Hurt Go Happy

by Ginny Rorby

  Pam Rowland was waiting for her in baggage claim. She held a pad in the air with SUKARI & JOEY printed on it in bold, black letters. When Joey waved, she grinned and pushed through the crowd to shake her hand. On the back of the pad she’d written, I’m so happy you’re here.

  Reading the scrawled welcome, Joey felt as if she’d stepped, alive and unhurt, out of the rubble of some disaster. She was here. She’d done it; she’d saved Sukari. “I am here, aren’t I?” Tears stung her eyes. She started to tremble and barely got out the words, “Thank you for taking us,” before she began to sob.

  Pam put an arm around her waist and led her out of the crush of people at the carousel where the first bags were arriving. They leaned against the railing around the baggage-claim area until Joey regained control.

  “I’m sorry,” Joey said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “I’m just tired, I guess.”

  Pam hugged her suddenly and Joey hugged her back. Though strangers, they shared a love of something so deep that they already knew each other’s hearts.

  Pam was tiny compared to Joey. When she let her go and stood on tiptoe to scan the crowd around the carousel, Joey looked, too. Doors from the outside swung open and the crowd parted. Joey saw Sukari sitting up with her baseball cap on backward, the way Luke always wore it. She was rubbing her eyes and yawning, but when she saw Joey, she signed, I-SEE-YOU, then hugged her backpack to her chest and waited for the cage door to open.

  People crowded around when the cart stopped. They pointed and laughed—dozens of contorted faces with all their teeth showing. Joey, with Pam right behind her, shoved her way through to the cage. “Get back. Get away from her,” Joey snapped and opened the door. The crowd backed away as Sukari, dragging all her belongings, climbed wide-eyed into Joey’s arms.

  Apparently, Joey’s deafness was considered a handicap by the parking police, because Pam had been permitted to park her van right outside the door. In seconds, Joey and Sukari were inside and rolling out of the dark, underground baggage-claim area and into the bright, white Florida sun.

  They drove the perimeter of the airport, then turned south on Red Road, through traffic like nothing Joey had ever seen. It took almost as long to drive the ten or so miles from the airport to Sukari’s new home in South Miami as it had to drive from Las Cruces to El Paso the day before.

  Pam had the van’s air conditioner turned on high but the interior stayed hot long enough for sweat to form and drip down Joey’s back and from beneath her breasts and armpits. She’d never felt heat like this, and it was as damp as a bathroom after a scalding shower. She stared out the window and strained to find something to love about the place as they crawled along in the glinting steel stream of traffic.

  Joey’s dread lifted a bit when they reached South Miami. There were more trees. A mile or so farther south and Pam began to grin like a person who knows the candles on the cake are being lit in the kitchen and the singing is about to start.

  Joey leaned forward against the restriction of the seat belt as they approached a forest of exotic trees penned in by a high wall of coral. She knew this was it, but her jaw still dropped at the sight of what had to be a twelve-foot-tall Blue and Gold macaw from whose beak the MACAW WORLD sign hung.

  They pulled into the banyon-tree-shaded parking lot and drove to a rear entrance. Perhaps sensing Joey’s anticipation, Sukari reached up and looped a long arm around Joey’s neck and smiled at her.

  Pam stopped outside a vine-covered gate and turned off the engine. HOME YOU, she signed to Sukari, then grinned at Joey. “See, an old dog can learn new tricks.”

  Sukari grinned with fear. DOG BITE.

  NO DOG HERE, Joey answered, then explained Sukari’s phobia to Pam.

  “I’ll never use that cliché again.”

  Joey stepped from the van into the sweltering heat with Sukari balanced on one hip. Pam led them down the path, past a small office. “There’s”—she turned, pointed, then turned back—“there you can sleep on.”

  “I missed that,” Joey said.

  Pam flinched. “Oh, Joey, I’m so sorry. How thoughtless of me. Is it rude for me to expect you to read my lips?”

  “Don’t feel bad. Having to always face me is a hard thing for people to remember. And your lips are pretty easy to read. I’ll ask you to repeat things I miss.”

  “Oh, good. Maybe you and Sukari will teach me to sign”—she laughed—“in our spare time. What I said before was there’s a sofa-bed in there you can sleep on. I’m so tired most nights I sleep here as often as I sleep at home. Did you get that?”

  Joey nodded. She’d gotten enough of it.

