Her BodyWare ID had been entered into the security system so any door would unlock so long as she was within three feet of it when she said, Ok Door, open.
She moved through the building, all the way back to the room that contained the bonobos’ sleeping chamber. The lights were in night-mode so they didn’t click on at her entrance. She waited silently in her wheelchair, several feet back, staring through the metal bars. As her eyes acclimatized, she saw the cotton hammocks heavy with sleeping bodies, a few nests of hay and blankets on the floor. The smell was of straw and pee and musky bonobo. She became aware of the raspy slow breathing, some of them half-snoring. She sat there content, waiting for them to stir.
Maybe three minutes later, she felt the sneeze coming on.
Shit, she whispered and grabbed for her crotch, just enough warning to jam her fingers in under her skirt and underwear, as close as she could get to the incision.
Normally what is a sneeze? Nothing. A fast muscular movement of the guts, over in a second. Since the operation, it had become something different. She held on with both hands, braced into her hold as she would into a car crash.
She sneezed. Saw black with a sparkling of lights. The sensation of a slammed door.
She exhaled slowly, the air trickling out between her teeth. She’d been to all the pain clinics, knew the techniques. Her body cavity, she imagined, empty and peaceful, her internal organs back on 107th St., comfy on her bed, watching a video. She made the image vivid, then slowly drifted back from the scene, lowering the sound on the video, closing the door to the room.
Only as her vision cleared and focused did she notice two shiny points of light inside the cage. Eyes. One of the bonobos staring at her over the edge of a hammock, startled by the sneeze.
Looking more carefully now, she spotted several other motionless faces, watching her.
She let go of her crotch and sat up straighter, staring back.
This felt different from being in the research room with Stotts and Goliath, for in that case, with more humans than bonobos, the balance was shifted toward a human perspective. Here she was alone with the group of them, breathing the same air, only bars in the way. They considered her solemnly, their eyes bright.
After a few minutes, their attention began to drift. They groomed themselves or cuddled. One of the hammocks near her began to move. There were at least two bonobos in it. In the dark she couldn’t tell which ones they were, but they began to French-kiss, tongue and lips engaged. The hammock swayed.
Soon after they were done, she heard a new movement. She searched through the darkness for the next couple having sex, then realized the sound came from behind her. Turning, she saw the keeper moving up the hallway, pushing a cart full of food. Through the windows, the sky was beginning to lighten.
The keeper stepped into the kitchen to rummage around for a while, the clatter of metal and pottery, the sink squealing on. Inside the chamber, Mama moved to the door, waiting. After a few minutes, the keeper stepped into the sleep chamber with a cup of coffee and a bottle of milk. She said, Ok Lights, on.
When the lights clicked on, she spotted Frankie and paused. She didn’t look pleased. Perhaps this was the peaceful part of her day.
Frankie said, Morning.
The woman’s only response was to say, Ok EarDrums, music on.
The music clicked on loud enough that the beat was audible from a few feet, her Bindi blinking, informing anyone looking she might not be able to hear them. Anyone would know to step into her line of vision, wave and speak where she could see the mouth—communicating the way she needed.
The keeper stepped past Frankie to unlock the door to the sleeping chamber.
Mama stood up and looked the keeper in the face. Not like a dog would greet its caretaker, all wiggling obeisance. Nor like a cat, tail up and demanding. No, Mama just stood there for a moment and looked, her eyes warm. On her shoulder sat Tooch, whining with hunger.
The keeper grunted and handed the bottle of milk to Tooch. He started nursing, businesslike as a machine.
In thanks, Mama rested her fingertips on the keeper’s arm for a moment.
The keeper gave the cup of coffee to Mama, then closed the door and left the room. Mama sat down and took a slurp, her eyes closed. Concentrating on her coffee, bald and grey and scrawny, she resembled a female Gollum, ready to mutter about her precious ring.
Meanwhile the keeper wheeled a cart full of food into the enclosure. Her movements echoing off the plexiglass and cement, she began hiding fruit around the enclosure for the bonobos to try to find. She tucked bananas into crannies in the climbing structure, hid the mangos under the milk crates. Half the battle of keeping smart animals healthy in captivity was having them stay busy and interested in life. Through the metal door to the enclosure, the bonobos couldn’t see where she was placing the food. They listened, heads cocked, eyes closed, clearly imagining each hiding spot. Mama was the only relaxed one, cradling her coffee.
When the food was all hidden, the keeper wheeled the cart back inside and cranked open the main door to the enclosure, giving the apes access to the food. All the bonobos stared into the sunlight, longing in their faces, but none of them moved. They turned instead toward Mama, watching her. The silence absolute.
Mama tilted back her cup, draining the last sip, then scratched her belly. Tooch climbed onto her back, looking outside.
Id, the youngest baby, dared to whine, breaking the silence.
The two grown females in the hammock next to Mama swiveled, giving the baby a piercing stare, their lips tight. Houdina hurriedly pulled Id to her breast to nurse her, hoping to keep her quiet.
