Jennie

by Douglas Preston

  We were deeply impressed and accepted Dr. Prentiss’s research proposal, with a few caveats. We refused the stipend; we found the idea of taking money to put Jennie into a research project repulsive. We also reserved the right to observe Dr. Prentiss and Jennie whenever we wished and to terminate the project at any time, for any reason.

  Dr. Prentiss accepted these requirements, and Jennie’s momentous voyage into the world of language began.

  [FROM an interview with Lea Archibald.]

  Dr. Prentiss . . . Well! What can I tell you about Dr. Prentiss? Maybe I’m not the best person to talk to about her. She was not exactly a warm person. She was all business, and full of that jargon that makes even the most ridiculous thing sound intelligent. We did not see eye-to-eye. She didn’t approve of the way we were raising Jennie—she who had never raised a child in her life. She never has married, you know. It makes one wonder, doesn’t it?

  She felt we were being inconsistent while raising Jennie. She wanted us to do all these experimental things, while I just wanted to raise a child.

  Yes, I have to admit it, she loved Jennie—in her own limited way, of course. And Jennie loved her back. Jennie was so sweet and trusting, even with people like her.

  What did she look like? Huh! Immaculate, poised, beautiful, a blond icicle. She was about thirty-five years old. Came from a rich old New York family, although you’d never know it from the way she dressed. Patched jeans and a work shirt and a silly hat. Plucked her eyebrows though; I could tell. She drove an old Jeep at reckless speeds through the neighborhood, endangering the neighborhood children. She was supposed to be brilliant, Ph.D. from Harvard, et cetera, et cetera. Perhaps she was; I’ve never read any of her papers on Jennie. Nor do I have the slightest interest, thank you.

  Now isn’t it funny, but I don’t even know what they discovered from studying Jennie. Hugo tried to talk to me about it but I found it silly. Something about how they found out Jennie was smart! Well hallelujah! Any fool could have told them that.

  Dr. Prentiss started giving us ASL lessons. It wasn’t quite as simple as she had said. Although Jennie was supposed to learn only five or ten signs the first year, she wanted us to learn hundreds. Give, drink, eat, tickle, hug, more, you, me, tricycle, sorry, dirty (that really meant “I have to go to the bathroom!”), and many others. We made up signs for our names and Jennie’s name. Her sign was an ASL “J”—the little pinky extended from a clenched hand—but pointing at her chest. [She proceeded to demonstrate the gesture.] Mine was an ASL “L” drawn through the air in a kind of “Howdy!” gesture. Like this. [Another demonstration.]

  Dr. Prentiss’s demands on us were excessive. She actually expected us to sign whenever Jennie was around, whether we were talking to Jennie or not. Can you imagine? It was a ridiculous imposition and I vetoed it immediately. I had to put my foot down on a number of occasions. After all, it was my house and my daughter. I mean my chimpanzee daughter, of course. She also wanted us to sign silently. I said, “Why on earth sign silently when Jennie understands spoken English already? No thank you,” I said, “we will speak the words while signing them.” I also pointed out to her that Sarah was just two years old and still learning how to speak. If we started this silent signing business, goodness knows how she would have turned out. Jennie wasn’t the only child we were raising. With all her brains, Dr. Prentiss never thought things through. She didn’t have any common sense at all.

  Don’t get me wrong: we were thrilled about the prospect of being able to communicate with Jennie. That was terribly important to us. We wanted to unlock her mind and her thoughts.

  Sandy was the most enthusiastic of all. He picked up ASL just like that. We already knew he was a genius—I mean he scored at that level on IQ tests. You should have seen him after a few years, signing furiously all over the place, just as fluent as a deaf person. It was a beautiful thing to watch him sign. The physical movement, the fluidity, of ASL is so lovely and graceful. It’s like a dance, you know. The whole body is involved. In a way it’s even more beautiful than spoken language. I’ve forgotten most of it now, it’s been so long.

