by Tim Sandlin
“The show host will sit across from you, like this, and there will be a microphone hanging above your head, out of the frame.”
“I don’t fathom.”
“It doesn’t matter, I’m explaining too much. The audience will be out that way.” She waves vaguely toward the refrigerator. “Ignore them. Pretend they don’t exist.”
“Why pretend people who do exist don’t?”
“You’re talking to the host who is this dippy woman and you’re playing to the camera. Ignore the audience.”
Bing starts to ask what he plays with the camera and Rosemary knows he’s about to ask. She jumps in before he can. “The dippy woman will tell the audience your story.”
“How will the dippy woman know my story?”
“Your publicist with have e-mailed her. Me, actually. We don’t have a full-time publicist and the guys in marketing only work up spots for our in-studio shows.”
Practically every word she says flies over Bing’s head. He focuses on the part about Rosemary. “You are my own publicist?”
“Until you get so big we hire someone.” She considers the concept of Bing getting big. It might change him. Turn him into a jerk, which would be sad beyond belief. She’s starting to enjoy his naïve comments, and the longer he’s out of the zoo, the more his innocence will go to pot. She’s not sure that’s a good thing.
“So the host will ask a question, like Turk did, only they won’t care about your spiritual journey so much as your human interest side.”
“I am interested in humans.”
Like that. Six months out of the zoo and he either won’t say stupid stuff like that or he’ll be self-conscious of cuteness. Cuteness is obscene when it knows it’s cute. Observe the seven-year-old beauty queen.
“Let’s try one,” Rosemary says. She holds the peppermill to her mouth as if it’s a microphone even though on the actual TV show there won’t be a handheld. She thinks it will make Bing think harder on his answers. “You were raised in the San Diego Zoo Safari Park and have never been outside before a week ago. Do you recall how you came to the zoo?”
Bing chews hard. He still can’t understand why he isn’t supposed to swallow the gum, but Rosemary said it would make her feel better if he just chewed but didn’t swallow, so that’s what he does. “Dr. Lori says I came in a box.”
Rosemary raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Did she tell you the stork brought this box to the zoo?”
“UPS.”
“UPS brought you to San Diego?”
“I have seen them often. Brown shorts. Tan legs. They carry objects. Sometimes they carry animals but usually they bring paperwork. Dr. Lori hates paperwork.”
“Did Dr. Lori give you information about your birth mother and father?”
“I don’t fathom.”
“If the host asks a question you don’t understand, you nod your head and say, ‘That’s a very good question,’ and then don’t answer it. I’ve produced hundreds of these things and that’s how the experienced people handle it.”
Bing nods his head, slowly. “That is a very good question.”
“Okay, not for TV but just for me. What do you know about your birth mother and father?”
“No information.”
“Dr. Lori never told you where the box came from?”
“She said it came from UPS.”
Rosemary pours herself a glass of water from a carafe with a carbon filter in the top so the water is more pure than what comes from the sink. Bing’s glass is still empty.
“Tell me about the California Pizza Kitchen.”
“I ate limes.”
“I mean, tell me about the boy who’d been shot. How did you save the boy?”
Bing nods. “That is a very good question.”
Rosemary laughs. “You’re funny. You know that. When you aren’t being disgusting, you’re funny.”
Bing revels in her laugh. It is what he looks forward to the most. “Is that a positive or a negative?”
“Definite positive, so far as I’m concerned. Okay what’s your earliest memory of life at the zoo?”
Bing closes his eyes to make it easier to bring up a memory. He’s never had much use for remembering. He knew where things he needed were located, and what he could eat. Otherwise, there’s wasn’t much reason to think of the past.
“When I was small, I ate a yellow candy bar. I found it outside the snake house. Someone had left it on a ledge, before you go into to see the snakes. And I ate it.”
“Was the yellow candy bar good?”
