Theory of Bastards

by Audrey Schulman

  Afterward, post orgasmic and calm, none of the bonobos had any interest in fighting for the food. Instead they simply held out their hands, palm up, their fingers flexing in an instinctive bonobo give-me gesture. The keeper lobbed chunks of fruit down to them, which they caught with one hand.

  They did not gobble this food like dogs bolting down canned mush. Instead they delicately peeled back the skin and picked out the seeds before taking a bite that they rolled around in their mouths like wine, eyes closed, inhaling with joy.

  When the keeper had thrown the last of the fruit, she held the buckets out so the bonobos could see they were empty. Most of the bonobos began looking around for any pieces that might have been dropped. Mama, however, continued to stand, her hand out, her fingers flexing, asking for something more. Tooch, against her chest, supplicated also with his tiny palm.

  The keeper reached for an object by her feet and looked at Mama, waiting.

  In response, Mama didn’t repeat the bonobo gesture, but made a different one. She held her left palm up, flat as a table, then reached out with the other hand, wrapping her fingers around an invisible object on the table and raising it into the air. The gesture precise.

  Frankie blinked.

  The avatar spoke, translating the American Sign Language gesture. The voice was clear, each consonant enunciated, a human voice emerging from the image of a bonobo’s face. The avatar said, Bottle.

  The keeper nodded and tossed the object in her hand. A baby bottle.

  Mama caught it with the ease of an outfielder and handed it to Tooch. He took the bottle with both hands, rolled onto his back and started nursing. For the first time, Frankie noticed Mama’s breasts were flat.

  Like any mother, Mama was happy for a moment simply watching her baby drink, sucking in strength. Then lazily, she touched her fingers to her lips, extending her palm toward the keeper.

  If Frankie hadn’t seen the other sign she might not have recognized this as language.

  The avatar translated the gesture automatically, Thank you.

  Mama’s hands were large and hairy and scarred from knuckle-walking. She scratched her butt with one of them, then picked up a chunk of pineapple from her pile of food and began to eat.

  DAY 3

  Four

  The next morning, Frankie and Stotts tried again.

  She managed to walk most of the hallway, nearly reaching the locked door, powering forward, The Little Engine That Could. Then she paused and reached a hand out in the direction of the wall.

  He needed no other clue. He scooped her up, sat her down on the floor and folded her over like a lounge chair.

  Facing the ground from just a few inches away, it looked so much less threatening than it had a moment ago.

  He sat down beside her, one hand on her back. He relaxed, stretching out his legs, as though he was sitting on his favorite couch, like they were an old married couple watching the news. In Syria, he’d probably seen the carnage resulting from suicide bombers and I.E.D.s—automatic weapons used on school buses. Perhaps, like the N.Y.P.D., nothing could flummox him.

  Unlike her, he was the kind of person who could touch others easily. He was used to assisting and did so without effort.

  He said, Ma’am, you seem to like this hall.

  She stared at the ground, blinking.

  He asked, Anything you want to tell me about your medical condition?

  She did her best to say, Endometriosis. There was a lot more air to the word than sound.

  She inhaled and tried again, Stage Four. Surgery. Recovering.

  Those five words had so much packed into them, a medical haiku.

  She always learned about people from their reactions, not so much what they knew about endometriosis as what the depth of their experience was with disease in general. Basically, their reactions could be taken as a rough proxy for how many people they loved and with how much courage—grandparents, spouses, friends. Some people’s eyes skittered or got flat. Others said—I’m sorry—a little loudly as though for someone else’s benefit. These responses left her spotlit and alone.

  Stotts, he stayed there with her, his hand warm on her back.

  He said, Tell me what you need and I’ll help.

  Such a simple statement.

  He looked around and offered, My office has a couch. Would you like to rest there?

  She said, No.

  He offered, I could bring some other researchers here. You could ask questions.

  No, she said and pushed herself up to lean back against the wall, Take me to see the research.

  He examined her expression.

  She said, Let me see you work. It’s the best medicine.

  He took his hand off her back, but made no motion to get up.

  She began to pat the ground around her. The difficulty of climbing to her feet might be overcome, she felt, if she could just get the placement of her hands right.

  He said, No need to rush. Tell me about the birds. How’d you come up with the idea of putting hats on them?

  Surprised she said, Bellows made you read my grad-school thesis?

  Stotts nodded, Every one of your papers and then he quizzed me. Why the hats?

  She could remember the zebra finches so clearly, their fluttering flight, the males’ complicated mating call: Stravinsky on a squeaky toy. As a species, they were not beautiful. Their markings didn’t work together like a tiger’s or a puffin’s. Instead they had a mish-mash of possible motifs: a few stripes here, a speckled corner there, the tuxedo front. Evolutionarily, they hadn’t finished getting dressed, but paused in front of the mirror, unsure of which statement to make.

  She said, I looked at the finches. It seemed clear what they were missing.

  What did the other students think about what you were doing?

  She said, No one cared. I was a nobody. It was lovely.

