Read more: A brief Q&A with Lyn Stevens
Inside the ape house it is cool and damp. The cages are lit with cool tone florescent lamps so that even at 6 p.m. if feels like a milk-white afternoon. When it’s time to put the toddlers down I unlock the heavy metal door and step into the corner cage. “Abu, Cleo, off to bed you two,” I say making a little hook with my finger, goading them from their play. Always the obedient little girl, Cleo swings herself off the crude wooden jungle gym and lumbers past me into the small opening of the shift cage where she will make a nest and bed down for the night. “Sleep tight, baby girl.”
Abu screeches and struts around the cage like a prizefighter. I puff out my chest too and walk defiantly to the center of the cage. Abu stands upright. Three years old and he is nearly as tall as I am. He pounds his chest and the sound reverberates in the gallery. I call to him sternly and beat my own chest which sounds, in comparison, like I’m hitting a piece of cardboard. Abu screeches back at me. I go over to the side wall of the cage, bend down, eyes still fastened on him and reach for the broom. That’s all it takes. Abu blinks disbelievingly. He lopes over to the tiny doorway, his long arms hanging meekly by his sides. “Goodnight, you little wise guy,” I say and bang the shift cage door closed.
The yammer of the white handed gibbons at the end of the gallery makes me laugh. Fussy monkeys I think. I haul the hose into the biggest cage where the troop lives. It is empty now that the adult gorillas are also in their shift cages. If you really want to do a thorough cleanup you have to angle yourself around and under the low slung branches and vines making sure that the hose doesn’t get twisted around a tree, watching all the time for muck and stray banana peels. It’s when I whip the hose straight that I notice the pool of thick dark liquid in the hollow of a boulder. I bend down to sniff it. The odor of fresh blood rises through the stink of the ape house. I dip my finger. There’s an unmistakable way that blood smears when you rub it between your fingers. A gorilla is dying. Repositioning myself so that my thick thighs are no longer crushing my knees, I try not thinking about which one it will be. Lenny. Mtobu. Erasmus. Olissa. SuzeQ. Tonia. Hanna. I accidentally brush my hand across my pants leaving a bright red smudge. Hanna was placed in my arms when she was 3 days old. I handraised her. She was the first and only gorilla I’ve ever named.
The water runs weakly from the hose. It takes a long time for the blood to swell and spill over the rocks down into hidden crevices. I follow a stubborn rivulet all the way to the gutter in the back wall of the cage, turn the hose on full blast. Then I trudge back over the packed dirt and boulders with a mop and full strength detergent.
We’re respectful of each other’s privacy in the Ape House but tonight I’m too upset to wait for Kim, supervisor and Senior Keeper here, to finish up in the locker room. She’s towel drying her straight black hair. Her skin is slick and beaded from the shower. Seeing her naked except for string bikini panties unnerves me. I feel like I’ve mistakenly barged in on someone sitting on the toilet.
“Is something wrong with you Jan?”
“No. Nothing’s wrong,” I say shaking off my stare. I tell her about the blood in the cage, exactly where I found it, approximately how much and what I suspect, which is a seriously injured animal.
“I would have noticed when I put them down.” Clasping her lacy little bra she says, “my guess is that one of the females may have miscarried.”
“But none of them are pregnant.”
“Not that we know of.” She raises her eyebrows like it’s some kind of joke. I’m not laughing.
“Look, there’s nothing we can do now,” she says. “I’ll call Arthur first thing tomorrow. He can check them out on his morning rounds.” She pulls on her sweatshirts and sweeps her shiny black hair out from under the collar. “Make sure to write it up before you go.”
“Make sure to write it up before you go,” I mimic under my breath, behind her back.
Four years ago, when I came to the Ape House to wean those first baby gorillas from my care and get them used to the other keepers, Kim was super friendly. Before I knew what was happening I was telling her all about Charles and me, small intimate details, like how inconsiderate he was for forgetting to put the toilet lid down when he knew well enough one of the kittens could jump up and fall in. I even got to a point where I confided in her about our on-going argument over whether or not to have kids. She’s five years younger than I am and pretty arrogant but I thought we had the beginnings of a real friendship. Now that I’ve been moved back to the Ape House indefinitely Kim doesn’t seem to have time for me. What I thought was genuine kindness was just a mask. It’s unfortunate how relationships can sour like that.
