The Elephant's Girl

by Celesta Rimington

  “But couldn’t she see her there at the Grasslands?”

  “No. I mean, she went looking for Amanda’s body.” Fisher says the last word like the voice in a horror-movie trailer. I elbow him. “She’s the one who found Amanda dead outside her trailer.”

  “Oh.” My insides feel suddenly squirmy and then hollow—like I have nothing in there. The emptiness hurts. It hurts for Miss Amanda. It hurts because I’ve always thought of my family as living, breathing people, even though I know they’re probably dead. I may not remember them, but it hurts to think of them as bodies.

  Fisher suddenly starts fidgeting with his hands. “Sorry.”

  “What are you sorry for?”

  “Was it rude for me to tell you that?”

  “No.” I try swallowing to get rid of the hollow feeling, but it doesn’t really work. “Well…maybe you could have left out the horror-movie voice.”

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. I uh…I just forgot about…well…that we’re talking about the night you lost your family.” Fisher squirms in his seat and grabs his backpack, unzipping the main pocket and pulling out his baseball glove. The bus is slowing to a stop at the edge of a parking lot. The baseball field sits just beyond it.

  “Don’t worry about it, Fisher,” I say. “I want to know these things.” People are afraid of talking about my parents or the night I lost them. They are afraid of talking about death in front of me. But the thing is, it’s worse to not talk about it, because burying it hurts more.

  The giggling girls from the bus get off at the ball field, too.

  As Fisher and I step off the bus, one of them says, “You’re Fisher Leigh, aren’t you?”

  Fisher slaps his baseball hat on his head and says, “Yeah.”

  “Weren’t you in Mr. Lindham’s class last year?” asks a taller girl with long, red hair.

  “Yeah,” Fisher says again.

  The girls seem to be headed to the same place we are, but they aren’t dressed like they’re planning to play any baseball. So either they’re coming to watch, like me, or they’re just following us so they can talk to Fisher.

  The first girl, who is dressed fancy and wears makeup, says, “Do you know Sebastian? He’s my brother.”

  We reach the edge of the field. A few people are already sitting on the bleachers across the grass.

  “Yeah, I know him.” Fisher doesn’t seem to have much to say to these girls. That’s okay with me. It’s like they are trying to know him, but I already know him.

  I feel like a stranger walking with all of them, not saying anything and not being able to talk to Fisher like normal. Fisher looks over at his coach and some other players gathering on the field. He’s probably going to join them any minute now, and I’m going to have to figure this out by myself.

  Fisher says to me, and not to the other girls, “I gotta go.” He hands me a hat from his backpack, not his Omaha Storm Chasers hat—he’s wearing that one. It’s his Dodgers hat. It’s one of his favorites, and he keeps it clean and new-looking. “Use this to keep the sun out of your eyes. I’ll see you after we’re done.”

  Before I can say “Thanks,” the tall girl with the red hair calls to him. “Hey, Fisher! Hit a home run!”

  I look at her sideways, put on Fisher’s hat, and turn to walk across the field toward the bleachers without these girls. But I didn’t realize the third girl was almost right behind me. I stop quickly, and she dodges out of the way, but we still smack into each other.

  “Excuse me,” I say, a little annoyed. When I jumped on the bus to come with Fisher, I hadn’t planned on this at all.

  “My fault,” says the girl, rubbing her shoulder where we hit. “I was standing too close.”

  “Well, I wasn’t looking,” I say, trying to match her nice tone. “Sorry.”

  The other two girls have followed Fisher onto the field and are talking with another boy, who seems to know the girl with all the makeup. The odd silence between me and the third girl seems to need something to fill it. I’m not sure why.

  “Are you watching the practice?” I ask, twisting a loose thread from my shirt around my finger. This is so different from talking to people in the zoo.

  The wind kicks up a little dust to get my attention. “Talk to me,” it nags.

  “I think so,” the girl answers. “Anna is getting some money from her brother for snacks. We might stay awhile and then go to her house.”

