How to Speak Dolphin

by Ginny Rorby

  “Adam.” Elisa stands him on his feet, but he lets his knees buckle. “Let’s check your schedule.” His feet drag along the carpet as she walks him to his strip of blue felt, which hangs with the others. His name and a picture Don took at Largo Center are at the top. In the picture, Adam is smiling. His hair is wet, and narrow streams of water snake from his bangs down his face. I can see the gray, new-moon curve of Squirt’s snout pressed to his cheek, but the rest of the dolphin’s head has been cropped out.

  Under his name and picture is a vertical row of small Velcro circles, each of which has a picture attached to it. The other kids’ schedules have different animals that match a table behind each partition, but Adam’s is a dolphin. His pictures from top to bottom are chairs in a circle, a dolphin, the word Play above a pile of blocks, a picture of a toilet, and the word Snack above a glass of milk and a plate of cookies. Next is the word Recess with a drawing of a slide and a swing. The last is a picture of a car.

  Elisa takes the dolphin picture and shows it to Adam. “Look, Adam, you’re at the Dolphin Table.” Her voice is full of excitement as though Disney World is waiting there.

  Adam locks his wobbly knees, touches the picture, then runs behind the partition to the Dolphin Table.

  “I’ll work with Adam,” Elisa says to one of the other teachers. To us she says, “Come watch.”

  Elisa puts an iPad in front of Adam. He turns it on and starts an animated dolphin story.

  I look at Don. “He caught right on to it,” I say.

  Elisa gets out two small cubes, a cup, and a plate. “Okay, Adam, four, three, two, one. My turn.” She takes the iPad from him and turns it screen-side down in her lap.

  He looks at her, gets up, and hops toward the gap between the partition and the wall.

  Elisa reaches behind her, catches his hand, and guides him back to his chair. She takes his hands and folds them in his lap. “Nice sitting.”

  Adam gets up and hops in a circle.

  On the shelf next to his plastic box is a big exercise ball. This one is silver and has bumps on it. It looks like a space satellite. Elisa gets it down, pulls Adam’s chair away from the table, and puts the ball in its place. “Adam, look at this.” She bounces it with her hand. “Come sit here.”

  He runs to the ball, sits, and bounces.

  “Nice sitting.”

  He reaches for the iPad.

  “Work first.” She places the cup, the plate, and two wooden blocks in front of Adam. “Can you stack these blocks?” She puts one on top of the other, then separates them.

  Adam puts one on top of the other.

  “Good job, Adam.” She makes a mark on a paper in Adam’s file. “Now can you hand me the cup?”

  Adam stacks the blocks and bounces on the ball.

  Elisa takes the cup, turns away from Adam, then turns back and puts the cup on the table. “Can you hand me the cup?”

  He hands her a block and bounces.

  This is repeated three more times before he finally hands her the cup. “Good job.” She gives him the iPad.

  He opens it to his video, lets the credits play, then restarts it. He does this until Elisa counts four, three, two, one, and takes it away from him.

  I still don’t know how he can he fail to do a simple behavior like hand Elisa a cup when he can use an iPad. I resist looking at Don.

  Elisa has a handful of Skittles in a Ziploc. Adam loves Skittles. When he sees them, he signs eat.

  Elisa puts the ball on the shelf and puts the little chair opposite hers at the desk. “Adam. Can you sit?” she asks.

  He does.

  “Good sitting.”

  He signs eat.

  “Can you touch your nose?” To Don she says, “Asking them to touch their nose or an ear helps focus their attention.”

  Adam touches his nose, then signs eat.

  “Adam, look at me.”

  Don stands in the corner, arms crossed, his face a mask, but his body language is another story. He doesn’t have a clue about how progress is made or how slowly and methodically the therapists go, but he’s judging them all the same.

  “May I ask?” he says. “Why is eye contact so important?”

  “Recent studies of autistic children show there seems to be a lag between what they see and what they hear. For them it’s like watching a badly dubbed movie. If I can get the child to look at me and I speak slowly, it’s less confusing.”

