The Elephant's Girl

by Celesta Rimington

  But Roger gets points in the naming department for also giving me the name Willow. Lexington Willow. It has a rather satisfying sound. It sounds like Willow could be my last name, since we still haven’t found out what that is, and Lexington can be shortened to simply Lex. I’ll answer to any of it—just not to that name those kids called me at the school. That was one reason I left that place and never went back.

  Mrs. Leigh is sitting at her desk, typing on her computer. Her office is tidy and smells of the curried onions with a faint whiff of her vanilla lotion. A red, velvety chair sits in the corner, and next to the chair is a bookshelf full of the books Mrs. Leigh gives me to read. A framed photo on the bookshelf shows Mr. and Mrs. Leigh all dressed up at a fancy dinner. It was a special event where Mr. Leigh won an award for his time playing Cornhusker football a long time ago—which is what he did before he lived in Kenya and filmed a Discovery Channel documentary about Amboseli National Park. Mr. Leigh is something of a celebrity at the zoo. On the wall behind the desk hangs a glittery tapestry of sequined Asian elephants. Mrs. Leigh’s mother gave her the wall hanging when she married Mr. Leigh.

  Mrs. Leigh looks up from her computer and smiles. She always seems happy to see me, and she’s like that with everyone. “Did you finish the book and write your report?”

  “I did.” I slide my double-spaced pages across the desk’s smooth surface but hold on to the soft paperback copy of Island of the Blue Dolphins. I’m not sure why, but I’m not ready to return it to her.

  “So—what did you like most in this book?” Mrs. Leigh asks. She glances at my report on the desk but leaves it untouched. “You liked it, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Fisher peeks around the corner of the kitchen and rolls his eyes at me through the side door of his mom’s office. He’s trying to make me laugh. He lets his tongue hang out of his open mouth, as if to say, “Is this what you have to do for school?”

  “Um…I think I liked how well Karana could take care of herself, even when she was alone.”

  Mrs. Leigh nods, so I keep talking.

  “She notices things about the world, the animals. She can make weapons, hunt, make shelter. I’d feel pretty safe if I was stuck on an island with someone like her.”

  “Mm-hm. Very good.”

  Mrs. Leigh leans forward and looks over my paper. The clock on the wall ticks the day away while she takes longer to read it than I hoped.

  Fisher pokes his head around the corner again. His dark brown hair stands almost straight up at the top, yet he runs his fingers through it now like he wants it to do that. He tosses a backpack over his shoulder and points at the clock. He mouths, I’ll meet you there.

  “The trash, Fisher,” Mrs. Leigh says cheerfully over her shoulder. Fisher slumps to the kitchen. His dad gives him a long list of chores, and Mrs. Leigh never forgets to remind him.

  Finally, Mrs. Leigh sets down my paper. “This is well done, Lexington.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’ve worked hard this year. Roger and I discussed it, and I believe you’re right on track to be ready for seventh-grade material.”

  She’s about to change directions on me. The wind does that kind of thing all the time, and I know Mrs. Leigh well enough to sense it coming. Mrs. Leigh left teaching to run the education program at the zoo. She also runs the zoo’s special events and advertising, and it’s here that she met Fisher’s dad. She says she loves living in the zookeeper’s residence and helping people understand what the Lexington Zoo does for animals and conservation, but I suspect she secretly misses teaching. She was more than happy to oversee my “homeschool at the zoo.” And she takes it a little far sometimes. I can usually predict when it’s about to happen.

  “I have one more assignment for you,” Mrs. Leigh says. “This one doesn’t have a deadline, though. You can work on it through the summer.”

  Through the summer?

  “But if I did well on my assignments, and I’m on track…why…”

  Mrs. Leigh laughs her signature laugh that means she wants you to lighten up. “Don’t worry! It’s a good one, I promise.”

  My insides are tight and squirmy at the idea of summer homework. I want to protest. I want to argue. But the sooner Mrs. Leigh gives me the details, the sooner I can leave to see Nyah. Thomas said he would start around eight-forty-five. I can’t miss this.