“It was good, but not positive. Dr. Lori told me eating found food is improper. I also remember a mountain gorilla stepping on my foot. That hurt and it was the first time I went to decontamination.”
“Why punish you for being stepped on by a gorilla?”
“I was not allowed in the habitat but I went in to play. Dr. Lori said I might be killed. She was angry. Before that, I didn’t know about killed.”
Rosemary takes a drink of water. She thinks about the moment she realized she would someday die. Backseat of her parents’ car, driving across Arizona, she and Sarah were naming roadkills. Sarah named a dead coyote Rosemary. Sarah must have been three, which made Rosemary five when she discovered death.
“What does Dr. Lori look like?”
Bing opened his eyes. “Old.”
Rosemary likes the sound of that. “How old?”
“Dr. Lori is female, but she’s maybe a hundred and fifty years old. She’s been at the zoo since before time.”
“Why do you think she hid your existence from the world?”
“To protect me from people like you. She said I would shrivel and my penis would fall off without her to shield me and I must always do what she says. She said Outies would ruin my skin.”
Rosemary stifles a smile. No matter how tough this Dr. Lori is, only a woman would threaten a child with ruined skin. “Your skin looks smooth to me. Has your penis fallen off?”
Bing glances down as if for reassurance. “Dr. Lori lied. I don’t know why. Is the interview over?”
“Do you want it to be over?”
“I do not enjoy thinking about Dr. Lori.”
“Do you miss her?”
Bing nods. “That is a very good question.”
46
The black man’s head is bald, shiny. He wears a frilled shirt so white it’s uncomfortable to look at, and black trousers that glisten like his head. He may only have one eyebrow. It’s difficult for Bing to tell. He stands behind a woman who has strips of white cloth swaddled over her body covering the spots Bing knows must be covered by Outies. Her skin is lighter than the man’s, more the shade of a hairless coconut.
The man bounces on his toes, up and down to loud music while the woman rubs against him like a bear scratching its back on a tree. The music goes into a beat, beat, break. The woman slides to the floor with her legs split, front and back. She slides between the man’s legs, then comes erect as he spins to face her.
Bing tries the split move and falls. He gets up quickly, his back curved, his shoulders forward, then he holds an arm out from his body and tucks the other arm forward, just like the woman on the television screen. He bounces to the music, which isn’t similar to music he’s heard at the zoo or since he got out. This music thumps like someone slapping his ear holes.
The couple faces each other, not pressed together but with a gap between them bridged by the touching of one hand and the grasping of torsos with the other. They skip in a circle around the floor. The woman throws her head way back as they sweep through a turn. Bing throws his head way back as he sweeps through a turn.
The observer will note Bing is aping the woman’s motions, not the man’s. Bing has no concept of gender roles. He was raised in a matriarchal society — two parallel matriarchal societies if you count both Betty and Dr. Lori. He knows nothing of the shame of femininity.
The music pounds three beats, then ends and the two people hug for a few seconds as th
e unseen audience goes wild with joy. Bing pretends to hug Rosemary, but, of course, his arms surround air. The black man and lighter woman smile at some other people sitting behind a long table. The man and woman bow.
Bing turns and walks into the bathroom where Rosemary lies soaking in the tub.
She says, “Bing!”
“Explain to me the TV. A male and female faced and touched with their hands and gyrated to music.”
“I could have sworn I locked the door.”
Bing realizes Rosemary has no clothes. Her wet hair is draped over the end of the tub. Her hands are balanced on the sides. Her knees are slightly bent so the kneecaps rise above the water surface.
Bing steps forward to look down at her body under the water. “You are shaped strangely.”
“Bing, why don’t you wait outside while I dry off and dress. Then we’ll talk.”
“I want to understand what the male and female were doing. Was it courtship?”
“They were dancing. I could hear the ‘Dancing with the Stars’ theme through the door. You had it too loud.”
Had Bing been a detective, this would have blown Rosemary’s claim that she owned a TV she never watched.
