Orphaned
Page 9
of the cascade.
Silverback arrives.
He makes his slow and heavy way through the wood,
meaty fists and feet drumming the earth.
When he sights Orphan he gives off a burst of fear-scent.
He opens his mouth to make a sound of
wragh,
but he stops when he sees how near Snub is to Orphan,
how unafraid Snub is.
Orphan turns from her search of the waterfall,
shrieks her strange not-gorilla shriek
at the sight of Silverback,
and cowers behind Snub.
It is the first time they have touched,
and the surprise contact fills Snub with
acha.
Orphan’s shriek does something inside Silverback,
setting him racing through the clearing.
Silverback takes a fistful of leaves,
pretends to eat them
so he can expose long teeth
as he stuffs leaves in,
only to let them fall to the ground.
He rises up on his legs and thunders back down.
The ground trembles with the sudden weight of him.
Though there is tension in Silverback’s eyes,
he has not hurled anything at Orphan.
Brother bursts into view,
the force of his charge sending him
careening into the ground,
plowing his chin through the dirt.
Then he’s back up,
hurtling to Snub and Breath and Orphan.
He rips up an armful of branches,
casts them at Orphan’s back.
She hunches even lower,
making herself as small as possible,
her trembling body
never breaking contact with Snub.
Snub whirls to face Brother,
to show him calmness
so he will feel calmness.
Brother brings his lips to Orphan’s ear,
mouth open,
breathing on her.
Snub watches Orphan
try to hold still,
face turning red,
lips turning gray.
Then Orphan screams.
Brother kicks at Orphan,
flinging her into the brush.
The not-gorilla child’s cry
cuts off.
She emerges sobbing,
hands shielding her face.
But she does not flee.
She huddles under a bush,
curling up as small as possible.
Again Brother charges her.
Snub tries to block him,
but he strikes Orphan with one fist
and then the other.
Each blow empties Orphan’s lungs
and creaks her ribs.
Brother’s next punch hits her hard
on the back of the neck.
Orphan coughs and goes flat on the earth.
Some day
in the before,
Silverback fought the one
who used to be Silverback.
Another version of this
dragging,
thumping,
screaming.
Unlike a gorilla’s tough skin,
Orphan’s casing easily splits and parts.
She is soon scored by blood and scratches.
Orphan has stopped crying out,
and as Brother continues to drag her back and forth
she loses the strength to keep her body curled away.
It is not just elbows and knees
raking across the rocky soil.
Silverback holds still, watching and waiting.
Snub has never seen Brother act this way.
Breath squeals in fear
and Brother rushes Orphan,
thumps her again,
grabs her by a heel
and drags her through the brush.
Snub tries to pull her away,
but Brother is too fast,
bringing Orphan bumping over the earth
before Snub can grasp him tightly enough.
Snub watches the whites of Orphan’s
panicked eyes
as she’s dashed along the ground,
delicate fingers trying to find purchase
but only finding
leaf,
soil,
rock.
Nothing slows her.
Snub has no hope of overpowering Brother,
and she has Breath to worry about.
She can only watch as Brother
stops dragging Orphan,
jumps on her instead,
leading with his heels,
rolling off,
charging back and forth with a branch,
coming to pound her body again.
Orphan doesn’t move anymore.
The only sounds from her are
coughs and gasps
whenever Brother’s assault
forces the air from her lungs.
Orphan’s animal covering has come free during the attack.
Snub can see more of her malformed body,
the places where hair should be but is not,
the odd tilt of her hips,
the long legs,
the frail and nimble hands.
Snub holds one of those hands in hers,
trying this new way
to tell Brother
that Orphan is not an enemy.
At the sight of it
Brother lumbers away
to Silverback.
Silverback’s mouth continues to make yawn-threats,
chewing as if there is food between his jaws.
Snub places her whole body over Orphan’s.
She and Breath might receive blows,
but putting herself in Brother’s way
might be the only way
to prevent the end of Orphan.