  They went through another gate in a tall, chain-link fence and past a cage with two young orangutans. One of them came over and put a long, orange finger through the wire.

  “This is Chris,” Pam said. “He’s a love.”

  A sense of hopefulness rose in Joey like it had at the movie E.T., the last movie she’d seen and heard. She remembered the glow at the tip of E.T.’s finger and how it had lit up the screen and spread out into the theater. Chris’s eyes held Joey’s as she shifted Sukari to the other hip and put her fingertip to the tip of Chris’s. He curled his finger and she slid hers to hook with his. “Friend,” she whispered.

  FRIEND, Sukari signed, hooking her own index fingers first one way, then the other.

  Joey hugged her. “A new friend and a new home.” And her optimism grew when Sukari signed, GOODBYE, RED BOY, instead of calling him a bug like she had the chimps when she lived at the zoo.

  But Joey’s heart sank when she saw Sukari’s new home—an old, rusting, cylindrical steel cage, ten feet high and about six feet in diameter. The sleeping platform was new and a tire hung from a single long rope. A colorful beach ball, which looked as if it had expanded in the heat to the point of exploding, lay on the dirt floor.

  Pam must have known Joey would be disappointed because she had a note all written: Don’t get bummed. It’s only temporary. If she gets along with Noelle and Kenya—and I’m sure she will, in spite of what happened at the zoo—she can move in with them soon.

  “Oh, I hope so,” Joey said too quickly, then turned and grabbed Pam’s wrist. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I’m so grateful to be here. It’s just that she grew up with a room of her own and now, no matter how much I hate it, she has to live in a cage. If I just think about her in that lab, this becomes a castle. It will be fine. I’ll stay in it with her for a few days.”

  Pam laughed and wrote, I wish I could tell you how many nights I’ve spent in these cages. You can borrow my lawn chair.

  Macaw World had more different kinds of parrots than Joey imagined there were in the world. Cages full of vividly colored birds lined the walkway to the main entrance. After the place closed that first afternoon, Joey took Sukari to explore her new home. A couple of dozen flamingos, in a pond beyond a patio with concrete picnic tables and a snack bar, seemed to do their dining upside down, but Sukari stared at two white swans for a full minute before deciding, Joey guessed, that neither of them was Gilbert.

  Just inside the entrance, an employee was putting away the last of the birds people held to have their pictures taken with. A Blue and Gold macaw held a foot out to Joey, who hesitated only a moment before lifting her arm to let it step on.

  Sukari leaned away from its massive beak. BIRD BITE J-Y?

  “It doesn’t want to bite me.” Joey knelt and picked up a sunflower seed. “Give him this.”

  When the bird stretched its neck to take the seed, Sukari chickened out and threw it down.

  Joey picked it up and handed it to the bird, who rolled the small seed in its huge bill, extracted the meat, and let the empty shell float to the ground.

  AGAIN, Sukari signed.

  Joey picked up another seed and handed it to her. This time Sukari gave it to the macaw, who ate it, then leaned over and caught one of Sukari’s big ears by its soft, vulnerable edge. Sukari’s lips pulled back in a grimace of fe
ar and she froze, her legs tightening around Joey’s waist. But the bird began to preen her gently, running its bill through her thin black hair, across the top of her head and down the back of her neck.

  Joey glanced at the man collecting the macaws and smiled, more to herself than at him. What a picture she made in her own mind, a chimpanzee balanced on a hip, a tremendous bird on her arm, two species—three, counting herself—from three different continents. She imagined her mother with a camera, maneuvering to get the background right. Her gaze drifted to the hibiscus hedge and the beautiful birds. She was suddenly astonished that she and Sukari were together again, and in this place.

  * * *

  That first night Joey did borrow Pam’s lawn chair and a sleeping bag, and set herself up in the cage with Sukari. Joey tried to get her to use her new platform but they ended up squeezed into the lawn chair together. Only Sukari slept. Joey perspired and watched the giant cockroaches scuttle about on the floor, sides, and ceiling of the cage.

  The second night, she waited until Sukari was asleep to try to slip away. Sukari had her by the hand before the door was open wide enough to let another roach in. Pam laughed the next morning, took a can of WD-40, and sprayed the cage-door hinges. “Maybe you’ll make it out tonight.”

  Late the next afternoon, Hidey arrived. Joey and Sukari had gone for a walk and when they returned, his carrier was in her cage. Sukari stopped dead in her tracks when she saw it and began to sway from side to side.

