by Ginny Rorby
It was when she turned back with the second bag full that she saw the old man. She froze, her heart pounding. He had her basket and he was very mad.
Joey gulped to keep a scream from escaping. Angry faces terrified her and his was red to the point of bursting. He was yelling at her, making it hard to read the furious flurry of words. He reached in the basket, grabbed the beefsteak mushroom, and shook it at her. “Thief,” he said. She caught that word because the tongue whips out like a snake’s with words that begin with “th.”
Instinctively, she took a step backward. The creek flowed over the rim of her boot and filled it with icy water. She was trapped now, unable to run if she had to.
He must have seen that he was scaring her, because he calmed down a little and put the beefsteak mushroom back in the basket. “You’re trespassing,” he said, shaking a gnarly finger at her. “I’m sick ---------- people ---------- mushrooms.”
“What did you say?” she stammered, though it was clear enough since he’d called her a thief. People were very territorial about the mushrooms on their property.
He said something else and pointed up the hill. Joey’s eyes followed the jab of his finger and for the first time she saw the small dark house nearly hidden by the trees. His head jerked and he blinked as if he’d been slapped. “Oh my,” he said. DEAF YOU? He brought his index finger to his right ear then brought his hands together like elevator doors closing then pointed at her.
Joey remembered that sign. It was one Smiley had taught her before she left the hospital. One secret she had successfully kept from her mother, who didn’t want her to learn to sign, was that she still practiced the alphabet with the old Sesame Street sign language book that Smiley gave her the day after the doctors said her hearing loss was permanent.
She nodded. Her foot was very cold. She slipped it out of the boot, which was so heavy with water it was hard to lift. Keeping an eye on the old man, she emptied it, then waded slowly toward shore. She froze when he stepped toward her.
He brought his fist to his chest and made a circle with it. “I’m sorry,” he said, and held out his hand.
She put the bag of mushrooms in it.
He turned and put them in her basket. “You can have them,” he said slowly, pronouncing each word carefully. “I don’t know one mushroom from another.”
The cold water was making Joey’s foot ache. She stepped up on the bank a few feet away, still watching him cautiously, though now that he was calm, she could see that this small, white-haired, brittle-looking man was too old to be afraid of.
She’d missed some of what he’d said about the mushrooms, but now he was asking her something that ended in “---------- sign language.”
By catching the last two words, she guessed he was asking her if she used it. People who did not depend on reading lips didn’t realize how many words create the same mouth shape. He had probably said “do you use…”—three words that only pucker the lips.
“No,” she said.
He shook his head, sadly, then patted his pockets, looking for something he wasn’t able to find. “Can you read my lips?”
“Some.”
“Come with me,” he said, and pointed up the steep hill.
She didn’t move.
“It’s okay,” he said, signing, OKAY.
Still she didn’t move. “I don’t think I’d better.” She saw by a little facial flinch that he understood very well that he’d scared her.
“Wait here then,” he said, using a “stay” hand signal as if she were a dog. “Until I get a pencil and paper.”
She nodded.
Joey watched the old man climb up through the trees. He did so slowly, resting often with one hand against a tree trunk and the other at his chest. When he was still yards from the top, he stopped again, looked back, and tried to smile. His face was red and his chest heaved.
Joey watched him stand there for a full minute trying to catch his breath and staring up at the house, still a hundred feet away. He started to climb again, but had taken only a few steps when his left foot went out from under him. He fell heavily and began to slide down the trail. Joey grabbed her basket, jammed her foot into the wet, cold boot, and climbed the hill to help him.
He’d caught hold of a redwood sapling, so he’d slipped only a few feet back down the hill. Joey helped him get his footing and let him lean on her until they reached the steps leading up to his back deck. That was when she saw the jungle gym in one corner, a tipped-over tricycle, and a litter of toys. Though she was no longer afraid of him, it made her more comfortable to know he was someone’s grandfather.
