Theory of Bastards

by Audrey Schulman

  In case her gestures had been unclear, Frankie repeated the question. She flicked her eyes into the enclosure to be specific about what she wanted to enter, and then added the word please for good measure, her palm tracing a circle over her heart. She hoped she got all the gestures right. She remembered once in Spanish class trying to say she was embarrassed—making a guess at the right word—and being told instead she’d declared herself pregnant.

  Tooch woke, smacking his lips. Leaning forward, he jabbed a curious finger as far as he could up Mama’s nostril. She backhanded his finger away with a clear thwap, not taking her eyes away from Frankie.

  Then Mama shook her fist, No. Briskly and decisively.

  *

  October now, the days were getting shorter and colder, long Vs of ducks and geese migrating overhead, honking. Other smaller birds migrated also.

  A little after 2 P.M., a tiny songbird hit the plexiglass with a startling thwack and tumbled to the ground inside the enclosure. All the bonobos looked over, surprised.

  It lay on the cement, unmoving, its beak open. Frankie couldn’t see if it was breathing or not.

  Mama knuckled over to pick it up, turning the tiny body over. She lay it on her palm and unfolded one wing ever so gently, then folded it shut. Repeating the action with one wing, then the other.

  She looked up at the plexiglass where the bird’s imprint was still visible, as she softly stroked her thumb over its bright yellow head.

  Still holding the bird in her hand, Mama rose on two feet and walked over to the climbing structure. The structure was made of rebar and metal I-beams. Using just two feet and one hand, she climbed the structure as easily as Frankie could ascend stairs. At the top she sat for a moment, scratching her armpit and sniffing the wind, before looking down at the bird in her hand.

  Then she drew back her arm and flung the bird into the air, returning it to its element.

  The body arced over the enclosure wall, rolling through the air like a tiny feathered ball. At no point did it start flying. Instead it hit the ground outside with a small bounce, motionless.

  Mama stared at the body, wondering what she’d done wrong.

  Frankie watched, her mouth open.

  *

  That afternoon, Stotts asked, When you met Tess in my office, what’d you say to her?

  They were walking down the hall to flint knapp with Goliath. Frankie asked, Why do you ask?

  He said, She keeps asking about you.

  She glanced at him, pleased, and said, Nice kid.

  What’d you talk about?

  Politics.

  She was feeling so much better than when she first arrived: eating real meals, no pain, able to trot for short distances. Whenever she was around Stotts, she’d remember the brunette’s look of pity and work to stand up straighter.

  She asked, How’s Tess doing?

  He said, Good. Heading to England to try gene therapy.

  Gene therapy?

  Thymulin analog, he said, sixty per cent chance of a permanent reduction in the remodeling of the airways.

  Frankie remembered parroting doctors’ statements like that, fearful but hoping, an incantation that answered anyone’s questions, a medical novena. She asked, Your insurance paying?

  He blew air out his lips, You kidding? That’s why she needs to go to England. Cause Ava’s British, Tess can get free health care.

  She looked to the right, trying to remember who Ava was, then realized this must be the name of his wife. Frankie nodded, I hope it works.

  He exhaled, Wish it wasn’t so far.

  You’re not going?

  He glanced at her from the side of his eyes and she felt bad about her question. Airplane travel so expensive these days, it was amazing they’d been able to pay for Tess and Ava.

  She waved away her question with her hand and said, Sorry. Let’s change the subject. Are the bonobos much smarter than the other apes?

  He said, Last year a researcher tested the I.Q. of every ape here using a puzzle with a prize inside. The bonobos figured out the puzzle fastest, but it was mostly three bonobos who skewed the results. Mama, Sweetie and Houdina.

  Sweetie? Is he smart? Frankie asked. She hadn’t paid much attention to him because he spent most of his time grooming others and sleeping in the sun.

