The Elephant in the Room

by Holly Goldberg Sloan

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. It’s yours now.”

  “Really? Thank you. Thank you so much.”

  “My wife would have wanted you to have it.”

  For a single moment, just a slice of a second, it felt to Sila as if Lillian Gardino was in the room. Generations of people who had come before her were also there, unknown and unseen but holding her up, giving her both air and light and room to breathe.

  And then Gio broke the spell and said, “Let’s see where I put that stuff about Veda.”

  * * *

  Sila’s backpack was heavier than usual as she pedaled home. Inside was not just the prized binder, but also the notebook Chester had given Gio. Once she and Mateo were in town she realized she had no memory of the ride through the countryside or even on the busy highway. She had disappeared inside her head and was thinking of the classroom where she had once sat by the window. She didn’t feel as sad now. Her mother’s birthday and Mrs. Gardino’s words had intertwined in a hopeful way.

  And for that Sila was grateful.

  Gio had looked at the binder. More than once. He had read Sila’s poem and he had been waiting for the right time to show her. He didn’t want Mateo to feel left out, but also, if he were honest with himself, he would have had to admit that it wasn’t easy to let go of anything that had been so connected to his wife.

  With the kids gone for the day, Veda back in the barn, and the flamingos preening down at the pond, he sat down in the chair by the window and watched the hills in the distance fade from gold to a purplish gray. He was glad that Sila had his wife’s school year memories. In difficult times, thinking about the past could be a savior for him. But since Sila and Mateo and Veda were in his life, he could also find comfort in the future.

  It belonged to them.

  35.

  Sila was at the kitchen table on the computer with a notebook open when her father came home. He moved closer to see her looking down at a yellowy slip of paper.

  “I’m doing research. This is a receipt from when Veda was sold twenty-one years ago. It says she’s two years old. So that means Veda is almost twenty-three years old.”

  Alp read from the paper, “Vincent Z. Doyle Enterprises.”

  “That’s the man who sold her. What’s great is he doesn’t have a common name. If his name was Bob Smith it would make finding out stuff so much harder.”

  Her father nodded but he had already started out of the room to change from his work clothes. Sila returned to the computer. Locating Vincent Z. Doyle felt like a birthday present. Maybe not for her mother, but on Cleary Road it seemed to her like something to celebrate.

  Just down the street, Mateo was staring down at his dinner plate. If he had a choice in the matter, and he didn’t, he would eat macaroni and cheese every night. And today he was getting his favorite meal. As he put his fork into his food he was pleased. After almost two hours riding a bicycle and six hours outside at Gio’s property, Mateo was hungry.

  His mother slid into the chair next to him. “Anything new to report from Gio’s today?”

  “Sila wished she had never kicked the hornet’s nest.”

  Rosa looked up with concern. “Goodness—was she stung?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. Kicking a hornet’s nest is very dangerous.”

  “I didn’t see it happen. Today is her mom’s birthday. She said it’s her fault her mom got sent back to Turkey because she kicked the hornet’s nest.”

  “Why would that be her fault?”

  “She looked at a paycheck from the hotel where her mom worked and she saw that the janitors got more money than the maids, so her mom complained to her boss.”

  Rosa stopped eating. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

  “They fired her mom after she complained about the check. Then immigration wrote and said there was a problem. Sila seeing the paycheck started a chain of bad stuff.”

  “Oh. I get it. Sila saying she kicked the hornet’s nest is just an expression.”

  “An expression of what?” Mateo asked.

  “Trouble.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I don’t think hornets are connected in any way to the immigration problem.”

  “Sila should have said that.”

  Mateo’s mother was no longer eating. She looked at her son. “I wondered what was going on with Sila’s mother. But I didn’t think it was right to ask a lot of personal questions.”

  “People don’t like answering a lot of questions,” Mateo agreed.

  “Do they have a good lawyer?” Rosa asked.

  “For what?”

  “For the problem.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I need to speak with Sila’s father.”

  Mateo served himself more macaroni and cheese. He ate for a while. When he was finished he took his plate to the kitchen, saying over his shoulder, “Mom, bees and hornets get blamed for a lot of stuff they don’t do.”

  * * *

  Sila was already in her room in bed, but she heard the doorbell ring. She was able to make out bits and pieces of a conversation between her father and Mateo’s mother.

  “Alp, I’m not an immigration lawyer. My specialty is labor law. But there’s a lawyer in our firm who does immigration.”

  Sila put her ear to the wall to listen. Her father answered, “We can’t hire anyone right now.”

  “No, you don’t understand. This won’t cost anything. It would be pro bono.”

  What did pro bono mean? Sila slipped out of bed and quickly typed the words into her computer and read: “Pro bono publico is a Latin phrase for work done as a volunteer without payment.”

  Well, that had to be good news.

  Sila waited. There was silence. Then she heard Mrs. Lopez’s voice:

  “I want to help. I’d really like to look at the documents you’ve received from the government. And find out more about what happened at the hotel.”

  Sila couldn’t understand what her father said in reply. But then she heard him pass down the hallway outside her room. Before long he was back at the front door.