  For lab space, she’d been assigned what at one point had been a closet, seven feet by six, no window—forced to consider only small species. Her budget so restricted, she’d skipped the lab animal catalog and visited the pet store instead. Her advisor had signed all her papers while on the phone. The first time he truly focused on her was at the end of the year when he reviewed her abstract, scanning it absentmindedly, then pausing to read it again with a tightness of attention. She led him to her closet to stare at the costumed birds and their pairings.

  Stotts asked, How’d you get the hats to stay on?

  They weren’t hats, she said. Just red nylon fluff. I used a hot glue gun to connect the fluff to their existing feathers, the same way hair extensions are added. The idea came to me while I was getting a haircut one day.

  He tucked his chin in, People use hot glue on their heads?

  Oh, what the female will do, she answered, Darwin in action. I found a color that matched the birds’ beaks. Took me a while to master the technique. The fluff stood up like a crest. The newspapers were the ones to call it a top hat.

  How long did the hats last?

  Long enough for me to see the results on courtship and parenting.

  And you put stockings on them too?

  She exhaled, You’re trying to stall. So I don’t stand up and faint.

  Yup, he said.

  She folded her legs up to her chest and rested her forehead on her knees, breathing in the heat of her body. The darkness comforting. The world, she thought, would be a better place filled with the bluntness of Missouri men.

  What’s your field, she asked, her voice muffled by her thighs.

  Archeology with a specialty in lithic technology.

  Lithic what?

  I specialize in tools from the Stone Age and how they were constructed.

  It took her a moment before she responded, You’re an expert in rocks?

  Yes, ma’am.

  She pulled h
er head up, The government paid for that?

  Even these days, ma’am, no politician can argue with a military scholarship.

  She grunted. Look, I’m ready to get up.

  Your skin is the color of oatmeal.

  It’s my natural color.

  You’re using the wheelchair.

  No. I’m not.

  Yes, ma’am, you are, he said and rose to his feet as easily—it seemed to her—as a ball bounces upward. He strode down the hall to retrieve the wheelchair.

  I don’t need it, she said as she attempted to stand. She made it only partway before she stopped, her eyes watering.

  He returned with the chair and helped her up, not as a man helps his beloved, clasping her hands in his, but the way he would assist his grandma, his hands wrapped firmly around her upper arms. He lowered her into the seat.

  (Just 33 years old and, these days, men touched her with as little thought as they would a child or a piece of furniture.)

  In the seat, she gave up and sat back. She said, After this I’d like to lie down on that couch.

  He answered, First smart thing you’ve said.

  The word smart was ever so slightly emphasized. With a MacArthur comes a certain amount of teasing.

  His humor wasn’t clipped and pushy, no New-York cut of a fast-talking knife. Nor was it what she had imagined as Mid­western wit: knee-slapping guffaws, as intellectual as euchre.

  The door had several large and complicated locks on it. A screen beside it declared Entry Denied.

  Why all these locks, she asked.

  He said, One of the bonobos, Houdina, is a bit of an escape artist. For a while we had to keep trying out new systems.

  Frankie said, She’s the mom with the baby Id?

  That’s her, he said, Most times we had no idea how she did it. We caught her on video once, back when we were experimenting with metal keys. One of the observation cameras happened to be pointed straight at her. In the video, you see her lying in the sun, looking innocent, while the last human leaves for the night. She waits two minutes, then spits a researcher’s keys out of her mouth and heads straight for the door to open it. The others follow.

  How’d she get the keys?

  When you’re in the enclosure, they constantly groom you. Given all that touching, picking your pocket is easy.

  Frankie asked, When they get out, are they dangerous?

  He snorted, They wander around the Foundation, staring at the gorillas and orangutans and eating marigolds out of the flower beds. Adele heads to the basketball court by the parking lot, does free throws for hours. The family that raised her used to play basketball with her. Goliath goes to the kitchen. He drinks dishwashing soap so he can burp bubbles. The female bonobos love that, but it gives the vets conniptions.

  He said, With the locks now, we’re using speech recognition combined with scanning the person’s BodyWare. You need to check in with the office later to make sure your ID is in the security system.

  He said, Ok Door, open.

  He turned to her and added, The bonobos can’t talk. Not yet.

  The screen flashed green, the lock clicked and Stotts swung the door open.

  Five

  A month after her 11th birthday, Francine stayed home from school with an ache in her gut. She was surprised because she rarely got sick. Since her parents never complained of being ill, she’d had the impression that health was partly a question of will.

  Working from home that day, her mom checked regularly on her daughter, taking her temperature and making sure she was hydrated. Francine’s childhood memories of her mom were of her always facing Francine, her eyes warm. She called Francine “the Marvel,” for her love of Marvel comic-books and the fact that she’d been born at all. Although Francine’s parents had tried a long time, they’d had no other children.

  Through the morning, the ache gradually increased, began to radiate down Francine’s left leg.