The next day Arthur calls to say that Hanna’s urine tests were positive for Beta HCG. Kim is right. According to the amount of blood in my report Hanna has miscarried at approximately 10 weeks. I’m not sentimental-no one here is-but I’m pissed off at Lenny, that lazy 580-pound silverback lunk for doing it to Hanna when he could have impregnated any of the three older, more experienced females.
I know he’s been shipped here from the Atlanta Zoo specifically to sire. And I know that, at six, Hanna is no longer considered a baby. Now that she has joined the adult troop I can’t sit down next to her and play with dolls and rubber alligators. Now she has her aunt to mother her and her older siblings to play chase with. The first time I tried to walk her into a cage she got me in a leg hold with her arms and wouldn’t let go. What kind of mother could a 6-year old make?
For most of the day Hanna sits under a sycamore branch towards the front of the exhibit, picking her toes. During my afternoon break I manage to get her attention through the glass by signing “Beautiful gorilla, I love you.” One of the most important things a mother can do for her human daughter is to say, I love you. Some mothers never say it, not even once, and then the girl grows up with no self-esteem and winds up taking stupid job when she’s capable of so much more. A girl also needs to be told she’s pretty. You can’t keep telling her she has bad posture or that you wish she had the kind of hair that didn’t frizz up so easily. Hanna is such a pretty gorilla, her brown fur streaked brilliant orange-red, like autumn leaves raining down her back, with perfectly sculptured ears, a gentle brow and big shiny eyes. Through the 4-inch thick glass she can’t smell me so I bank on the fact that she recognizes my shape. Hanna doesn’t understand signing. I stick out my tongue and cross my eyes hoping she’ll mimic me, hoping she’ll play. Instead she eyes me suspiciously and resumes her picking. That’s when I figure out what’s really been bothering me. It isn’t about Lenny, or about Kim showing me up by being right on the mark about Hanna’s miscarriage. It’s not the cramping Hanna has silently endured, the tissue and blood cascading out of her womb. It’s that the loss means nothing to her. Nor to us.
I struggle through afternoon chores, my arms and legs stiff. When I take a final look around before shutting the cage lights I see Charles propped against the railing reading with a pen flashlight. You’d never guess from his thinning blonde hair, or the way his shirt and pants droop off his slender frame that Charles is one of only six zoo pathologists in the country qualified to routinely slice open tufted deer and Mongolian wild horses, animals with the strength and speed of small cars. He smiles up at me as if to say to he understands what a lousy day I’ve had. “Shower,” I mouth. “Sign out,” I say scribbling in the air. I feel like hurling myself through the glass into his arms.
By the time I get through with my shower and emerge from the bamboo covered door Kim is standing in the gallery jabbering away with Charles. From 20 feet away I see him rolling up his sleeve, showing her the inside of his forearm. Then I look at Kim and see right through her uniform to her little tits and slender waist.
“Hi. All set to go,” I say to Charles, pecking him on the cheek.
“Hi. I was just showing Kim the joys of taking blood from a cranky iguana.” My eyes run the length of the gash on Charles arm, up to Kim’s face. A self-assured smile swallows up her almond eyes.
“Goodnight,” I say stiffly. Charles looks at me curiously, picking up his journal and his briefcase. Kim jingles her massive set of keys as we turn to leave.
“Take care of that arm.” Charles glances back over his shoulder.
It’s mid-March, still too cold for the mammals to be outside, too soon for the masses of people to trample in and gawk at the animals. Opposite the rolling plain of empty lion exhibit a herd of nyalas stumbles into the twilight.
“What was that all about back there with Kim, rushing me out like that?”
“Hanna had a miscarriage. Kim was an asshole about the whole thing,” I say.
“How so? She usually has good judgement.”
“I didn’t even know Hanna was pregnant. I just feel like I don’t know what’s going on anymore, like she’s pushing me away from the gorillas.”
“You’re imaging it, honey,” he says gently.
“Maybe so.”