  Stotts said, Maybe. It’s possible these three are geniuses of the bonobo world. Or it might be all the bonobos are just as intelligent and these are the three who happen to love gummy bears the most.

  She asked, Aren’t gummy bears bad for their teeth?

  Stotts held open the door to the interaction area for her. He said, That’s nothing. The chimps work for a vape pen.

  Nooo, she said.

  He glanced over at the pleasure in her voice, used to her sounding tired. She had more color in her face today. He said, The Trust got the chimps from this lab studying addiction.

  Whenever she needed to stand up now, he still helped her, but not by clasping her upper arms to heft her upright. Instead he just held onto her hands and pulled gently upward, waiting until he was sure she had her balance.

  He said, When the chimps smoke, they look a bit like Winston Churchill. They get this very internal expression.

  He made a gesture like he was pinching a cigarette away from his lips while he tried to stick out his gut to imitate an older heavier man. Since he didn’t have much of a gut, mostly he just jutted forward his ribs and hips. Rather than appear heavy, he looked like an athlete stretching.

  She looked away. She didn’t like noticing his body. The healthier she felt, the more being around this man made her feel tired.

  She opened the door to the research room and asked, You ever feel weird about them being in a cage?

  He said, Where the bonobos come from they are sometimes killed for food. If we sent the Foundation bonobos back there and released them, they’d run right up to the first human they found, expecting to be handed a peeled mango.

  They stepped into the room, both standing there for a moment, blinking in the sunlight from the window.

  He said, Or if we released them here, let them wander off Foundation property, a policeman or farmer would gun them down inside of an hour.

  Tooch and Id were rolling on the ground nearby, tickling each other.

  He said, Most people think of the enclosure as a method to keep them in captivity. It’s more of a restraint for humans, to stop us from killing them. It says, Don’t shoot; private property.

  Ok Door, unlock, he said and opening the door called into the enclosure, Hey Goliath, I’ve got a new issue of Glamour. Want to come in and visit for a few minutes?

  Goliath was getting groomed by Mr. Mister. He looked over at them and didn’t move. Every day he seemed more reluctant to do the flint knapping, discouraged by his lack of progress.

  Stotts had to call a few more times, before Goliath wandered inside to take his seat on the desk.

  Stotts began to flint knapp. His hands moved without doubt, so precise and competent. Every time he snapped the hammerstone into the chert, there was a porcelain clink and a splinter of rock would slide off the chert. The shard began to take shape, a glassy edge appearing, the spine becoming longer and straighter as he worked. Having watched this process repeatedly, Frankie thought about rock differently now, as something mutable and fragile. With each glancing hit, the edge didn’t shatter, but just shed another flake of rock, the blade becoming sharper.

  Although Stotts always knapped with his hands out so Goliath could see every step, he was enough of an expert that he had no perspective about what the difficult points were for a learner. He hummed to himself as he worked. Frankie didn’t know how hard this task was to master. Was it like drumming where you just had to copy the general motions and then gradually perfect the beat? Or was it more like trying to play a Chopin étude by plonki
ng your fingers down on the keyboard?

  At one point, he scrubbed the hammerstone across the edge of the blade in a side-to-side motion.

  Why you doing that, Frankie wrote on the whiteboard. Although Goliath no longer got tense if she moved, she hadn’t yet tried to talk in his presence.

  Stotts was so absorbed, she had to clear her throat to get his attention and tap her marker on the board.

  After reading the note, he frowned down at his hands. He asked, Sorry, why am I doing what?

  She made a rubbing motion with her hands.

  He said, Ahh, abrading the chert helps reduce splits.

  At this statement, she glanced over at Goliath and saw he didn’t understand that any more than she did.

  When Stotts finished knapping the shard, he used it to cut the rope and open the box, pulling out the banana. He then put some gummy bears inside the box and tied it back up, settling into his seat and eating his banana while Goliath picked up two rocks.