“I’m an old goat,” he said slowly, emphasizing each word, “but clearly not a mountain goat.” He smiled, patted her hand, and indicated that she should sit and wait for him. When the sliding glass doors opened again, he stepped out onto his deck with a pad of paper, then turned and motioned to someone inside.
Joey was watching his mouth, waiting for him to say something, when she saw small but very long, dark fingers reach up and curl into his hand.
The man stepped aside. At the height of his knee, a big-eared, amber-eyed face peeked around at her from behind his legs.
Joey gasped. “A monkey.”
The old man shook his head, then made the letter “N” with his right hand and snapped it sharply. NO. NO. “She’s a chimpanzee.”
For a second, Joey thought the chimp was clutching a stuffed toy, but when it opened its hand a gray kitten scampered away and jumped off the deck. The chimp brought two fingers to its eyes, then stretched the V toward Joey.
“She is saying, ‘I see you,’” the old man said, and made the same sign.
I-SEE-YOU, Joey signed back, then grinned.
“Don’t show your teeth,” the old man said, covering his mouth.
The little chimpanzee was wearing a diaper and a T-shirt from their local lighthouse, Point Cabrillo. “My brother wears that same outfit day and night,” Joey said and laughed, then clamped a hand over her mouth.
The chimp began to sway back and forth, then ran toward her on bowed legs and knuckles. Joey held still like her mother had told her to do when a dog runs up to sniff you. But the little chimp veered off and grabbed the basket Joey had left on the top step. She dumped all the mushrooms out, put the basket over her head, and began to spin until she got dizzy and fell down.
Joey giggled.
The chimp peeked from beneath its wicker bonnet, grinned, and signed, I-SEE-YOU, again.
“I-SEE-YOU, too. May I pet her?” she asked the old man.
He nodded, then wrote on the pad and showed it to her: But let her come to you.
Joey sat down on the deck and crossed her ankles.
The chimpanzee rolled over and stood up. Her eyes locked on Joey’s face, not boldly, but not shyly, either. Joey knew she was being judged. She knew this because it was how she herself judged the intentions of strangers.
The old man held the pad down for her to see. He’d written, Friend.
When Joey looked up, he signed, FRIEND, by hooking his index fingers first one way, then the other.
Joey pointed to herself, then hooked her index fingers.
The chimpanzee mimicked the sign, then glanced up at the old man, who nodded. “A new friend,” he said.
She came toward Joey with one hand extended, bent at the wrist. Joey touched the back of her own wrist to the chimp’s, then patted her own thigh. The chimp glanced up at the old man, who flipped his hands for her to go ahead.
The chimp turned a couple of circles, then stepped across Joey’s legs and sat down. She linked her arms around Joey’s neck and put her forehead against Joey’s.
“Wow,” Joey said. “What a wonderful girl you are.” She stroked the coarse, thin hair on the chimp’s head and watched her staring at her own index fingers at work in her lap, signing, FRIEND, to herself. When she lifted her head, her eyes sparkled and her lips were puckered. She kissed Joey’s left eye, then pulled her head to one side a
nd began to pick through her bushy, auburn hair.
The old man held the pad out. She’s grooming you. Her name is S-U-K-A-R-I. He’d added the phonetic spelling: Sue-car-e.
No one had ever thought to do that for her. “Sukari,” Joey said.
The old man nodded and smiled, then fingerspelled her name. It’s Swahili for sugar, he wrote on the pad. A nickname for sugar-butt.
As if she understood, Sukari turned, put her head against Joey’s knees, and pulled her diaper down so Joey could admire the fine white hairs on her bottom.
Joey put her head back and laughed out loud.
CHAPTER TWO
Joey sat on the top step with her back against the side of the house and the baby chimpanzee balanced on her knee. She knew it was unnecessary, but she kept the fingers of her right hand spread across Sukari’s narrow shoulders, as if she needed support like Luke had when he was a tippy baby. In truth, Joey wanted the energetic feel of Sukari against her palm to last forever.