Frankie guessed these two were Marge and Adele—the two who’d been having sex in the hammock earlier—although she couldn’t tell which was which. Both were in their early thirties and powerfully built. In the file Frankie had on the bonobos, beneath the photos of these two was scrawled the phrase, The Terrible Two. Their eyes never wavered from Houdina and Id.
Houdina stayed very still, trying to look small, while Id nursed.
After a moment, once it was clear that everyone was obeying, Mama sauntered out into the enclosure, Tooch on her back. They watched her go. After a pause, Marge and Adele followed, checking over their shoulders to make sure no one else had moved—bank robbers leaving the scene.
The rest waited a good 20 seconds and then one by one they knuckled outside, letting time pass between each—first the eldest females, then the juveniles. Throughout the process, they watched the Terrible Two and Mama through the door, ready to freeze at the slightest disapproval.
By the time the adult males were allowed to leave the sleeping chamber, most of the biggest caches of fruit had been claimed.
*
Around the time Francine was 13, she’d begun to attract attention. She saw other girls and women walk along the street—taller and she thought much better looking—cutting through the crowds of people, utterly ignored. Instead it was to her that the men began to turn, toward her body as though it were waving at them, calling out some information. Something must have seemed different, something in the way she moved or held her face. Some days this signal seemed loud enough to carry across the street. Was it a statement, a question? It cut through whatever the males were in the midst of. Their heads swiveled, their eyes narrowed. Not all of them, but still a disturbing number.
Her body’s message was understood in different ways by different men. If the man were white, most often he became still, his expression frozen. Whatever her body was saying, he seemed to hear it as an insult or perhaps a challenge. Most of these men didn’t speak to her. She hurried by, head down. She was only 13 and they were grown men. She was accustomed to adults ignoring her, addressing her only to tell her the rules, where she could play or to not yell in the halls. The way these men looked at her now it was as though she’d done something—or was about t
o do something—very wrong.
Black men were less disturbing in general. For them, her body’s call seemed more like a friend waving hi. They tended to examine her with appreciation, to call out in her wake, as if she’d given them a gift. She wasn’t ready for any of this, wanted instead to play Parcheesi with her friends or read, but at least the black men’s reactions were less upsetting. Perhaps her first thought along the lines of evolutionary strategies was that their actions were less likely to scare women off.
However, in her neighborhood, most of the men were white. She began to feel as though she were a passenger in her body, a fairly unwilling one, along for its ride.
Every year, her period got a little worse, the sensation she felt. At school, she spent time in the bathroom, leaning against the wall of a cubicle, her mouth slack. In class, her hearing at times receded, so the teacher had to call out her name repeatedly. Between classes, she walked tenderly, limping slightly, sliding her right foot forward like she was on ice. She watched the other girls in her class but never noticed them walking this way.
Her parents were getting divorced during this time, constantly rushing off to appointments with lawyers, accountants and mediators, leaving her alone. Divorce was not an outcome they’d ever imagined for themselves. Their locked-down expressions were tighter than ever, their movements nearly robotic.
Three times she tried asking her mother questions about her experience: was it normal, what strategies or products could she use? She never considered talking to her dad about it. Each time, her mother reacted the same way, her face hardening into a mask as her eyes skittered away from Francine’s. Anger? Disgust? Guilt? It was hard to say.
Her mom clipped out the words—Take ibuprofen—and then she left the room.
The only fact Francine knew about her mom’s reproductive experience was that right after giving birth, she’d had her uterus removed.
Francine never considered taking a sick day because she’d have to explain to her parents in what way she was sick and it was clear this subject was not to be discussed. Increasingly she was left wondering if there was something different about her body; if this was what the men on the street were sensing. She reasoned if total strangers could see it, then everyone at school must be able to also. During those adolescent years with her heightened social antennae, this idea terrified her.
When her friends asked her why she spent so much time in the bathroom or why she walked so slowly, she tried to change the subject. If they persisted, she’d panic. She’d find herself yelling, saying it was none of their business. In Manhattan, she’d lost her polite Canadian voice. It sloughed off like a skin she’d outgrown. Still three of her friends were loyal, best friends since second grade. Instead of alienating them, the yelling made them more concerned.
So by the time she was 16, she’d had to master two new capabilities: a cold confident voice and an instinctive sense of what to say to make each person go away and leave her alone. The ability to see the secret weakness each person held: the lesbian sister; the father’s likely affair; the tender dimpling of cellulite along the thighs. With her three ex-friends, she learned how to find this type of button and jab it hard, in public when necessary.
It became a strength she could use at any moment.
DAY 5
Seven
At nine A.M., she was lying down on the couch in Stotts’ office, eyes closed, resting after a morning of watching the bonobos.
When Stotts walked in, he was talking to his Wrist-able. He said, Remind me to pick up Tess’s meds on the way home.
At his entrance, the lights automatically clicked on. She cupped her hand over her eyes.
