Talulah

“Gather‘round and step right up ladies and gents for the experience of a lifetime! For just one quarter of a dollar you can not only see the Eighth Wonder of the World, but look upon the other Seven, as you gaze in awe on the pulchritudinous splendor of Talulah, The Totally Tattooed Lady from Timbuktu!”

As the rubes lined up outside the tent, money in hand, Esther rose from her stool, carefully laying aside her dog-eared copy of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in the original Greek, donned her wig and adjusted her costume. Hell, the girls in the girly show, two tents down wore more, but they only got a dime a look. And they didn’t have their likeness painted on canvas 12 feet high over the midway.

Esther owned the entire midway and Talulah was just along for the ride.

And what a ride it had been. Esther was the eldest of eight children born to a hardscrabble farmer and his withered wife outside of Marion, Ohio. People in town were amazed that such a beautiful young lady could be so smart. Everyone thought she would actually to go to teacher college on a scholarship.

But then there had been the fire.

No one would ever know how it started. Esther had been at a Future Teachers of America meeting at the high school. Walking home, she looked up to see an orange glow in the dark, where her home and family were supposed to be. She broke into a run leaving her books scattered in the dirt.

The small crowd standing in the front yard, futilely passing buckets back and forth from the well, never saw her as she streaked past them into the inferno.

Of her parents and siblings, she was the only survivor.

It was widely surmised that the only reason that she had survived was that one last bucket of water had divinely drenched her just before she ran in.

Then, there were the agonizing months in the hospital.

And the three years where her physical pain diminished as her mental pain slowly sapped the spirit from her being.

As she sat in the darkest corner of the local watering hole, nursing a “on the house” beer, a tall stranger came up and stood before her.

“Looks like life dealt you a hard hand little lady. How would you like to turn that seven high hand into a Royal Flush? “

Phil, the artist, Esther, the canvas. Seas of scar tissue became the battle of Trafalgar, the Great Pyramids at Giza, and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, leaning provocatively over Esther’s cleavage towards the Eiffel Tower. Her scared face beneath the flowing blonde wig, an astonishing replica of the Mona Lisa.

Talulah was born.

For most, life is an endless series of incremental changes, for Esther it had been one of transcendental reincarnations.

Phil affectionately patted her on her Great Wall of China. “Go get ‘em beautiful.”

Esther smiled fondly at her husband before striding out into the lights.

The rubes, as one, gazed in awe.