Though where she sat was damp, shady, and cold, Joey felt as if her insides were roasting. How could she have imagined her day would take this turn? That she would be sitting here with a chimpanzee rifling her pockets, splaying her lips to look at her teeth, and rooting into her boots as far down as she could reach.
Joey laughed until her sides hurt. But deep inside was a truer joy, exactly like she’d felt when her mother came home from the hospital with Luke—instantaneous, heart-pounding love.
Sukari went back to sorting through sections of Joey’s thick, unruly hair. When she found a spiky redwood leaf, she yanked it from the tangle.
“Ouch.” Joey flinched. “That hurt.”
Sukari made a loose little fist, circled her heart, then slapped the leaf back in place and covered it with a clump of hair.
The old man, who sat at the base of the jungle-gym slide, flapped his hand for Joey’s attention, made the same sign, and pointed to Sukari. “She said she was sorry.”
“How did she know what I said?”
He thought a moment, then wrote, Do you have any pets?
Joey shook her head.
How old is your brother?
“Two and a half.”
“Sukari’s probably three and a half,” he said, then took a moment to write his answer to her question. Even though babies can’t understand what we say, they figure out what we mean from our facial expressions and the words we repeat over and over. It’s how children learn language. It’s the same with our pets. They don’t have to understand every word to get what we mean. We say, “Are you ready to eat dinner? Do you want to go for a walk?” and they probably hear blah, blah, blah, eat, blah, blah, blah, walk.
Joey laughed. “That’s just what I do. Catch a word or two and figure the rest out.”
He clapped his hands together. “Exactly.”
“Did you teach her sign language?” Joey asked.
He nodded.
“How many words does she know?”
“Twenty-five or thirty.”
“Where did you get her?”
“Africa.” He flicked his index finger away from his forehead. “Understand?”
“Africa, yes. Understand, yes, but what does this mean?” Joey flicked her finger off her forehead.
That’s the sign for “Do you understand?”
UNDERSTAND, Sukari signed.
“Yes, I understand,” Joey said and poked Sukari in the ribs.
Sukari leaned back along the length of Joey’s outstretched legs until she was looking at him upside down. She brought her arms over her head and signed something.
The old man repeated the signs for Joey, then wrote, “Tickle me, turtle.” She calls me turtle because I’m slow.
“How did she think of that?”
He held the pad so she could see his answer: In addition to Hidey, the kitten, she has a pet tortoise. He took the pad back and wrote, I guess I remind her of the tortoise when I’m up and moving. He showed her what he’d written, then laughed.
“Why is Hidey’s name spelled like that instead of H-e-i-d-i?” Joey asked as she tickled Sukari’s ribs.
When we first got her she tried to hide from you know who. Sukari would look for her, signing “where hide cat?” He put his pencil down and signed each word for her, then wrote, The name evolved into Hidey.
When he showed Joey the signs, Sukari sat up and signed, WHERE HIDE CAT? and looked around. When she didn’t see her, she signed, MORE TICKLE.
“No,” the old man said. “That’s enough tickle.”
Sukari stood up and flailed her hands, then signed, MORE TICKLE, over and over.
“She’s spoiled,” he said. He started to write something, but Sukari grabbed his pad and threw it over the railing.
The old man signed something emphatically. “Tell her bad girl,” he said to Joey. UNDERSTAND?
“Sukari’s bad,” Joey said, shaking a finger at her, but she couldn’t keep from grinning.
Sukari marched back to Joey on her little bowed legs and bared her teeth.
The old man shouted, “Watch out,” but Joey had no time to realize that the whisper she’d heard was a warning before Sukari bit her on the arm.
Joey’s reaction was immediate. She caught Sukari’s hand and bit her back.
Sukari screamed and ran to the old man, who smacked her bottom. “Are you okay?” he asked Joey.
She nodded. “She didn’t break the skin. Besides, I get bitten all the time by our resident monster.” Joey held out her arm for him to see. “Should I have bitten her back?”
His head bobbed. “That’s exactly what you should have done.”
