Triumph Over Tragedy: an anthology for the victims of Hurricane Sandy

by R. T. Kaelin

  “Chicory? But she’s only—”

  “Eleven, twelve, something like that. I know.”

  I put my clothes on while Mick woke the others, and we went down to the stream. Chicory was sprawled out, but not peacefully—there was a dribble of blood at the corner of her mouth, her eyes were wide and horrified, her hands were curled into frozen talons. All about her in the moist soil of the stream bank were footprints. I searched my memory for an instance of murder in the chimp community and could find nothing remotely like it—quarrels, yes, and lengthy feuds and some ugly ambushes and battles, fairly violent, serious injuries now and then. But this had no precedent.

  “Ritual murder,” Yost murmured.

  “Or a sacrifice, perhaps?” suggested Beth Rankin.

  “Whatever it is,” I said, “they’re learning too fast. Recapitulating the whole evolution of religion, including the worst parts of it. We’ll have to talk to Leo.”

  “Is that wise?” Yost asked.

  “Why not?”

  “We’ve kept hands off so far. If we want to see how this thing unfolds—”

  “During the night,” I said, “the pope and the college of cardinals ganged up on a gentle young female chimp and killed her. Right now they may be off somewhere sending Alice or Ramona or Anna Livia’s twins to chimp heaven. I think we have to weigh the value of observing the evolution of chimp religion against the cost of losing irreplaceable members of a unique community. I say we call in Leo and tell him that it’s wrong to kill.”

  “He knows that,” said Yost. “He must. Chimps aren’t murderous animals.”

  “Chicory’s dead.”

  “And if they see it as a holy deed?” Yost demanded.

  “Then one by one we’ll lose our animals, and at the end we’ll just have a couple of very saintly survivors. Do you want that?”

  * *** *

  We spoke with Leo. Chimps can be sly and they can be manipulative, but even the best of them, and Leo is the Einstein of chimpanzees, does not seem to know how to lie. We asked him where Chicory was and Leo told us that Chicory was now a human being. I felt a chill at that. Grimsky was also a human being, said Leo. We asked him how he knew that they had become human and he said, “They go where Vendelmans go. When human go away, he become god. When chimpanzee go away, he become human. Right?”

  “No,” we said.

  The logic of the ape is not easy to refute. We told him that death comes to all living creatures, that it is natural and holy, but that only God could decide when it was going to happen. God, we said, calls His creatures to Himself one at a time. God had called Hal Vendelmans, God had called Grimsky, God would someday call Leo and all the rest here. But God had not yet called Chicory. Leo wanted to know what was wrong with sending Chicory to Him ahead of time. Did that not improve Chicory’s condition? No, we replied. No, it only did harm to Chicory. Chicory would have been much happier living here with us than going to God so soon. Leo did not seem convinced. Chicory, he said, now could talk words with her mouth and wore shoes on her feet. He envied Chicory very much.

  We told him that God would be angry if any more chimpanzees died. We told him that we would be angry. Killing chimpanzees was wrong, we said. It was not what God wanted Leo to be doing.

  “Me talk to God, find out what God wants,” Leo said.

  * *** *

  We found Buster dead by the edge of the pond this morning, with indications of another ritual murder. Leo coolly stared us down and explained that God had given orders that all chimpanzees were to become human beings as quickly as possible, and this could only be achieved by the means employed on Chicory and Buster.

  Leo is confined now in the punishment tank and we have suspended this week’s meat distribution. Yost voted against both of those decisions, saying we ran the risk of giving Leo the aura of a religious martyr, which would enhance his already considerable power. But these killings have to stop. Leo knows, of course, that we are upset about them. But if he believes his path is the path of righteousness, nothing we say or do is going to change his mind.

  * *** *

  Judy Vendelmans called today. She has put Hal’s death fairly well behind her, misses the project, and misses the chimps. As gently as I could, I told her what has been going on here. She was silent a very long time—Chicory was one of her favorites, and Judy has had enough grief already to handle for one summer—but finally she said, “I think I know what can be done. I’ll be on the noon flight tomorrow.”