  The front-door latch clicks—the sound of Fisher’s escape. He can thank me later for the distraction I always seem to provide for him to get out the door.

  “It’s an opportunity more than an assignment.” Mrs. Leigh walks around the front of her desk and leans on it, partially sitting on the edge. Her smooth hair is the same rich dark brown as Fisher’s, except hers doesn’t stick straight up. Hers lies elegantly over her shoulders—not at all frizzy like my blond curls that can’t choose a direction.

  “I want you to determine how you are a survivor like Karana in the book. Like Karana, you lost your family in an unexpected way. Perhaps you’ll find other similarities if you look for them.”

  I hadn’t thought about that. Mostly, I thought of Karana as brave and tough and having long, beautiful hair like the picture on the cover. But it does kind of make sense. Karana’s people sailed away and left her behind. She still had her brother on the island with her, but then the wild dogs killed her brother, and she was left completely alone. Boats and wild dogs, tornadoes and zoo animals…maybe Karana and I aren’t that different.

  The clock on the wall dings to signal the half hour. Eight-thirty a.m.

  “Consider how Karana is a survivor at heart. What does that lead her to do? How does it help her? Once you know that, then decide what things you can do that apply to your life in a similar way.”

  I nod quickly. I have no idea how to do what she’s asking me.

  Just as I’m wondering how she’s going to know if I’ve done this assignment, she says, “I’ll check in with you once in a while, and you can report to me what you discover. Okay?”

  I’ll agree to anything at this point. Fisher’s summer vacation has started, and elephant training is about to begin.

  “Okay, Mrs. Leigh. I’ll work on that.”

  She stands up from the desk with a satisfied smile and tells me I can go. I launch out of her office like a cat during Fourth of July fireworks.

  I’m coming, Nyah.

  “Fisher!” I call into the wind as I round the turnoff from the Leighs’ gravel road. It isn’t very windy this morning, but even a small breath of a breeze will carry my words.

  Fisher waves at me from the corner of the African Grasslands maintenance building, across the paved path and slightly down the hill. Morning in Nebraska smells like dew-moistened dirt and green plants all fat with humidity. I catch a swarm of gnats in the face as I run toward the Grasslands. Nebraska bugs are the gateway to summer.

  “How’d you get out of there so fast?” Fisher asks.

  “There is a trick to getting along with your mom, Fisher. One that you seriously need to learn.”

  “Oh yeah?” he asks, folding his arms and leaning against the maintenance door.

  “Yeah,” I say. “You gotta agree with her.”

  Fisher rolls his eyes, but he smiles his I-hit-a-home-run smile and knocks on the maintenance door. There’s a keypad by the handle, but we don’t have the code. Thomas, the elephant manager, is expecting us.

  “So, what did you agree to this time?”

  “It’s a weird project,” I say. “Kind of personal. She wants me to apply Island of the Blue Dolphins to my life.”

  Fisher wrinkles his nose and shakes his head. “You should just come to school with me next year.”

  It’s my turn to roll my eyes. Fisher knows I prefer to stay in the zoo, and that’s not going to change, no matter how much he bugs me about school.

  The maintena
nce door opens.

  “Just in time,” Thomas says, his hat on backward as usual. “I was beginning to wonder where you were.” He’s speaking more to me than to Fisher. When I was younger, I used to follow Thomas everywhere, trying to get close to the elephants. He knows how excited I am for today.

  “I had a little more…homework,” I say. “I wouldn’t miss this.”

  Thomas chuckles. He isn’t tall like Roger, but he’s strong. The sleeves of his khaki keeper’s shirt are cuffed and stretched tight around his arms, as though his muscles got in the way. He pushes the door open wider and lets us inside.

