The Carnival
By Robyn Neilsen...A young man with sun bronzed skin stood online with his friends. He’d come every day that week. Always ending up at whichever ride I was collecting tickets for.
The lights of the carnival blinked out with a thud. The final stragglers, in their poodle skirts and pressed khakis, made their way out on the notes of Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind”, arms laden with buckets of popcorn and stuffed animals they’d won at the gaming booths.
I wondered where they were going. To a party? To share clandestine kisses by the shoreline? To a home with roots planted generations deep? Off to a life that only lived in my dreams.
That day I’d been in charge of the Ferris wheel. Laughter and joyful screams floated through the steamy air of July.
A young man with sun bronzed skin stood online with his friends. He’d come every day that week. Always ending up at whichever ride I was collecting tickets for. Jeans rolled over boots, white t-shirt crisp. His gaze made me blush. The curve of his full lips sent heat to my cheeks. For a moment, I felt seen. Real. Alive.
Watching the other kids my age, watching the boy, I wanted to be a part of it all. But papa would never let me.
“Ay, childhood is a frivolous thing,” he’d say with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You’re sixteen. You work. Now that builds character. Everything else…is just trouble.”
My whole life was work. A cycle with no end. I was scared to admit, even to myself, that I wanted more than this, something steady. Because the admission meant leaving my family behind, and who was I without them?
The field to home was bathed in darkness. Crickets chirped their summer songs, and the grass tickled my ankles as I walked to the trailers by the ocean where we lived. At least for as long as we were on Montauk. We never stayed anywhere long. But I ached for a home without wheels.
The path through the trees was lit by moonlight, a swath of forest opened onto a fire encircled by a ring of trailers. Mama and my aunts were bringing pots of caldo verde from their kitchens. The men seated on chairs around the fire, cups of vinho verde in hand. Old world rancho sang out from my avo’s concertina.
And a silhouette stood at the edge of our camp.
I tapped Marta on the shoulder. “Who’s that?”
She shrugged and took the pot from her mother, Tia Fatima.
I walked toward the shadow, the details of the young man’s face from the teacups coming into focus, dusted in starlight.
My heart dove into my stomach. “What are you doing here?” I said. “No outsiders allowed.”
The young man pushed a strand of brown hair off his forehead. “You’re the girl from the carnival.”
I folded my arms across my chest and leaned into my hip. “What do you want?”
The young man’s eyes settled on mine, soft and warm. “To know your name.”
I narrowed my gaze. “Why?”
The young man cleared his throat. “Because you’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. And I would never forgive myself if I let you go without at least attempting to know you.”
My body hummed. But my mind counted down the days left in this place. My family’s trajectory, an arrow forward that never found a target. Why even bother pursuing this if it couldn’t go anywhere?
I pointed with my thumb over my shoulder to the party behind me, all my relatives eating dinner and drinking wine, dancing in the light of the fire.
“My papa will shoot you on sight if he sees you,” I said.
“They don’t seem to be all that interested in murder right now.”
That line got a small smile from me. “Don’t be fooled. This moment isn’t worth dying for.”
“Maybe. But I think I just met the girl I’m going to marry.”
I laughed. “You think so? You don’t even know my name.”
“Not for lack of trying. Perhaps if I tell you mine…I’m Anthony Russo.”
I stared at him, and he gestured that it was my turn to respond. I rolled my eyes. “Isabel Oliveira.” I reached out my hand and he took the offer. His skin calloused. A spark, electric, where we touched. Butterflies fluttered their wings in the pit of my belly.
“We’re not staying here long. One more night and then we’re on to Queens,” I said.
“Well, what do you know. My family lives in Queens.”
“Is that so?”
“Indeed, going back two generations. My family practically owns all the apartments on the block. When you find something good. You don’t let it go.”
The air charged with a current that brightened the world around us, the crashing waves, the fireflies, the heat.
“Isabel!” mama called. “Who are you talking to?”
“I’ll be right there!” I shouted back. “You better go,” I said to Anthony.
“I’ll see you in Queens,” he said.
“What makes you so sure I’m not going to ignore you if I see you again?”
He closed the space between us, his breath like funnel cake and powdered sugar, his skin like salt. “You felt it too. The spark. When we touched.”
I looked down at my feet and back into his golden eyes. He smiled. The joy of it taking up his entire face. “I’m going to make you fall in love with me, Isabel Oliveira. If I have to follow you to the ends of the earth.”
I pushed his shoulder lightly. “Go!” I said, laughing.
He kissed my hand and began to walk backward through the trees. “That’s a promise.”
My heart, plucked like the string of a harp. I’d had many endings, but this didn’t feel like an ending. A beautiful beginning. A promise of tomorrow. A seed planted.
My mother came up behind me and placed her hand on my shoulder. “Isabel, you don’t listen when I call you. Who was that? No good talking to strangers in the dark.”
“That wasn’t a stranger, mama. That was the man I am going to marry.”
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After 13 years teaching English at an inner-city high school, Robyn Neilsen now develops curriculum and instruction for educators through her virtual store, The Bookish Classroom. Her flash fiction has placed in the top ten stories for the 2021 and 2024 NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Competition and her fairy tales and historical fiction have been published in Carmina Magazine, Grande Dame Literary, and The Lorelei Signal.
