by Ginny Rorby
When I came home from the hospital, I wanted Sukari to understand that Katie was a permanent addition. I began by nursing her in a rocking chair near Sukari’s cage so she could watch. I even moved close enough for her to poke a finger through the wire and touch the baby’s cheek. I thought including her would keep her from becoming jealous.
I suppose, without knowing any better, I made things worse. I put Katie’s bassinet in the living room so Sukari could see that she lived with us. Unfortunately, Sukari got so attached to her that if the baby cried, she would go nuts in her cage, banging and throwing her toys. Her devotion to Katie was scary and the racket was awful unless the baby was right where she could see her, day and night.
The final straw was all my fault. I had just given Sukari her lunch when the phone rang. The baby was asleep and I ran to answer it and didn’t get the padlock locked tightly. She got out and took Katie from her crib. When I found them, Sukari had her up on her bed-board, six feet off the ground, and, bless her heart, was trying to nurse her. When I tried to get the baby away from her, she swung off the platform, ended up dangling by one hand from the wire roof of the cage, with Katie draped over her arm, the way she used to carry Hidey. I was terrified that she would drop her, though never afraid that she would hurt her intentionally. Charlie always said she’d sell her soul for raisins. I gave her two boxes to engage both hands so she had to put Katie down.
I keep telling myself she will be better off with her own kind. And that she’ll become a mother herself someday. And I pray Charlie will forgive me, and that you will.
Lynn
Lynn had been writing on the pad as Joey finished the letter. “So she is in a zoo?”
Neither of them answered. When Ruth looked at Lynn, waiting for her to finish, Joey knew there was more news, and that it wasn’t good. She closed her eyes. A chill swept over her as if a wind had come up. She began to shiver.
“You need a sweater,” Ruth said. She got up and went into her bedroom and came back with a sweatshirt for Joey.
When Joey finished pulling it over her head, she saw they’d said something that she’d missed and that Lynn, by the set of her jaw, was angry. She turned away and tucked Katie’s blanket around her more snugly, then sat up and tried to smile. She took Joey’s hand and held it tightly before sliding the pad across the table.
There’s no way to soften this. Sukari didn’t do well at the zoo. They told me that chimps that are raised by humans never accept themselves as chimpanzees, but I had hoped Sukari would be the exception. Instead she was as terrified of them as she is of dogs. She called them “black bugs.”
The staff eventually moved her to a cage by herself, but I think the isolation was worse. She spent the days rocking and signing to herself as if she’d lost her mind.
Joey pulled her hand free and flipped the page.
Lynn scooped Katie up and hugged her.
They didn’t have the facilities nor the funds, nor the inclination, I suspect, to keep her isolated. When they were sure that she would never adjust, they said I had to take her back or find a rehab facility that would accept her.
Lynn rested her chin on the top of the baby’s head. Tears rolled down her cheeks and dropped to form silver beads on Katie’s red wool cap.
I called all over trying to find a place, but there are hundreds of chimps in need of a place to go, and they were especially uninterested in a chimp who can’t be housed with other chimps.
Joey, shortly after Sukari went to the zoo, I went back to work and hired a full-time, live-in nanny to care for Katie. We’ve turned the porch into a sunroom. Even if I wanted to, we couldn’t have taken Sukari back. Last month, she was sent to a facility in Norman, Oklahoma. It’s a kind of clearinghouse for unwanted chimpanzees. Most eventually go to research labs.
The note ended there. Joey looked up, tears brimming in her eyes. “Where is she?”
Lynn bit her lip, took a deep breath, then handed Joey a letter.
