Orphaned Read online

  FOR DR. JANE GOODALL

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  GORILLA VOCALIZATIONS

  CENTRAL EASTERN AFRICA

  PART ONE: HOME

  PART TWO: FAR FROM HOME

  PART THREE: OLD MEETS NEW

  PART FOUR: NEW MEETS OLD

  PART FIVE: HOME REMEMBERED

  A Q&A WITH ELIOT SCHREFER

  ENDANGERED SNEAK PEEK

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  “THE MORE YOU LEARN ABOUT THE DIGNITY OF THE GORILLA, THE MORE YOU WANT TO AVOID PEOPLE.”

  —DIAN FOSSEY

  Until this time, gorillas lived by the millions in a broad band of jungle across Africa. Then a series of volcanic eruptions, many times more forceful than any the modern world has experienced, occurred in the Great Rift Valley. The shift in landscape allowed tribes of early humans to travel south into this area for the first time.

  It would be the first meeting between ape and human.

  Rock. Nut.

  Snub looks between the two, thinking.

  This tree keeps its nuts high in its branches—

  a fallen one is a lucky treat.

  She imagines rolling the inside nugget in her mouth,

  biting its oily flesh.

  Tongue between her teeth, brow scrunched,

  she raps the rock on top of the nut.

  It does not crack.

  She licks the rock.

  The rock tastes like rock.

  She licks the nut.

  The nut tastes like dirt.

  Snub twists the woody halves.

  They will not part.

  Opening nuts is Mother’s job,

  but Mother let Snub go off alone.

  mrgh.

  Fresh fury surges.

  Snub hurls the nut, aiming

  at a pair of magpies.

  It goes wide and disappears into the foliage.

  Worthless nut.

  Snub looks to see if anyone has

  been impressed by her rage.

  But this only reminds her:

  Her family is not here.

  The magpies don’t fly away.

  The magpies watch and mock.

  The magpies are not afraid of Snub.

  Snub grunts and charges.

  The birds flutter up,

  chopping white and black

  into the open blue sky.

  As she watches them flee,

  Snub feels better.

  When she leaves the clearing,

  she struts.

  Maybe when she returns to her family,

  they will be impressed by her.

  When Snub finds her family,

  not a single one of them looks up.

  Brother is feasting on the buds of a thicket.

  Wrinkled and Teased, the squabbling older females,

  are back-to-back in a patch of clover,

  searching out the lightest greens.

  Mother hasn’t stirred.

  Her night nest has become a day nest.

  This is not like Mother.

  Mother

  is no longer

  like Mother.

  Snub knows what is to blame.

  It is that thing.

  It is pink

  and it wriggles.

  It is pink

  like a large worm.

  Mother should crush it

  under her foot.

  Ooze under her toes!

  But instead

  Mother is caring for it.

  It used to be

  that Snub only had

  to worry about

  foraging food and

  being close to Mother.

  It used to be

  that Snub and Mother

  groomed each other,

  climbed trees with linked arms,

  passed a fruit rind

  until together they had stripped it

  of every glossy golden morsel.

  It used to be

  that when all this was done

  they would sprawl in the sun-fragrant grass,

  content.

  hoo.

  Then the worm arrived.

  Now Mother doesn’t allow Snub to come near.

  Now Snub hasn’t been touched all day.

  Now Snub’s legs crumple right where she stands.

  Now Snub lands heavily at the edge of the family’s clearing.

  Now Snub is outside everything that used to be

  inside

  and she doesn’t understand why.

  Snub knows what will happen next,

  knows she will be unhappy after,

  but she cannot stop herself.

  She gets to all fours,

  feet furrowing rich black soil,

  and cheats her way to Mother.

  She leans so the hairs on her back mingle with Mother’s,

  extends an arm,

  as

  slowly

  as

  she

  can,

  until it grazes Mother’s knee.

  Mother tightens her grip on the pink worm.

  As she pivots, Mother’s eyes look at Snub

  but don’t see Snub.

  Snub still doesn’t understand why.

  She has done nothing wrong,

  not once this day has she

  kicked Brother

  teased Wrinkled

  pelted Mother

  yanked Silverback.

