Nadine studied the names on the page. It seemed to make a great impression on her, the white man’s name and the black man’s name, one after the other in the column. Nadine shut the book.
“Well, then.” She was not satisfied, I could see that, but she was unsure. “You say this was a misunderstanding?”
“Exactly,” Dr. Gardner said. “That’s exactly what this was.”
Nadine eyed him a few seconds more, deciding whether or not to trust him. “Thank you for your time, Dr. Gardner,” she said. I knew that she was merely retreating, but Dr. Gardner took her hand as if she had decided he was right.
He still hadn’t looked at me.
Nadine shook his hand and smiled falsely. Then she turned for the door and gestured for me to follow. I knew if I left that room with Nadine right then, I would have to give up Dr. Gardner.
Nadine was at the door now, waiting for me, wondering, and so I said, “Go on. I have one more thing to ask Dr. Gardner.”
She did not even bother to hide her disapproval. She glared at me, then looked to Dr. Gardner, who raised his hand in agreement. She shook her head once, then was out the door.
I stood for a few minutes, wondering how to begin.
“Well,” he said. “What is it?”
Even as I spoke it, I knew it was wrong. Even as the words came out of my mouth they felt oily and slick and sad: like gristle on an old soup bone. I could taste their poverty. This was not how I imagined saying it for the first time to a man would feel. But I am nothing if not stubborn. So I said it anyway.
“Dr. Gardner, I believe that I love you.”
I thought he would be disgusted or angry or offended. But he only twitched and his upper lip rode a little higher on his two front teeth. And then he widened his eyes and pulled his mouth into a grin, and I realized with dread that he was going to be kind. He said, “How can you say that, Nymphadora? I don’t believe you understand what you’re saying.”
“But I do,” I said miserably. “I understand perfectly.”
“Then I revise that statement. I don’t believe I understand the words you are saying.” He had tried to make a joke of it. I shut my eyes.
“There’s nothing more to understand,” I said, my eyes still closed. “I am in love with you.”
“That’s not possible.” He sounded puzzled as he said it, as if it really were outside the realm of being.
And then there was a very loud scream. Dr. Gardner rushed toward me and clamped his hand over my mouth. I could see he was a little bit afraid of me, if I was capable of making that sound. Afraid of me, and even still feeling pity for me. I looked back at him, only ashamed. He was still holding his hand to my mouth, believing he had quelled me, when the scream sounded again. We sprung apart, surprised. We’d both assumed the sound had come from me, that I’d lost complete control of myself and was lowing my misery like a broken organ.
On the third scream, Nadine rushed back into the room. “Come quick, Doctor, come quick. Merryweather is going mad.” And then he was gone.
I could hear a commotion in the hallways: feet shuffling past and yells and calls for blankets and buckets and help, more help. The screaming got louder. I sank down into Dr. Gardner’s chair and closed my eyes.
I heard another shout, an eerie hollow call, so loud and sudden it sounded like it came from over my shoulder. My eyes opened. I jerked up. More footsteps rushed down the hall. I saw a mess of shadows blur across the frosted glass on Dr. Gardner’s door. I turned back in my seat, sighed. And it was then that I saw it.
As I write this, I think how lucky I was, that at the very moment Nadine and I were attempting to shame Dr. Gardner, one of the apes threw a fit. She went mad in a swirl of grunts and shrieks that truly were unholy.
So, to that crazed and saddened ape, I owe my life. Without her, I would not have been left alone in Dr. Gardner’s office, and he most surely would not have allowed me to discover the drawings.
On his desk a curious curlicue caught my eye. I looked, and looked again. I recognized something. I reached for the sheet of paper and drew it out of the stack and I held it up to my eyes and there I saw it.
I thought at first that the curve I saw was mine, but then I looked at the head attached and saw, grinning back at me, the shivering smile of a chimpanzee.