Dear Dr. Mansell: In response to your query, dated October 10, our records show that chimpanzee #1029, formerly known as Sukari, has been sent to the Clarke Foundation in Alamogordo, New Mexico. She will be used in their pesticide testing program. If you require further …
Joey closed her eyes and swallowed over and over, trying not to throw up. She staggered to her feet, knocking the chair over and scaring Katie, who began to wail. The leg of the chair tripped her and she stumbled but batted her mother away when she tried to help her up. When she got her footing, she lurched across the bedroom and out the door to the carport. She ran the trail toward Charlie’s, beating her way through the ferns and huckleberries that grabbed at her legs. The tree that had toppled during the earthquake was still across the trail. She climbed over it and stepped into the icy stream. She ran with the rush of the creek. The next tree to block her path was Charlie’s alder, covered with oyster mushrooms, fresh and abundant. She stopped when she saw them and looked up at his house. “Charlie,” she cried.
The woman who was sitting on the deck got up, came to the railing, and looked down at her. She shouted something. Joey saw her hands frame her mouth, before she turned and called to someone in the house. A man came out, ran down the steps and down the trail toward her.
Joey dropped to the bank and folded over her knees, sobbing with the smell of mud and pine needles in her nose. Her heart burned like a broken blister.
When the man tried to lift her, Joey jerked free and crawled away. He grabbed her and wrapped his arms around her and held tightly until she began to shiver.
The woman came with a blanket and together they helped Joey up the hill toward the house. About halfway up, they met her mother, Lynn, and the baby, coming down.
At the bottom of the steps, Joey looked up. The sunlight played with the wind-stirred shadows on the deck, rolling and flickering. She squinted, praying for one small shadow to scramble toward her, and for the sun to light the white hair of an old man. But the jungle gym was gone, French doors replaced the sliding glass ones, and the house had been painted beige with trim the color of dried blood. She couldn’t remember what color it had been. She sank down to sit on the bottom step. Her mother sat with her and held her while she cried. The couple who lived in Charlie’s house went inside and closed their doors.
It was dark out when she woke, and for a moment Joey hoped it had all been a nightmare and now it was over. She knew it wasn’t; everything Charlie had feared for Sukari had come true. She remembered Ruth and Lynn driving her home and that they’d been openly mad at each other when they helped her into the house and into her room. Lynn sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing her hair, but when she tried to tell her something, Ruth stepped in, saying that it could wait. Joey didn’t fight back. She didn’t think she could stand more details.
She’d sobbed herself into total numbness, pretending to be asleep when her mother came to cover her with a blanket. She wasn’t sure how long she’d lain there, trying not to imagine the horrors Sukari was suffering, before she really did fall asleep.
Joey rolled over and looked at her clock. It was after one. She got up and, with her hands jammed in her armpits for warmth, went out and into the bathroom. She pressed a wet, cold washcloth against her swollen eyes for a few minutes, then brushed her teeth, wondering all the time what it was her mother was keeping from her. Maybe Sukari had already died, and Ruth was saving that news for after Joey adjusted to this loss.
When Lynn came by early the next morning to say goodbye, Ray insisted she stay for breakfast, but she came in only for coffee and didn’t stay long enough to finish a full cup. Outside, with Ruth making an obvious effort to ensure that she and Joey weren’t alone together, she turned from strapping Katie into her car seat and took Joey’s hands, pressing something into one of her palms. “There’s still hope. Don’t think that this is over.” Lynn hugged her, looked at Ruth, got into the car, and drove up the driveway.
Joey jammed her hands into her pockets. A few minutes later, in the bathro
om, she read the note: Remember what Charlie said. She’s yours. Call Bryan McCully.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Joey arrived back at school late Sunday afternoon. First thing Monday morning, she went to the office and used the TTY to call Mr. McCully’s office. His secretary took the message. He was in Los Angeles, trying a case, and wouldn’t be back for at least a week.
For the next few days she went from class to class, meal to meal in a daze. The weekend came, and though she loved football, she begged off going to the game with Michelle and Jenny, claiming to have cramps and a raging headache. She needed to be alone, away from Michelle’s buoyancy and the spirited pre-game enthusiasm.
