Chapter 7

It took Rosie nearly three months to complete the task she had set for herself. Like any heroic task, it was long and painful, but even in her most difficult moments, she bore the pain by closing her eyes and picturing Josephine. And then she had an even harder task ahead of her.

With today's technology it is alarmingly easy to find someone you're looking for. In Rosie's day, this was not the case. She traveled through small towns in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, sometimes stopping to do a day's work apple picking or dishwashing to earn more train fare, always asking when the carnival had last been to town. If a carnival had been there in recent memory, she always asked a second question: Had there been a bearded lady? All too often, the answer was no.

In Georgia, though, she felt she might be getting the scent of a trail. An old man picking peaches beside her said that a carnival had been to town two weeks before. "There was a bearded lady, too," he said. "Woulda been right pretty if it wasn't for the whiskers. Called herself Madame something. Started with a J, I think."

"Josephine?" Rosie asked, squeezing a peach so hard that juice dribbled down her wrist.

"That sounds right. My brother lives in Versailles, the next town north of here. Said the carnival was there last week."

So they were moving north. At the rate the carnival moved—one town per week—they should be in the next town up from Versailles, Rosie thought. She thanked the old man and announced that she was through picking peaches.

Rosie made it to the carnival in time for the last show of the night. Wearing a long black dress and long black gloves despite the heat, she bought a ticket from a seemingly normal man she didn't recognize and crowded in with the rubes inside the tent.

When Josephine took the stage, Rosie was shocked by her appearance. The once snug-fitting emerald green gown she favored for performing now hung loosely from her narrow waist and hips. Had heartbreak made her so thin? Tears pooled in Rosie's eyes.

"I come from the backwoods of Kentucky," Josephine was saying automatically. "When my mother was still expecting me she was frightened by a wild boar that came charging out of the woods—" Suddenly Josephine was silent, and her eyes met Rosie's.

After a full minute of silence, Wilma nudged Josephine, who said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everyone. I was just thinking about... the past. But you don't care about my story anyway, do you? You just wanted to see me. And you have. And now you must excuse me."

She stepped off the stage and walked through the audience toward Rosie. The rubes parted, as if afraid that brushing against Josephine might make them freakish, too.

"Rosie?" Josephine said, as the rubes stared at them.

"Yes." Try as she might, Rosie couldn't read the look on Josephine's face.

"How is your father?"

"Recovered... and remarried."

"Rosie," Josephine said again.

"We can't talk here," Rosie said, feeling the dozens of pairs of eyes on them. "Take me to your tent. I have something to show you."

In her tent, Josephine hugged Rosie so tight she could scarcely breathe. "I never thought I would see you again."

"I told you I'd come back."

"And I wanted to believe you. But I couldn't because they... they never do." Josephine let Rosie go. "And even though you have come back, how do I know you'll stay? If you left again, Rosie, I couldn't endure it. The normal ones always choose to leave because they can. They—"

"I'm not a 'they,' Josephine." Rosie took Josephine's hands in hers. "I am me. And I'm not like all the other rubes. I am one of you."

Josephine released her. "I... I don't understand."

"Remember how I said I had something to show you?" Rosie pulled off her long black gloves and unbuttoned her dress until she stood before Josephine in just her chemise.

Josephine, who was used to causing shock in others but not to being shocked herself, gasped. Rosie's fair skin—her shoulders, arms and hands, her legs and feet, were now decorated with trailing green vines, thorns, and leaves which led to fully blooming red roses. On her left forearm a butterfly lit on a rose. On her right thigh, a hummingbird fluttered over another rose to sip its nectar. A honeybee hovered above a blossom on her shoulder.

"You see," Rosie said. "I'm not Rosie Bell anymore. I am La Belle Rose, the Tattooed Lady. And my life isn't out there with the ordinary people. It's here with you."

Josephine moved closer and trailed a finger down a snaking vine on her arm. "So beautiful. But so much pain... for me?"

"It was nothing compared to the pain of being away from you."

When Josephine's and Rosie's lips met, the two worlds they knew—the normal world and the carnival world—faded to black, and there was nothing but the two of them.

Josephine led Rosie to the narrow cot, pushed her back, unbuttoned her chemise and gasped again to find another surprise—

Rosie's lovely breasts were white and devoid of ink except for a heart-shaped vine tattooed on the left over Rosie's own heart, with the name "Josephine" in script inside it.

With tears in her eyes, Josephine leaned to Rosie's ear and whispered, "Your name is written on my heart, too."

Josephine kissed each picture on Rosie's body: licking the rose petals, biting the bumblebee, tracing her tongue and fingers up the vines that trailed from Rosie's ankles to Rosie's calves to Rosie's thighs to the part of Rosie that was free of illustration and exactly the way Josephine remembered it. There Josephine lingered, her face dipping down like a nectar-thirsty hummingbird over a rose.

And to Rosie it felt like the speed of a hummingbird's wings with which Josephine's tongue flickered against that most sensitive spot. This sensation, she knew, was what she had always wanted even before she knew she wanted it. Rosie was soaring with joy, carnival lights shimmering in her head, her breath coming in great gasps, her hands tangled in Josephine's long black hair. When the carnival lights burst into fireworks, she cried out, "Oh, Josephine! My sweetheart!" Her thighs quaked, and her hips bucked so hard that the flimsy cot collapsed beneath them.

Rosie laughed as she sprawled naked in the sawdust, but Josephine still asked, "Are you all right?"

"Never better," Rosie said.

Josephine held out her hand to help Rosie up. "We'd better get dressed. It's time for the second show. And as delighted as many audience members would be to see you in your current state, I think it would be wise for La Belle Rose to make her debut with at least a few stitches on."

Rosie smiled. "Will my old costume from the knife-throwing act do?"

"It will until I sew you a new one. You'll need a new costume now that you're here permanently." Josephine kissed Rosie's shoulder blade as she zipped up her costume.

"Yes, permanently," Rosie said.

The love she and Josephine carried in their hearts was as permanent as the ink on her skin. It would be with them all of their days.