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She put one foot up, but then stopped, and the ringmaster leapt down to give her his arm. She leaned on him heavily, her thin spindly limbs shaking as she climbed to the stage, where she spun and gave us another grin, clearly something she’d perfected in her days as the Rubber Woman.

“Why do I feel a little scared?” Hannah whispered in my ear. “Me too,” I assured her.

The elderly Rubber Woman was surprisingly limber, I had to give her that. She began by doing a slow dance that involved kicking her leg up and catching it with her hands, then pulling it behind her neck before pirouetting around on the standing leg. She moved gracefully, and soon was on the floor, going through a series of splits and backbends in time with the music. For a few moments, we all sat enthralled—she was really very good.

But as she reached her grand finale, which involved bending backwards and essentially crawling through her own legs to grin at us upside down, her weight on her elbows, the grin turned into a