Every afternoon, after classes, she walked to the park where she’d seen the geese that first day. She sat in the same swing each time, walked it forward, then let her own weight drag her backward over and over until she had created trenches in the sand with her heels. Joey tried not to think about Sukari’s circumstances, but her imagination ran unchecked: a small cage, someone spraying her in the face with Raid, or giving her toxic shots. As hard as she tried to escape those thoughts by focusing on what she would say to Mr. McCully when he returned her call, she couldn’t. The only plan she’d come up with was to use her college funds to buy Sukari back. But even if that worked, where could she go with a half-grown chimpanzee? The more she thought about it, the more hopeless she believed it was. By the weekend, she felt herself giving up and growing toward trying to accept Sukari’s death.
In history class on the following Tuesday, an aide from the office came to tell her there was a call for her.
With trembling fingers, she typed, “Joey Willis here, GA.”
“Joey, this is Mr. McCully. My secretary said you called. There was also a call from Lynn telling me about Sukari. GA.”
“I’ve been trying to figure out a way to get her back and was hoping maybe we could use the money Charlie left me for college to buy her back. GA.”
“I think we can do better than that. Can you come into San Francisco this Saturday? GA.”
“Yes, sir. GA.”
“Shall I send a car for you? GA.”
Joey wanted to say yes, but a car showing up for her would generate questions and require permission from her mother. “I can take a bus. GA.”
“I have another appointment at noon, so can we meet for breakfast at the Hyatt on Union Square? GA.”
Joey had never been to a fancy restaurant. “What should I wear? GA.”
“Your very best jeans and your thinking cap.”
Thinking cap?
On Friday afternoon, Joey told Michelle that she was going home for the weekend to babysit for Luke. Without a clue where she would spend Saturday night, Joey caught the 6:30 A.M. bus to San Francisco.
Though Joey had seen the San Francisco skyline many times from the Oakland side of the bay on her trips home, the size of it up close was beyond imagination. She came out of the dark, low-ceilinged terminal into a sleeping giant of a city where the early morning sun made the windows of skyscrapers glow like hot coals. There was little traffic and fewer people. Even the homeless still slept in doorways and alcoves.
Joey leaned against the outside wall of the terminal and stared at the city. When she’d come through the station, all the ticket windows had been closed and she had no idea how to find her way to the Hyatt. She went back inside to check the walls for a map or to ask someone for directions.
A homeless man in a wheelchair was setting up his begging station at one of the entrances. He’d placed an open guitar case on the floor, but she saw no guitar. He glanced at Joey, but his shaggy beard covered his mouth. She smiled shyly and walked on.
Inside, in a dark corner beneath a staircase, an old man sat surrounded by newspapers and magazines. He watched her come across the marble floor through veiled, angry-looking eyes. Just as she stopped, he suddenly glanced to his right. Joey looked where he looked. The rackety metal Gray Line tour window was just going up. By the time Joey reached it, another person, who had materialized from nowhere, had gotten there ahead of her.
When she stepped to the window, the clerk smiled at her.
Joey returned her smile and was comforted. “I’m deaf,” she said. “Could you show me how to get to the Hyatt on Union Square?”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. Sure.” The woman shuffled some papers, found a red pen, then reached through the window and took a map from the display rack that she’d just placed there. She outlined the little blue Gray Line triangular logo, which was inside a shaded square labeled TRANSBAY TERMINAL.
Joey smiled. Most people were awfully nice.
She added a “you are here” arrow. Next, she studied the map herself, located Union Square, then drew a rectangle in the blank area on its north side and cross-hatched it with red lines. Hyatt, she wrote and drew another arrow. She showed Joey, who smiled, said thank you, and reached for it. Four people were in line behind her.
“No, wait.” The woman opened a drawer and found a green pen. Carefully, so as not to cover the names of the streets, she traced the route Joey should take.
Is this clear? she wrote along the margin.
“Very clear,” Joey said. “Thank you.”
Joey was nearly to the entrance when the woman caught up and tapped her shoulder. She’d scrawled, Let me get you a cab, on an envelope. She tried to hand Joey five dollars.
“Is it that far?”
5 or 6 blocks.
Joey gently pushed the money away. “No, thank you. I can walk and I’m hours early.”