The Wrist-able’s voice responded (the standard female voice, such an organized tone), On the way home, I will remind you to get Tess’s meds.
Thanks, he replied to the device—his decency that ingrained—and then noticed Frankie in the room.
She jerked her chin toward the Wrist-able and asked, You a Philistine?
The Philistines were in the news a lot these days, individuals who believed technology had gone too far. The spectrum ran from those who turned off their access to the Quark for a few minutes on Sunday to diehards who refused body implantations and demanded paper notifications.
No, Stotts replied, I’m just cheap.
She asked, Who’s Tess?
My daughter, he said.
The four-year-old? She’s sick?
Asthma.
She took her hand away from her eyes, How bad?
With more floods and droughts, the levels of fungus, dust and pollen were higher. Asthma had become a more serious diagnosis. About five years ago, there’d been that first “asthma storm” (a freak spring thunderstorm in Dallas followed by a westerly wind blowing pollen through the city); people who didn’t even know they were allergic had difficulty breathing. Now the weather report commonly included recommended levels of pre-emptive medication, while fleets of freelance ambulances converged on the worst situations.
He said, There have been a few scares.
(Saying this, his voice was flat, less expressive than the Wrist-able’s voice.)
Turning away to the closet, he began packing rocks into a bag. He said, Time for more flint knapping. You coming?
She said, It must be hard to see a kid sick.
He seemed to hear this. He paused for a moment, studying the rock in his hand.
He said to the rock, It’s the worst. This morning . . .
He waved his hand in the air, cutting himself off and said again, You coming?
Yep, she said and got slowly to her feet.
He asked, You promise this time you won’t talk in front of Goliath?
Yes. How’d you learn to flint knapp?
He said, It was a research project I designed as a postdoc. I spent a year in Tanzania, in the Olduvai Gorge, with two Fulbright scholars. We taught ourselves how to knapp.
She said, That’s a long way to go to learn to slap rocks together.
He opened the door for her and took hold of her upper arm for the walk down the hall, his grip warm and no-nonsense.
He said, Tanzania was where humans first learned how to use tools. We wanted to master the same skills in the same landscape in order to explore how it might have happened.
He matched his step to her shuffle, pacing along as ceremoniously as in a wedding. She was moving faster than yesterday. She remembered a cartoon she’d once seen of a snail riding on the back of a turtle, calling out Wheeee!
He said, Many fields hypothesize about why humans have managed to monopolize so many of the planet’s resources. You evolutionists concentrate on the body: opposable thumbs, bipedal stance.
In an attempt to move at her speed, he tried adding a pause to his step, his right foot catching in mid air, a slow-motion limp. He said, I concentrate on tools.
She eyed the goal of the locked door at the end of the hall and said, Chimps use tools. Are they human?
Ma’am, chimps haven’t progressed past sticks and stones in a million years. Humans have technology that ratchets upward. We’ve moved from the cordless phone to implants in a few decades. I specialize in how we began to learn to do that.
He said, With Goliath, I want to find out if bonobos can master the first tools and if they have the precursor skills for ratcheting.
Her incision was radiating heat upward. Information about pain was transmitted along the same type of neurons as heat; this was why pain frequently was confused with temperature: the cold slice of a knife or the burning of a wound. The chemical compound in chili peppers activated the pain sensors, making the tongue burn, not a flavor at all. Simplify, simplify was the body’s motto, each structure serving many purposes.
She said, You got a big grant for this one, huh?
He grunted, Only way I can pay for my share of the food costs.
&n
bsp; Frankie had her head down as she walked, breathing through her mouth. His hand round her arm was a comfort, solid as a railing. She asked, So what happened in Tanzania?
Her need to think hard, to distract herself, was part of the reason for her success. Other researchers spent time watching TV or laughing with friends. She hunched over her work, taking notes, fingering her bottles of pills.
He said, The two Fulbrights and I, we learned to knapp stone knives and then used the knives to butcher scavenged meat, trying to figure out how pre-humans did it.
Scavenged meat?
Research shows pre-humans didn’t so much bring down prey as fight for access to a kill long enough to slice off some meat and run.
Wait a sec, she said, They weren’t hunter and gatherers, but vultures and gatherers?
It’s the current theory.
Her eyes flicked from left to right. Her mind beginning to tick. She asked, What about the gathering part, finding tubers and berries. Some Tanzanian tribesman teach you?
He shook his head, We couldn’t find any tribesman who knew enough anymore. The local tribes specialize in the tourist trade now or they live in government housing. So we learned from books, researching which plants were edible. In terms of scavenging, we practiced our butchering on the carcasses we found, mostly impalas and gazelles.
He added, And one elephant.
Serious? she asked.
It had been shot by poachers a few days earlier.
She asked, A few days in the hot sun?
She imagined the rotting elephant, Fulbright scholars running up to it holding sharp rocks.
Yes ma’am, he said. It took us two days to figure out how to cut through the hide. Like trying to slice through a tire.
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