  We found Mimsy dead in the usual way late this afternoon. Leo is still in the punishment tank—the third day. The congregation has found a way to carry out its rites without its leader. Mimsy’s death has left me stunned, but we are all deeply affected, virtually unable to proceed with our work. It may be necessary to break up the community entirely to save the animals. Perhaps we can send them to other research centers for a few months, three of them here, five there, until this thing subsides. But what if it doesn’t subside? What if the dispersed animals convert others elsewhere to the creed of Leo?”

  * *** *

  The first thing Judy said when she arrived was, “Let Leo out. I want to talk with him.”

  We opened the tank. Leo stepped forth, uneasy, abashed, shading his eyes against the strong light. He glanced at me, at Yost, at Jan, as if wondering which one of us was going to scold him; and then he saw Judy and it was as though he had seen a ghost. He made a hollow rasping sound deep in his throat and backed away. Judy signed hello and stretched out her arms to him. Leo trembled. He was terrified. There was nothing unusual about one of us going on leave and returning after a month or two, but Leo must not have expected Judy ever to return, must in fact have imagined her gone to the same place her husband had gone, and the sight of her shook him. Judy understood all that, obviously, for she quickly made powerful use of it, signing to Leo, “I bring you message from Vendelmans.”

  “Tell tell tell!”

  “Come walk with me,” said Judy.

  She took him by the hand and led him gently out of the punishment area and into the compound and down the hill toward the meadow. I watched from the top of the hill, the tall, slender woman and the compact, muscular chimpanzee close together, side-by-side, hand in hand, pausing now to talk, Judy signing and Leo replying in a flurry of gestures, then Judy again for a long time, a brief response from Leo, another cascade of signs from Judy, then Leo squatting, tugging at blades of grass, shaking his head, clapping hand to elbow in his expression of confusion, then to his chin, then taking Judy’s hand. They were gone for nearly an hour. The other chimps did not dare approach them. Finally Judy and Leo, hand-in-hand, came quietly up the hill to headquarters again. Leo’s eyes were shining and so were Judy’s.

  She said, “Everything will be all right now. That’s so, isn’t it, Leo?”

  Leo said, “God is always right.”

  She made a dismissal sign and Leo went slowly down the hill. The moment he was out of sight, Judy turned away from us and cried a little, just a little; then she asked for a drink; and then she said, “It isn’t easy, being God’s messenger.”

  “What did you tell him?” I asked.

  “That I had been in heaven visiting Hal. That Hal was looking down all the time and he was very proud of Leo, except for one thing, that Leo was sending too many chimpanzees to God too soon. I told him that God was not yet ready to receive Chicory and Buster and Mimsy, that they would have to be kept in storage cells for a long time until their true time came, and that was not good for them. I told him that Hal wanted Leo to know that God hoped he would stop sending him chimpanzees. Then I gave Leo Hal’s old wristwatch to wear when he conducts services, and Leo promised he would obey Hal’s wishes. That was all. I suspect I’ve added a whole new layer of mythology to what’s developing here, and I trust you won’t be angry with me for doing it. I don’t believe any more chimps will be killed. And I think I’d like another drink.”

  Later in the day we saw the chimps assembled by the stream. Leo
held his arm aloft and sunlight blazed from the band of gold on his slim hairy wrist, and a great outcry of grunts in god-talk went up from the congregation and they danced before him, and then he donned the sacred hat and the sacred shirt and moved his arms eloquently in the secret sacred gestures of the holy sign language.

  There have been no more killings. I think no more will occur. Perhaps after a time our chimps will lose interest in being religious, and go on to other pastimes. But not yet, not yet. The ceremonies continue, growing ever more elaborate, and we are compiling volumes of extraordinary observations, and God looks down and is pleased. And Leo proudly wears the emblems of his papacy as he bestows his blessing on the worshipers in the holy grove.

