Orphaned
Page 8
breaks into a frenzied, panicked scream,
and she scampers back to the fallen pair,
throwing her body over them,
face red from crying, red from their blood.
The child stands in the tall grass,
fists balled as she stares after her departing kind.
She kneels in the grass,
shaking the bodies,
so much water running down her face
that it drips off her chin.
The tips of the grass turn orange
as the day’s aging sun descends.
They have stayed too late.
The nighttime jungle is already fearsome.
What new dangers does this grassland have?
Snub imagines mountains rolling over the land,
flattening wayward gorillas,
or tiny jabbering jackals
swarming out of the black like locusts,
or lions loping low and silent,
eyes reflecting moonlight.
The only way to keep danger away
is to have a silverback near.
As the sun goes low over the grassland,
Snub senses how far away Silverback is
and her body starts to jangle.
And yet, she doesn’t leave.
The not-gorilla child is splayed out in the grass
so low and so motionless
Snub might have forgotten she was there
if it weren’t for her
high-pitched keening.
That child has no Silverback near either.
Breath is not interested in a sobbing not-gorilla child.
He rolls out of Snub’s lap,
grabs a tuft of thick yellow grass in each hand,
tugs them hard enough
that his body jerks and dances.
He rasps in pleasure at the game.
Snub eases toward the child.
Thick grasshoppers pop away,
flies batter her face,
dry grass crackles.
Breath is never one to be left out.
He bounds onto Snub’s back,
raking her hair.
When Snub whirls,
Breath bounces free,
into the grass,
right beside the not-gorilla child.
Her snuffles stop.
Breath scampers up Snub’s back.
Once he’s secure on her shoulders
he starts making sounds of
wragh
at the child,
beating his little fists on Snub’s head
for extra emphasis.
Snub settles him on her back,
and when she returns
her attention to the child,
the not-gorilla has disappeared.
Snub turns around, hooting in confusion.
The grass bursts into yellow motion,
and the child is leaping at her,
hands outstretched and jaws wide open,
leading with her teeth.
They are small teeth,
but Breath cheeps in fear.
Snub flings her arms over her head
and sees the child standing there,
arms still outstretched,
ferocity cooling.
Snub slowly lowers her own arms,
purses her lips and grunts.
The child is a pitiful creature, made more so up close.
She has an oddly bare face,
nearly hairless from brow ridge
to the top of her broad nose,
only the wispiest of hairs
over the brown skin of her neck,
thickening into fullness over her shoulders.
She was well taken care of,
few scars lining her face.
An animal skin is draped over one shoulder,
covering most of her skinny fine-haired body.
The hide smells rancid,
is covered in previous meals,
in the crushed purples and reds of flowers,
the browns of dried mud,
the blacks of dried blood.
Emerging from the bottom of
the animal skin
are impossibly thin ankles,
encrusted in insect bites.
Snub waits for the child to fall down to all fours,
to make a sound of
wragh
or
mrgh.
But she stays silent on her two legs.
The child slowly lowers her arms
and bows her head.
Snub realizes:
She thinks I will eat her.
She is not running.
She wants to be eaten.
Breath gets down from Snub’s back,
toddles to the child,
gives her a solid kick on the leg,
then scampers back to the safety of Snub.
The child bares her teeth,
backing toward the bodies
of the two dead not-gorillas,
drawing the rancid animal skin closer
and lying beside them in the grass.
Snub makes a soft grunt and starts away.
If this lonely child tries to follow her,
Snub will not stop her.
But she does not follow.
Snub has been away from Silverback too long.
The setting sun falls behind a rise in the earth
and darkens the land without warning.
The moon has disappeared tonight, as well.
It is too dangerous to walk the jungle.
Snub feels a large fern at the swampy edge of the jungle
and pushes her way into its fronds.
She displaces some small creature
that rustles away through the leaves.
She lowers her body deeper into the stalks of green,
fibers breaking and crackling underneath her.
Breath snuggles down close,
trying Snub’s nipple and then
turning so his backside is against her belly.