  Snub stares out at everything that is not Mother:

  one puff of cloud in the sky,

  moss on the trees, thick as wet green hair,

  bright edges of a puddle,

  fly-milled soil, so richly black that it foams.

  Snub can’t bring herself to say

  hoo,

  because Mother is ignoring her

  and might not

  hoo

  back.

  Snub stands.

  Snub sits.

  Snub tries

  one more time

  to lean against Mother.

  Snub’s breath catches.

  Mother has let her stay beside her!

  Snub risks lowering her shoulders

  so she is curled around Mother’s body.

  Mother allows that, too!

  The worm isn’t just pink.

  Fine black hairs drape along it.

  Its eyelids don’t quite close over the slick slivers of its eyes.

  It is a weak and fragile and useless and disgusting thing,

  even if Snub sees now that it’s a small version of a gorilla.

  Surprise:

  She wants

  to hold this tiny gorilla that came out of her mother,

  to cradle its tiny shoulders in her rough palm,

  to pry its eyes open and see them look into hers,

  to say

  acha,

  to share in Mother’s

  acha.

  Mother sneezes.

  Afraid that she is about to be alone again,

  Snub holds very still.

  Startled by Mother,

  the worm raises its too-heavy head,

  then feeds some more.

  Feeding makes Snub think of food.

  She selects a handful of sweet grass

  and sprinkles it on the baby’s face.

  The baby is too useless to eat this grass.

  The pink-gorilla-baby-worm doesn’t do anything

  except take away Mother.

  If Mother doesn’t start foraging soon

  she won’t eat anything before the day goes dark

  and her day nest will turn into a night nest.

  This fragile little thing, />
  which demands

  acha

  and gives none back,

  will keep Mother in this one spot for the whole day.

  It makes Snub growl out loud—

  mrgh

  but softly, so Mother cannot hear.

  Snub rolls away from Mother

  and knucklewalks through the clearing,

  blowing contempt through her nostrils.

  The day ages.

  Already heavy with humming insects,

  the jungle thickens until it is murky with their sound.

  The sun lowers beneath the tops of the trees,

  its light disappearing as quick as a thought.

  Snub hasn’t eaten enough today,

  and she knows she’ll wake before light with a hollow ache,

  her belly plump and sharp.

  Alone again,

  no longer a daughter but nothing else either.

  Is there more out there than this family?

  In the morning, Snub puts her mind on Brother.

  Brother lags behind the world.

  He eats buds, grunting with wonder

  each time he peels back a sap-stiff frond

  to discover—surprise!—yet another soft brown center.

  Snub rocks from side to side,

  feet in Brother’s face,

  hoping he will notice.

  Brother does not notice.

  Snub rocks harder, until she tumbles right into him.

  He grunts and splays out, flat in the grass,

  looking at Snub in shock.

  Then he rasps and gets up on all fours,

  waiting for her to start the game up again.

  Why does he never rock into her?

  Snub bowls right into him, and this time knocks him flat.

  He gets up, rasp-laughing and expectant.

  Playing with Brother will always be a one-sided game.

  No gorilla in the family plays the way Snub wants to play.

  While the other gorillas—

  Silverback, Brother, Wrinkled, and Teased—

  begin their nests, Snub makes slow circles around Mother.

  It used to be that they nested together.

  Now Mother wants only to be with Silverback and the worm,

  and it hurts like a hole where there once was a tooth.

  Now that she has the pink worm,

  Mother settles in close to Silverback,

  bedding in a sheltered stretch between his hulking body

  and the sun-warmed side of a tree.

  Silverback lies serenely on his haunches,

  expressing no

  acha

  or

  mrgh

  or

  wragh.

  He flicks his eyes to the pink worm baby,

  tenderness wisping on his face.

  Snub paces near, hoping Silverback and Mother will look up,

  will waggle their chins in that way that means

  Yes, come and be with us.

  But Silverback makes no such move.

  Mother makes no such move.

  She still looks at Snub like Snub is no longer Snub.

  Steam and boom.

  Sky red and black, and a pink worm,

  suckermouth gaping,

  not for Mother but for Snub.

  The dream ruptures and spits Snub out.

  She sits up, grunting, patting the moss around her,

  beating her chest against sweaty stirrings.

  For the first time, the night is not dark.

  It is not the gray white of moonlight on low clouds either.