  “Thanks.” He unfolds his arms and puts his hands in his pockets.

  The knot in my stomach loosens.

  “It was a good question.” Elisa gets up and walks to the other side of the cubicle. “Come here.” She crooks a finger. Adam gets up and walks to her. “Good job. High-five.” She puts her hand up and so does Adam. He lets her touch his palm, but he’s looking past her to the bag of Skittles on top of a file cabinet.

  “Adam, look at me.”

  He shifts his eyes to hers, and I see something in my brother’s face I’ve never seen before: confusion, panic, and pain. His brown eyes hold hers for as long as he can bear this deep a connection.

  “Good, Adam. Can you sit?” Elisa says, just in time.

  He whirls and plunges into his chair.

  “Good job.” She gives him a Skittle.

  I glance at Don but can’t tell if he saw the same thing. There’s no change in his expression, which makes me doubt my own eyes. Maybe the ache I feel in my chest is because I wish more than anything that Adam could connect, and painlessly.

  “The system we use is the same as B. F. Skinner used,” Elisa says.

  “To train animals,” Don says.

  Elisa studies him for a second. “The system of rewards is very effective.”

  Don’s brow creases. He’s the one in pain now.

  Finally, after five Saturdays, the parking attendant at the Oceanarium recognizes Don, rips a ticket in half, and wishes us a good day. It’s just me, Don, and Adam. Suzanne took the day off and I didn’t ask Zoe.

  “Hello, hello.” We get the usual overly enthusiastic, two-handed wave from Sandi when we come through the glass doors. There’s the bucket of fish on the dock, and Nori’s at the edge of the raft with her mouth open.

  Usually we’re the only ones here, but today a mom, dad, and two kids, all in black-and-blue wet suits, are knee-deep in the water with two dolphins. Adam runs right toward Nori’s pool. Don follows. I stop to watch the family.

  Two dolphins have been moved from their pens to the unfenced half of the lagoon. The little girl sits in the water, and one of the dolphins puts its head on her legs. She leans and kisses its beak. It’s a sweet picture like the ones on the Oceanarium’s website.

  At the far end of the lagoon opposite where the family is standing, an employee holds a long pole with a tennis ball duct-taped to the end. She blows a whistle, lifts the pole, then hits the water with the ball. The little girl’s brother points to the second dolphin, then at the girl with the pole. The dolphin zips away and a moment later leaps out of the water at the point where the tennis ball hits the water. The boy’s parents applaud his dolphin-training technique.

  I look over at my brother. He’s on his stomach on the dock, arms outstretched to Nori. Another perfect picture: a cute little blond kid having the time of his life. Snapshots. That’s what Don calls the pictures in our albums at home: moments in time that supposedly capture the heart of what’s going on. But there’s no way to tell if the smiles are real or artificial. I can’t help but wonder how many dolphin lives would have been saved if the line of their jaws turned down instead of up.

  Now that Don has seen how structured Adam’s life is at school, I don’t see why it’s not as obvious to him as it is to me that this is nothing more than a weekly swim with Nori. Sandi’s focus is trying to get him to talk because she knows that’s what Don wants. For the hour and a half we’re here, she tries to get him to say Nori over and over until I want to scream. But there are no consequences when he doesn’t. He gets to swim with her no
matter what. And worse, they’ve turned Nori into a robot. Instead of Adam being special to her, someone she loves to see, now, after she drags him around the pool attached to her dorsal fin, or swims away when Adam points, she heads straight back to the raft for a fish.

  Sandi’s in the water to make sure Adam’s hand is properly positioned around the base of Nori’s dorsal fin. Don looks over and smiles at me.

  I can’t force a smile. I leave instead.

  There’s a pizza stand and a few picnic tables near the killer whale show tank. The tables have umbrellas. I go sit at one and call Zoe. A flock of white ibis are probing the grass under the tables. They and the pigeons are the luckiest animals in this place.

  “Hey. Where are you?” Zoe says.

  “Same place I am every Saturday.”