Snub uproots a sapling and drapes it over them,
sprinkling handfuls of fern on top for warmth.
Nestled away like this,
an elephant or buffalo foraging at night
can’t crush them without hitting the tree first.
But the child alone has no such protection.
Night winds whip through the grass,
setting it sighing and screaming.
Snub snuggles deeper into the soft ferns,
clutching Breath as tightly as she can.
Over the sounds of Breath’s sleep
and the whip-whistling wind,
Snub hears other noises in the direction of the child.
Panting struggles,
cries of grief
cries of pain
a scream.
Not a scream of pain,
but of some other feeling.
It is still dark,
and yet Snub has come awake.
Breath is awake, too,
clinging to her in silence.
Rain falls,
a hushed patter on the leaves above
under the croaks of frogs,
under the whooshes of bats.
Whatever sound woke them has now stilled.
Careful to make no noise,
Snub retreats as far as she can
into the sheltering hollow of the tree,
pressing into moist wood.
The night world is only frogs and bats and rain.
Then Snub hears a sniffle, and a shuffle.
The ferns beside her rustle.
Breath makes an outraged
wragh.
Snub, suspecting who has arrived,
stays quiet.
Snub is already awake when daylight comes.
She watches gray steal away black.
It starts by lining the edges of a distant stream,
then the puddles of last night’s rainstorm
.
Finally light arrives to the things that are not water:
the wet hairs on Snub’s feet,
the edges of the trees above,
the magnificent lock of red-brown hair
that curls on Breath’s sleeping head.
Sunlight arrives on the body beside her.
The not-gorilla child is curled on her side,
knees pressed tight to her chest,
hugging herself.
The soaked animal skin does little to keep her warm.
The droplets on the child’s hair tremble with each shiver.
When Snub gets to all fours,
Breath comes with her without even waking up,
snoring away with his fists clutching her hair.
Snub deliberately steps on a branch and cracks it,
hoping the noise will wake the child up.
But she doesn’t budge, shut into sleep.
Snub takes a few steps in the direction
of the lagoon, where she last saw Silverback.
After only a few paces,
she finds herself stopping
and looking back at the child holed up in the ferns.
This spindly ape
is so pitiful
and really not so unlike a gorilla.
Snub taps the child’s shoulder
with the back of a finger.
The not-gorilla child startles awake,
props herself up on her forearms.
When she sees Snub her eyes widen.
Not just fear—
though fear is there, too.
It is more like she is trying to absorb Snub.
Snub feels looked at again.
Breath looks at her this way,
and Mother once did,
but Silverback and Brother do not.
For no reason
the child screams,
a short and piercing noise.
Breath gasps awake,
sees the child,
and gives a sound of
wragh,
angry fingers digging into Snub’s skin.
The child—Snub thinks of her as Orphan—
becomes eerily still,
not even raising her hands to defend her face.
Snub makes herself as still as Orphan,
and Orphan stops making noise.
The only movement is Breath
flicking his lips back from his teeth,
which would be scary
if Breath were bigger.
Orphan seems only confused by it.
Snub keeps her eyes trained on Orphan’s feet,
not wanting to accidentally present
mrgh.
When she flicks her gaze to Orphan’s eyes,
she finds her staring back.
It fires an anger in Snub
for this frail thing to challenge her,
but she remembers Breath doing the same
before he learned how a gorilla should act.
Snub flicks her lips away from her teeth.
That seems to help Orphan understand.
She casts her eyes down to her own feet.
Bobbing her head, Snub turns from Orphan
and roots through nearby nettles
until she comes upon some husks.
The seeds have been eaten,
but there is still plenty of soft white pith
between the inner and outer shells.
Snub pulls out long strands of cottony white fiber.
She places a handful in her mouth.
Breath reaches for his share.
Once she and Breath are both eating,
Snub sneaks a glance at Orphan.
The child watches them, fascinated.
Snub lowers her head, grunts,
holds out the rest of the pith in an
open palm.