  Hidey must have meowed, because Sukari’s head jerked, then she looked at Joey wide-eyed. HIDEY THERE?

  Joey shrugged, but couldn’t cover her smile.

  Sukari leaned as close as she could get to the carrier without letting go of Joey’s hand. She put an eye to one of the slots, then began to hoot. HIDEY THERE. OPEN. HURRY. HURRY.

  When Joey undid the latch, Hidey flopped over on his side, like old times, and let Sukari pull him from the carrier. He hung limply, just as he’d done as a kitten, draped over Sukari’s arm, permitting kisses until his back was wet. That night Sukari took Hidey up onto the platform. The hinges had been silenced. When Sukari was asleep, Joey crept from the cage and slept for the first time in days in the air-conditioned, cockroach-free office.

  * * *

  When it wasn’t raining or threatening to rain, Pam took the chimps and orangutans for a walk in the afternoon after Macaw World closed and before their evening meal. At her suggestion, Joey and Sukari joined in as a way of testing Sukari’s tolerance of the other chimps.

  Noelle was two and a half, but Kenya was past four and had lost the white hair tufts on her bottom that mark a baby chimpanzee. They decided to start with just Sukari and Noelle, and of course Chris, the orangutan, whom Sukari seemed to like and who would have been crushed if left behind.

  Joey started out carrying Sukari but Noelle, who was familiar with these afternoon playtimes, walked. After only a few yards, Sukari wanted to walk, too. Pam carried Chris, whose feet fit tree limbs beautifully but were not well suited for the ground.

  Their destination was a huge old ficus tree, alone in a weedy field at the back of the property. Joey had never seen a tree quite like this. It reminded her of a giant troll. Thin, long roots like coarse hair stretched to meet the ground. Those that had sunk their tips into the sand had thickened so it looked as if the branches had grown legs and were pulling the tree apart in all directions. Sunlight couldn’t pierce the canopy, so nothing grew beneath it.

  Sukari liked “red boy” and tried to keep his attention on her by signing to him. Noelle, whom she called “black bug,” as Joey had feared she would, was tolerated but only if Joey paid no attention to her. If Noelle approached Joey, Sukari charged, screaming and flailing her arms.

  On their third trip to the ficus, Sukari climbed high into the tree with Chris, trying to keep up with him as he swung on long arms through the branches. Noelle came down and sat on Pam’s lap. When Joey smiled at her, Noelle glanced up to locate Sukari, then came over with her wrist bent. Just as Joey reached to take her hand, Sukari swooped down, grabbed Noelle by the arm, and began to climb with her.

  “No,” Joey screamed. She jumped up and ran to position herself to catch Noelle if Sukari dropped her. “Bring her down here,” Joey demanded.

  The tone of Joey’s voice must have startled Sukari. She stopped climbing but still dangled Noelle by one arm.

  HUG BABY BUG, Joey signed.

  Sukari reeled her in and grabbed Noelle around the waist but made no move to let her go or bring her down.

  NO HURT BUG, YOU.

  J-Y MAD?

  YES, J-Y MAD.

  J-Y BITE?

  “Not if you bring her DOWN right NOW.”

  Sukari appeared to think about this.

  Joey was still wearing the white Macaw World smock that identified her as someone permitted behind the scenes. On their first walk, she’d put an emergency box of raisins in a pocket for just such an occasion as this. J-Y VERY MAD, she signed. WANT BABY BUG. YOU WANT RAISIN?

  Sukari started down with Noelle slung over her arm. She stopped on a limb above Joey’s head, still out of reach.

  “Let her go,” Joey said, repeatedly tossing and catching the box of raisins.

  Sukari held Noelle out until she grabbed a handful of roots and swung away. J-Y HURT SUKARI?

  Joey’s heart leapt. She couldn’t bear it, if Sukari was afraid of her for even a moment. NO HURT SUKARI. SUKARI NO HURT BABY BUG.

  J-Y NEED HUG?

  YES.

  Sukari swung down until her foot rested on Joey’s shoulder, then she let go and fell into her arms.

  I-LOVE-YOU, Joey signed. WANT YOU LOVE BABY BUG.

  BUG NEED HUG?

  YES.

  Sukari pulled her lips back as if in disgust but dropped to the ground, then swayed as she lumbered toward Noelle, who grinned with fear.

  Joey prepared to charge in, but Sukari sat down suddenly and signed, COME HUG BABY, and held her arms open.