Sukari crawled into his lap for sympathy and buried her face in her hands. When neither of them paid any attention, she peeked at her hand where Joey had bitten her, carefully parting the hairs to look for a wound. She held it up for the old man to examine, but he only scolded her again.
She signed, SORRY.
“Don’t tell me, tell her you’re sorry.” He pointed to Joey.
Instead, she climbed him like a tree trunk, dropped over his shoulder and onto the slide, climbed to the top, and slid back down.
Joey went down the steps to retrieve the pad. She had so many questions.
Sukari pushed her hands between the old man’s arm and his side, spread them, and watched Joey through the crack she’d created.
Joey wiped leaves from the pad and put it beside his foot. When she got back to the deck, she smiled, remembering not to show her teeth, and crooked a finger for Sukari to come.
GO. TELL SORRY, the man signed.
Sukari climbed down and moved cautiously toward Joey.
“Would she bite me again?”
He shook his head. “If you want her as a friend…,” he said to Sukari, then signed, WANT FRIEND, TELL SORRY.
Sukari turned, circled her chest with her small fist, and held her arm out, wrist bent, with the back of her hand to Joey.
The old man mimicked her bent wrist. He picked up the pad. That’s submissive behavior, he scrawled in large letters and held it for Joey to see.
“No biting.” She shook a finger at Sukari.
Sukari hung her head and signed something.
Joey waited to watch the old man’s lips interpret. When he stopped laughing, he wrote, She must really be sorry. She called herself “a dirty diaper devil.”
Joey laughed, then took Sukari’s hand and pulled her into her lap. FRIEND, she signed. “Is that right?” she asked.
He gave her a thumbs-up.
“Did you buy her?” Joey asked.
He shook his head no, then began to write an explanation, some of which he crossed out. When he handed Joey the pad, a line was drawn through bushmeat hunter. Instead, he’d written, A poacher killed her mother when she was just a few months old.
Sukari was sitting in Joey’s lap, facing the old man and letting Joey rub her belly.
“Oh no. Why?” Joey asked.
They ate her mother, the old man wrote, and bro
ught Sukari back to sell.
“Ate her mother? Who eats chimpanzees?”
Chimpanzees are called bushmeat in Cameroon.
“Would they have eaten her, too?”
Not much meat on a baby, but they eat them if they’re hungry enough. She’d already been sold to an amusement park. Joey watched his writing grow darker. Others are sold to animal traders who in turn sell them to rich fools who collect wild animals as pets, or to research labs, where most of them end up anyway.
Joey felt sick. “What would a research lab want with a baby chimpanzee?”
Chimps are genetically our closest relatives. Researchers use them to test all kinds of things including medicines before they’re approved for use on humans.
“Don’t you have to be sick before medicines work?”
They make them sick first.
“Even babies?”
That’s not the half of it. They’ve been used in the space program, sent into orbit.… His face was getting red.
Joey changed the subject. “How did you get her?” She stroked Sukari’s fingers with their perfect little nails.
The two sanctuaries for confiscated babies were full, so my wife and I took her. We were in Africa doing medical work and fell into doing some rehab with baby animals. When the rangers took her away from the amusement park owner, she was nearly dead, so they brought her to us. She’s still small for her age, he added.
It took him a while to write his answer. “What’s your name?” Joey asked before he finished.
SORRY, he signed, then wrote, Dr. Mansell, Charles Mansell. Call me Charlie.
Joey stuck her hand out and they shook. “My name’s Joey. Joey Willis. I just live up the creek from here.” She pointed. “We live where the old rest home used to be before it burned down.”
“I remember it.”
“Where’s your wife?
“She died a year ago and I moved back here,” he said, then looked away, out through the trees.
“I’m sorry,” Joey said, and without really being aware of it, she signed SORRY at the same time.
Charlie saw it and wrote, Fast learner.
“I taught myself the alphabet,” she said.
You weren’t born deaf. How did you lose your hearing?