The Elephant's Girl

by Celesta Rimington

  “Good girl,” I say. Somehow, I feel it more inside my chest than in my throat.

  “Good girl, Nyah,” Fisher says.

  Nyah holds still, patient, while Thomas inspects her foot. I plunge my arm into the bucket and curl my fingers around a cool piece of apple, waiting. When Thomas finishes, I gently toss the apple along the barn floor to Nyah. She finds it with the “fingers” of her trunk, grabs it, and presses it into her open mouth. Her lower lip flops loose as she chews, her eyelids closing as her mouth fills with the juice.

  I want to talk to her more. But Thomas says we must stick to words and commands the elephants are used to hearing. I want to tell her she’s magnificent, she’s beautiful, she’s my rescuer. I want to tell her I’m sorry she misses her mama. I feel her heart. We have so much in common, Nyah and I, and talking to her from the top of my treehouse where only the wind can hear is just not enough.

  And then Nyah steps closer to the training gate again and feels for me with her trunk, as though she is seeking something more.

  “Not too close, Lex,” Thomas warns, doing his job.

  I look into Nyah’s light brown eyes.

  Suddenly, an image of trees in a wild-looking forest comes into my head through a low rumble that my ears didn’t hear. It’s been seven years since my brain has felt this rumbling. Somehow, and I have no idea how, Nyah is speaking to me.

  I look around at Fisher and Thomas. They are saying, “Good girl, Nyah.” Thomas is inspecting her front right foot and trimming her toenails, and Fisher is digging through the bucket of chunky carrots and sweet potatoes for Nyah’s next treat. They don’t seem to feel this rumbling or see an image from her. Only I do. And Thomas thinks I don’t pay attention.

  “Do you kids feel that?” Thomas asks without pausing in his work.

  I’m speechless.

  “Feel what?” asks Fisher.

  “The rumble,” says Thomas. “It seems Nyah has something to say.”

  “I don’t hear anything,” Fisher says.

  “Not everything elephants communicate is something you can hear.” Thomas’s voice is soft and soothing, as though he doesn’t want to interrupt Nyah.

  And I want to tell Thomas I feel the rumbling, but then Nyah turns her head toward me, and I look into her eyes again.

  My mind fills with images—of a woman I don’t know and an unfamiliar place. The woman is thin and wears fancy, flowing fabrics. She’s in a place I don’t recognize, surrounded by fields and crowds of people in colorful outfits. And before I can study any more details, I see another image. This is a place I do know. It’s the trees and the wild-looking forest again, and I know where it is. It’s the undeveloped land outside the zoo’s perimeter fence. I’ve seen it from the road when I’ve waited for Fisher at the bus stop near the zoo parking lot.

  The image of this place comes with a feeling. Something urgent, something lost, something that will change everything. This seems to be Nyah’s feeling about the place. It’s a place she would go if she could leave her habitat. Perhaps she wants me to go there for her—to learn something, to search for the lost something. Whatever it is, Nyah thinks it’s urgent.

  Nyah’s eyes go all lazy and half closed. She swishes her tail from side to side, a sign that she’s calm and relaxed. Her eyes open wider again, and another image rumbles into my thoughts.

  This image is of three elephants standing together. I’m pretty sure one of them is Tendai, Nyah’s mother. I don’t know the other two. They aren’t the elephants in the Lexington Zoo.

  “Lex?” Fisher holds out the bucket to me, and the sweet and tart smell sets my brain straight again. Fisher looks hard at my face, as though I have something written there. Did he see the images from Nyah? Did Thomas see them?

  “What are you doing?” Fisher asks me.

  Nyah has turned around and taps the target with her back foot. Thomas moves in to inspect it.

  I shake my head at Fisher. If he didn’t see what I saw, I can’t explain this. Not right here and right now. Fisher knows I talk to the wind, but it’s not something we discuss in front of anyone else. I think talking to elephants goes in that same category.

  I grab a chunky carrot as Thomas finishes with Nyah’s foot, and I roll it through the gate. “Good girl.” My voice sounds like someone else’s in my ears.