“What is dancing?”
“You’ve never seen dancing?”
“I have heard the word, but do not know the meaning. A zoo interpreter told her group the ibises danced before mating. Were the two about to perform copulation?”
“I doubt it, not on national TV, anyway.” Rosemary gathers herself and leans forward. Her hair comes across the tub end to hang down her back. “You poor boy, how could you grow up and know gyrating and copulation but not dancing? Dr. Lori should be in jail.”
Rosemary reaches into the water and pulls the rubber plug from the drain hole. “If you’ll give me ten minutes of privacy, I’ll show you what dancing is.”
Bing frowns. He likes Rosemary’s hair, but he wanted a clear view of her bare back and now he doesn’t have one. He says, “I do not fathom privacy.”
47
Rosemary pats herself dry, careful not to rub, and puts on white shorts, a gray spaghetti top, and sandals — the San Diego at-home-on-a-Saturday-night look. She can hear Bing in the front room slapping bongos on his belly. Sounds like a fairly complex six/eight jazz solo on alternately tight and relaxed abs, not something he would have heard in the bonobo habitat. She knows Bing’s belly is hard as a barbecue grill. Rosemary feels queasy when she pictures it. Sleeping next to the man-child has been not difficult so much as not easy. She’s never been one for tasteless lust, but. But.
She leaves the bathroom to find Bing standing in front of a commercial for term life insurance for seniors, a universally trusted actor whose name Rosemary can never remember explaining what will happen to your wife should you croak.
Bing’s shirttail is tucked under his chin, so he can slap bare belly. He bends his upper body toward the commercial without moving his chin off his chest. “What?”
Rosemary has no capacity for deciphering the purpose of life insurance — You wager money you’ll die — to Bing, and even if she could she doesn’t know term from not term.
“It doesn’t matter.” She turns off the TV. “You ready to dance?”
Bing lets go of his shirttail. “Is it appropriate?”
“Dancing is always appropriate.” She flips on her MP3 player hooked up to speakers and scrolls through her list. “Here’s a waltz. You know waltzes?”
Bing doesn’t bother to say No. Of course, he doesn’t know waltzes. He knows tabla when he hears it, with the sitar and wooden flute. The music they blasted at the Frequent Flyers bird show would be classified as movie spectacular if anyone had ever classified it for Bing and no ever did.
Count to three,” Rosemary says. “One-two-three, one-two-three.”
“One-two-three.”
“Sarah and I taught each other how to waltz to this song in our room. We’d start out arguing over who got to lead and end up laughing so hard we fell down. Sarah threw up once from laughter.”
“Is that a positive?”
“You bet your butt it is.”
Rosemary flips a switch and after a few seconds “Home on the Range” bursts from the speakers.
Rosemary faces Bing — stomach in, chest out, back stiff — and holds her right arm out, slightly bent, palm down. Her left arm curls before her body, like the woman in the white cloth strips.
Rosemary says, “Assume this position.”
Bing does, which means his right hand sticks out the wrong way.
“Other hand out. We have to match up.” She wiggles her right hand fingers. “And hold one another with this hand.”
“Oh.”
“Now, count. One-two-three. One-two-three.
Bing counts simultaneously, “One-two-three,” what the kids at the zoo called a jinx.
Rosemary shuffles her feet — left-right-left, right-left-right. “See what I’m doing. Copy that.”
Bing copies. He nails it right away.
“Perfect.” Rosemary left-right-lefts and Bing right-left-rights and they move toward each other till they almost but not quite touch.
Rosemary says, “You got it.”
“I know.”
Rosemary fits her hand into Bing’s. Her other hand rests on his shoulder. “Put your free hand on my hip.”
He does.
“Lower.”
He does that too.
“Now, move about the room.”
Bing looks perplexed.
She says, “What’s wrong?”
“Deer and antelope are serious. They don’t play.”