  We follow Thomas down the hallway toward the training gates, passing supply rooms and Thomas’s office. Thomas has worked at the zoo longer than Mr. Leigh, and he was the elephant manager when Nyah, my Nyah, came to the zoo. He’s lined the hallway walls with photos of each member of the African elephant herd. Their names, birth years, and relationships are printed on metal plates at the bottom of each frame. Although I have the information memorized, I read each one as I pass.

  Asha: estimated birth year 1989, saved from Swaziland drought in 2008, herd matriarch, mother of Zaire.

  Zaire: estimated birth year 2006, saved from Swaziland drought in 2008, daughter of Asha.

  Jazz: born 2009, acquired from Arkansas facility.

  Nyah: born 1996, born in captivity, retired from Fenn Circus with mother, Tendai.

  Tendai…

  Thomas pauses at Tendai’s photograph, places his hand on the glass over her image, and says, “Hey there, girl.” Then he walks out into the open barn space toward the training gates. Fisher follows him, but I linger at Tendai’s photograph a moment. The glass in the frame is covered with fingerprints, as though Thomas taps her photo every time he walks this hall. He hasn’t taken her photo down after all these years. I’m glad, because Nyah would never forget her mother, so neither should we. Thomas did, however, update the details below Tendai’s picture.

  Tendai: born 1979, retired from Fenn Circus in 2011, mother of Nyah. Passed away in 2013.

  Tendai died in 2013.

  The same year as the tornado.

  The elephant barn is home to the best friend I have besides Fisher. She’s a twenty-four-year-old African elephant named Nyah. And she took care of me the night I lost my family.

  Fisher has doubled back to me and shifts the backpack on his shoulder.

  “Wish you could’ve known her,” Fisher says. “Tendai, I mean.” Fisher was five years old when Tendai died in April, seven years ago. I showed up at the zoo a couple of months later. In June.

  “I’m sorry that Nyah misses her mother,” I say, more to myself than to Fisher.

  “Maybe it’s better not to have such a great memory,” Fisher says.

  I bite my lip and don’t answer him. He means well, but only someone who knows who their parents are would say such a thing. I’d give anything to remember mine.

  The hallway opens into a large barn space with a barrier fence separating us from the elephants. It smells of sweet apples and hay, soured only by a small tang of sadness. I can sense it from Nyah.

  “I hate that we can’t go into the Grasslands with them,” I say to Fisher. After all, I did spend an entire night sleeping next to Nyah, and she never hurt me. But the Lexington Zoo is compliant. As far as the elephants and I are concerned, that’s just a word that means the Association of Zoos and Aquariums—or the AZA—has rules, and humans can’t share space with elephants without a barrier.

  “Yeah,” Fisher agrees.

  To be honest, I wouldn’t expect Fisher to care about Nyah and the Grasslands as much as I do. I mean, baseball does come first for him. But he knows how much Nyah means to me, and that’s just one of the reasons Fisher and I are friends.

  Thomas strides toward us from the other end of the barn carrying two large buckets brimming with chopped carrots, apples, and sweet potatoes—the elephants’ reward food. I reach for one of the buckets. Thomas raises an eyebrow to go with his half smile. He gives me that same look every time he sees me on the observation deck.

  Instead of handing over the bucket, he motions to the rack on the wall. “Why don’t you get the target poles?”

  I’ve watched the training through the windows on the deck above us enough times to know what he means. Fisher and I take three long poles with small rubber knobs on the end just as Jazz saunters into the left side of the barn from the Grasslands. We can see her between the railings of the barrier fence, but the rails are too close together for her to reach us unless we open a training gate.

  “Hand me one of the targets and watch this first one,” Thomas says. “Stay behind or to the side of me. No closer than that.”

  I hand him a target pole, and he opens a small gate in the barrier fence, just large enough for one jumbo elephant foot. He holds out the target, and Jazz moves closer. Jazz turns her massive body until her rear faces Thomas, bends her wrinkled back leg at the knee, and lifts her rounded foot until it taps the target.

  “Good girl, Jazz,” Thomas says.

  Fisher reaches into the bucket and grasps a sweet potato chunk.