Though it is what she hoped for,
Snub is still shocked
when she sees a slender,
soft-haired hand reach in,
work its fingers around the pith,
pull it away.
Orphan gums it down,
going cross-eyed
as she stares along her nose
at the strands falling out of her mouth.
She doesn’t know how to eat pith.
How can this child possibly survive?
Orphan has finished her handful,
and now looks at Snub hopefully,
a long strand of grubby fiber
dangling from the corner of her mouth.
An ant is on the end,
clutching with its back legs
and raising its head,
antennae tapping.
When Snub reaches forward,
Orphan jerks and goes rigid,
but allows Snub to delicately
take the pith between thumb and forefinger
and raise it to Orphan’s lips.
Snub works the fiber into Orphan’s mouth
and she swallows it,
ant and all.
Orphan strides away from Snub,
back into the grassland.
The movement is so sudden.
When Orphan swings around a tree and disappears,
Snub is relieved to think that maybe Orphan is leaving,
striking off to find her people again.
Then she’s sorrowful,
missing the child who saw her so fully.
Orphan reappears at the far side of the tree,
scrabbling at an open sore in the earth.
She bounds back over,
one of the dirty tubers in hand.
Startled by the sudden movement,
Snub cowers to the earth,
her body shielding Breath.
Orphan waits.
Snub accepts the root and studies its dusty, pitted surface.
She remembers seeing the not-gorillas eat one,
but cannot remember how they started.
Orphan moves so she’s in Snub’s view,
brings up her hands delicately,
as if there is a tuber in them.
She bites,
pulling at the open space with her teeth.
Snub waits to see what will happen next.
Strange chittery sounds coming from her throat,
Orphan takes the tuber back from Snub.
She places it between her puny canines,
repeats the motion she made before,
this time stripping the bark from the tuber.
Then she passes the clean white flesh back to Snub.
Breath bats at the strange food with his free hand
while Snub brings it to her mouth.
It is watery and crisp.
It is delicious.
Snub would like a tuber to bring back to Silverback and Brother.
Hooting and bobbing,
she approaches the pit where Orphan pulled out the tuber.
But she does not know what to do next.
Orphan is soon beside her, squatting in the soil.
Small rocks and clods fly as she works her way through,
finally getting her fingers under a root.
Snub and Breath grunt in astonishment
as Orphan’s veins stand out
while she tries to free it.
She crawls over to the corpses of the not-gorillas,
goes motionless for a moment at the sight of them,
then digs beneath the body of the male until she retrieves
a sharpened stone.
Orphan returns to the pit.
An unknowable not-gorilla expression on her face,
she hacks at the ends of the tuber.
She struggles to lift the large root in both arms,
offers it to Snub.
Snub grasps the tuber in the toes of one foot,
examining its bright glistening flesh.
She decides to take off the bark here,
and her strong teeth make quick work of it.
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Once the whole mass of crisp tasty flesh is exposed,
it’s hard to resist biting in.
Snub eyes it hungrily.
Breath eyes it hungrily.
Orphan eyes it hungrily.
But Snub tucks the tuber under an armpit
and starts back to Brother and Silverback.
Imagining Silverback’s reaction,
Snub goes a long time without thinking about Orphan.
When she remembers her, Snub stops and looks back.
There is no Orphan.
Then Snub sees her, worried,
poking her head around a tree.
Orphan is both hiding and following.
Silverback’s nest is still there,
flattened leaves and dry dung,
but he is not.
Knuckleprints surround his nest.
Snub drops the tuber,
then stands on all fours,
sniffing the air for Silverback’s scent.
Breath ambles about the clearing,
pretending to investigate trunks and bushes,
but Snub knows his true target.
The tuber.
The wet white flesh has gotten covered
in leaves and dirt and gorilla hair.
Breath bends down near one end,
takes it in his hands,
starts to gnaw.
Orphan approaches,
flitting from trunk to trunk,
half gorilla and half heron.
She heads for the waterfall.
Orphan cranes her skinny body,
trying to get the best view