  It is red.

  A jumping red.

  A painful red.

  A red like the inside of a tree that lightning has struck.

  A red to hurt.

  The horizon blooms into the sky

  and Snub watches the red bend and expand,

  plume up to take on sparks of yellow,

  orange clouds massing high above the earth.

  The other gorillas scatter from the noise,

  but Snub wants to see those beautiful reds up close.

  She surges up the hill and sees a monkey

  stirred out of sleep,

  staring up at the sky, hands over its ears.

  The monkey’s fear gives Snub fear.

  She cries out,

  and the ground responds.

  The mountain has always been as permanent

  as the sky,

  but now it moves.

  Rocks crack and heave,

  like the land is laboring through some sickness,

  buckling at the seams of its wound.

  The mountain makes sizzling, suffering sounds.

  It begins to bleed down its slope.

  Even though it is still far away,

  Snub can feel that the blood is hot.

  The air booms, afraid like Snub.

  She pivots, hooting. Where is Silverback? Where is Mother?

  Snub punches a puddle,

  sends up a spray of muddy water and blue-black flies.

  She hoots and calls,

  but she cannot hear or see or smell Silverback.

  Her curiosity about the mountain’s distant suffering

  has brought her too far.

  She is lost.

  A small gorilla by herself at night might die,

  and finding her family will take time.

  Snub knows it will be best to hide away up here,

  as still as possible,

  and make her way down in the morning.

  She rips up tufts of moss and piles them lumpily,

  then harrumphs down into the mess.

  Day brings

  terror of wandering.

  The sick distant mountain has

  gone back to the color

  a mountain should be,

  but Snub’s worried heart

  has not gone back to the speed

  a heart should be.

  hoo

  is as far away

  as her family.

  The air is drier and cooler up here.

  Snub’s lungs feel rough,

  like their insides have skidded along the ground.

  Once, when she looks back down the slope,

  her mind sees Mother coming to find her.

  But it is only the shadow of a frond.

  A hawk circles.

  The sun slants.

  The day will soon end.

  The ground goes sandy and firm.

  Cool edges of rock cut Snub’s feet

  wherever her hair parts between her toes.

  She reaches the top of a ridge and hoots in wonder

  at the sight of a new place.

  The green continues farther than Snub

  thought green ever could,

  vibrant all the way to a ridge of mountains,

  capped by snow and forbidding cliffs.

  No gorilla could ever pass that way.

  For comfort,

  Snub looks back

  to the familiar green basin where her family lives,

  the brown lake in the center where Silverback

  sometimes leads them to cool and splash.

  For curiosity,

  Snub turns forward

  to the new land edged in mountains.

  From far below she can hear

  the muffled call of a forest elephant.

  Brother would run right now,

  fear dung clodding his legs—

  Wrinkled or Teased or Silverback would run—

  When she was with them, Snub would have run, too—

  But by herself, she finds out what Snub alone will do,

  faced by a new place.

  Snub alone is curious.

  She hoots, lost between thrill and terror.

  She turns a slow circle, not sure what to do with herself.

  One moment she’s looking down into the green crater where

  her family is somewhere bedding down without her,

/>   the next moment she’s peering into this new land

  where elephants call.

  Snub builds a nest before the sun vanishes,

  staring out into unfamiliar jungle.

  Maybe she will never find her family.

  Maybe this is all that Snub will ever have:

  trees draped in spiderwebs,

  a trio of yellow parrots,

  a small brown antelope nibbling on lichen,

  a burnt heaviness to the air the only sign

  of the suffering mountain that set Snub

  running

  away from her family.

  Snub does not feel any

  acha

  for those animals,

  but maybe she could.

  Maybe

  acha

  doesn’t have to be

  only for other gorillas.

  Here, she is alone.

  With her family, she was abandoned.

  Maybe alone is better than abandoned.

  Snub’s eyes are already open when,

  like a fruit’s dark rind,

  the night cracks to reveal a ring of yellow dawn.

  Mists have sloughed from the mountains

  that rim the gorillas’ green land.

  As Snub rolls in her nest, trees

  disappear and reappear,

  released and retaken,

  the mists unsure of what they want to keep.

  Snub thought the distant mountain’s suffering was over,

  but that night it suffers again.