  I’m back to listening with my ears like a normal human, and it’s like waking up from a nap you didn’t plan to take. I can’t feel the low rumblings anymore, and Nyah’s images are gone. Before, it was like clips of a movie were playing in my head, and now, those images are only a memory—less vivid. And Fisher and Thomas are looking at me like they’re waiting for me to transform into a moth, so I can’t focus on it more.

  Nyah bobs her head a little as she chews her carrot and then, without another glance at me or any of us, she turns on her clean, newly trimmed feet and trundles out of the barn and into the sun.

  Roger likes things that are old. Steam trains, of course, is the first thing. He knows how steam engines work, how to fix them, and how to keep them running. The steam engine he runs at the zoo, Engine 109, was donated by the Union Pacific Railroad. Most zoos don’t have anything like our train, except maybe Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium. They have a Union Pacific train, too. Anyone who spends any time in Nebraska will probably notice that Union Pacific is a big deal here.

  Roger likes books. Real books. He won’t read anything on a screen or a device. The only reason we have a computer in the Old County Bank is because Mrs. Leigh insisted I needed one for my schoolwork. The living room bookshelves in the Old County Bank are full of books, and Roger has read every one. He reads about other people and places, about historic events, wars, presidents, inventors, and countries. He rarely reads made-up stories. He sort of disapproved of me reading Island of the Blue Dolphins unless I promised to read the epilogue that talked about the real woman Karana was based on—the Lone Woman of San Nicolas Island.

  Roger likes radios. He thinks they’re much better than cell phones, especially for emergencies. He gave me my own radio to carry with me, but it’s big and awkward. I usually keep it in my treehouse. Zoo employees use radios to communicate across the zoo, but most of them also have cell phones. Not Roger. The radio is enough for us, he says.

  All these old things that Roger likes sometimes make me wonder whether he was born in the wrong century. Once, I had to write a paper for Mrs. Leigh about the Middle Ages. People believed in spirits and ghosts. They believed you could lose your soul if you sneezed and someone didn’t say “God bless you.” They believed in jinxes and curses and, sometimes, even magic. I don’t think many people believe in stuff like that anymore. But Roger does. Roger believes in ghosts. He believes that a ghost showed him where to find me the night I came to the zoo. And he believes I can talk to the wind.

  I wonder if he’ll also believe that I can see Nyah’s thoughts in my head.

  “So, what happened in there?” Fisher asks when we leave the barn. “You kinda went all zombie-like.”

  “Uh…” I don’t know where to start.

  “I mean, elephant training is all you’ve talked about for a long time, and then when we finally get to do it…” Fisher hitches his backpack strap over his shoulder. “It just seems like you weren’t having fun is all.”

  “Secret,” says the wind. I’m not sure whether it means I should keep Nyah’s communication with me a secret or whether Fisher has a secret. The wind often knows things I don’t.

  “I had fun,” I say. Without talking about what we’re going to do next, we’ve both started walking up the main path toward the entrance gates, and we pass the turnoff to Fisher’s house. I’m walking toward the gates because that’s the way out…and I’m thinking I might, just maybe, go out and search the woods that Nyah seemed so anxious about. That is, if Fisher will come with me. I don’t want to get lost i
n the acres of wild growth beyond the zoo’s west fences, with no idea why I’m there except that Nyah thinks it’s urgent, without Fisher.

  And suddenly I realize that Fisher is also walking to the main gates, without knowing that’s where I’m headed.

  “I had fun, Fisher, I just…something happened that surprised me. It sort of threw me off.”

  “You mean what Thomas was talking about? You didn’t hear Nyah speaking to you like the wind, did you?” Fisher doesn’t laugh one bit when he says this. He’s not making fun of me. He’s not like the kids at school. But Fisher does like a good laugh, and he’s the master of the serious face that turns funny at just the right moment.

  I stop walking, and he stops, too. I stare at him—watching for his mouth to turn upward, or any sign that he’s kidding. But he only stares back with his dark brown eyes, waiting for my answer.