  Behind me, a metal door goes up.

  “What was that?” Zoe says.

  “They’re letting people into the killer whale show.”

  “Are you going?”

  “No. We’ll be home about two. Want to come swim?”

  “Sure. Or you could come over here and we could try to call AquaPlanet.”

  “Stop it, Zoe.”

  The second of the two metal doors goes up. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to the show. I’ll call you later.”

  It’s twelve thirty and blistering hot as people start into the killer whale show. Only the top six rows of the twelve that encircle the tank are roofed. I climb to the very top row where there’s shade and a breeze. From this height, I can see that this tank is all there is. There’s no place else for the orca or the three Pacific white-sided dolphins to be.

  The tank is shaped like a vase, round and swollen at one end, narrow at the neck, and wide at the mouth. It’s the same shape as the paper vase Daniel and Roberto pasted over their flowers, the same shape as some of vases we have under the sink at home, left over from flowers delivered after Mom died.

  A girl in a black-and-white wet suit is standing in the shade of an umbrella behind the short wall at the top of the tank. It’s so shallow at that end that Carlotta, their orca, is resting with her tail against the bottom of the pool, mouth open. When the girl hears the click of a microphone being turned on, she picks up and carries two buckets of fish through a gate that opens onto a long, narrow raft. Carlotta makes a tight turn and follows her.

  A booming voice like a radio announcer’s welcomes us to the Bayside Oceanarium’s Killer Whale Show; then the volume of the music is turned up. Two more trainers run over the bridge and out onto the dock. They wave to the audience with both hands.

  Carlotta positions herself in front of the first trainer. The three Pacific white-sided dolphins line up in front of the other two trainers, mouths open. The music softens and the other girl trainer shouts out the second welcome.

  “The Bayside Oceanarium was built in 1955 and is the longest-operating aquarium in the United States. It was the first to exhibit a killer whale, and remains the only aquarium with a killer whale in an exhibit with Pacific white-sided dolphins, one of the world’s smallest and fastest dolphins. They are capable of doing twenty-five miles an hour in the open ocean.”

  “Where they oughta be.” I don’t realize I’ve said this out loud until the people in front of me glance around. I’m more surprised that it just popped out. It’s like I’m channeling Zoe.

  “Carlotta has been the star of this show since 1970 …”

  I do the math and gasp. Forty-four years! It can’t be the same orca. Maybe they name each new one Carlotta like they do replacement Flippers.

  “She is twenty feet long and weighs seven thousand pounds. We keep the seawater chilled to a comfortable fifty degrees—comfortable for her, anyway.” The girl hugs herself like she’s cold.

  The show starts with the white-sided dolphins doing synchronized somersaults. While they perform, the first trainer occupies Carlotta by giving her small pieces of fish that I imagine must be as satisfying as a tadpole to an alligator.

  The male trainer gets in the water and does the backstroke while one of the dolphins swims alongside him on its back. He keeps a close eye on Carlotta. I wonder if it’s because the orca at SeaWorld in Orlando killed his trainer.

  It’s time for Carlotta to earn bigger fish. The music switches to Enrique Iglesias’s “Don’t Turn Off the Lights,” and the trainers clap in time, encouraging the audience to do the same.

  Carlotta turns on her side, raises a huge paddle-like flipper. Her trainer steps aboard and rides her around the tank. Both she and Carlotta wave at the audience, then Carlotta delivers her back to the raft and she steps off.

  Carlotta dives, and when she surfaces again, one of the other trainers is riding on her head. Carlotta brings her to the raft, then opens her mouth. Large chunks of fish are fed into it.

  I shouldn’t have come to this show and definitely shouldn’t have climbed all the way to the top. There’s no escape without the entire audience seeing me. If I had Zoe’s guts, I’d do just that—walk out. But I don’t. I stay there watching them degrade this poor whale.

  Carlotta turns on her back; her trainer steps onto her stomach and is carried around the perimeter of the pool to be delivered back to the raft. Carlotta dives, shoots out of the water, and splashes back in, sending gallons of icy water over the wall to drench the people sitting in the splash zone.