What my eye had recognized was the pose. She was posed the way I had been, our first time together: on her knees, pressed down on her elbows. Of course, he could not have gotten her to actually pose this way. This could not have been from life: no wild animal would consent to that. Only dumb, lovesick human beings would consent to that. There was a tinier subset drawing, done quickly but with much detail, of a folded-over, secret part of her anatomy: I could not tell if it belonged front or back. I turned the drawing over in disgust and was confronted with myself. There I was, in the exact same pose, a mirror of the monkey on the other side, my elbows and knees ground down.
I began to weep. Loud, loud sobs that luckily no one heard: no one was around the office anymore. I sobbed and sobbed and stood up and began to frantically shift through all the papers on his desk: searching, searching. I found twenty drawings in total: all with me on one side and the chimp on the other. On a few, a name appeared. Rosalee. It must be hers, I thought. And this was the greatest insult. He only ever sketched my body in those drawings. Never my face. But the chimp was drawn precisely, her every mood lovingly captured, the wrinkle of a pensive brow, the scurrilous raise of an eyebrow, the pensive suck of lower lip, the large brown eyes soft and inviting. He drew her like he loved her, like he loved her face, and I realized I had been wrong to be jealous of Julia Toneybee-Leroy.
And I saw that he’d written little notations beside me: estimates for dimensions—scribbles of number with double prime marks for “inches.” And he’d used my name, my secret name. He’d written Nymphadora. I turned the page over to Rosalee again and saw she had the same marks beside her. And on a few, I could see my measurements and hers. And this equation:
(Rosalee)(12") / (Rosalee)(34") > (Nymphadora)(42") / (Nymphadora)(36")
That stupid, stupid sign. That little gaping mouth, pointing his love for Rosalee, how he had scientifically determined she was greater than me. I almost tore the drawings in half right then. But I didn’t: I turned cold. The same feeling that had come over me when I burned my parents’ store started to quake, and I put the drawings back as best I could. I took one close-up detail of Rosalee’s face, her eyes full and trusting, I took this with me and slipped it into my handbag. Then I opened the door to Dr. Gardner’s office, and I ran down the hallway, trying to remember the way as best I could. I ran back down the little stairway and I ran back down the steps and out of the kitchen and down the long gravel drive. Away and away, I ran and I ran until my chest burst. And I had her face in my pocket.
Dr. Gardner sent me letters in the mail every day for a month. I didn’t answer a single one.
Where did you go off to?
Will you come sit for me again?
Tell me how I offended you and give me a chance to defend myself at least, please.
You are being impossible.
He even risked gossip and came to Sermon on the Mount’s house and asked if I was in, but I told her to tell him I wasn’t home. I watched him walk away from behind my window curtain. I am not proud to say, but following his cringing walk as he made his way down the street, the falsely modest bend of his back, I still loved him even then.
I stayed in my bed all day. Luckily, it was still summer recess, as I don’t think I had the will to drag myself from my nest of sheets to face a roomful of students and write alphabets on a chalkboard.
Instead, I lay on my side, my one good blouse buttoned up to my chin, my skirt and drawers in a tangle on the floor beside my bed. I let the hot muggy air wash over me. I only kept on the blouse so that I could wear my pin. I worried that pin constantly, twisting it back and forth while turning over the picture of Rosalee’s face. I didn’t eat anything for
three days: I only sipped at the dull water at the bottom of my washbasin. On the fourth morning, when I woke up sweaty and spent, my fingers ripe and swollen from turning that pin, I knew what I had to do.
I packed up everything I owned. It fit easily into one small suitcase. I left behind only my bottle of scent. I thought for certain I would leave behind my Star of the Morning pin—my fingers were hovering up near my throat, I was ready to take it off. But something stopped me and I let it stay. It was as if the pin had decided, all on its own, that it would come with me.
I waited till night, till I heard Sermon on the Mount creak first one way past my door, then the other. For the past few days, she’d knocked a few times to check on me, and I’d meekly called to her that I was merely tired, and Sermon on the Mount, bless her, bless her, never turned the doorknob. She only called back, “All right, then,” and kept walking. When I opened the door and went out into the hall, I shuffled on the sides of my feet as I passed by her bedroom door. I left the remainder of my month’s rent on her tea table, tucked under a fine bone saucer. When I opened the front door and tripped down the steps and down onto the street I felt the dark close around me. I kept going, my legs trembling a little bit from the lack of exercise, the muscles shaking until they grew steady and by then I was out of Spring City. I crossed into Courtland County.