“It’s just words to the song, Bing. Listen to the beat.”
“Baby antelope might kick some, but mostly antelope eat grass.”
“Ignore the antelope and dance. We’re going to start moving now.”
Two false starts later, Bing finds the flow. The song ends, Rosemary runs over to push Replay, and they begin again. “You lead,” she says.
“What does that mean?
“Move around the room in a circle. Just keep your feet moving one-two-three.”
“Like the male and female on the television?”
“Only slower, I imagine.”
Bing takes off and they are dancing. Rosemary is amazed. She smiles straight into Bing’s face. She can see from his eyes that he feels no awkwardness.
“You are a natural.”
“Dancing is natural. I wonder why Dr. Lori didn’t teach me dance?”
“Same reason she left God and love out of your education. She’s a dipshit.”
Bing tries out the word. “Dipshit.”
“I mean it, Bing. You must have dancing in your genes. You know genes?”
“Pants.”
“No, genetics. Genetics are the traits we get from our parents.”
“Everyone knows what genetics are. You have no need to explain them.”
Rosemary leans into the centrifugal pull of waltzing. It’s a bit like flying and a bit like floating on your back in a slow river. “In your world, everyone knows genetics but no one knows dancing.”
“Is your world separate?”
“Now, let’s move a little closer to each other.”
“Like so?”
“You were born to dance, Bing.”
“I wondered why I was born.”
And Bing and Rosemary spin around the room together. “Seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day.”
48
The bedtime ritual. White tea and whole grain Wheat Thins in a mandala. Rosemary calls it a mandala. It’s more a pattern. Ten crackers that could be taken as an atomic bomb mushroom but in Rosemary’s mind are a baobab with a single cracker like a star hovering over the bare limbs.
Bing stands nearby, watching, drinking chocolate milk from a mug. Rosemary has never shared the ceremony before. She feels the need to explain.
“Growing up, my parents were obsessed with these role playing game
s, mostly Dungeons and Dragons.”
“Dragons do not belong to a real species.”
“Sometimes I think my parents weren’t real parents.” In a white cotton nightgown and blue terrycloth robe, she touches each cracker once. “They would be playing games half the night and leave me to put Sarah to bed. I invented this routine with Wheat Thins. They weren’t whole grain back then. Just regular.”
Bing — wearing a royal blue jogging outfit that’s been hanging in Rosemary’s closet for three years — swishes chocolate milk around his mouth. He’s had whole milk before, but never chocolate. He likes the crisp feel on the sides of his tongue. Dr. Lori wouldn’t allow sweets. He had to scavenge whatever sugar he ate, so he’s always connected the taste to being naughty. It seems odd to drink sweet milk indoors.
“Then Dad died from breast cancer. Did you know men can get breast cancer? They hardly ever have it treated in time cause they’re embarrassed or clueless or something — men don’t check themselves for lumps — so the survival rates are way lower than they are with women.”
“I have seen cancer on elephants.”
“After Dad died, Mom fell off the deep end. Discovered Kaballah. Swore off personal intimacy. Gave away our money. It’s a wonder Sarah and I didn’t starve.”
Rosemary picks up the ten Wheat Thins, then she shuffles them four times.
“Mom’s off in Denmark now, raising vegetables, tending goats, and servicing the needs of her master. She’s renounced her family — that’s us.”
Rosemary re-deals the crackers in her pattern, tapping each one twice as she sets it on the table. “I think that’s why Sarah and I are so much closer than sisters from normal families.” She quarter turns each Wheat Thin clockwise so there are no horizontal or vertical edges. Only diagonals. “Sarah had trouble sleeping there for a while, and I started laying out the crackers in a certain way. I told her it was an antennae and Dad could read our minds when we spread them out just so. He knew our thoughts while we ate the crackers. Knew if we brushed our teeth or put on dirty underwear. It’s shameless what I did to get her to behave. Don’t you think?”
