pretends he is playing an accordion at a restaurant.
    When it’s his turn, Nathan puts the balaclava on the lid of the trunk. He moves around the stage, timid, frightened. But when he finds the balaclava and puts it on, he is suddenly powerful, forceful, dodging back and forth like a boxer, doing Ninja kicks.
    When he is finished, I grab my imaginary bucket and mop and move like a tired old woman onto the stage.
    â€œWonderful,” Cosmo praises us. He brings out a cooler of juice and a container of cookies. “Time for a bit of a break now,” he says.
    On cue, Bella arrives with Livvy, who is dragging a large sheet of paper.
    â€œHey, look, Cosmo,” she says. “I did the bestelephant. It was going to be a dog but then I made it into an elephant.”
    â€œWow,” says Cosmo. “And you’re just in time for cookies and juice.”
    Some of the other kids are standing around us, and Livvy, never bashful, displays her picture for each of them. For the last half of the work-shop, she nibbles cookies on the upper terrace and draws on a piece of manila Bella has left with her–an elephant friend for the one she has painted.
    â€œSo, what do you think?” After the workshop, Cosmo walks with us as far as his house, wheeling Mehitabel alongside. “You were good, Miss Barbara Stanwyck. Great with the sunhat.”
    â€œIt was fun. A little scary, but fun.”
    â€œI was great with my elephant,” Livvy reminds him. She has the large papers rolled with a rubber band around them.
    â€œYou were,” Cosmo laughs. “Bella says you’re a natural.” We are at Cosmo’s yard. “See you tomorrow,” Cosmo waves at us.
    â€œYou can’t let Daddy see your pictures,” I tell Livvy.
    â€œI want to show him and Grandma.”
    â€œIt needs to be a surprise for later. If he askswhere we were, you have to say we were at the playground and the library.”
    â€œOh, bah.”
    â€œYes, bah. Promise me, Livvy. It’s really important.”
    She scowls at me.
    â€œPromise. Or I’ll never play ball with you again, or read you
Winnie-the-Pooh”
    â€œCan we play with Bingo when we get home?”
    â€œIf you promise.”
    â€œI promise,” Livvy sighs.
    Daddy and Grandma are both asleep when we get back to the house. The end of a videotape runs bright blue on the screen. I make a game of tiptoeing