Jennie

by Douglas Preston

  And now I wonder if my failed effort to bring a Christian commitment to Jennie’s life was, in truth, an exercise of not seeing the forest for the trees. In every way, at every moment, Jennie shows kindness and altruism that reveal her to be a child of grace. Just as babies and severely retarded children are saved by grace despite their lack of intellectual understanding, so is Jennie’s grace revealed by her Christian responses to those around her. If spontaneous kindness, without cunning or forethought of reward, is not proof of grace, what can be proof? I am aware that this may be a radical conclusion, perhaps at variance with my church. So be it. I seem to be at variance with so much in my church these days.

  I am resolved to finally deliver that sermon on Jennie. Fear of ridicule has held me back.

  After Jennie arrived, I played on the hi-fi one of my favorite pieces of religious music, Duruflé’s Requiem, and Jennie was quieted by it and sat on the floor listening. I signed to her that the piece was about God and Jennie looked at me with interest but did not respond.

  February 24, 1971

  In the middle of last night, I heard a squirrel in the chimney and now I am afraid to light a fire. I was under the impression that squirrels hibernated in the winter.

  Jennie was very lively today. She announced her desire to listen to music by banging on the hi-fi, and I obliged by playing Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor. She is greatly taken with loud organ music. To her great delight she has discovered the knob that controls the volume, and she turns it up whenever my back is turned, hoping, perhaps, I will not notice.

  We perused the latest issue of Pennies from Heaven and she signed Jesus Jesus when we came to a picture of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It showed Lazarus lying in a robe, and then him rising with a radiant light around his head. Then Jennie began signing What that? and pointing at the picture, and I tried to explain the story of Lazarus. The conversation was rather peculiar, and, indeed, astonishing in its own way. I will here insert the relevant sections from my Jennie notes:

  Myself: Man dead.

  Jennie: What?

  Myself: Man dead.

  Jennie: What? (By this I think she possibly meant Why?)

  Myself: Man dead, Jesus make man alive.

  Jennie stared at the picture with utmost interest. I thought she probably did not understand. She repeated what five or six times, slowly. Then she finally signed: Dead, dead, dead, dead. Over and over again. I repeated the story, Man dead, Jesus make man alive. Jennie furrowed her brow and scratched and squeaked and hooted to herself, as if lost in deep thought.

  Then she signed something followed by the word “dead.” Like so:——dead. I could not find any meaning in the ASL dictionary for the——sign, except bug which of course must be wrong. She continued signing——dead quite insistently. At the same time she exhibited all the signs of puzzlement, as if the word “dead” itself held some mystery for her. As indeed it should. It is one of the oldest and most baffling questions that faced Mankind until God revealed himself through His Son Jesus Christ, and when that happened, truly then, death lost its mystery. I hope that Jennie at some point in her life can come to this realization, although it may be beyond her intellectual capabilities.

  We continued our peculiar conversation.

  Myself: Jesus make dead man alive.

  Jennie: Dead, dead, dead man.

  Myself: Man dead. (And I pointed to the picture)

  Jennie: What dead?

  Myself: Man.

  Jennie became frustrated at this. What dead? she signed several times in rapid succession. I realized that she must be asking “What is it to be dead? What is death?” So I responded, Death like sleep.

  She stamped on the floor and hooted loudly. Dead! Dead! she signed, and then signed What dead?

  I responded by lying down and pretending to be dead. This silenced Jennie, and when I peeked out of an eye I saw that she was looking at me with a terrible grimace of fear. I had frightened the poor thing! I quickly got up and she signed Hug, hug over and over again. Then she picked up the book and threw it down on the floor and slapped it and kicked it across the room. Death is obviously as distasteful a subject to a chimpanzee as it is to a human being.

  I did not, however, wish to leave the subject. I felt a breakthrough might be imminent. The fear of death is what brings many to God, and I have often thought that God gave us this terrible fear for that very reason. Therefore, as painful as it was to me, I introduced Reba into the conversation.

