Strange Hands Reaching

Bitsy learned to juggle when she was five. She started out using tennis balls because they fit in her overly large hands perfectly. “Banjo-pickin’ hands,” her mother had called them then. Bitsy’s fingers were long, longer than most children her age by at least an inch or two. She found that her extraordinary hands were perfect for grasping items out of the air, and soon she mastered the Half Box and the Four-Ball Slam, with which she regaled her aunts, uncles, and cousins at that year’s family reunion. They applauded with their normal hands, and Bitsy bowed and curtsied and performed two encores.

She juggled at school for first grade show-and-tell, using three boxes of Kleenex and Mrs. Langstrom’s desk lamp. Her classmates said “Oooh” and Mrs. Langstrom covered her face and watched through petite fingers. Bitsy practiced at home, learning the Four-Ball Shower using sofa cushions, and the Asynchronous Fountain using small countertop kitchen appliances.

Bitsy’s mother taught the girl to take care of her hands. Every Saturday, they drove out to the Laughing Springs Beauty Salon for manicures. Bitsy fisted her hands tight to fit them in the manicure dish, while her mother pointed out the new colors of nail polish to draw her attention elsewhere. When Bitsy turned ten they moved her manicure to the pedicure station. The Supreme Bubbling Foot Spa was large enough to accommodate her hands, with some room to grow.

“Someday I’ll have to get my manicures in a big whirlpool tub,” Bitsy said, her eyes wide.

“That’s ok, they have those in the back,” her mother whispered, patting Bitsy on the arm.

Bitsy developed her act to include singing and dancing, colorful rings, bowling pins, and flaming torches, and then she and her mother took the show on the road. Venues grew from county fairs to state, from the nickel circus up to Barnum and Bailey. Crowds roared with small-handed applause at Bitsy’s tricks. When Bitsy sang “America the Beautiful” while performing the Multiplex Mayhem with seven lit torches, men wept openly and wiped their noses on their shirt sleeves. Bitsy looked up into the flying fire and then at her strange hands reaching and twirling, and she felt good.

At age thirty, Bitsy began feeling pain in her long fingers, and by thirty-five she was dropping things. When Bitsy dropped a pin for the first time, the music stopped, the crowd silenced, and the pin bounced and rolled and came to rest at Bitsy’s feet. She picked it up and continued her performance, but for the rest of the show she felt off by just a hair. Afterward, she sat backstage with her hands in her lap, flexing and splaying her fingers, searching the joints and nooks for an explanation of their betrayal.

The cheering crowds became quieter and the venues smaller. The act changed. What was once a juggling, singing, and dancing spectacular became just singing with a Five-Ball Clawed Cascade as a finale. The joints in Bitsy’s fingers creaked and moaned like old wooden steps. Her mother brought salves and balms and massaged Bitsy’s hands every morning and night. Bitsy performed for the final time to a near-empty room at The Green Canteen in Rockport. After the show, she packed up her gear, went home, and watched television.

Now in her late sixties, Bitsy volunteers at the Cedars Sinai hospital nursery. When a baby is sick or failing to thrive, Bitsy wraps her slack, wrinkled hands around it like a blanket. The skin-to-skin contact is reassuring, and when Bitsy begins to sing, the baby turns pink, warms, and snuggles into her expansive palms. Day after day, the woman cradles the soft newborns, sometimes three or four at a time, closes her eyes, and imagines them squealing with delight while soaring in an airborne roundabout of pastel pinks and blues.