That night, my suitcase weighed heavy in my fist and my schoolmarm’s boots bit at my heels, and I wished I’d listened to Pop and not Mumma in such matters as the natural world and guides in the wilderness. Mumma only taught me metaphors that were useless now. Knowing the moon was the alias of Diana was not helping me. I kept glancing up at it as I walked, but not once did that cold, fixed stone seem to change place in the sky. At least, I told myself, it stayed bright. At least it didn’t dim. And then, when I thought I could go no farther, I was there.
At night, the birch trees and the gravel of the Toneybee Institute glowed and the building didn’t squat like it did during the day but seemed, instead, graceful, as if it had suddenly decided to take a deep breath and stand up straight. It was all so pretty it made me bold.
When I got to the kitchen door, I panicked: what if it was locked? I tested the door and was relieved when it swung open without a sound.
Once indoors, I let the smell guide me. I followed the stench of apes up the little staircase and down the hall, past Dr. Gardner’s now-dark office, around a corner, down more stairs. Then I came to it. A large door at which I did not even hesitate. I pushed hard and again it swung open for me.
In the dark, I could hear them dreaming. I heard them inhale. Exhale. Sigh for some other place, far away and dim and half forgotten. I wondered how I would know which cage was hers, but again, luck was on my side. When I leaned close I saw, in the hard white glare of the moon, that each cage was tagged.
The first one read BENJAMIN; the second one, JOSEPH. I went past three more cages until I found her. Rosalee. She was farthest from the door and her cage stood alone.
I settled down, tried to make the only sound the whisper of my skirt: the last thing I needed was to startle a bunch of apes awake and raise the alarm. I considered her where she lay. I thought about maybe just picking up the cage and carrying it off, but I tested it and it was too heavy.
I drummed my fingers against my knees and tried to figure out what to do next. And then, I felt the little spark, like static electricity, that one feels when one realizes she is being watched. A flash like sunlight slapping water. Rosalee was awake and her eyes gleamed at me in the dark.
We studied each other for a good while. I had not held eye contact with any being, human or otherwise, for a long time and I found myself, again and again, following the curve of her perfectly made eyes, large and amber, and the very elegant slope of her brow. I thought, with a flash of bitterness and insane panic, Of course he prefers her. All the while, Rosalee gazed steadily back at me, probably taking in my goggled eyes and dead tooth with a curiosity that in a human would be called sympathetic. Then she leaned forward and took a long, theatrical sniff. I held my fingers up to the bars so she could know me better. To my surprise, she grasped my two longest fingers in her hand, brought them close to her mouth and pressed them to her lips.
With my free hand, I rubbed my pin one more time, good and quick, and then I took a deep breath. I drew my hand away very slowly and then I reached up and unlatched her cage. I waited a few seconds more. So did she. Then I reached into the cage and held out my arms and she crawled right into them, she did not even hesitate, and I embraced her.
The way back was slower. A young girl chimp is heavy. Rosalee nestled against me, draped her own arms around me, held on lazily, as if I were a bridegroom carrying her across the threshold after dancing all day at our wedding. She rested her head on my shoulder.
I tried to be quiet at first, but I realized this meant I could not be fast, so eventually I started moving at a clip. Through the hallway. Past Dr. Gardner’s rooms. Out, out, out into the night air. When we were outside under the moon, Rosalee was still holding on to my neck. She raised her head. I realized it had been a long time, possibly never, since she had been out of doors. She took it in stride, the only sign of her curiosity was her dilated nostrils, quivering very slightly, trying to catch the smell of the country at night.
I held her and walked until my arms began to shake and then I found a hollow place for us to lie. We were off the Toneybee estate by then, making our way very slowly along the turnpike back to town. I shambled the two of us down off the road and into a leafy ditch. I knew it was unlikely that anyone would pass us on the road, but I did not want to risk it.