  I signed, Reba dead.

  Jennie looked at me.

  Remember Reba? I asked.

  Jennie signed Reba.

  Reba dead I signed.

  Jennie signed Reba! several times, as if she had forgotten about Reba. Then she looked about wildly. I do believe that she realized, for the first time, that Reba had been missing for a while.

  Right away she turned and ran up the stairs and pounded on the door to Reba’s old bedroom, which I keep shut but unlocked. Reba had spent several months there before the end. I went up the stairs after her, and by the time I arrived she had thrown the bedroom door open and was standing on the threshhold. Then she whirled around and came racing past me in the hall and went back downstairs—myself struggling to keep up—and headed into the kitchen, the other place where Reba was often found. When I caught up with her, she was standing in the middle of the kitchen looking confused.

  Where Reba? she signed.

  Reba dead, I signed. Reba in Heaven. My heart was pounding so awfully, with a mixture of sorrow and anticipation. I felt that some very profound revelation was taking place in Jennie’s understanding. And I felt so terribly sad at the same time.

  Jennie signed, Where Reba! again with both hands.

  Reba dead, I repeated. Reba with God in Heaven. I pointed to the sky. Reba dead, gone to Heaven. Reba with God.

  She looked so utterly lost that I signed Jennie, what you think?

  She looked at me and signed again, Where Reba? and stamped her feet on the ground in frustration.

  And then I remembered Jennie’s kitten, which she owned for a short time some years ago and which died. I signed Remember cat? Jennie’s cat? Jennie’s cat dead. Reba dead. Same. Same.

  Jennie became very still, looking at me. I repeated: Jennie’s cat dead. Reba dead. Same.

  At this, a most dramatic reaction occurred. Jennie remained frozen, but her hair slowly began to rise up on end, and she swayed back and forth on her knuckles, while making a peculiar squeaking noise in the bottom of her throat. A noise I had never heard before, but clearly one of profound distress. I do not know whether she was affrighted or grieving. I suspect the former.

  She then signed Jennie’s cat several times and went and sat in the corner, facing the wall, hugging herself and squeaking. She would not allow me to approach or comfort her, which was very unlike her. My heart was in turmoil. I was divided between thinking that Jennie was sharing in her own way my grief, and wondering if what Jennie was actually experiencing was that terrible and unassuagable fear of death that often strikes nonbelievers in the middle years of life. I could hardly breathe.

  I attempted to comfort her in my own limited way. Reba happy. Reba in Heaven. Reba with God and Jesus. Jennie continued signing to herself Jennie’s cat and Reba Reba Reba and rocking back and forth, lost in her private and powerful emotion, without paying me the slightest attention. I finally took her hand and led her home. She was passive and unresponsive.

  Knowledge of death—which is, in a peculiar way, also the knowledge of good and evil—is the most terrible burden that we human beings must bear, and I wonder now if it wasn’t cruel to force that knowledge on Jennie.

  [FROM Recollecting a Life by Hugo Archibald.]

  By the fall of 1971, we noticed that Jennie was growing up fast. Every day she seemed to get bigger and stronger, more self-assured and less dependent. She abandoned many of her childish ways. She stopped hoarding her toys and guarding them obsessively. She became more at ease with
strangers. She was less likely to throw a tantrum, but when she did her tantrums were more prolonged and violent.

  At the same time our son was going through the throes of adolescence. He grew his hair long and participated in a protest of the Vietnam War in Kibbencook Square. It was a tame protest—a candlelight March for Peace—and we insisted on coming along, partly because we agreed with the protesters, but mostly because we did not want to see Sandy arrested or injured if the police should overreact. Jennie, naturally, came along as well.

  The marchers gathered at the high school parking lot at sunset and proceeded down Grove Street to the clock tower in Kibbencook Square. There were several hundred marchers, mostly young people from the high school, along with a number of worried parents. Sandy and his young friends wore flowers in their hair and they carried candles. Lea and I followed behind, keeping one eye on them and another on the police. We were worried that one of Sandy’s less-intelligent friends would light up a marijuana cigarette and give the police a reason to arrest everyone.