  “This is from the hotel. And these are from Citizenship and Immigration Services.”

  Sila had never seen whatever he was showing Mrs. Lopez. She heard her say, “I’ll make copies of everything and get this back to you tomorrow.”

  Sila couldn’t see her father, but in her mind’s eye she could imagine him standing in the doorway with his face in shadow and his body in silhouette, looking defeated.

  Then Rosa Lopez, sounding to Sila as if she was forcing herself to be optimistic, said, “Let me see what I can do.”

  Back at home, Mateo’s mother cleaned the kitchen and then went to tell her son it was bedtime. These days she no longer had to argue with him about turning off a game console or putting down a book. By the time she made it upstairs she could hear Mateo snoring even with his door half shut. That’s what all the bike riding and outdoor work had done. He was exhausted at the end of the day.

  Rosa changed into pajamas and propped herself up on pillows in bed. She started through the letters in the file Alp had given her, noting that the Tekins had entered the country legally fourteen years ago. They had come seeking political asylum. Alp’s father was Kurdish, a cultural minority in Turkey. He had been politically active and had been jailed as a dissident. Oya was not Kurdish, and part of the reason they had left the country was to start a new life together free from the political struggle. They picked Oregon because they had heard it was very green and that people were friendly and welcoming. They had established a life in the Willamette Valley.

  The Tekins had applied for lawful permanent resident status, and after a number of steps, which included submission of evidence and supporting documentation, they each received S
ocial Security numbers and visas. They had both found jobs and paid taxes. But Oya’s permission to work was issued as a temporary document. Alp’s was not. He was the asylum seeker. Her classification was as a spouse.

  Rosa was no expert in immigration law. But she knew that the situation had recently changed for people coming from Muslim countries. Sila Tekin was born in America and was a citizen. So she didn’t have a problem. But Oya was the spouse of an asylum seeker. Spouses no longer received the same protection under the law as they had fourteen years ago.

  After reading the contents of the file, Rosa took her laptop from the night table and sent Alp an email asking questions about his wife’s job at the Grand Hotel. Alp answered immediately. Only two months before Oya was let go, she had been named hotel Employee of the Month. She was always on time. She had a good attitude. She did exactly what the hotel wanted her to do. At least, until the morning she had gone to speak about the differences in pay in the employment of men and women who cleaned the hotel.

  That night when Rosa had arrived at his apartment, Alp Tekin had been angry, afraid, and suspicious. The system didn’t seem to him to be fair. Alp’s words were simple: “I came to this country because it was a place to start a new life. I have a degree as a mechanical engineer. Here in America I work as an automotive mechanic. It’s not the same thing, but my wife and I have been very happy. Our daughter was born. We felt so fortunate. But now my family’s situation is broken. And it’s not like a bad truck engine. I don’t have the parts to fix this problem.”

  It was late when Rosa closed her computer. She turned off the table lamp but remained sitting up in bed. The room was at first totally dark. As her eyes adjusted she began to make out the furniture in the room. And then gradually the light from a sliver of moon glowing through the window allowed her to see what was really there. Two things were going on: Oya Tekin had a serious immigration issue. But Oya Tekin also had a grievance for wrongful employment termination from the hotel. She had the making of a workplace retaliation lawsuit. Were her firing and the immigration problem connected? Or was it all just a terrible coincidence?

  36.

  It was Sunday, which was the only morning Sila and Mateo didn’t bike out to Gio’s. Sila got up early and walked six blocks to Mateo’s house. She carried Chester’s notebook along with the information she’d written down about Vincent Z. Doyle. Mateo was sitting on the porch with his dog, waiting for her. She took a seat next to them.

  “Your mom came over last night to talk to my dad.”

  “I heard.”

  “She said she’s going to help my parents. Pro bono.” Sila was waiting to tell him what that meant. Instead Mateo answered, “Pro bono publico. Latin ‘for the good of the people.’”

  She couldn’t help but be irritated that he already knew this. She thought she finally might know something he didn’t. “Right.”

  “She does a bunch of cases like that.” He looked at the notebook in her hands. “Did you find out anything about Veda?”

  “Yeah. The guy listed on the bill of sale was an exotic animal broker in Chicago.”

  “That sounds like an interesting job. I wonder how you train for that.”

  “It’s not as exciting as it sounds. It looks like all he did was arrange to have animals moved.”

  “He has a website?”

  “No. He had an obituary.”

  “So he’s dead?”

  “He is.”

  “Did it say what kinds of animals he moved?”

  Sila opened her notebook and read: “Elephants, hippos, sugar gliders, squirrels, chinchillas, lions, and even ‘large quantities of insects.’”

  “What kinds of insects are shipped in large quantities?” Mateo asked. He then sounded hopeful: “Bees?”

  “It didn’t say.”

  Mateo then went off on a tangent. “I had an ant farm once. But after two months the ants all died. It wasn’t a farm, obviously. It was two pieces of clear plastic with sand in between. You order the ants separately and they come in the mail. The ants eat sugar water at first. Then half a grape can last them a whole week. My mom was happy when they died and I had to throw it all out. I’m not sure if I fed them too much or too little.”