  Noelle looked over her shoulder at Pam, who glanced at Joey, then gave Noelle a little shove in Sukari’s direction. “It’s okay.”

  Sukari reached out and grabbed Noelle’s hand.

  Noelle screamed.

  Pam started to jump in, but Joey stopped her. Sukari signed, BABY, then forced Noelle’s arms into the same shape, one resting on the other, as if cradling a baby, then rocked from side to side. Sukari pointed at her. YOU BABY.

  Noelle let her arms drop.

  Sukari shaped them again, then poked Noelle’s chest. YOU BABY.

  Noelle poked Sukari’s chest.

  NO BABY ME. YOU BABY, Sukari signed.

  Noelle flicked leaves with her toes, which made Sukari scream and flail her hands in frustration. She stopped suddenly, then got a sneaky look on her face. TICKLE, she signed, then tickled Noelle, who laughed and rolled on her side.

  TICKLE became Noelle’s first sign.

  * * *

  By the second week, Kenya and Sukari tolerated each other; Noelle and Sukari were fast friends. Pam decided she was willing to try Sukari in the large cage. Joey said she was glad, but each day she put the move off and each day her mother called to insist she come home. Joey knew that if they successfully moved Sukari in with Noelle and Kenya, she’d be out of excuses to stay. By the end of the week, her desire for what was best for Sukari finally won over her dread of leaving her. On Friday, when they returned from their walk to the ficus tree, they put Sukari in with Noelle and Kenya, then pulled up chairs for the evening vigil. Just before dark, Sukari and Kenya argued over possession of the identical platforms. Kenya won the one she wanted, but Noelle chose to sleep with Sukari and Hidey. Later that night, Pam booked Joey on Saturday’s all-night flight to Oakland.

  There was a pond off the trail to the eastern snack bar and Joey liked to go there to “listen” to the water. Late Saturday afternoon, she took Sukari to the pond. With no idea how to explain that she was going home, Joey led her to a concrete bench beside the water and lift
ed Sukari onto her lap.

  “Do you like your new home?” Joey said into her ear.

  Sukari put her head back against Joey’s shoulder and looked up at her.

  Joey signed, LOVE THIS HOME, YOU? Then spread her arms to take in the forest in which they sat.

  YES, Sukari answered. J-Y LOVE HOME?

  Joey’s heart sank. NOT MY HOME.

  Sukari lost interest and returned to watching the koi in the pond.

  She shifted Sukari off her lap and put her on the bench so they were facing each other. “Sukari, listen to me.” J-Y GO HOME, SEE LUKE. Joey made circles in front of her face with the “L” hand, the modified sign for trouble, which she and Sukari had created as a sign-name for Luke.

  Sukari scooted off the bench and held out her hand.

  NO, YOUR HOME HERE, Joey signed. YOU STAY HERE.

  WANT SEE LUKE. GO J-Y HOUSE.

  NO, YOU STAY WITH HIDEY.

  HIDEY WANT SEE LUKE. HIDEY GO J-Y HOUSE.

  NO, YOU STAY WITH BABY BUG.

  BABY BUG WANT SEE LUKE.

  Joey caught her hands. “You have to wait here for me.”

  GO J-Y HOUSE, SEE TURTLE.

  Joey shook her head. Sometimes she was grateful that Sukari didn’t understand death and at other times she wished she did. Joey had disappeared from her life and come back; how hard was it for her to believe that Charlie might come back, too? At least it made Joey hopeful that when she disappeared this time, Sukari would trust her to return. But what concept of time did Sukari have? Joey couldn’t tell her she’d be back in June when school was over. Here in Miami, she couldn’t even use the changes in the weather to explain that she’d be back when it was hot again. There were no discernible seasons: a little less hot, a little drier, that was it.

  In the end, Joey just left. She stayed with Sukari until she was asleep, then Pam drove her to the airport. The air conditioner in the van was broken. Between her grief and the heat, Joey was wringing wet by the time she got there, as if she wept from every pore.

  She waited until Tuesday to call Pam from school. At first, Pam tried to sound upbeat, but Joey begged for the truth, then broke down and cried when she got it. Sukari had spent all day Sunday watching the walkway from the office. On Monday, she stayed near the front of the cage, rocking, with Hidey in her lap. When anyone came to the fence that separated visitors from the cage itself, she’d look up expectantly, then resume rocking and signing to herself, WHERE J-Y? WHERE J-Y?