  They linked hands and sang “Give Peace a Chance,” with Jennie right in there with the thick of them. She had no idea what was going on, but she loved the crowd, the singing, and the undercurrent of excitement. She was in her element.

  The police and a National Guard unit lined the marchers’ route, but there were no pointed guns or tear gas. The police were well behaved and the only unpleasant note came from a group of working-class men in black leather jackets, who were protesting our protesting with jeers and catcalls. Kibbencook was not a hotbed of radicalism, and even antiwar marches were organized with a certain decorum. It was a thoroughly suburban protest.

  During the march, Jennie behaved herself beautifully. She did not start a riot, attack the police, burn the flag, or spit on the National Guardsmen. It was an odd sight indeed seeing these young teenagers treating this ape as a friend—albeit a rather special friend. Jennie would sign away until she was blue in the face with Sandy’s friends, but none of them understood what she was saying without Sandy translating. This never seemed to matter much to them or to Jennie. She made herself understood in one way or another.

  The local press was there, and the next day there was a picture of Jennie and a line of protesters, hands linked, on the front page of the Kibbencook Townsman. There were several nasty letters to the editor making crude comparisons between Jennie and the marchers. The letters made Sandy angry and he responded with a letter to the editor pointing out that chimpanzees were perhaps more intelligent than certain American politicians, since war was unknown among apes. This was, of course, before Dr. Jane Goodall’s observation of a deadly conflict between two chimpanzee groups in Gombe.

  The march deeply impressed me. It was a moving experience, seeing young people so earnestly concerned about the morality of our involvement in Vietnam. While many of their ideas may have been naive or youthfully excessive, their hearts were in the right place. It was one of the first times in the history of America where a large segment of the population had questioned the morality of war—not just a war but any war. They were not going to accept blindly the values of their parents.

  Sandy had just turned fourteen. I felt that I was witnessing the beginnings of a great sea change in America. I was deeply moved. Through this terrible ordeal of Vietnam, I believed, we might finally see America becoming what the founding fathers had envisioned, a nation with a moral purpose in the world and a nation that cared about all its citizens. We might see the end of the cynical Nixon-Kissinger version of realpolitik.

  It hasn’t turned out that way, but then we are all a little older and wiser.

  Not long after the march I purchased a Trans-Lux eight-millimeter silent movie camera, a projector, and a set of lights. I hoped to capture on film her childhood playfulness before it vanished completely. I was almost too late.

  I began to film Jennie at home, doing the things she normally did: eating, squirting the hose, running around the house, playing with Sandy. When the first batch of film came back from the developers, we set up the screen and settled in for an evening of home movies. We were curious what Jennie’s reaction might be to seeing herself on the silver screen. She had a streak of exhibitionism, a necessary prerequisite for movie stardom.

  When the lights darkened and the moving picture flickered on, Jennie became still and attentive. Her image suddenly appeared on-screen, squatting on the piano stool and pounding away at the keys of our old Weser “cabinet grand.” When Jennie saw herself on the screen, she let fly a short scream and stood up, hopping up and down in excitement and pointing at the screen. Then she began to sign Jennie and point again. If ever there was proof of self-awareness, this was it.

  Yes, Sandy signed, that’s Jennie playing piano.

  Me Jennie! signed Jennie. She went up to the screen to examine her image more closely. Her shadow obscured the screen, and she began poking at her shadow, grunting with puzzlement. Then she went over to the projector and tried to look into the lens, but the light was so bright she backed away with her face wrinkled up and her eyes blinking. We tried to persuade her to sit down and watch, but whenever her image appeared on-screen she sprang back up and hopped up and down, squealing with excitement.