  *

  I Am Made of Every Color

  by Jaym Gates

  Secret

  He found the first one on the floor at the grocery store, and asked the clerk about it. “Oh, that's Anna,” the clerk said. “She's something. I think God took all the colors he had left and painted her out of them.”

  Jason laughed at the obvious hyperbole, and went on his way. He forgot about it within minutes. Three weeks later, he ran into a woman as he was going into the Post Office.

  The collision knocked the letters from his grasp, and a shred of shining skin off of her hand. It rustled onto the street, catching the light. He stared at it stupidly, and then at her face. She was indeed made of every color. Impossible shades of translucent green and peach and pink and gold shone from her white skin. Skin made of the same nacre he'd picked up in the store. She was beautiful. Magical. If the clerk hadn't said something, he'd never have noticed. If the letters hadn't scattered like feathers over the pavement, he'd never have seen.

  “D-doesn't that hurt or something?” He was terribly awkward. It was like every time he tried to talk to the co-worker with the lazy eye, or to his nephew, who had Down's. So hard not to stare. He wanted to touch her, see if her skin felt as odd as it looked.

  She waved it away. “It was just a tiny memory, I think.”

  “I worry about all sizes of memories,” he said, and invited her to dinner. He had no idea what he was doing, or saying, and didn't realize what he'd done until she was gone, and he had a dozen envelopes and a cheap ad flyer with her number scribbled on it.

  He realized later that she must have been terribly lonely, to accept an invitation from an awkward stranger.

  Memory

  At first, it had been in her chest. A tiny lump that formed when she was just about 2 years old. Her mama had smacked her on the bottom for talking back. The next day, the tiniest of bumps on her chest. Her parents, not inclined to notice little things, paid no attention. But it grew, now and then, when something bothered her. When a playmate called her mean names, when her cat got hit by a car, it grew a little bigger.

  She’d turned eight before her mother, giving her a bath one evening, finally noticed.

  They took her to the first doctor, who assured them it wasn't cancer. He agreed that it shouldn't be there, but it showed up as normal flesh to all their tests, and what could he do?

  “Wait and see,” he said.

  By the time her first boyfriend broke up with her, it was about the size of a golf-ball, and the doctors were firmly convinced that she was a mutant, an alien or a top-secret government project released into the wild.

  “It's like pearl,” one of them said, “but we can't figure out where it is coming from, and it’s nothing—biologically or chemically—like we've ever seen. Her ribcage has actually grown around it.” He wanted to do surgery, but she cried and he reluctantly gave in.

  “It isn't going to hurt her, as far as I can tell,” he admitted. “It's just a lump, but it's attached to her heart and spinal cord, and surgery would be very dangerous. Let me know if it gets painful, or inflamed, or she has strange symptoms.”

  “She has a pearl-that-isn't-a-pearl, growing in her chest,” said her mother.

  “Well, normal strange symptoms,” said the doctor.

  The girl smiled and stroked the thin skin over the lump.

  Secret

  “What's your favorite color?” Jason asked, worrying a piece of her pearl-skin off of her arm.

  “Black and white,” she said. The skin slipped off, another tiny secret. It would join the others he kept in a box in his office. Hidden from her.

  “That's not a color.”

  “Nope. It's a no-color and an every-color. It's me.”

  “Your favorite color is you?” he asked, laughing.

  “Yep.”

  “Ok. But why? Why do you turn everything into something else? My secrets are just words in my head.”

  She shrugged, gracefully.

  He kissed her wrist, savoring the feel of nacre that was still hardening. Her outer skin was old and brittle: little secrets, old secrets, other people's secrets. That skin came off easily. He was addicted to it. Putting it under his tongue allowed him to taste things she hid.

  “I know why you like white. You are every color. But why black?”

  She grew very still in his hands.

  “Because all of my colors are on the outside,” she said.

  Memory

  On her sixteenth birthday, the skin broke. She was alone in her bathroom when this happened. It hurt a little, but the skin was mostly dead, anyways. The rich gleam of a pearl shone through, golden-white struck with green and blue, yellow and silver.