Breath wriggles free,
prods Orphan’s feet.
Unmoved by Orphan’s distress,
he holds on to his own feet
and begins to roll,
rasping at the game
as he careens through the uprooted foliage.
Snub’s breathing quickens
when she hears breaking branches;
Brother is on the move again.
As she senses Brother near,
Snub buries her head over Orphan,
chin fitting over the slender nape
of the child’s neck.
Snub hears Brother’s labored breathing,
Orphan’s pained gasps.
Snub waits for Brother’s blows to fall on Orphan—
or, worse, on Breath.
But with a grunt of
amrcha,
the shadow of Brother goes away.
Breath’s delicate toes rest against Orphan’s forehead.
He brings his face right in front of hers,
raps on her temple.
His confusion is clear:
Why isn’t she moving?
Snub rolls off Orphan,
sitting on her haunches
to better look at her.
No longer than a gorilla’s thumb,
a frog is on Orphan’s thigh.
It leaps away into the green.
Snub can’t see it amid the leaves,
and realizes the world has gone dim.
Night is almost here.
She has been guarding Orphan
for a long time.
Breath is on Snub’s back,
using her body as a nest
since Snub hasn’t made them
a proper one.
He snores into her neck.
Orphan is asleep, too.
Sleep is unlike death
because Orphan’s back rises and falls,
her mouth agape and drooling.
Snub examines Orphan as best she can
in the scarce light of the eveni
ng,
parting the soft hair and grooming
skin gone the color of dead leaves.
She gingerly rolls Orphan over,
sees that the front of her body
has the worst of her wounds.
They’ve clotted with debris,
dirt and leaves now part of Orphan.
Orphan is shivering in the heat.
Snub picks up the ripped branches
Brother left littering the clearing
and lays them over Orphan’s body.
The motion of it wakes Breath.
He squeaks in interest,
promptly goes about undoing her work,
strewing the branches
back around the clearing.
Snub plucks him up,
plants him on her belly.
He whines in protest, but
holds on, making sounds of
acha
as Snub brings the branches back,
tucking them in close to Orphan.
Stirred by the activity,
fat bees crowd the clearing,
their buzz a horror in the nighttime.
Snub tucks herself even tighter around the child,
listening to the sounds of Orphan’s breathing,
the echoes of her slow heartbeat under Breath’s fast one.
Satisfied that Orphan will live,
Snub allows her eyes to close.
From somewhere far off,
Snub hears a pap pap.
It is Silverback, calling her to bed near him.
Snub opens her eyes,
heart surging.
Every habit she has,
every call to maintain
hoo,
the part of her
that longed for home,
for the place that had Mother
and Wrinkled and Teased,
tells her to seek him out.
But instead she waits,
panting at the prickly tension.
Snub imagines Silverback
watching for Snub to come to him,
confused why she has not.
For the first time in Snub’s life,
she has not obeyed the call of Silverback.
Snub opens her eyes to see the magpies
poking through a pile of leaves,
lifting each one delicately by its stem,
holding it in the air for a moment’s inspection
before casting it to one side.
Their mysterious eyes peer at her,
always from a tilted head,
as if sideways were the best way to see the world.
Orphan breathes slowly and shallowly,
eyes darting beneath purple lids.
During the night Breath switched
from clutching Snub to clutching Orphan,
hands draped across Orphan’s slender neck,
snoring into the chill morning.
Snub nudges Orphan,
listens to her nose and mouth.
Orphan continues to breathe.
Her pulse continues to pitter.
Snub grunts and rocks back on her heels.
She moves away from Orphan
and makes a pap pap on her chest.
Orphan does not stir.
Snub turns a loose and lazy circle
to make herself dizzy.
She hasn’t done this since she was a small gorilla.
She doesn’t know why she’s doing it now.
Breath climbs up Snub’s body to ride her back,
beats an excited rhythm on her shoulders.
Snub will not go far to forage today.