  “Let’s go, Camille,” calls the one with the makeup, who is Sebastian’s sister, Anna. She waves some money in the air and leads the way toward a small shaved-ice shack at the far side of the bleachers.

  Camille, the girl next to me, waves at Anna and the tall girl, but she doesn’t leave to join them. Instead, she walks with me to the bleachers.

  “Did you used to go to Lexington Elementary?” Camille asks. She has a round face with high cheekbones that looks friendly, but I still dread her questions. Nothing good can come from the direction this is going to take.

  “A long time ago.” Immediately, I regret answering her.

  “What’s your name?”

  I’m suddenly reminded of my assignment from Mrs. Leigh—the one where I’m supposed to figure out what I can learn from Karana about myself. This situation right here is my very own version of the first time Karana tries to go after her people. She makes a canoe and sails away from the island all by herself. It’s the first time she tries leaving her island, and it doesn’t go well. She nearly sinks and drowns, and she has to turn back.

  Coming to the ball field was a bad idea. I should’ve listened to the wind.

  “I’m Camille,” the girl adds, as though telling me her name will make me feel better about telling her mine.

  We reach the bleachers, and it seems Camille is determined to follow me. I don’t want to have this conversation, but I don’t know where else to go. The bus probably won’t return to the parking lot for a while. Fisher is about to play baseball and can’t help. Camille’s two friends are at the snack shack and will join her soon. I can’t think of a way out.

  “I’m Lex.” It comes out as a whisper.

  “I thought I remembered you!” Camille says, her eyes widening like marbles. “You’re the girl from the zoo.”

  “Not exactly,” says the wind, laughing as it always has whenever I’ve asked it where I came from.

  “Lexington Willow, right?” asks Camille.

  I wince. I’m not ashamed of my name. I like it. But I’m worried about what’ll come next.

  “I think we were in class together. Do you remember?”

  I don’t remember, not really, but I nod and say, “I think so.”

  “Where do you go to school now?”

  I start climbing the bleacher steps, and Camille joins me.

  “I…um…I do my schoolwork at the zoo. I have a private teacher there.” I adjust Fisher’s Dodgers hat to shade my eyes from the sun reflecting off the silver metal seats.

  “I didn’t know you could do that. I guess you still live there, huh?”

  The third row has no one in it, so I pause there, wondering if Camille is planning to sit down. So far, I’d be okay with that.

  “Yeah, I live there—same as Fisher.” I figure mentioning Fisher will help it sound more normal. She hasn’t yet looked at me like she’s trying to figure out if I’m a rare breed of monkey. She hasn’t yet called me—

  “Elephant Girl!” cries a high-pitched voice that ends in a delighted squeal and then a giggle. It isn’t Camille who said it.

  I turn to see Anna and her red-haired friend holding shaved ice with a snowcap of evaporated milk drizzled over the top. I cringe inside, wishing I hadn’t turned immediately in answer to that name.

  “I thought I recognized you,” the red-haired girl says, still giggling.

  “Tae, that isn’t nice,” s
ays Camille.

  “But she is Elephant Girl,” Anna says. “I should’ve known when she got on the bus at the zoo stop. Her hair! It’s the same as it was in first grade.” She’s talking about me as if I’m not even here.

  And suddenly, I remember Tae. So they recognize my curly hair, huh? Well, I recognize Tae’s red hair and how she used to laugh at me like she’s doing now.

  “You are the girl they found sleeping in the dirt with the elephant, aren’t you?” Tae asks. “You used to talk to the wind at recess.”

  They’re all giving me that look—like I’m an exhibit at the zoo. All of a sudden, I’m Karana from my book, and all the water is coming inside my canoe. I’m going to sink if I don’t turn back to my island. I push past Camille and the other girls and start down the stairs.

  “Run,” says the wind.

