“He’s missing fingers,” I said to Clément.
He didn’t break his silence.
“Why would he be missing fingers?” I asked.
I gently lifted the bonobo’s hand, but he tugged it away, turning his head to stare quietly out the window, his fingers making knitting motions over his rope. Leave me alone.
Staring at him was the only thing in the world I wanted to do. He didn’t meet my eyes. There was no seeing in his looking.
I pressed my forehead against the window and watched what he watched as it passed by outside: the lifeless streets of the wealthy district with its guards dozing against front gates; day laborers crowding job boards; swamps of trash picked over by street kids; chickens with wrung necks thrown flailing into ditches; boys pushing a truck until the engine kicked over. It was a big change from the tidy American scene I’d left two days before.
The bonobo either hadn’t been given anything to eat or had refused it — he was so thin. Nothing was coming out now, but he had had major diarrhea sometime recently; the hair on his legs was matted and stinky. The breath that came from between his chapped lips was hot and dry. He had nothing left in the world except me, and we had known each other for just minutes. For all I knew, he could have only hours left to live. No wonder he was trying to shut everything out.
So what? I thought against the quaking in my heart. He’s an animal. But I couldn’t feel it. Despite myself, I cared about him.
I stroked the bonobo’s belly, and for a few moments he half closed his eyes. His breathing slowed as if he might fall asleep, but then Clément hit a bump and the bonobo startled. Suddenly panicked, he sat up and stared about.
“Shh,” I whispered. “You can relax. No one’s going to hurt you now.”
Even then I knew it was a dangerous promise.
The gorillas I visited at the Bronx Zoo should have been paid a consulting fee. But what’s the point—if I gave them cash, they’d just eat it. Here are the not-gorillas I need to thank, though:
Sarah Mulhern Gross, an English teacher at High Technology High School in New Jersey, read a draft of this book and gave me many helpful thoughts on gorilla behavior—she observed them as part of her master’s degree in conservation. She came up with the enticing idea that the fictional gorillas fleeing homo ergaster might have founded the small Congolese population of Grauer’s gorillas, still alive today (though highly endangered).
Other early readers who helped me immensely with this book include Sy Montgomery, a longtime idol of mine who was generous enough to read a draft. I read her amazing Walking with the Great Apes as part of my research for Endangered six years ago, and for her to spend time reading my words now is a dream come true. Similarly, Dr. Jane Goodall’s correspondence about Rescued led me in useful directions for this novel. Todd Mitchell, author of the fantastic The Last Panther, read an early draft of Orphaned and helped me to see how to shift the structure of the entire narrative to give it more shape. Donna Freitas, you helped me see this book in totally different ways over lunch. Daphne Benedis Grab, you helped me see it in a whole different set of ways over breakfast. Both were so helpful and so delicious. Patricia McCormick, I respect your work and your mind so much, and I’m so grateful for that lunch where we talked gorilla. (I’m realizing I eat a lot with my fellow authors.)
My longtime editor, David Levithan: You’ve seen these apes through from beginning to end, and I’ve come to rely on your strokes of genius. I feel very lucky to have someone with such good ideas in my corner.
Richard Pine, my agent: I’m a lucky, lucky primate to have an ally as terrific as you.
Thanks to the wonderful team at Scholastic, who work so hard to get books into the right hands. Lizette Serrano, Tracy van Straaten, Ellie Berger, Lori Benton, Emily Heddleson, Rachel Coun, Elizabeth Parisi, Maya Marlette, Melissa Schirmer, Alix Inchausti, Jazan Higgins, Sue Flynn, Nikki Mutch, Chris Satterlund, Barbara Holloway,Terribeth Smith, and many more: Thank you.
Thank you, MacDowell Colony, for the fellowship that allowed me to retreat into the woods to write. What a special place.
To my writer’s group, Marianna Baer, Coe Booth, Anne Heltzel, Marie Rutkoski, and Jill Santopolo: You’re such stalwarts. All times of year, through all sorts of restaurant closings and life upheavals and crazy New York weather, I can count on your kind faces and wise insights whenever I need them.
Family are my most constant readers: Mom, thanks for the check marks and smiley faces and your unfailing radar for word echoes. Eric Zahler, you’re the emotional core of this book, and the source of much acha.
Eliot Schrefer’s first three books in this quartet—Endangered, Threatened, and Rescued—count among them two finalists for the National Book Award, a New York Times Editor’s Choice, two winners of the Green Earth Book Award, selection to the Amelia Bloomer List for best feminist works for young readers, and praise from Dr. Jane Goodall as being “moving, fascinating, and eye-opening.” Schrefer is also the author of The School for Dangerous Girls, The Deadly Sister, two novels in the Spirit Animals series, and other books for children and adults. When he’s not off somewhere hanging out with apes, he lives in New York City. Connect with him online at eliotschrefer.com.
Copyright © 2018 by Eliot Schrefer
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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First edition, October 2018
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1 Nova: Becoming Human, three-part documentary series.
2 The University of Texas, Austin’s efossils.org site: http://www.efossils.org/book/activity-3-relative-brain-size.
3 Nova: Becoming Human.
4 Schaller, The Year of the Gorilla, 228.
5 Quoted in “The Metamorphosis: What Is It Like to Be an Animal?” by Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker, May 30, 2016.
6 Ibid.
7 Cited in Schaller, 177.
8 Schaller, 154.
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