Theory of Bastards

by Audrey Schulman

  Setting her chair up in front of the enclosure and sitting down on it, she waited for Mama to walk by. Looking into Mama’s face, she asked in sign language, Me enter? The gestures came to her more naturally now and she ended the question with the sign for please.

  Mama considered her for a moment, then made her decision. She flicked her eyes to a spot just beside her, inside the enclosure. She did it just once. The minimum needed to communicate.

  Surprised, Frankie stared back.

  Mama’s eyebrows rose at Frankie’s slowness.

  Obediently, Frankie hustled around the building and down the hall to the interaction area. The keeper was nowhere in sight.

  At the door to the enclosure, Frankie said, Ok Door, unlock.

  She opened the door and took a tentative step into the enclosure, checking Mama’s reaction.

  Mama glanced at her and then away. The other bonobos, seeing this, simply watched, their eyes big.

  For a full minute, Frankie fussed around near the door, coughing and scuffing her feet and clearing her throat, watching their reactions, before she let the door shut behind her and began to walk up the hill. Every movement she made echoed off the plexiglass as though she were in an aquarium. She felt like an audience member who, searching for the bathroom, had wandered by mistake onto the wrong side of the stage lights.

  Once she was visible over the hill, there was a swell of noise from the tourists, the surprise on their faces.

  She stopped beneath the climbing structure, looking it over. She needed to be at least seven feet up on it. From there, she’d be able to see every mating that occurred in the enclosure, no matter where. Since the bonobos made scaling this look so easy, she hadn’t considered how she’d do it. Even baby Id could scoot up the structure at a run. There were handholds—metal rungs that crossed the posts at irregular intervals—but the lowest of these was a foot above Frankie’s head.

  She grabbed hold of this rung and tried to do a chin-up on it, but only managed two inches before she coughed out air and dropped back down.

  The bonobos stared.

  Next she attempted wrapping her hands and thighs around a post to shimmy upward, but—grunting and heaving—succeeded only in looking like an angry pole dancer.

  She didn’t glance toward the tourists, but could hear their attentive silence.

  So she stepped onto the tire swing, standing up, holding on to its rope. The weight of her feet canted the tire away from her, making her twirl about in a somewhat horizontal position, a human piñata. With effort, she kicked first one thigh, then the other, onto the top of the tire and pulled herself up into a sitting position.

  Spinning slowly, she saw the tourists staring motionless, hands on the glass. This day was turning out so much better than they’d imagined.

  She moved her hands up the rope, then clambered to her feet on top of the tire. From this new height, she was able to grab a post and lurch over onto the structure.

  Taking a seat there on the metal beam, her back against a post, she glanced over at the bonobos. At first, she thought something medical had happened. They’d fallen on their sides, writhing, breathing hard.

  Laughter. She’d seen them laugh before, but through the plexiglass hadn’t heard it. It sounded like they were half huffing, half grunting, the chuckling of asthmatic piglets. Mama had her arms round her ribs, her face in pain. Marge and Adele were clinging to each other. Goliath seemed particularly hard hit, spread-eagle, waving a hand in front of his face as though brushing away the memory of her climb.

  She sat there with as much dignity as she could muster.

  After the bonobos had recovered, they climbed into the structure to cluster around her, ready for her next miraculously entertaining action. She sat still, assuming soon they’d get bored and return to their normal behavior. Then she could become the unobserved scientist, taking notes with her Bindi.

  However, nothing this exciting had happened in the enclosure for years and the bonobos had patience. When Frankie refused to move, they began exploring her hair, picking at the insides of her ears and tugging at her clothes to see if they came off. She slapped at their hands.

  The tourists continued to crowd in, five deep, then 10, staring. At one point she spotted one of the Foundation staff pushing through the crowd to find out what was going on. When he spotted her, he froze, absorbing the scene. He recovered and nodded at her, doing his best to act as though of course she should be sitting inside the enclosure.

  *

  After three hours, the attention of both the bonobos and tourists exhausted Frankie, so she climbed down and went to take a nap on Stotts’ couch. When she woke, Stotts was sitting at his desk working.

  He was relaxed around her now, didn’t stand at attention anymore or address her as ma’am—perhaps because Frankie was so bad at knapping or maybe because she rested each day on the couch in his office, looking rumpled and tired.

  Or maybe, simply, like horses, they’d become physically accustomed to each other.

  She wasn’t the kind of person who talked when it wasn’t necessary, so whenever he was working in the room she con- tinued to lie there, her head pillowed on her arm. There were long silences. He coughed and opened drawers, jotted items down and muttered to himself. Occasionally he spoke, saying whatever was on his mind.

  He said, Tessie’s learning how to play checkers, she beat me yesterday.

  Frankie responded, Can’t be that hard.

  He looked at her. Instead of being amused, his eyes were sad. He said, She’s leaving today for London with Ava. First appointment with the gene-therapist is Wednesday.

  You worried?

  He raised his brows and inhaled.

  He talked about Tess much more than he talked about his wife. To Frankie, this was understandable, a focus of attention built into the genes. The desire for romantic love was strong, yet a person could fall in love with any number of people—the resulting relationships broken sometimes for the smallest of complaints: he didn’t do the dishes, her friends weren’t fun.