  Mateo stared intently at the ground and Sila decided he was now looking for ants.

  “Anyway, Vincent Z. Doyle’s obituary said he died six years ago at Highland Park Hospital in Illinois at the age of eighty-one.”

  “Did he get crushed loading a rhinoceros into a crate?”

  “It said natural causes.”

  “Which covers a lot,” said Mateo.

  “We have the name of his business.”

  “We should call them.”

  “It closed when he died. Maybe it wasn’t much more than him. But we’re on the trail.”

  Mateo’s eyes were back on the ground. “When ants find food, a chemical comes out of their bodies. We can’t see it. But other ants smell it and follow. Then every ant that walks the same path releases the same chemical. That’s why they move in lines in such an organized way.”

  “Well, that’s good to know. Thanks.” Sila was teasing him. But sometimes Mateo couldn’t tell the difference between her being sincere and snarky.

  “You’re welcome.”

  * * *

  They left the ants behind and went inside to continue the investigation. The obituary said Vincent Z. Doyle was survived by a daughter named Penny. So they searched for a person named Penny Doyle. But it turned out there were many people online named Penny Doyle. There was a food writer. A gymnast. Realtors in different parts of the country. There were multiple Penny Doyles in Illinois. But it was while looking up Penny Doyle that they came upon an interview done in The Kenosha News children’s page in Wisconsin, which was where Vincent Z. Doyle and his family must have spent a vacation one summer. This small newspaper had a column that mentioned kids from out of the area. It said: “Penny Doyle and her family are up from Chicago. Penny’s father works with such interesting clients as the Larmen and Falls Circus as he moves animals. Penny has quite a few stories to tell.”

  Sila was excited. “We know Veda was sold to the man named Chester. We know Vincent Z. Doyle arranged it. And now we have the circus where she might have come from.”

  Mateo searched Larmen and Falls, and read aloud from the computer screen: “For over seventy-five years the circus traveled with all sorts of animals and performers, setting up a three-ring show in small towns and big cities across North America.” He stopped reading. “So Veda might have been born in that circus and sold to another smaller one.”

  “And Vincent Z. Doyle did the moving.”

  “We need to research circuses.”

  Sila shot him a look. “I think we need to concentrate just on Larmen and Falls.”

  But Mateo was already in command of the keyboard, typing. Sila took notes from what he said. She wrote on her pad of paper:

  In 1808 a man named HACHALIAH BAILEY somehow bought one of the first elephants to come to America (from India). Supposedly the idea behind Mr. Bailey’s purchase was to have the elephant plow his field instead of a horse. It feels like everyone back then was a farmer.

  Only plowing the fields for Mr. Bailey didn’t work out because the elephant ATE TOO MUCH FOOD and also the elephant didn’t really want to act like a horse.

  But people came from all around the area to get a look at Hachaliah Bailey’s elephant, so he started charging 25¢ a person to see her. In order to collect the money, he had a BIG CURTAIN made and he hid the elephant until everyone waiting in line had paid. He ended up making a set time during the day for the PERFORMANCE, which was when the curtain was pulled back and people got to see the elephant. Today Mr. Bailey is considered the father of American circuses. He died when a horse kicked him in the head, which is ironic.

  At 12:08 p.m. Mrs. Lopez put out tuna
sandwiches, almonds, and chips, and Sila and Mateo took a short break. The bad news was that Larmen and Falls had gone out of business, citing “the high cost of running the operation and a failure to find audiences.”

  While eating, Sila asked Mateo, “Have you ever been to a circus?”

  “No. Unless I don’t remember because I was really little. What about you?”

  “Same,” Sila said.

  “They’re mostly all closed now.”

  “Which I think is a good thing.”

  Mateo carefully counted out seven almonds as Sila continued, “Maybe circuses aren’t popular today because we have TV and movies and YouTube to watch animals and people perform. When circuses were really popular, there weren’t so many choices.”

  Mateo stopped chewing his almonds. “Maybe if we didn’t have so many choices it would be better. One of the reasons I have the same lunch every day is that otherwise there are too many variables.”

  Sila nodded. She could see his point. When she liked something, she stuck with it. The modern world had a lot of options.

  After they finished eating they went right back to work. The good news was they discovered that even though Larmen and Falls was out of business, their website was still up. It explained that the company’s elephants had all been relocated to sanctuaries, mostly one in Florida.

  This was a big breakthrough. Sila and Mateo were able to find the Florida sanctuary, and they wrote a letter.

  Dear Elephant Sanctuary People,

  Our names are Sila Tekin and Mateo Lopez. We live in Oregon and we work (as paid interns) for a man named Giovanni Gardino. He bought an elephant named VEDA from a man named Chester Briot. Chester Briot ran the Briot Family Circus. He bought this elephant from Vincent Z. Doyle, a wild animal broker in Chicago. According to our research he did a lot of work for Larmen and Falls.

  We know about this because we have the bill of sale for Veda, which is from twenty-one years ago.