  “Why…why would you say that?” I ask.

  Fisher inches closer. “So you did, huh?”

  “Well…not exactly. I didn’t hear her speak. I looked in her eyes and…I saw images in my head as though she sent me her thoughts. They were like scenes in a movie. How did you know?”

  He shifts his backpack strap again and smiles at some of the bronze-badged members of the grounds crew heading down the hill. The voice coming from their radios is talking about a delivery of fish for Harbor Reef.

  When they’ve passed us, he says, “Well, Nyah hasn’t been this close to you since the tornado. It makes sense she’d have something to say as soon as she saw you on the other side of that fence.”

  “Oh.” Maybe Fisher notices more about the animals than I give him credit for. “But…you didn’t see anything…or feel anything?”

  “Nah.” Fisher sounds a little disappointed, but he shrugs and keeps walking up the hill toward the main gates. He seems to be in a bit of a hurry. “So you saw pictures in your head when you looked into her eyes?”

  “Yeah. It seemed like those two things were connected. I felt a deep rumbling first, exactly what Thomas was talking about. It was like a bass speaker playing really loud right next to me, except without sound. And then came the movie scenes.”

  “What did you see?”

  “The trees beyond the fences,” I say, pointing.

  “The undeveloped property the zoo owns?”

  “Yeah. And it seemed like Nyah was anxious about it. I could feel that she wanted to go there, or that she wanted me to go there.” I didn’t realize how much keeping this to myself made it heavy. Nyah didn’t just show me images, she handed them off like an elephant-sized suitcase that she no longer wanted to carry. Telling Fisher makes all of it less heavy. I’m so glad I can talk to him about these things, and that he believes me.

  Fisher keeps walking with a purpose up the main gate hill. It’s only nine-thirty in the morning, but the summer sun is already sending thick waves of moisture into the air from the nearby Platte River. It’s an invisible soup that makes walking up the zoo hill a major effort. But we keep going.

  “Fisher…” I pause for a breath. “Where are you going?”

  He ignores my question. “So did she show you anything else? Like something to tell you why this is important? Why, after all these years, the first time she’s close enough to communicate with you, would she try to tell you something about the woods?”

  Good question. “I…I don’t know. But she showed me a lady in fancy clothes, someone I’ve never seen before. And she showed me a herd of elephants.”

  “Seriously?”

  People are swarming down the hill from the ticket stands and the entrance gate. The zoo is open for the day. Fisher and I are heading the “wrong” way. We are like those salmon that swim upstream, but instead of leaping over boulders like the salmon, Fisher and I must skirt around giant double strollers.

  “A fancy lady and a herd of elephants,” Fisher repeats. “You don’t think she means you’ll find those things out there in the woods, do you? I mean…”

  “I don’t know what she meant, I…Fisher, where are you going?” I ask again. I’m breathless from trying to keep up with him and his new Omaha Storm Chasers backpack that matches his jersey.

  Fisher glances quickly at me and then looks straight ahead again. “I was worried about telling you, but you’re gonna know soon, so…”

  “Worried about telling me what?”

  “This backpack is part of the gear for the baseball camp I’m doing this summer.”

  Fisher stops walking and turns. He looks up at the tree branches overhanging the main path, avoiding my eyes. “I’m going away to a baseball camp in Kansas City. Some of the Royals will be there. It’s an amazing opportunity….” He runs his fingers through his hair and spikes it higher. “I would’ve told you about it sooner, but I didn’t think I was going to get to go until my grandma offered to pay for it. She’s really supportive about this kind of thing.”

  “With the Royals? Fisher! You love that team!” I’ve never seen Fisher play in an official game, but he talks about baseball almost as much as I talk about elephants.

  “…but I’ll be gone for three weeks.”

  “Three weeks?” I didn’t mean to repeat that, and I didn’t mean for it to come out all high-pitched.

  “Yeah, three weeks. I leave in July.”

  “Okay.” I steady my voice. “But that’s not for almost a month. We have lots of time before then.”