As she and Breath pick through the green,
searching for anything to keep their bellies full,
Snub sometimes goes still and listens,
chin in the air,
hoping to hear the sound of Silverback and Brother,
hoping not to hear the sound of Silverback and Brother.
There is only the hush of the waterfall,
the wind in the leaves,
the calls of birds,
the occasional streak of the magpies overhead.
They remind Snub of something,
of somewhere she once wanted to be.
Young ferns are soft and fuzzy under a gorilla’s jaws.
This afternoon Snub has the rare pleasure of a full belly.
She lazes back, holding out a slim green tendril.
She will think about the magpies so she does not
have to think about Silverback and Brother.
The magpie with the wounded leg
hops toward the fern, then stops,
tilting its head quizzically
before hopping forward again.
It nips the stem with its beak.
In her excitement Snub drops the fern,
scrambles to pick it up.
The magpies scatter into the air,
then the wounded one returns
and darts forward again.
This time it seizes the tender stalk,
flaps off to the far side of the clearing.
The other magpie watches its partner
approach Snub and accept another fern.
Breath decides he’ll try feeding them, too,
only his idea of feeding a magpie
is to uproot an entire bush
and run at the bird while waving it,
roots raining dirt.
The magpies flee, cawing furiously,
and don’t return until near dark,
when they roost in a nearby tree
and look at the gorillas accusingly.
Snub never thought magpies could
glare
but these ones do just that.
Frustrated, Breath stares up into the canopy,
waiting for the birds to come down and play.
Orphan doesn’t move for an entire day.
Snub runs the sweetest, most delicate fern head
over Orphan’s cracked lips,
over the strokes of dried blood,
but Orphan makes no move to eat.
Her body is as warm as that of an alive creature,
but Snub fears that during the night
it might cool and never warm again.
As before,
she and Breath curl around Orphan’s body.
This time Breath doesn’t tease Orphan.
He settles in on her back,
reaching his arms wide,
as though shielding her.
As though he is a silverback.
The sun arrives and leaves again
without Orphan moving.
The wounded magpie takes food from Snub’s hand again
without Orphan moving.
Breath wanders in and out of the clearing again
without Orphan moving.
Snub feels a tense sort of
hoo
to spend a second day in the same spot,
with the same companions,
all because Orphan can’t move.
It is the same sort of peacefulness
as being sick.
Snub is feeding both magpies out of her palm,
Breath sitting on top of her head,
watching with fascination.
Orphan stirs.
She lifts herself to her elbows,
and the birds scatter.
Orphan smacks her hands over her eyes,
gives a howl of pain,
rocks herself.
Breath seems to have forgotten Orphan could be alive.
He hollers at the sight of her,
hides himself away in Snub’s lap,
teeth bared even as he faces them the wrong way.
Their sharp points poke Snub’s belly.
After her moaning is spent,
Orphan gets to all fours.
She quivers there.
Something wrenches in her back,
and with a gasp of pain
she suf
fers her way up to two legs.
Orphan taps her spindly fingers against her lips
while looking at Snub.
It is like she is trying to communicate something,
but Snub has no idea what it could be.
Orphan takes a step.
She is back on the ground,
rolling and howling.
Breath,
made miserable by Orphan’s misery,
pounds the ground
and kicks out.
Orphan looks at him in shock.
It is the expression a gorilla might make,
jaw slack and brows raised.
She staggers out of the clearing
toward the lagoon,
leaning against the trunks of trees
so that she can keep one leg
from touching the ground.
Snub has avoided the lagoon.
Without Silverback beside them
the sameness of deep jungle feels safer
than being exposed under open sky.
But Orphan heads right there.
She staggers the last few paces to the edge
and kneels beside the water.
What is Orphan doing?
She leans far over,
kissing its surface.
The surf from the waterfall causes the water
to lap over her face,
making her cough even as she sucks water in noisily.
Snub has never thought of eating water.
She looks appraisingly at the surface.