  So Dr. Prentiss started coming three days a week. I heard a lot of noise from the basement where they played, but I didn’t see any evidence of signing. Some days they went outside and climbed around the crab apple tree, and I saw her signing away. But no response from Jennie. Hugo and I fumbled our way through signing, and clear wore out that ASL dictionary but Jennie seemed totally uninterested. It was so discouraging. She’d sit there on the floor playing with a stuffed animal or something, and Hugo and I’d be bending over her, signing away till we were blue in the face, looking up signs in the dictionary, arguing about what sign was what. And you know what? She’d just look at us with that what-the-heck-are-you-crazy-humans-doing-now expression on her sweet little face.

  After a month of this I took Dr. Prentiss aside. “Now look here,” I said, “what’s going on? Why isn’t Jennie learning anything? She’s darn smart enough to learn these signs,” I said, “so what’s the problem?” What was wrong with her teaching?

  Dr. Prentiss was a defensive girl. Woman, I mean. She got all huffy and said our expectations were too high. It might take six months for the first sign, she said. Six months!! I was furious. Why. This was the first I’d heard of six months. Well, I talked to Hugo and he tried to calm me down, but I was not going to have this woman in our house for six months. We had quite an argument about it, Hugo and I. Oh dear.

  [FROM Recollecting a Life by Hugo Archibald.]

  Dr. Prentiss began working intensively with Jennie during the late spring of 1967. She felt that a warm relationship was a necessary prerequisite to teaching a chimpanzee sign language. While this may seem obvious to the uninformed reader, in fact it was a highly controversial position in the field. Many primatologists felt that early efforts to teach chimpanzees ASL had been compromised by the strong bond that always developed between researcher and subject. They believed that such a relationship would destroy the researcher’s objectivity and would cause unconscious “cueing” to the chimpanzee. This criticism of ASL teaching to chimpanzees, unfortunately, continues to this day. There are still a great many eminent ethologists who dismiss the validity of all ASL experiments done with chimpanzees for this very reason.

  Dr. Prentiss, Harold Epstein, and I felt otherwise. Human infants need a close bond with their mothers and a great deal of love while learning language. There was no reason to suppose chimpanzees were any different. We could have introduced rigorous double-blind controls for teaching Jennie ASL, denying her direct human contact and therefore eliminating the possibility of cueing, but the end result would be a perfect experimental setup with a negative result. A human baby could not learn language under those circumstances, let alone a chimp.

  Dr. Prentiss spent twenty-four hours a week with Jennie. After four weeks, to our surprise and disappointment, there were no results whatsoever. Jennie could imitate anything, and we expected her to pick up signs as fast as, for example, she had learned to wash the dishes, start the car when our backs were turned, light matches, unscrew light bulbs, and use scissors to cut all the hair off her tummy.

  We expected it would take only a day or two for Jennie to pick up her first sign. Instead, we had been waiting a month, without any encouraging signs at all. Sandy in particular was very disappointed. He had studied ASL with enthusiasm and had learned dozens of signs, but after a month with no progress from Jenny his interest was flagging. Dr. Prentiss encouraged us, saying that imitation and communication were quite different. It would be simple to teach Jennie to imitate hand gestures; it was a different matter entirely teaching her to communicate with hand gestures. Looking back, I am amused by our reaction. We were typical parents, overly ambitious for our child, full of expectations, and ready to blame a lack of progress on the teacher.

  [FROM an interview with Lea Archibald.]

  Let’s see now . . . About five weeks after Dr. Prentiss started, I was in the kit
chen cooking dinner. Dr. Prentiss had just left, and Jennie was inside playing on the kitchen floor. She got bored and started banging her cup on the floor. I turned around and said, “No!” very crossly. She stopped for a moment and then started banging again. Except this time she was banging her cup and spoon. And she made that sassy noise, you know, the Bronx Cheer. That razzing noise with her lips, while sticking out her belly. Right at me!

  She knew exactly how to get under my skin. I picked her up and swatted her on the fanny. Now don’t be shocked. The truth is, it did no good to swat that chimp on the fanny. It didn’t hurt her a bit. Chimpanzees don’t have a nice cushioned tush, you know. It’s all bone and hard as a rock back there. But it made me feel better. And of course it upset her, because she was very sensitive to our moods. Although sometimes when I spanked her she would laugh and pretend that we were playing and start swatting me back. Oh, that used to make me boiling mad.