  It was curious to see her reaction. With each change of scene Jennie signed what was happening: Jennie eat or Jennie wet or Fire fire when she was shown pulling roasted apples out of the fire. When we filmed Jennie chasing one of the neighbor’s dogs she jumped up with a screech of derision and raced to the screen, signing Bad! Go away! In another scene we gave her a hamburger loaded with pickles and ketchup, so we could record for posterity her dinnertime manners. When she threw the hamburger in the film, Jennie laughed and whirled about on the floor, signing Bad Jennie! Bad bad Jennie!

  One of the truly interesting sequences occurred when Sandy brought home a milk snake he had caught in the fields in Maine. We knew Jennie had an irrational fear and hatred of snakes. We put the snake in a shoebox and left it on the coffee table in the living room. I set up the camera in a strategic place to record the action and Sandy called Jennie in from the orchard.

  She came tumbling into the house and raced to the living room. Jennie had extraordinary powers of observation and always noticed when something new had been added to a room. She immediately saw the shoebox and stopped dead. She reached out to touch it, and quite suddenly she jerked her hand back and her hair rose in fear. To this day I do not know how she knew there was a snake in the shoebox. Chimpanzees do not have a sense of smell keener than humans, and milk snakes are clean and do not have a detectable odor.

  She took Lea’s hand and whimpered loudly and stamped on the floor a few times, but she did not retreat. Her curiosity was too strong. Pulling Lea by the hand, she advanced on the shoebox, swatted it, and scurried back behind Lea.

  The box did not open.

  She signed Box open box to Lea, but Lea merely signed back Jennie open box.

  Jennie took another quick step toward the box and gave it a harder swat, which sent it tumbling to the floor, spilling the snake on the rug.

  At this Jennie let fly a terrific scream and ran to the door, where she stopped and stood swaying on her knuckles, screaming and drumming on the floor with her feet. She ran halfway to the snake, pounded and stamped the floor in a display of anger, and retreated back to the doorway. Her magnificent performance was lost on the poor snake, who was either dazed from his fall or merely half asleep on the soft rug.

  She signed Bad! Bad! and made another charge and retreat at the snake, to no effect. The snake just lay there, flicking its tongue. Sandy fetched the snake and eventually persuaded Jennie to touch it from a distance, which she did with her arm stretched out and her face averted with a grin of fear. I recorded the entire encounter on film, and Harold Epstein and Dr. Prentiss both watched it with great interest. We concluded that chimpanzees must have a genetically programmed fear of snakes, as well as the ability to detect them when they are hidden, something that we humans have los
t.

  During that next year I took several thousand feet of film of Jennie and Sandy: the two of them roasting marshmallows and dancing around a campfire in the field behind the farmhouse; Jennie and Sandy riding their bikes around the neighborhood; Jennie and Rev. Palliser waving at the camera. The camera revealed one limitation in Jennie’s intelligence: she never made the connection between the camera and the home movies that we later viewed. As a result she was never self-conscious in front of the camera. This was a great contrast to Sandy, who became increasingly irritated at being filmed. He had turned fifteen and, like most teenagers, was agonizingly self-conscious.

  Jennie was nearing the age of puberty. Just as Harold Epstein had warned, she was becoming increasingly unruly. She had always “tested” the limits of her power, but as she reached the age of eight her testing of us became more strident and aggressive. We found ourselves quite unable to oppose her at times.

  Jennie’s rebellion at eight paralleled Sandy’s at fifteen, and the two of them often defied parental authority together. It was a conspiracy: each would undermine our efforts to discipline the other. It was not uncommon that when I became angry at Sandy for some reason, Jennie would start bristling up, barking and swaggering toward me, in a classic threat. When we tried to discipline Jennie, Sandy would often say “Leave her alone” or “Come on, Jennie, let’s get out of here,” and Jennie would drop her contrite expression and stare at us with sheer insolence.

  I particularly recall one time when Jennie had been pounding on the piano for too long while I was trying to work, and I shouted at her to stop. Sandy was in the room reading a book. Jennie stopped and got off the piano stool, crouching and looking guilty. Then Sandy said, “Why don’t you quit picking on her. You’re always at her, trying to control her every little move, make her do this and not do that.”