The Nature of Jade

by Deb Caletti

  Everyone is quiet on the way home. It is the edgy silence of unmet expectations. I can see everyone's reflections in the car windows. Mom, with her hair that has gone from inappropriately frivolous to somehow ashamed; Dad, with his disappointed profile; Oliver, with his faraway face, lost in another place where children fought beasts way bigger than themselves and where potions fixed the worst evils.

  It's turning out to be a lousy weekend. Hannah has already left two messages on my phone about homecoming the night before, and my family feels like jigsaw pieces, each from a different puzzle. I have so much homework I'm thinking AP stands for Addicted to Pain. And the red-jacket guy had gone back to his own world, back out to sea, maybe. Gone forever.

  That's when I decide that shoveling elephant shit would be better than this.

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  PART TWO:

  Elephants Are Just Like People, Only More So

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  CHAPTER SIX

  Animals will sometimes offer help to others of a different species. In Kenya, an elephant was witnessed attempting to lift and free a baby rhino that was stuck in the mud. Its own mother charged when she saw the elephant, but then went back to eating when the elephant retreated, oblivious to her baby's danger. The elephant waited, then returned and attempted once more to save the stuck baby . . .

  --Dr. Jerome R. Clade, The Fundamentals of Animal Behavior

  I do sometimes shovel elephant shit (which has its own, sunny name: zoo doo), heaving it onto shovels and into wheelbarrows used just for this purpose. After all, each elephant contributes eighty pounds of it a day. Consider yourself informed if the question ever appears on Jeopardy!

  But when I'm at the zoo, I do many different jobs. I spread new hay and slice fruit and fetch Flora's tire whenever she has to be moved, and I set up the microphone for Rick Lindstrom's Saturday elephant talks, featuring the happy-to-oblige Bamboo. I help feed, water, and look after the physical and mental health of the elephants, check their trunks (adequate saliva on the tips means they're drinking enough water), mouths (rosy-pink means no anemia), skin (should be elastic, not dry), pulse (taken below the chin), and prepare their enrichment exercises, which include such things as hiding watermelon in various parts of the habitat so they can hunt for it, and hanging traffic cones from rope.

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  A little over two months ago, that day after Oliver's football game, my determination to volunteer at the zoo ran out right about the time I got to the elephant keeper's office. I'd followed the directions of Sheila Miller, the zoo's volunteer coordinator, and then, when I got there, I just stood in the hall. I didn't knock. I had nearly convinced myself to go home, when the door opened and startled me.

  The keeper let out a little shriek. I guess I'd startled him, too. "Can I help . . ." Then he smiled.

  "Hey! Elephant girl!"

  "Jade DeLuna." I held out my hand. "I'm here to work."

  "Damian Rama," he said.

  I waited in his office while he gave some direction to Rick Lindstrom, his assistant, a lanky postgrad zoology/animal behavior student with long bangs and a soft voice. I studied Damian Rama's office while he was gone--the window that looked out onto bamboo fields; the sill filled with elephant figures in ceramic, glass, wood, even straw; the messy desk with paper stacks and ring binders. And photos--a picture of him and his wife (he was right--they were both chubby), both with wide grins against a background of trees with curving, reaching branches; a family group by a riverbank; a black-and-white image of a barefooted boy riding an elephant across a band of water; and a large photo of Damian Rama embracing an elephant. He looked so happy, and so did the elephant. I liked him already.

  When Damian Rama returned, we discussed the hours I could work and the jobs I would do. It was nuts with all the classes I was taking, but I was committed to coming after school every day if I could. My homework would kill me, but my inner overachiever reminded me it was community service, and my inner psychologist (who had Abe's voice) told me it was 87

  good to get out of my house and that I could handle whatever I chose to.

  "I like your photos," I said.

  Sometimes a person on first meeting will do something that tells you all you need to know about them. Or at least the most important thing. Damian Rama did not pick up the photo of his wife, or his family. Instead, he lifted the black-and-white image of the barefooted boy on the elephant.