  “Lex, wait,” a voice calls after me. I think it’s Camille, but I don’t turn around. My tennis shoes hit the gravel with a crunch at the bottom of the last step. I run from the bleachers and the ball field. The slap of my feet against the earth has the familiar rhythm of a chant I wish I could forget.

  Elephant Girl

  With the crazy hair

  Smells like the zoo

  and talks to the air

  Elephant Girl

  Elephant Girl

  I remember the words the way the kids used to chant them outside the school, and I keep running all the way to the bus stop.

  I feel like a lone leaf blown from a tree. I don’t know how to find my way back to the zoo. But I know that Fisher takes the bus home from the ball field every day, so I wait at the stop until a bus comes.

  “You should listen to me,” says the wind.

  “It’s all your fault,” I say. “It’s YOUR fault they call me that name.”

  A bus pulls up to the stop. It has an electronic sign on the front that shows the number five and the words East River Road.

  I climb the steps with my exact change. At least I know this much.

  “Will this bus take me to the Lexington Zoo?” I ask the driver. It’s a different driver and a different bus, but she nods, so I drop my $1.25 in exact change into the fare box.

  I’m riding the bus back to the zoo without Fisher. I left him at the ball field after I told him I’d watch him play. I’m not sure if that makes me a liar or just…a really bad friend.

  Fisher got in a fistfight once with some of the boys who made fun of me. It was after school, outside Lexington Elementary. He punched one of them in the stomach, a very big kid who looked too old to be at the playground. The kid threw mud clods at us. A mud ball hit me on the side of my head and stuck in my hair. The kid had put a long sock in front of his nose like an elephant trunk. Then he trumpeted the Elephant Girl chant until everyone had memorized it. Fisher got hauled into the principal’s office for fighting on school grounds. It didn’t matter that the big kid and his friends didn’t go to our school, Fisher still got in trouble, and all the other kids learned the chant anyway. Fisher knows I quit going to school because kids were making fun of me. But he doesn’t know the other reason. I also quit going because I didn’t want him to keep getting into trouble for me. Turns out he still gets in trouble for me—or because of me.

  Now he’s playing baseball at the field, and I’m not there. And I’m still wearing his Dodgers hat.

  The bus creeps its way up the hill toward the zoo. As it drives past the long stretch of undeveloped land, I press my forehead against the window, trying to see through the trees. It’s impossible to make out anything but a blur of browns and greens, with occasional bursts of wildflower clusters. I wonder if Miss Amanda notices the change in the scenery around her trailer home. Does she notice changes in the weather and seasons, even if ghosts don’t get wet in the rain?

  The bus takes a turn away from the zoo. I’m nervous that I’ve gone the wrong way, and I’m about to ask the driver when she pulls the bus into a turnaround spot on River Road. More people get on and off. I pull Fisher’s hat down lower and keep looking out the window. Eventually the bus stops at the bottom of the zoo parking lot. I’m out of my seat and down the steps as if the wind blew me out the door.

  “Back safe and sound,” says the wind.

  But it doesn’t feel safe and sound. It feels like the wind wants to keep me here more than I didn’t want to leave. And I don’t think that’s a good way to feel about home.

  I trudge through the prickly weeds toward the trees and Miss Amanda’s trailer.

  That red-haired Tae, and the way she yelled out that awful name, as though first grade and the big mean kid with the mud and the sock were yesterday, has got my head in a whirlwind and my feet moving angry-fast. I reach the dense trees in the deeper part of the woods in record time. I take the diagonal path from the fallen log, and soon I see the first of Miss Amanda’s upturned chairs. I shove my hand into my pocket and feel the letter, rubbing it between my finger and thumb like it might have some power to bring her back. But as I approach, the rest of the familiar wreckage comes into view. It seems I won’t be seeing Amanda Holtz today.

