Annie walked down the pier. She remembered the shooting gallery where Karin had won the bear. As she neared the end of the pier where the roller coaster rose in menacing humps, she saw a building called the House of Freaks. She did not recall having seen it that first time with St. Vincent. She drew nearer. The lurid posters, painted in colors that looked as if they’d been scraped from living things, promised shocks that would make strong men faint. Two men looked up at the drawing of a tattooed lady. An elderly woman wrapped from head to ankles in a thick black shawl stared longingly toward the entrance, where a man in a booth played with a roll of tickets.

St. Vincent had warned her—what you’re afraid of becomes your only real life. She bought a ticket and passed through canvas flaps into a dark passage. From somewhere ahead she heard a low murmur, as of people conversing softly. The passage led into a round room with a high tent ceiling. Just to her right was a small stage on which sat a huge obese man, a black ribbon tied into a bow around his neck. As she quickly averted her eyes, one of his hands slipped indolently from a thigh like a torso. Ringed around the circular wall were other such stages, set off from each other by black curtains. In each one, on a straight-backed chair, sat a motionless creature deformed or hideously marked; all were as silent as stones.

She was suddenly aware of a powerful smell, a combination of rotted fruit, urine, straw, sweat, and the unsettling odor of animals. The murmuring she’d heard had apparently come from a small group of people who were leaning on a corral fence looking at the prize exhibit. A sign clamped to chicken wire announced: HUMAN MOTHER OF MONKEYS.

In the middle of this ring, behind the chicken wire which rose to the ceiling, sat a monumental Negro woman on a small stool. Straw was scattered over the floor, a few wisps of it clung to her hair, a patch here and there on the brown tuniclike garment which left one of her brown shoulders bare. Around her, darting, grimacing, defecating, poking, pinching, and screeching, was a horde of small monkeys. They climbed to her lap, her shoulders; they plucked at her hair that was like a thicket of black heather. Sometimes they sat and held their tails like ladies holding fans. Their little flecked yellow eyes moved like the eyes of thieves and they bared their teeth in batlike grins.