  Anyway, after I swatted her she sat on the floor rocking back and forth, going “Oooo oooo ooo.” Very upset. I was still angry and I said, “Shut up!” And then, then she made a sign. I was stunned. I said, “What?” and then I signed What? She did it again, insistently. It was the sign for hug, like this. [She demonstrated the sign by crossing her arms over her chest.] I was startled, but then I thought, Oh well, that’s a natural gesture. That’s not a sign. She’s done that before. You see, Jennie would sometimes hug herself in a way that was very similar. So I signed Hug who? just to see. And Jennie signed back Hug, hug, hug, hug Jennie, Jennie! She actually signed her name! Jennie! [Again she demonstrated the sign.]

  I was . . . thunderstruck. I signed Who are you? and she signed Me Jennie! with both hands. Two signs altogether. Just like this. [Mrs. Archibald demonstrated.] Me Jennie! With this look of triumph on her face, it was unmistakable. . . . It was . . . excuse me . . . Please forgive me. . . . It brings back such memories. Oh dear . . . [Editor’s note: At this point Mrs. Archibald broke down and the interview session was suspended.]

  [FROM the journals of the Rev. Hendricks Palliser.]

  January 15, 1967

  Yesterday I called upon the Archibald household, to see Jennie. Jennie is now being instructed by a tutor three days a week who is teaching her sign language. I have seen the lady coming and going in a Jeep for some weeks now. She was there, and I regret to say she was a rather rude, inconsiderate person. She asked me to leave. Jennie, it seems, is actually communicating with various people using sign language.

  I returned after the woman had departed and spoke with Mrs. Archibald. I have been giving a year or more of thought to this question, and I finally made her the proposition.

  It sounds perfectly ridiculous on paper and I do not doubt it sounded equally absurd to Mrs. Archibald. I stated that, in my opinion, Jennie would benefit from religious instruction. I asked if I might be permitted to take her one afternoon per week.

  I naturally received the reaction I expected: disbelief followed by ill-concealed mirth. I explained to Mrs. Archibald how and why I felt that Jennie might enjoy learning about Jesus and God. I talked about Jennie’s intelligence, her capacity for kindness, and I recounted Jennie’s interest in the cross. I reminded her of Jennie’s unaccountable affection for the picture of Jesus I had given her. I explained that I would learn sign language myself.

  Mrs. Archibald asked me what kind of religious instruction I was proposing. Episcopalian?

  I chuckled at this and explained that the instruction would be nondenominational, that it would be the kind of teaching that I have done with very young children. I explained that it would not involve matters of dogma, but would merely help Jennie understand and feel the love of God and His Son Jesus Christ. All religious instruction, I said, begins with one simple feeling: love. Surely, I said, Jennie understands love. Yes, murmured Mrs. Archibald, she knows what love is. I said: then she can understand religion, because religion starts with love. Religion is love. Without first loving God and feeling God’s love for us, there can be no religion.

  She said she thought this kind of teaching would be confusing to Jennie and frustrating for me. I replied that I had been called to do this. I said I would consider it a great favor if she would permit me to give it a try, and that as silly as the idea sounded, it was only arrived at after a great deal of thought and prayer. I ended by reminding her that Jennie already visited the house at least once a week and that we had become fast friends; and I mentioned that Reba and I had never had children and that I had begun to consider Jennie as a kind of child to us. She seemed moved by this and said she would discuss it with her husband and the teacher, who is no less than a professor at Tufts University undertaking some kind of linguistical study.

  [FROM an interview with Dr. Pamela Prentiss, former Director of the Center for Primate Studies and Throckmorton Professor of Linguistics, Tufts University, Malden, Massachusetts, in her office at Tufts, November and December 1992.]

  Dr. Epstein explained everything. What you hope to do with this book. So what’s your background? I would like to know what makes you such an expert in this subject that you can write a book about it. [Editor’s note: At this point a lengthy discussion of the author’s credentials followed, which did not entirely satisfy Dr. Prentiss. For the sake of the story we have omitted this discussion.]