It’s so quiet that we hear the distant drone of cars on the highway a mile away. Although the sun has set and sucked the warmth out of the air, a few stray visitors linger in no hurry to find the exits. Black silouette figures of peacocks and cranes step gingerly across the still-frozen ground. Bare limbed trees thicken and our path narrows into a spidery maze.
I don’t imagine things.
Three months later Hanna is pregnant again. She doesn’t eat and she doesn’t play. I stand guard in the exhibit while she is being examined. Abu throws large plastic blocks at Arthur, the vet.
“It’s the white coat,” I say. Arthur tries getting antibiotics into her mouth with a plastic syringe but she keeps flicking her face away from him. He snaps his fingers in the air. When Hanna look up he jams the syringe into her enormous behind. “I’ve taken care of gorillas smarter than you,” he says. He packs up his medical bag, assures me he will be back tomorrow. He tells me that if there are no changes he will dart Hanna and take her to the Animal Health Center for x-rays and blood tests. I march over to Hanna. “How are you going to improve yourself looking like that?” I say imitating my own mother and then I smile so she knows I’m just teasing. But her eyes remain watery and unfocused.
A few days after I was given responsibility for Hanna, Peggy, the woman ran the gorilla nursery, an ordinary house not far from the zoo, retired and left me on my own with nothing but childproof locks and light sockets, a first aid kit and a beeper. She convinced me I’d do fine by myself until they found her replacement. After all, I’d been handraising gorillas with her for three years.
So it was me, Abu, Cleo and Hanna. Blues Clues was our favorite show. I taught Abu to stick out his tongue when Barney came on and discovered that the only way to get Cleo to lay relatively still when I changed him was to put pieces of sugarless candy in the crib, just out of his reach. I sang a lot of Itsy Bitsy Spider. I got used to the routine, the messy playroom, the quiet inside my head. Bathing and grooming and sweeping up the yard, passing cars stopping to stare at us when I sat in the aluminum chair on the front lawn soaking up the sun with Hanna’s arms around my shoulders, her stomach hot again my chest.
Once, when she was no more than five or six months old – maybe 12 pounds and already knuckle walking – she got into a tussle with Abu over a rubber toy. The fighting must have upset her because she made diarrhea. One of the new girls picked her up, put her in the crib and attempted to change her diaper. Hanna wanted no part of it. She turned into a biting, kicking, flapping machine. The new girl persisted, muttering curses, gritting her large square teeth until at last, she slapped down the diaper tape. The minute she picked Hanna up it began leaking out her Pamper all over the poor girl’s arm. I laughed hysterically. I took Hanna, laid her back in the crib and cleaned her up, constantly talking to her. She lay there like an angel, drinking in the sound of my voice. Taking care of her was the best thing that ever happened to me. One night Charles and I composed a song to the tune of the Chiquita Banana song—“Hanna Banana is here to stay.”
As part of an outdoor cocktail reception for the docents Charles gives a lecture on the pathology of disease in large mammals to the mostly wealthy, mostly retired, Friends of the Animals. Shuffling through his index cards he says, “This will be an informal talk, whether I like it or not.” His mild-mannered, remarkably understandable presentation captivates the audience. It’s a wonderfully breezy evening. The maples that border the great lawn are lush with spring leaves, emerald green against the blue sky. Crocuses and daffodils push up at their feet. I sit in the last row of foldout chairs next to Ron, the Aquatics Birdhouse Curator. Ron had bought the keg of beer at our wedding on this same lawn seven years ago. Though I rarely see him anymore it’s comforting to have someone I know sitting next to me. Suddenly, Kim ducks into the empty chair on the other side of me and hands me and Ron each a plastic glass of white wine. She’s wearing a uniform shirt tucked into a pair of tight brushed jeans. Her outfit implies disdain for all the men wearing jackets and women wearing skirts, me included.
Charles says from the podium “We will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand and we will understand only what we are taught.” I mouth the words along with him like a prayer. When the applause dies down Ron tells us how he spent the whole day installing alarms in his exhibit to stop teenagers from wringing the necks of the aquatic birds. I spot Charles, his face flushed and glowing, gliding down the edge of the lawn towards us, shaking hands. “Excuse me,” I say stepping sideways across Kim. I kiss Charles’s warm cheek.