Joey slung her backpack over one shoulder but by the time she got to the first corner, she decided that wearing it was safer. There still weren’t many people out: one jogger, a couple of people walking dogs, and a few homeless men.
She had quarters in her pocket left over from the bus fare. The first homeless man she passed had a sign that read, HOMELESS VET, PLEASE HELP IF U CAN. She put a quarter on his blanket. He didn’t look up. She understood why. So far, nothing had wiped from her memory the looks people had given them during those weeks before the restaurant hired her mother. Joey also remembered that it was the other homeless who had kept them fed.
On the sidewalk outside Macy’s, across the park from the Hyatt, Joey gave her last two quarters to a man who was breaking the sausage and cheese part of a McMuffin into bite-size pieces for his red-sweater-wearing cat while he ate the bread.
She found the Plaza Restaurant on the first floor of the Hyatt but decided to wait outside when she saw a uniformed man watching her. She got the creepy feeling that if she went inside and sat down, the Hyatt man would ask her to leave.
Outside on the steps, she examined a fountain created from a jumble of raised copper-plated scenes of San Francisco landmarks. She settled on the top step near the one of the Golden Gate Bridge to watch for Mr. McCully.
It wasn’t long before she saw him bound up the steps, but he went straight into the restaurant and was looking for her when she touched his arm.
HELLO. He shook her hand. SORRY LATE. NICE SEE-YOU AGAIN.
THANK YOU. NICE MEET-YOU AGAIN.
The dining room looked full, but the hostess led them through the maze of tables to one by the window overlooking Union Square. There was a Reserved sign on it, which she removed as Mr. McCully pulled Joey’s chair out for her. The hostess took Joey’s napkin from the table, snapped it open, and let it float to cover her knees. “Enjoy your breakfast,” she said, handing her a leather-bound menu. From the window Joey could see the red-sweatered cat curled and asleep beside his friend.
“Are you wearing your hearing aids?” Mr. McCully asked.
They were in her pocket. She shook her head. “They don’t work in crowded places. They amplify all the sounds so I only end up hearing racket.”
Mr. McCully patted her hand. “How well do you read lips?”
“Depends. Some people’s are easier than others. But if I catch a few words, I can sometimes guess the rest.”
Mr. McCul
ly took a long yellow pad and a pen from his briefcase. I don’t sign all that well, so we’ll make do with reading and writing instead of signs and lip-reading, if that’s okay with you.
Joey nodded.
“Do you want to eat first?”
“Is there hope for Sukari?”
“Yes.”
“I’d rather know that first.”
GOOD. I have something for you to read. From his briefcase he took a fat, maroon leather notebook. ESTATE PLANNING PORTFOLIO was embossed in gold letters across its middle. He opened it to a page he’d marked with a yellow Post-it, opened the rings, and took out a few pages. THE LAST WILL OF DR. CHARLES WILLIAM MCKINLEY MANSELL was the title of the first page.
Mr. McCully laid the will between them, then wrote, Your mother told Lynn that Charlie signed something to you just before he died.
“She’s yours,” Joey said, signing, SHE YOURS, for him to see.
He meant just that. Mr. McCully opened the will, flipped a few pages, pointed to the third paragraph, and turned the document for Joey to read.
All decisions concerning issues of care, maintenance, housing and well-being for the aforementioned chimpanzee, Sukari, will be decided by and at the sole discretion of her guardian, Joanne Elizabeth Willis, aka Joey.
An odd taste rose in Joey’s throat. Bile. She knew it from the many times she’d thrown up as a child. She reached for her water glass and drank in great, long gulps.
“She was mine. All along, she was mine? Why didn’t anybody tell me?” Tears of anger welled in her eyes.
As if he’d guessed this would be her response, he’d already written, Your mother didn’t want us to tell you about this part of the will. Charlie also left a trust fund for Sukari, but unfortunately, the way it’s set up, you are her sole guardian and the money to take care of her is funded at your discretion. No one’s been able to access it to help Sukari.