  The long and the short of it is, I’m only going to talk to you because Dr. Epstein told me to. Okay? Forgive my skepticism. All the journalists I’ve dealt with have been so poorly informed. They don’t make the slightest effort to understand the science. Journalists are lazy and stupid. I won’t mention any names. But take that young man from Esquire magazine. Did you know his journalism background was in celebrity profiles? He wrote about movie stars, so that gave him the authority to write about Jennie. Why, you see, Jennie was a celebrity. Make me laugh. And you’d think the Boston Globe would be concerned about scientific accuracy. That hapless reporter didn’t even know the difference between an ape and a monkey. It would have been funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

  I’ve brought some things for you to read: papers, offprints, monographs. This’ll be a start, and then when you need more—see those three shelves? That’s all Jennie research. You’ll have to read most of that stuff too. It’s really very interesting, if you take the time.

  Now, I want to make you understand. I’ll talk to you on certain conditions only. [Editor’s note: Again, most of this discussion has been omitted.]

  Finally, you’ll tell the truth. I’ve read so many lies about the project I can hardly stand it. If this book can set the record straight—well, you’ll be doing us a service. And I hope you won’t mind if I turn on my own tape recorder while we talk. It isn’t that I don’t trust you. . . .

  I’ve brought some notes here. Whoops! Shit. Help me pick this up. For Christ’s sake now everything’s messed up. Let me see. . . . My work with Jennie began on May 1, 1967. She learned her first two signs five weeks later, on—let’s see here—June 4, 1967. They were hug and me. On June 6, she spontaneously signed Hug me Jennie to Mrs. Archibald, her surrogate mother. Mrs. Archibald was under the impression that Jennie’s first sign had been directed at her. I didn’t correct that misapprehension. Why? I should suppose the reason’s obvious.

  My technique was to mold Jennie’s hands into the sign while speaking the word. We always spoke the words while we were signing them. Jennie already seemed to understand some English. I molded her hands into hug, and then gave her her reward, which was a hug. As soon as Jennie learned a sign, I wouldn’t respond to her requests unless she used the sign. For example, when she learned drink. From that point on, in order to get a drink she would have to sign drink. Her reward was, of course, receiving the drink, or the hug, or whatever she wanted.

  We didn’t use food as a reward. As some previous ASL researchers did. Jennie’s reward was making herself understood. That is, she was rewarded like a human child would be rewarded. We wanted to replicate the way a human child acquires language. You don’t cram food into
an infant every time she says something, now, do you? Of course not.

  The conditions at the Archibald household were not ideal. It was chaotic over there. But Jennie made extraordinary progress anyway. Our Barnum colony chimps learned at less than half the rate Jennie did. Jennie’s progress had a lot to do with the Archibald boy, Sandy. He learned ASL as fast as a deaf child and used it extensively with Jennie. Jennie’s surrogate parents, Mrs. Archibald in particular, didn’t participate in the project. Jennie’s rate of learning could have been even faster had there been consistency in her training. And in her relationship with her surrogate mother.

  We faced some big problems with this experiment. The Archibald family went away on vacation every August. This interrupted my work with Jennie. Then there was this peculiar old cleric who lived across the street, who interfered constantly. Interference that Mrs. Archibald encouraged. I would have understood it if she were a religious woman. But she was not. Mrs. Archibald was always undermining me. Very jealous of my relationship with Jennie. A very difficult woman. This priest or whatever learned the barest rudiments of ASL, which he combined with his own crude signs. It became a serious problem. I have never worked under such difficult conditions. Every week, I had to deprogram Jennie after a session with this terrible man. She never did learn the signs for sky or clouds, for example, confusing them with the cleric’s crude sign for God. When she saw a bearded man, she would rub her head. I couldn’t figure out what the hell she was doing. And then I learned that this rubbing was that priest’s sign for Jesus. And one day she started making this gesture. It wasn’t an ASL sign at all, and I realized with a shock—I’m sorry, but you won’t believe this—that she was crossing herself. I can hardly believe it now when I look back, that this . . . this man was attempting to make Jennie into a Christian. Why the Archibalds put up with it is entirely beyond my comprehension. Dr. Archibald was a reasonably competent scientist but when it came to Jennie and family matters he deferred to his wife. She was—well, she was a difficult woman. A difficult woman. With a voice as cold as ice. You’ve met her. Need I say more?