“Hi, how are you?” he says offering me his plate of frosted white cake. Before I can answer Ron signals him from behind.
“Hi, how are you?” Charles says to Ron pumping his hand with both of his, simultaneously nodding and grinning at Kim.
“I was just passing by on my way out and I couldn’t help but sit down and listen to you. You really wowed them tonight,” says Kim.
“Not only is he a loving husband and a brilliant doctor, he’s quite good when it comes to asking for research money. Each year he gets better,” I say.
“Jan here’s my biggest fan,” says Charles blushing. “Thanks a million for coming, both of you.”
Ron launches into a story about some drainage problem he’s having with the flamingo pond. When his wineglass is empty he cuts the story short and excuses himself to see if they’re serving beer. No sooner does he leave but Kim starts up again with her so-nice-to-be-with-you repulsive charm. This is Kim. She’s pulling down her jeans, turning around and displaying her rump. “I wish I’d known about the party. I would have dressed more appropriately.” Now she’s exposing her genitals, behavior that shows submission and serves to reduce aggression. I jam forkfuls of cake into my mouth without stopping to wipe the crumbs off my lips. If you keep eating this way you’ll turn into the Goodyear Blimp I hear my mother say. I wash the cake down with the wine. (I am not a drinker—people who drink a lot disgust me.) I brush the crumbs off my skirt, take Charles’s upper arm in both mine and lean my head on his bony shoulder.
“Come Charles, take me home, the dogs need to be walked.”
“I guess it’s time,” he says with a thin, nearly regretful smile.
We walk past the reptile house down the smooth white stone steps which lead to the parking lot. Crocodiles and gators are the only animals I truly hate. They are brainless eating ogres that cannot be reasoned with or talked to. They eat their prey a piece at a time. I feel this wild jealousy mixed with light-headedness, which I somehow manage to keep in check until I reach the car door.
“You just better not ever fuck her,” I whisper grabbing Charles’s meager ass.
“And just who do you propose I fuck, Janny?” There’s a glint in his eyes. He puckers his lips and leans in for a kiss. I burrow my hand between his pant legs, give his balls a little squeeze. Survival of the fittest I think to myself. Right from the start I have always turned Charles on. He loves that I’m sexually excitable and untamed. By the time we get to the back door of the house to let the dogs out, I’m clawing at his animal print tie. Inside I open his pants, slide down and lick him all over. It drives him crazy. He strips off my navy skirt and caresses my ass. Daisy, our Blue Conjure is screeching in her cage. Sometimes I get so agitated I call him big daddy. Love me up, big daddy Charles I say. He straddles me on the bed, vibrates my breasts, one in each hand. He hikes me over so I’m on top. We roll in tandem like eagles copulating in flight. There’s a part of my brain that’s aware of the missing condom when I aim my hips over his hard cock but I need him inside me too much to stop. “Oh baby. Oh Janny baby. I love you,” he says. I pump down steadily. “I love you. I love you.” I pump faster.
A week later Hanna is diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy. She’s carted over to the Health Center for a surgery that takes four hours. Still anesthetized when they bring her in through the back door, three men carefully lay her in her shift cage so that she will awaken in a familiar place. After two hours she finally opens her bloodshot eyes. “Hanna Banana, how’s my baby girl,” I say. Her eyelids fall shut. After my shower I check her once more. She’s curled up in a fetal position in a nest of straw, sound asleep. Hanna is out of danger.
The next day in the tiny locker room, without so much as a ‘good morning,’ Kim tells me that when the surgeons cut Hanna open they found cancer, a cancer comparable to that of a young reproductive women. She will be getting a course of chemotherapy orally and will be checked on daily by a team of vets. I drop my head into my hands. […]
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Lyn Michele Stevens won the 2014 Saturday’s Child Press short story contest. Her stories have appeared in Prism Review, Greensboro Review, Eclectica Magazine, the American Literary Review, and The Saturday Evening Post, among other journals. Lyn lives in the Bronx. She is crazy in love with her growing family.
“Gorilla Mother” originally appeared in Greensboro Review.
Read more: A brief Q&A with Lyn Stevens