I sat in a pile of warm, moist ground to catch my breath and I held Rosalee in my arms. She nestled even closer. Eventually, her body went slack against mine, and I realized she had fallen asleep. I eased myself down to the ground, until she was lying almost on top of me, her limbs entangled with mine. I tried to match my breath to hers but I couldn’t, I grew winded. I settled for breathing in her air, which only smelled slightly sour. Mostly her breath smelled like the grass and the leaves rotting around us. I lay with her for a long time, felt the quick beat of her animal heart against my own. Her skin on me began to feel too hot. I lifted my face up to the sky and imagined lying there with her forever. I squeezed my eyes shut and willed that it could be so. And then I reached up and took her arms away from mine, rolled her gently to the earth, stood up and brushed the dirt from the seat of my skirt, took my battered suitcase in my hand, and scrambled out of the gully and left her there.
It didn’t really occur to me what I had done until I was more than a mile away, almost at Courtland County’s train depot. I hadn’t planned to do it at all. As I walked away from her, my heart and head separated, floated apart, became two separate entities; my heart stayed in the ditch with Rosalee, but my mind was already at the train tracks, waiting for the next car out. I did not believe what I had just done. My original plan was to take her all the way back to Courtland County with me, to smuggle her aboard the 4 a.m. milk train to Boston, to find a suitable home for her in the city. I imagined delivering her to a delighted laboratory at Harvard or some tidy city zoo. I’d make her life over and then I’d make my life over, too, far away from Stars of the Morning and falsely friendly white men.
But.
But.
She was so very heavy in my arms. And her skin was so hot, unbearably hot, that when I finally disentangled myself it peeled away from my own. And she had so loved the night that it did not seem fair to consign her to the world of people again so quickly. At least, that is what I told myself to make it right.
The night was warm, she wouldn’t catch cold. I knew I had to hurry if I was going to catch the train to Boston.
And I made the train, but when I got to the city, I found my conscience had galloped down the tracks ahead of me and met me there. As soon as I stepped off the train, it hit me, hard, between the eyes and made me flush with shame all over. I took what little money I had
and headed to the West End, where I knew Negroes lived, and found a room so similar to the one I’d just left it made me a little bit queasy. I waited anxiously for one full day, and in the morning I bought every paper I could find and scoured the pages for any news items, any mention, some funny little story about a hunter or a farmer or a driver startled by an ape in the Berkshires. There was none.
I bought a paper every day for a week and a half, despite the cost, but still there was nothing. So I imagined an item. I imagined a girl, the paper would say she was from “the Negro quarter of Courtland County,” discovering one of the charges of the Toneybee Institute for Great Ape Research in a small clearing a mile or so away from the institute and the mystery of how she got there. And I felt free. I imagined that the girl who found her was one of my students, that she was good and kind, and I thought of her as I wandered around the city asking for work and finding none. I thought, with pride, of that imaginary girl, She’s better than me.
I think I am going to San Francisco next. There are, after all, as Mumma told me, Stars of the Morning everywhere so surely they’ve made it as far as that coast. I imagine, I hope very much, I am in fact counting on the assumption, that the golden light of the West and the spacious beaches and bountiful orange groves means the light of the Stars of the Morning is not so harsh there, not so unforgiving. Far stranger things have happened. I have to save up money for it, though, so I’m leaving for parts not yet known. But I wouldn’t write down what they were if I knew them.
Before I leave Boston and New England for good, though, I take from my skirt pocket the scrap of drawing I’ve kept with Rosalee’s face. I fold it in three. I put it in an envelope, with this almost confession I’ve written, this attempt at explanation for my many betrayals of my race and of dumb blameless beasts. I take drawing and confession and I mail it to you, Dr. Gardner, whom I still love, still, despite all, knowing that I should not, so that you may finally know my true name.
But only if you wish to hear it.
We Love You, Charlie Freeman Page 22