  For her last act, Carlotta launches herself onto the raft and lies there with one trainer on her back and the other two on either side, smiling like she’s their trophy.

  I stay and watch people file out the gate until they’re all gone, then I hear the clatter of the far metal door being lowered. A few teenage boys in Oceanarium uniforms race each other to the top row of bleachers on the opposite side of the pool. They holler, curse each other, and the winner whoops. Then they search the bleachers for any trash left behind. I watch for quite a while before my cell phone ringing draws the attention of the trainer who’s feeding the last of the fish to the dolphins and Carlotta.

  “You gotta leave, miss.”

  I look at my phone. It’s Don. “Yeah.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In the killer whale show.”

  “Sorry if it’s not over, but your brother’s ready to go.”

  “Okay.”

  I sit for a minute more watching Carlotta. All the fish are gone and she’s lying in the water. Just lying there in her vase.

  “Miss?”

  “I’m leaving.” I stand, and while he watches me, I text Zoe. 2 @ your house. Let’s get Nori back to her mom.

  I easily find Zoe’s house on Tigertail, a few blocks up from the park where we met. It’s an old Grove house like ours, though hers is wooden instead of coral rock. Her mom answers the door. I glance around quickly as she leads me through the sparsely furnished living room. Most of the furniture is pushed against the wall except for one chair and a footstool near the center of the room.

  “Sorry. It always looks like this. Zoe has me shift a piece of furniture every day so she can practice echolocation.”

  “I still don’t know how she does it. I tried and could only tell my wall from an open doorway because I peeked.”

  “She’s determined to be—”

  “I know, the greatest blind kid ever.”

  When her mother smiles at me, I see in her eyes the same pain I see nearly every time Don looks at Adam.

  Zoe’s at her desk. A mechanical, nasal-sounding male voice reads the computer page so fast, and in such detail, I don’t know how she can keep up. And it reads everything on the page. “h t t p colon backslash backslash w w w dot aqua planet backslash contact us backslash reservations backslash p h p.”

  “That voice is awful. How do you stand it?”

  “He does make me wish I could see.”

  Once again, I’ve jammed my foot in my mouth. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ve gotten used to him. I imagine he’s very handsome and has a really nice car.”

  The keyboa
rd Zoe’s using looks like mine except that all the letters and numbers have bumps on them. Skype is open on the screen.

  The voice says, “Toll free one dash eight six six dash five five five dash two four one nine.”

  “Is Mom gone?” she whispers.

  I look over my shoulder. “Uh-huh.”

  “Good. Close the door, will you.” She listens to me cross the room and waits for the lock to click. “Dial number,” she says.

  Skype makes its little bubble-popping sound as it dials.

  My heart is pounding. We should have practiced what we would say.

  “We’re sorry, our reservation desk is closed.” It’s their answering machine. “Please leave a number and we will call you back during business hours.”

  “Hang up,” Zoe instructs Skype. “Let’s decide what message to leave, then call back.”

  “Just say we have news about Nori. And leave this number. I don’t want them calling our house when Don’s home.”

  I call Zoe the next day. “Hi.” She sounds bummed.

  “They didn’t call, did they?”

  “No, they didn’t, and Mom said not to try again.”

  “How come?”

  “She says it’s not our call to make. Your stepfather has to make that decision.”

  I took forever to make up my mind about this, and now I’m not going to give up. “I’m not willing to leave it up to Don. Are you?”

  The smile returns to Zoe’s voice. “Of course not.”

  “Good. If we don’t hear from AquaPlanet in a day or two, we’ll try again.”

  “It won’t work unless your stepfather’s onboard.”

  “I know,” I say, but I’m not sure what to do about that.

  I stand outside Don’s bedroom door trying to decide how to go about this. How to make him see beyond Sandi’s phony efforts and how wrong it is to keep Nori in a pen for Adam’s sake when she should be returned to her family. All this is running through my mind when Don opens his door. We both jump.