  “Not yet, Fisher,” I whisper quickly as Thomas holds out his other hand to stop Fisher.

  “The reward is for letting me inspect her foot,” Thomas says in a low voice.

  Fisher nods. Fisher enjoys the animals, but he doesn’t pay close attention to these kinds of details. Instead, he remembers how many strikeouts the Dodgers’ rookie had during the World Series.

  With a large brush from the supply caddy, Thomas scrubs the dirt from Jazz’s foot pad. Once it’s clean, he inspects the foot and toenails.

  “Good girl, Jazz,” Thomas says when he finishes, nodding at me.

  “Now,” I whisper to Fisher.

  Fisher rolls the sweet potato to Jazz. “Good girl, Jazz.”

  Jazz picks up her treat with the end of her trunk and curls it into her open mouth. I get an unexpected case of goose bumps all over my arms. Something fills me up inside, like a fast dose of hot chocolate, and it reminds me of being close to Nyah—being this close to Jazz, watching her think something through and make decisions and eat her snack. I think I understand them, even in their wildness. My heart feels like it’s being squeezed from caring, as though I can’t hold all the feelings in there.

  It’s the same with all the elephants, but especially Nyah. The keepers are constantly reminding me that she’s wild—that I can’t go into her enclosure. But Nyah never feels dangerous to me. She could’ve trampled me when I stumbled into the Grasslands during the storm. But she didn’t. Instead, she wrapped her trunk gently around me and sheltered me from the winds with her body.

  That’s what I remember about that night. I don’t remember anything before the tornado. Roger took me to some doctors, and they said that sometimes when people experience something traumatic, they forget what happened before the trauma. Sometimes they forget a little bit of what happens after, too. But I do remember feeling lost and confused and scrambling uphill through a terrible wind beneath a blackened sky. I remember hearing the wind speak to me for the first time. It said, “They’re all gone, but I’m still here.” I didn’t know who was gone, but I knew I was alone except for the wind.

  I remember tree limbs strewn in my way and the sting of debris pelting my skin and feeling like maybe I had been in this place before. I remember an opening in the fence and an invisible pull to find something I knew was there. My fingers finding Nyah standing tall and strong in the dark. The muddy and hay-sweet smell of her wrinkled skin. The feel of the muscles in her thick trunk, all 40,000 of them…not hurting me. And I wasn’t alone anymore. The power of the storm was no match for the giant and gentle presence of Nyah. I was rooted to the ground behind the shelter of her body, and the wind couldn’t touch me. Then, as if she knew how frightened I’d been, she rumbled a sound too deep for my ea
rs to hear. I felt the rumble in calming waves, and my brain understood it.

  It became a picture inside my head of two elephants in a field. They were entwining their trunks like a mother and baby. Nyah was telling me something important. And I knew she would keep me safe from the dark and the storm, safe in this place, just like a mama elephant protects her baby.

  “If you don’t pay attention, you’ll miss what’s right in front of you,” Thomas says. His voice sounds a little stern, like going deep in my thoughts was somehow dangerous.

  I never miss a thing, I think. I notice everything.

  Jazz is turning to tap Thomas’s outstretched target pole with her front leg. She’s on the left side of the fence, and now Nyah ambles in on the right. She sways with each step. Her trunk, powerful yet gentle, bobs up and down as the two “fingers” at the tip sense the air and feel the earth. She comes straight for me, her tail swinging behind her. Her soft eyes look only at me. My heartbeat changes with her approach—a stronger, longer beat that roots me to the earth yet makes me feel like I have wings.

  Fisher hands me the target pole that I somehow dropped.

  I open the lower gate for her foot and hold out the target. Her trunk bounces and twists near my feet, feeling the ground on the other side of the barrier just inches from where I stand. Her eyelashes are so long, they shadow her eyes, but I can still see the color—a perfect mix of light brown and gold. She lowers her head slightly and then moves closer, presenting her front left foot at the gate and tapping the target.