  The parent-child bond was different. Even though the relationship started off with the parents in the role of the lowest sort of slaves (wiping the master’s butt, responsible for every meal, being screamed at for mysterious infractions in the middle of the night), what parents divorced their newborn? No, instead hopped up on hormones, they gasped with joy at any moment devoid of physical pain, filled with love for their incontinent tyrant.

  The more essential and difficult an action was, the larger the desire for it. The chemical messengers released, the physical need pumping through the body. The greatest joy in life found in meeting the biggest challenges.

  When Frankie considered the word bliss, the image that came to her mind was of wildebeests leaping into a river, migrating, thousands of them, their heavy bodies arcing through the air. She felt jealous of this moment—even though a second later when they hit the water, the powerful current shoved them sideways, others crashing onto them, a few drowned bodies twirling downriver—because this moment, the moment of the leap, their hearts were filled with exhilaration at this action they’d been born to do.

  On the other hand, she had had to deny all she most desired. A juicy hamburger, a strong cup of coffee, the ability to inhale without pain.

  Stotts got up and began to fill a bag with chert. He said, I’ll try to use the time while they’re away. Get stuff done around the house. Go biking off-road this weekend.

  He closed the bag and said, Wakey wakey, time to flint knapp.

  She grunted.

  He said, My bike’s a beaut. You should see it. Made of stainless steel.

  On the couch, she pushed herself up into a sitting position, moving almost smoothly, her daily stretches beginning to have an effect. She asked, Stainless steel?

  Yep.

  Can you cook with it?

 
He smiled—superior in his biking know-how—and answered, It means the bike presses down into the road, gets better traction.

  Cause it’s heavier? Doesn’t that mean it’s harder to bike?

  Makes me exercise harder.

  She asked, Why don’t you pop the wheels off then? That would make it hard.

  He blinked at her. The longer she was around him, the more she noticed his eyes. They were a color that seemed so right for him, the most transparent blue, like clear water. The color felt very Midwestern, untroubled and straightforward. She felt if she stood close enough and the light was right, she could peer through his eyes straight into his brain. Everything in there would be just where it should be, clean and well cared for, nothing to hide. This decent man.

  Her own eyes were dark brown, her brain shaded, twisted and dark, some gears whining and straining with speed, some areas utterly blocked off.

  She waved her comment away with her hand, feeling slightly ashamed.

  It was time for her to stand up. Automatically he helped her. By this point in her recovery, he held out just one palm. The solidity of his hand always surprised her, like a bookshelf in its lack of give. Inside her jumped the shimmer of gratitude, a fish in the air—the fear of her body’s weakness still coiled there.

  He waited, holding onto her fingers, until he was sure she had her balance. She imagined him as a child, his mother training him, ingraining the requirement to help. The gallantry of strong men, she realized, must break the hearts of old women.

  Today, she was wearing what she thought of as her Milky-Way outfit. The matching shirt and stretchy pants had a pattern of yellow stars against a dark pink sky. The material shiny and clearly flammable. He considered the grinning asteroid on her shoulder for a beat too long. She was a puzzle he hadn’t figured out.

  He asked, Have you started dreaming about them yet?

  What? she said.

  He seemed surprised he’d asked this.

  He answered, Dreaming about the bonobos. Everyone who works with any of the apes dreams about them. The chimps, the orangutans, the gorillas. Not of them in the enclosure, but them outside, on a Sim-call or driving to work or ordering food at a Denny’s.

  He shouldered his bag of chert and held the door open. She stepped forward, the ease of her stride still surprising to her. For breakfast, she’d eaten 12 pieces of crispy bacon soaked in maple syrup. Crunching through the grease, she’d kept her eyes closed. The fatty rinds she’d held in her mouth for a moment, sucking on them like candy.

  She asked, What do you dream?

  His eyes considered her. For a moment she thought of the way Mama had eyed her when the boys were kicking the plexiglass, wondering if Frankie could help.

  She didn’t speak. She was curious, but felt no real investment in whether he answered or not.

  Perhaps her silence was reassuring, for he offered, They phone me. I answer and can tell instantly it’s a bonobo. They’re chirping the way they normally do, but this time I understand the chirping as words. I even recognize the voice. Normally it’s Mama, but sometimes it’s Goliath or Sweetie. The voice is always urgent and fast, relaying something critical. I can speak passable Spanish; from Tanzania I know some Swahili; from Syria I have a few phrases of Arabic. Whatever language this is, I can’t identify it.

  He glanced at her, It isn’t a quiet dream. It’s a nightmare. I wake up in a sweat every time.

  He didn’t smile to erase the edge in his statement. After a moment he looked away.

  They were quiet for the rest of the walk to the research room.

  With flint knapping, she was now better than Goliath. She didn’t have as much strength, and her hands were half his size, but she could fairly consistently apply the blow at the correct angle, flicking her wrist at the last second to increase the impact, that glassy clink followed by a piece of rock sliding off. Now that she could do this reliably, she concentrated on learning how to shape the rock.