  She never let anyone see her chest after that. The boys assumed it was a weird fetish, but they didn't care much. If they touched it and asked about the weird lump under her shirt, she told them it was a benign cyst. Most of them quickly stopped touching it.

  Ed was different. He felt the lump, and he wouldn't take that for an answer.

  When she bent over one day, he saw the tell-tale gleam from inside her shirt, and wouldn't be dissuaded. Since he was her steady boyfriend, and she was a little drunk, she let him take her shirt off.

  “Oh, wow,” was all he said, before he started kissing it.

  They were married four months later, because anyone who loved that most secret thing must love her, too.

  Secret

  “Move in with me,” Jason said, as they lay in bed together. He'd found a loose piece of shell on her lower back, right above her tailbone. He didn't want her to tell him what this secret was. It would be more fun to see for himself.

  “Ok,” she said, and kissed his hand “But I shed.”

  He laughed into her shoulder, playing his fingers across her lips. “I noticed.”

  He sucked on the shell, under his tongue.

  Memory

  Edward loved the pearl more than he loved her. He never kissed her. He kissed and fondled the pearl. When she covered it up around the house, he got angry. If she wore anything in public that would show even the littlest glimpse of it, he got even angrier. He called her “Treasure” and “Jewel” and “Precious”, but he almost never used her name.

  She got pregnant, and they were happier for a while. Ed forgot his obsession with the pearl…a little.

  She miscarried at six months.

  There wasn't much blood, but the pearl grew so large that it squeezed against her ribs.

  “It needs to come out, soon,” said the doctors.

  Ed did all of her talking now. Her throat was squeezed shut with grief, and her lungs couldn't seem to quite fill. “How will you do that?”

  “I'm afraid we'll have to drill it out,” said the doctor. “It's too large now to remove without tearing her apart, otherwise.”

  “Destroy the pearl?”

  The doctor gave him a strange look. “Sir, it is destroying your wife.”

  “She isn't ready for surgery yet. Let her get over losing the baby.”

  Ed took her home.

  Secret

  She moved in with Jason, with her cats and too many books and not very many pictures disappearing into his beautiful collections. She didn't try to make over the apartment. He was a little surprised. “You li
ve here, don't you want to decorate?”

  “I don't know how.”

  “You haven't ever decorated a place before?”

  She hung her head, couldn't meet his eyes. He could have sworn that her glow faded.

  “I did, once. It got messed up.”

  Skin fractures deeply across her chest, and he knows he's found one of her big secrets, one of the secrets around her heart.

  He takes her into his arms, but she is stiff and silent. This is a secret that isn't ready to fall off.

  Memory

  She got held up by two small-time crooks, coming home from the grocery store. They spilled the milk and took the ten dollars she had left. It was the last ten dollars from Ed's paycheck, because she hadn't gone back to work after the baby, and Ed was swinging between jobs, a victim of the economy. He wouldn't get paid for another two weeks.

  He hit her, hard, across the cheek, when she made it home and sobbed out her story to him. Bruised and shaken, she tried to cling to him, only to be flung aside.

  “They could have found the pearl!” he yelled. “Who cares about you?”

  Shocked, scared, tearing apart, she swung back at him, screaming inarticulate, mad-woman griefs. For a moment, he was the focus of all her hatred and hurt. The pearl shrank a little, maybe fueling her anger, and his eyes went cold. He caught her hand, and tied it behind her back.

  She raised her voice at him one more time, but he taught her a lesson, and the pearl grew again.

  Secret

  He became obsessed with finding out her secrets. He teased secret after secret out of her, unwinding her like a mummy. Down and down, although now she cried when she told him her secrets, and cried when her shell sloughed off. Bits of blood flecked her where he sometimes had to pry off the secret. He comforted her, of course, but sometimes he found himself having to bully her a little bit. It was for her own good. Surely the secrets must suffocate her, bind her. If he could pry them all away, she could love him.