  As usual Goliath simply slammed the rocks together at the end of his arms, their centers hitting rather than their edges. Thunk, said the rocks and only dust sprinkled off. He pulled his arms back further and did it again harder. Thunk.

  Watching him so imprecisely mimic Stotts’ action, he didn’t look all that smart, certainly not smart enough to comprehend language. However Frankie didn’t know how hard it was to figure out how to knapp.

  She leaned forward to examine the unused rocks left on the desk. When she picked a hammerstone and a chunk of chert, both males turned to look at her.

  She set the hammerstone down and turned the chert around in her hands. She had no idea what criteria Stotts used when deciding which side to carve, so she just placed the flatter side down on her thigh so she could balance it there with one hand. The hammerstone was big for her hand. Holding it, she drew her arm back and hit the edge of the chert hard. The hammerstone bounced off with a dull bonk and she nearly dropped it. Not even dust came off the rock.

  Stotts said, A MacArthur, huh?

  Goliath, on the other hand, was watching.

  Her next strike was sloppy, too close to the center. The hammerstone again bounced off like a ball.

  She focused, picking out the exact spot she wanted to hit, then swung hard. This time she hit the right spot, but nothing happened. Like Goliath, she hadn’t spent a lot of time using handheld tools. The hammerstone was heavy enough it was difficult for her to aim. She kept trying, narrowing her eyes and holding her breath before each hit. After three minutes, she hadn’t chipped a single piece off the rock.

  She flicked her eyes up at Stotts. He was enjoying this.

  She gritted her teeth, saying nothing, but continued to concentrate, experimenting with her grip and the length of the strike. Her arm was already aching, as well as her hand. Her thigh (which absorbed the blows through the chert) felt bruised. After each strike, she paused to examine what had happened.

  She wasn’t playing Chopin; she was trying to pick her way through a few notes of Chopsticks.

  Goliath studied every motion she made.

  DAY 18

  Nineteen

  Staring at the Moments cube, one picture of Stotts’ wife stood out. She was younger, late twenties, wearing waders in a stream, fishing, the water twinkling around her. She was turning to look at whoever was taking the photo.

  Images were supposed to be about what was in the frame, the people, the action and setting, but Frankie had always considered a Moment also a description of the person who framed it. She could learn so much about that person from what was included and what wasn’t, from which moment was selected and from the emotion on the faces of the people as they looked at the photographer.

  In the image, Stotts’ wife’s smile was open, her eyes soft.

  Curious now, Frankie searched for a picture of Stotts where he had that softness in his eyes. There was that one in the hospital when he held the newborn Tess, staring down into her face, but none where he looked at his wife that way. Of course, who would select such an image to look at repeatedly? Each person would instead select images of the spouse’s love.

  In these earliest photos, his face was different. He wasn’t just younger, but seemed untroubled.

  *

  Every morning on the balcony, Frankie read the temperature of each female’s sexual swelling. The first few days she had to hold up the mango to get the females to turn around. Once she’d gotten the temperature readings, she’d toss the chunks of food down.

  However with each day that passed, getting the readings took less time because the bonobos had begun to treat her differently. Perhaps this change had been going on for a while and she’d only begun to notice it. Before they’d sometimes stared at her, eyebrows raised and waiting, like at a magician hired to entertain them. Now, when they turned to her, it was more to check her reaction. For instance when Tooch, hanging off the climbing structure by two fingers, slipped and landed on Sweetie’s head, several would glance over, to see if she was amused also.

  And they’d begun to respond to her in other ways. To get a female to turn around, rather than hold up a slice of fruit, she could now simply call out the name of the female and make the gesture for turn around. If she added, please, the female would most often comply.

  And she’d changed how she dealt with them too, for after she’d gotten all the readings, she’d lob down to the bonobos one by one every piece of fresh fruit she had, throwing fruit even to the males, making sure each of the apes got at least one piece. She enjoyed watching them snatch the fruit out of the air, then sit down, peeling the skin off, chirping with happiness. After the food was eaten, some of them would look at her and tap their pinched fingertips together, the gesture for more. Others—such as Petey, Lucy and Stella—preferred the bonobo begging gesture, holding their palms upward and flexing their fingers. She assumed these bonobos hadn’t been raised with sign.

