The Life She Was Given

In November 1956 in Hatfield, Long Island, 18-year-old Julia Coralline Blackwood prepares for her work shift as a waitress. Julia ran away from Blackwood Manor three years earlier to escape the strict and controlling confines of her parents’ home, only to end up impoverished and living above a liquor store with an abusive boyfriend. Julia’s mother blamed Julia for her father’s alcohol use disorder. When he died in a car crash when Julia was in high school, Mother told Julia it was her fault: Julia should have known “something bad would happen if [she] didn’t follow the rules” (17).

As Julia begins her shift at the diner, she sees a man in a pin-striped suit who looks out of place in the neighborhood’s greasy spoon. He is a private investigator who has been looking for Julia for a year; he hands her an envelope.

The narration shifts back to Lilly. Coralline leads her out of the attic through an elaborate set of secret doors for the first time in her life. Lilly wheezes and has trouble breathing as they move throughout the house. Once outside, she can’t believe all the sights, smells, and sounds. Coralline guides her through the fields toward the Barlow Brothers’ Circus. They stay out of sight of cars, and Lilly worries about being spotted, wondering, “What would happen if someone saw a white monster on the side of the highway?” (30). Soon, they encounter a circus performer named Viktor, who Lilly thinks is a giant, and a man named Merrick, who seems to be in charge. Merrick examines Lilly, questioning whether she is really Coralline’s daughter and checking if her father agrees with Coralline’s plan. Coralline replies, “My husband is not long for this world. And Lilly has been nothing but a cross to bear since the day she was born” (34). Coralline tells Merrick never to return to her land, as she won’t be leasing it out to a circus again. Viktor pulls Lilly away as she kicks and screams.

In the letter Julia received, she learns from her parents’ attorney that her mother passed away almost a year ago, in September 1955, and that Julia has been named the sole heir of Blackwood Manor Horse Farm. The one caveat to Julia’s claim on the house is that she must move back. The realization that she is now an orphan makes Julia emotional, and she wonders why she didn’t feel aware of profound loss when her mother died. She remembers that she had also been happily swimming with friends with her father died and concludes that perhaps “family members only sense[] one another’s passing when they share[] a genuine love and true affection” (37). Julia returns to work, conflicted about whether she should return to her family home.

Viktor and Merrick lead Lilly into a train car and lock her in a cage alongside llamas and goats. Lilly screams for help and tries to escape. She meets two circus workers, an older man named Leon, who is in charge of taking care of the animals, and Dante. When Viktor and Merrick return and attempt to get her out of the cage, Lilly kicks Viktor in the face. As punishment, Merrick whips her. To teach Lilly a lesson, Merrick also forces Leon to tell Lilly what happened to his daughter, a bearded woman performer who was murdered by townspeople after marrying a local man. Leon tells Lilly that people are afraid of what they don’t know. Merrick explains that he oversees the sideshow and that he is doing Lilly a favor by taking her in—the circus is a place for people who don’t belong elsewhere. He brings in a tattooed woman named Glory to help Lilly get cleaned up and fed.

Glory is kind and gentle, but Lilly is overwhelmed by the chaos around her. In the dressing room, Glory helps Lilly get dressed and washed up; when she notices the welts on Lilly’s back from the whipping, she makes Lilly promise to obey Merrick from now on. Lilly is nervous to see herself in a mirror for the first time, fearful that she will see a monster. Instead, she sees “a young girl with flawless skin, winter-white hair, and eyes the color of a summer sky […] her lips [are] such a light pink they [are] nearly invisible, and her lashes and brows look[] dusted with snow” (57). Lilly is distraught when she realizes that she looks like a doll, not a monster; she cannot understand why her parents didn’t want her. Glory tells her there is a name for her condition—albinism—and that there are other people like her out there.

When Julia arrives at Blackwood Manor, the house is damp and dark, and the yard is overgrown. She suddenly feels very alone in the large home, and she is reminded of her difficult upbringing, during which she was confused by her father’s alcohol use disorder and her mother’s neglect. Julia tries “to understand why she felt so unloved, and why is always seemed as though her parents were keeping things from her” (63). She remembers being held and kissed in childhood, but something shifted as she got older. She meets Claude, the barn manager and groundskeeper, who has maintained the home after her mother’s death.

As Lilly and Glory make their way to the cookhouse for breakfast, Lilly sees lions in their cages. She empathizes with the animals, reminded of when she had been locked in and longed to be free. She also passes a young boy and man playing with a baby elephant. In the cookhouse, Glory promises to look out for Lilly and tell her whom to trust and whom to stay away from. Still, Glory reassures Lilly that circus folk “are strangers in every town [they] go, so [they] only have each other” (70). Glory takes Lilly to meet Mr. Barlow, who is in charge of the circus. Inside his extravagant train car, Mr. Barlow and a woman named Alana evaluate Lilly, deciding that Lilly’s circus act should focus on her as a porcelain doll or princess. Merrick and Mr. Barlow, who are second cousins, disagree about who is in charge, arguing over Lilly’s act. Merrick drinks heavily when he returns to his car and slaps Glory when she asks to sit out of the night’s show to stay with Lilly. When Glory and Merrick leave for the evening’s performance, Merrick locks Lilly in a bathroom to keep her from escaping.

Julia explores more of Blackwood Manor, remembering how her mother used to keep the doors locked and always had a giant ring of keys in her hand, though Julia never knew why. Julia meets the veterinarian, Fletcher Reid, who invites her to the horse pen to see the stallions that a buyer is interested in purchasing. Julia’s parents forbade her from visiting the horse barn, but she would sometimes sneak out to feed and pet the horses, feeling a strong connection to them. Claude insists that they shouldn’t sell, but Julia needs more time to think.