Once long ago when depression gripped the land, a woman left her husband and child. She became an itinerant entertainer, doing a one woman show. She pinned up a white sheet and stood in front of the sheet dressed in a black leotard with her face painted white. She knew all the great Shakespeare soliloquies, and poems and pieces from lesser known plays as well. The witches in Macbeth were her best success.
She performed in Grange halls and school auditoriums when she could. Mostly she performed in the open. She would collect a nickel from each spectator and put on her show. Sometimes people would want their money back because she did not sing or dance, but mostly the people of the lonely towns were delighted to have some live entertainment.
When she went into Mexico the people didn't understand her. They would pause to listen for a moment and some would throw a coin into her coffee can.
She was beginning to starve, but instead of going north she continued taking the local buses south. If no one harmed her when she slept huddled in a doorway it was because they thought she had nothing worth taking.
It was in Yucatan that the juggler appeared. While she declaimed, he juggled. In Venezuela a dancer and a Peruvian musician joined them.
Now she called out the great soliloquies while the juggler's clubs whirred above his head and the Andean pipes played mirthfully. The young dancer performed some odd but dignified amalgam she had invented for herself, circling the woman in slow parabolas.
In Buenos Aires a child with limbs like sticks and black ringed eyes stole all she could from them and then returned for more, but ended up by joining them.
They all spoke different languages, but over the months by some consensus, they developed a language of accepted words. They could converse among themselves and none else could understand them, though they would catch a word here and there.
In Patagonia the group broke up. The cold was intense. The dancer and the juggler married and traveled on. The musician just disappeared one night. The woman and the child made the long trip north together.
It was five years since she had seen her own child. He was now a tall and angry boy of twelve. He would not look at her or the strange child who accompanied her. Her husband was long remarried.
One day the woman gave a performance at the local school. Her son was in the audience. The children were spell-bound by her voice and gesture.
``That's my mom,'' the boy said. No one heard him. He did not join the group crowding round her at the end of the performance.