  Each morning, after they’d finished eating, she’d call out Mama’s name and ask with gestures if she could enter the enclosure—thumping her fist into her chest, then swooping one hand under the other.

  Mama would consider her—searching her face for who knows what—then look away, not even bothering to respond.

  Frankie didn’t like having all the tourists stare at her on the balcony, so before the gates to the Foundation opened each day, she’d return to her normal viewing spot in front of the enclosure. Taking a seat in her folding chair, she noticed that, even with the thermal app off, that percent sign was still visible, pulsing in the corner of her Lenses’ screen.

  Probably this was another sign of incompatibility. She really needed a new BodyWare implant. Getting the new implant would just take a fast visit to an app store. A nurse practitioner would inject it, explain the potential adverse reactions and bill her Bindi. Frankie had been putting this visit off for months, along with a visit to the dentist, filing her taxes and other such chores, because she’d been sick. Now she needed to get to these tasks.

  *

  In front of the bonobos, some of the tourists answered mail while they waited for their children. They talked to themselves in a continuous muttered undertone, gesturing, their eyes fixed on something only they could see, like toddlers whispering to imaginary friends. The main difference was they specified punctuation, saying, Thought you’d be interested. Period. Send.

  Meanwhile Adele jumped from one side of the climbing structure to the other, flying 15 feet through the air to catch hold of a metal beam with one hand. Only a few of the adults glanced up at the athleticism of her loop-de-loop.

  The parents who watched videos were less unnerving. They didn’t talk to themselves, but just stood there quietly staring up and to the right, their mouths slightly ajar, their Bindis lit, as motionless as if they were asleep standing up. From a few feet away the cumulative audio of a crowd of EarDrums sounded like the sea or distant traffic. />
  Two men wearing Kansas City Royals shirts yelled and pumped their fists at the same time.

  Alrighty, one called looking up and to the right.

  The other yelled, That’s the way.

  The nearby children turned to stare. They’d been watching Adele fly back and forth.

  Frankie, like the children, watched the bonobos. Not having yet reached a point where she’d begun to develop a theory, she mostly sat in her foldout chair observing and thinking, while eating as much as she could.

  Frankie’s disease, endo, was made worse by gluten, wheat products and dairy. Bread with butter had been a forbidden food for her for a decade. Post-operation, she was ready to experiment. This morning she’d defrosted readymade pizza dough and cut into small bread rolls. She’d let the dough rise until the rolls were plump balls of gluten, then cooked them in the lunchroom toaster oven.

  Watching Adele, she pulled one of the still hot rolls out of her bag and tore it open to drop in a generous chunk of butter. Waiting for it to melt, she held the roll beneath her nose and inhaled the scent.

  With her first bite, she closed her eyes. The crunch of the warm crust, the rich butter. As soon as she finished the first roll, she started on the second.

  When she’d gone to the supermarket a few days ago, she’d selected anything she desired, tending toward the organic, artisanal or imported options, piling it all into her cart. The Foundation was located half an hour outside of Kansas City. In the Midwest over the last decade, the rains had become less predictable, the summer temperatures soaring, the crops failing year after year. Locally there were few jobs left. Most factory workers had been replaced by high-tech machinery, administrative assistants by apps. Lately big data had taken the jobs of many doctors and lawyers. As she pushed her heaping cart up to the self-check-out, several customers had turned to stare.

  She was eating her ninth roll when a loud bang made her jump.

  A few feet to her left, a teenager—maybe 18 or 19—had kicked the plexiglass. He was with another boy. Both wore camouflage jackets decorated with safety pins and spray paint. The older one had a tattoo of a spider on his neck.