  I kick the dirt, sending a cloud of dust and grass bugs into the air. How can I help Miss Amanda remember anything about the treasure or Nyah’s family if I can’t find her? Stepping over the torn fabric awning, I move slowly toward the trailer. Now that I know Mrs. Leigh found Miss Amanda after she died, it doesn’t make sense that no one cleaned up this wreckage. I’m glad they didn’t, or I might never have met Miss Amanda, but did people forget about it? Did they forget about her? I wonder whether Miss Amanda’s belongings are untouched inside the trailer.

  The idea of walking into the abandoned home of a dead person gives me a cold and squirmy feeling, but I still want to solve the lost-treasure mystery. What if Miss Amanda is wandering as a ghost and has lost her memory of this trailer? What if she can’t remember how to get home? If I can find the right clues, find Eden from the letter and return the treasure to her, Miss Amanda might be free from this wandering, memory-losing state. She might be able to go where spirits are supposed to go.

  I climb the two steps to the trailer door and slowly wrap my fingers around the metal doorknob.

  I turn the knob, checking. It’s unlocked.

  Is it really invading someone’s privacy if you look through their things after they’ve died?

  A thump comes from inside the trailer, like the sound of a drawer or a cupboard closing. It startles me, and I nearly fall off the steps.

  In a tiny voice that sounds unfamiliar, I quaver out a soft “Hello?”

  Something creaks inside the trailer.

  I should run, but my feet don’t obey me. This part of the zoo property isn’t fenced off. They’ve posted Private Property and No Trespassing signs around, but that’s not going to keep people out. What if someone is inside stealing stuff, and I’ve just stumbled upon this with no way to defend myself? Mr. Bixly installed all those security cameras and alarms in the zoo, but that’s not going to help me out here. If I yell, no one will hear me all the way on the other side of Bear Country.

  My feet finally move off the steps just as the door swings open to the inside of the trailer. It’s darker in there than out here. My eyes aren’t adjusted to the change of light, and I can’t make anything out. Not even an outline or a shadow.

  “Lexington Willow!” calls a cheery Southern voice. Miss Amanda moves into the daylight of the doorframe, as real-looking as any person. The sun reflects off her key necklace.

  “Hi, Miss Amanda.” My voice comes out with a breath of air like I’ve been holding it for a week. “You…you’re here.”

  “Well, of course I am. Where else would I be?”

  “I’ve been coming to see you, and you haven’t been here,” I say, holding on to the railing to keep my balance.

  “Have you, now?” Miss Amanda is
wearing a yellow-and-gray skirt with a soft-looking sweater. Fisher must be right about ghosts not being affected by the weather. Miss Amanda probably wouldn’t choose to wear that sweater in June if she were alive. “Tell me,” she says, “did you have any luck with the loose board in the gift shop? Did you find the treasure?”

  I’m trying hard to focus on the ghost in front of me, in case she suddenly disappears or something. Since everything looked undamaged and right side up when I last saw her, I assumed that the old and broken state of everything today meant that I wouldn’t be seeing the ghost.

  “I found a loose board,” I say. “My friend Fisher helped me. We pulled up the board, but we didn’t find a treasure.”

  “Nothing behind the board, huh?” she asks.

  It seems weird that she would say behind the board instead of under it. I shake my head no. “No treasure. But I found a few other things I want to show you. I was hoping they might help you remember something.”

  “Wonderful!” she exclaims. “Come in and set a spell. We’ll have some tea. You show me what you found, and I’ll do my best to remember some more.” Miss Amanda turns from the door and walks into the trailer.

  I move to the top step and peek in at the dark interior. Miss Amanda goes to a window on the opposite side, which has a small halo of daylight framing some curtains. She pulls the curtains aside, filling the trailer with filtered sunlight from the woods behind it. The window sits above a table in a very small kitchen to the right. A teakettle rests on a turquoise stove that matches a miniature turquoise fridge. At the other end of the trailer is a wide bed topped with a thick comforter. A single shelf of books and trinkets runs around all three walls of the bedroom space.

  I feel for the letter and the wrinkled train ticket in my pocket. Then, as I take one step into the trailer, the wind rustles the leaves and sends a breeze swirling around my ankles.