  “If I’m going to be ready for this camp, I have to practice. More than just playing in the city league like last summer. My grandma thinks I’m going to be the family claim to fame, her American grandson she can tell all the cousins in Thailand about, so she’s offered to pay for special lessons.”

  “Wow. That’s cool, Fisher.”

  “Every day.”

  I nod again and chew on my lip. Fisher has big ideas for big things that aren’t in the zoo. I’ve known this about him for years, but today it hurts a little.

  The thing is, I like staying at the zoo and not going to school. I have friends here, and no one calls me Elephant Girl or makes up stupid rhymes or throws mud at me. I get to be with the animals and watch flamingo eggs hatch and see everything when it’s most active in the morning. Most of all, I can be near Nyah. But I still wait for the city bus to drop Fisher off when he gets home every day at three-thirty. And I still count down the days to summer vacation, when we can hang out all day and he can catch up on all the things he misses when he’s at school.

  “Starting today?” I ask, already knowing the answer. Why else would he have packed his special new backpack? He wasn’t planning to spend the day exploring the zoo with me and hanging out at the treehouse like last summer. He was planning to leave.

  “Yeah. Lessons start at ten, so I have to get on the next bus. But you know, it’s not like it’s all day. I’ll be home on the one-twenty bus. We can still have a fun summer.”

  I chew my lip some more and nod. “Yeah. It’ll be fine.” I force a smile. “It just means this summer will be different, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, but still good,” Fisher says, looking a little relieved. “You’re still my best friend, Lex.”

  My heart squeezes a little—like when I watched Jazz work so hard to get her snack. It’s a good kind of squeeze, but it hurts a tiny bit. “And don’t you forget it,” I say, elbowing him in the ribs.

  “Ow!” He grabs his water flask from the mesh pocket of his backpack and pours ice water on my head.

  “Fisher Leigh!” I squeal, running from him as the glacial cold rolls down my neck and the back of my shirt.

  He runs to catch up, but he’s done throwing water on me. He needs all that water for his practice in this jungle heat.

  “Are we good?” he asks, laughing a little at my wet hair.

  “Well…” We’ve reached the top of the hill, where the path turns and opens i
nto what I think of as the zoo town square. A large bronze statue of a lion pride sits in the center, surrounded by the main gates, ticket booths, gift shop, and food carts. My favorite cart is open for business.

  I point at the frozen chocolate banana cart and give Fisher a look to tell him he’s got it coming. “We’re good…if…”

  Fisher glances at the frozen banana cart. “Oh no! My brain freeze with those things is the worst! Come on, Lex!”

  “You just dumped ice water on my head.” I give him my best innocent face. “I think you can handle it.”

  I march over to the food cart, plunk down my zoo ID card that gives me employee discounts, and pull out one of the five-dollar bills from my pocket. Roger gives me five dollars a day for snacks, but sometimes Mrs. Leigh feeds me and I don’t always use Roger’s money. Roger says I can keep it and share with Fisher.

  “Two bananas, please,” I say to the girl. She looks new. The zoo hires a lot of high school and college kids for the summer season. They always start with the food carts.

  Fisher joins me at the cart. “Okay, but if I get a frozen banana headache, you have to help me with my chores tomorrow.”

  “Are you kidding? I help you with your chores anyway. What does your dad have you doing this week? Chopping carrots for the orangutans or shoveling hay for the giraffes?”

  “Garbage duty,” Fisher says flatly with a devilish look. He may have planned this all along.

  The new girl squints at my ID card. “This says Roger Marsh.”

  I must’ve grabbed Roger’s card off the counter instead of my own by mistake.

  “That’s her da—” Fisher stops himself from saying “dad” and looks at me all stiff.

  “He’s my guardian,” I say. Fisher forgets sometimes that Roger never adopted me. Roger asked me a long time ago if he could adopt me, and I think I kind of ruined it. I was little. And I couldn’t stop crying about my lost family. I feel the memory creeping back, and I shove it down.