  Midmorning she realized she had to pee, the need abruptly urgent. She stumbled to the bathroom and shoved down her pants. A person spends a life making the same actions each day. The actions seem simple but are made up of millions of complex biological processes—protein uptake, glucose levels, phagocyte function—walking down the stairs, picking up the newspaper, breathing. At some point, one of these processes goes wrong and the machine of the body stumbles.

  As she clenched her bladder, she felt something tug that shouldn’t, a fleshy pull, a sharp pain.

  Yowww, she yelled.

  Her mom moved fast down the hall to her, calling questions even before she got there.

  When she stepped into the bathroom, she saw the blood on Francine’s underwear. She stopped. Standing there.

  Oh, said her mom looking. And for a moment her face held nothing at all. All humanity wiped from it. That distance appearing for the first time.

  Oh, she said, It’s that.

  *

  Inside the interaction area, behind the locked door, there was no more drywall or ceiling tile. Instead it was all durable cleanable surfaces: concrete, plexiglass and steel.

  Along the hallway stood the woman who normally fed the bonobos. This woman, the keeper, was putting cleaning solutions away on a cart. She was faced away and had EarDrums pumping out music so loudly Frankie could hear the papery beat from a distance of several feet. Her short permed hair combined with her general thickness made her look a bit like a Ukrainian shot-putter, the power in her upper body waiting to be used.

  To warn her of their approach, Stotts leaned forward and waved his hand where she could see it.

  The keeper jerked around to face them. She turned not in a startled girlie way, but more like a gun turret. Her eyes wide and dilated, her expression fixed. Ready to battle. Her meaty hands held out.

  Then she recognized Stotts. She blinked and rolled her cart to the side for them to pass.

  Stotts nodded his thanks and wheeled Frankie forward.

  Frankie raised a palm in greeting.

  The keeper made no response, eyeing her.

  Moving down the hall, Stotts said, She’s deaf. Because of that she’s been in some scary situations. Make sure never to sneak up on her.

  Frankie said, Deaf? As in deaf-deaf?

  Yes ma’am.

  No hearing implant?

  No.

  Why not?

  Never asked, he said, She copes by always playing music loud enough that strangers will realize she can’t hear them. Her version of a blind man’s stick.

  Frankie considered this, looking back at the keeper. She asked, What did you mean by scary situations?

  He said, When people want to warn you about danger they do it through sound. A car’s honk, a fire alarm, someone yelling Heads up. People expect sound to be enough, especially these days. She’s had some surprises.

  She grunted, She was hired because she knows sign?

  Yep, he said, Most of the staff know fewer than 30 signs. She’s the only one who’s bilingual. Also she’s great with the apes. She doesn’t take any guff, not even from the chimps.

  Stopping in the kitchen, Stotts opened a cupboard and took some food out. He said, Ok Kitchen, I’m grabbing a banana and a bag of gummy bears.

  The fridge beeped and said, Thanks David, I’ve logged those items.

  Frankie asked, Bellows charges for food?

  He answered, Everything I use, including electricity, is taken out of my budget.

  She said, Electricity?

  Stotts said, It’s a big cost these days and he tries to be innovative. You don’t have to worry; your budget’s ample.

  She listened for resentment around this statement, but he simply moved her down the hall to the next door and said, Ok Door, open.

  The door clicked open and he pushed her chair inside. He said, Technically the bonobos are allow
ed anywhere in this locked interaction area, but mostly we keep them here within the research room.

  The far side of the room had a large glass window into the enclosure. Light poured in, the nearest bonobos turning around to stare at them. Behind the bonobos was the cement hill and climbing structure, part of the pond visible. The hill lay between the tourists and researchers, blocking their vision of each other, allowing both groups to feel as though they were alone with the apes.

  Stotts parked her in the corner of the room, next to the whiteboard.

  Stay here, he said. Once Goliath enters the room, don’t talk and don’t get out of the chair. That’s important.

  At Stotts’ words, the upper torso of the bonobo avatar appeared on the wall, next to the window. Her hands moved quickly and fluidly, translating his words into sign.

  Stotts said, He will take awhile to get used to you. We don’t want to alarm him.

  Stotts’ words flashed by under the avatar’s face as she made each gesture. The speed so fast it was hard to match the word to the gesture. Still the gestures were hypnotic; the impulse was to watch as though the motions would soon make sense, as though a language could be broken with a few minutes of concentration.

  Why not? Frankie asked.

  The avatar-translator signed those two words as the text appeared below her chest. For the word not, she shook both her head and fist No. At least Frankie could translate this one word.

  Whoever had designed the avatar hadn’t spent a lot of money on it. The nose was a bit pointed and the hands small for a bonobo, the gestures brisk and the expression businesslike. The overall feel was of a human dressed up in a bonobo costume, some makeup applied.

  He answered, First off, ma’am, that’d be cruel. Secondly, while he’s a gentle soul, it’s wise to remember he has the physical power to rip our faces off our skulls. Third, to do research here, we need the cooperation of the bonobos.