  Goliath watched, trying to copy her technique, but could still only chip off small divots. He couldn’t seem to master the timing of the wrist flick. Instead of swiveling smoothly in one fluid motion with his arm, his wrist would click mechanically into the swing, too soon or too late. After a while he got frustrated and gave up, playing instead with a metal cart that had been left in the room. Standing, he pushed the cart around the room, rolling it left and right, marveling at the miracle of its wheels—looking like a hairy naked shopper.

  For the first time, the chert she was knapping began to look a bit like a blade. Even though the edge of the shard zig-zagged and wasn’t that much sharper than the end of a screwdriver, she was excited and pushed herself to improve it, her arms aching and fingers beginning to tremble.

  Then she missed.

  She had enough time to think Oops before the full force of the hammerstone—a pound of granite—slammed down onto the tip of her thumb.

  For a single instant it was as though the blow had hit her temple instead of her hand. It smacked away her vision and hearing, left only a vacuum where time was whistling.

  When she returned, she saw there was a bleeding divot where her nail used to be. The nail was now standing upright like a car’s open hood, connected by a thin strand of flesh to the nail bed. She knew what had to be done. Before the pain of the injury could truly arrive, she bit the corner of the car’s hood and yanked it free.

  She spat her nail onto the floor and slid her thumb into her mouth like a baby.

  Both males stared. At no point had she whimpered or even exhaled.

  What? she asked.

  The sensation was starting to heat up her thumb, the hum of it rising, a choir searching for its pitch. The pain from small wounds—paper cuts and bonked noses—struck fast as lightning, no pause for worry. The agony from a larger injury took its sweet time, the anticipation terrible, like hearing an earthquake approach through the motion-alarms of cars, the wave of mechanical screaming rushing closer, heralding all that was about to occur.

  She listened to her thumb’s scream with something close to professional interest.

  Jesus, said Stotts. You alright?

  Well no, she answered, I need a Band-Aid.

  Yes, said Stotts, I’ll grab the first aid kit.

  He hustled from the room, leaving her for the first time alone with Goliath.

  Like guests at a party where the host had stepped out, the two of them looked at each other, wondering where the conversation would go.

  Goliath was hunched forward, his shoulders pulled in, his expression pinched. He was, she understood, mirroring the pain she should be showing. If someone stepped into the room now, the person would assume he was the one who was hurt.

  He held out his hand, palm cupped upward, arm extended and flicked his eyes to her thumb.

  Curious, she popped her thumb out of her mouth and held it toward him.

  He shuffled a few inches closer on the desk. She lowered her hand into his. His palm was warm, the skin solid and burnished smooth. Once on vacation in Maine, buying lobsters in the harbor, she’d touched the hand of an old fisherman to give him the money. His skin had felt like this, solid as a tight leather glove.

  With her hand in his, she realized any fear of his greater strength had disappeared at some point during the days of sitting beside him on this desk.

  Although he weighed less than her, his hand was huge, the palm elongated. Framed in his, her hand looked like a child’s—tiny soft fingers, someone who had not yet lived but somehow been hurt. He cupped his fingers round her hand and rotated it ever so gently to see the wound better. A drop of her blood hit the desk with an audible splat. He grunted deep in his chest.

  Then they heard Stotts in the hall saying, Ok Door, unlock.

  Goliath and she both jerked away from each other as though caught cheating on a test. She slid her thumb back in her mouth, the
damaged baby.

  Stotts stepped into the room with the first aid kit. He put the kit down on the desk and held out his hand to her. Palm upward, arm extended.

  Almost hypnotized by this repeated moment, she lowered her hand into his. Here, her hand looked different, like a painting in a new frame. Her hand and Stotts’ were much closer to the same size, same color and hairlessness, the skin just as soft. Held in his, her hand didn’t look so childish or unformed. Perspective, perspective.

  However his touch was just as gentle as Goliath’s as he patted the blood away with some gauze and then began to bandage her thumb, first smearing the inside of the bandage with antibiotic cream so he wouldn’t have to touch the wound more than necessary.

  The throbbing of her thumb was rising in volume. With her other hand, she rummaged through the kit for ibuprofen. Awkwardly she ripped open the paper envelope with her teeth and shook the two pills into her throat. She dry swallowed them with the ease of long practice.

  Pain could be amplified dramatically by the mind. When worried about an injury, a person attended to the sensation, wondering why there was a sharp pain with every blink, was the retina getting lacerated? Was it getting worse? Was it irreparable? Before modern pharmacology and the specialization of pain clinics, an old treatment for unendurable chronic agony had been a lobotomy. A fast side-to-side motion up the nose with a scalpel and the person instantly became a Zen master, able to endure physical torture without it ruining their good mood.

  There were many pain receptors packed in the nail bed of her thumb, but the wound signaled nothing permanent about her future, so she let the heat of it wash over her. Gratitude is all about comparisons.

  She kept her eyes away from her thumb, looking through the window into the enclosure. Stella and Adele hung by their hands from the climbing structure, having sex, legs wrapped around each other, pelvises grinding.