  "This one is my elephant, Jum."

  "Wow," I said.

  "Here, too," he said, and handed me the recent photo of the two of them.

  "She's beautiful."

  "Indeed. And a good soul." He looked at the picture and smiled. It may as well have been Jum's school pictures, with him the proud parent. "You like her?"

  "Very much."

  "Oh, we'll get along fine, then, won't we?" He chuckled.

  That day, I met the elephants for the first time, in person. This is what the house smells like, I learned--wet concrete, hay, apples, the sweet/sour of crap. There would come a day, Damian warned, when we wouldn't even be able to be with the elephants one-on-one anymore because of the liability risks. Someone might get hurt, someone might sue. Some zoos already had elaborate systems of leading the elephants where they needed to go, caring for them with a barrier between human and animal, between human and lawsuit. But not at his house, Damian said. They need the touch, as we, too, need the touch, he said. As the saying goes, elephants are just like people, only more so.

  An elephant is much, much larger when you are standing

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  beside her than when you are watching her from a distance as you sit on a bench, especially with words like "danger" and "liability risks" in your head, and with your hands full of forms both you and your parents must sign relieving the zoo of responsibility in the event of your injury or death.

  Damian brought me to each of them so we could be introduced. First, he buzzed me through the locked gates of the elephants' private quarters, where I met Flora, the smallest of the Asians (only six thousand pounds), with the pink around her ears and trunk, who is never parted from her tire; and Bamboo, the matriarch, with her high arched back and long straight tail. Outside (and for the first time inside the enclosure), I said hello to Tombi, the only African elephant, easy to spot with her large ears; sad, old, Onyx; Chai, young mother with the notches in her ears, and baby Hansa.

  "Go ahead, touch her," Damian said as I stood before Hansa.

  I put my hand out, flinched when she moved her trunk to smell me.

  "Oh, my God." I wanted to scream. I almost did.

  Damian laughed. "They are not tigers," he said. "Here. Blow in her trunk. It is like saying hello, or shaking hands. Once you do, she will never forget you."

  He holds Hansa's trunk out to me, and I blow gently inside. "Oh, my God." My heart was beating so fast, I cannot tell you.

  "You must approach them with confidence," he said. "It's essential. Do not show your fear."

  I held out my hand, and did as he said. That day, I learned that an elephant feels tough and soft at the same time. Wrinkled, warm. And I learned that you can be brave, if you must.

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  In the two months that followed, Hannah had four more boyfriends, and Mom had the principal's tea, the holiday bake sale, and the Winter Art Walk. We had Thanksgiving and Christmas, and celebrated my eighteenth birthday. Oliver's football games wrapped up and Dad signed him up for basketball. Michael and I both got letters telling us of our automatic acceptance to Seattle University. I was glad; I knew at least one place wanted me. Seattle University--just a few minutes from home, on a quiet, small campus.

  In those two months, I had also gone through two new patron saints when my reoccurring nightmares appeared again-- dreams about tsunamis and wings ripping off of airplanes. I hauled out Raphael, my other favorite multipurpose do-gooder, who guards against nightmares, and who also protects young people and joyful lovers and travel
ers and anyone meeting anyone else. Also, Gratus of Aosta, who is my usual natural-disaster guy (lightning, rains, fire, storms), but who I also discovered protected against animal attacks, which I hoped would give me a little extra protection when I worked with the elephants. In the two months I had also dated Justin Fellowes, this guy in my Spanish class, though after three weeks we decided we should "see other people,"

  which in my case was a joke, but it beat hearing him remark on everything I ate. I don't fenou; iohy girls are always on a diet, he'd say when I ordered a Diet Coke, and You should tuatch your starch intake when I had a muffin. I scarfed a Snicker's bar behind my locker door when I saw him coming once, and that's when I knew his time was up. If I decide to have food issues, they're going to be my own food issues, thanks.

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  You don't think much happens in a couple of months, but, looking back, I guess a lot had. I had many new people in my life now, in addition to Damian Rama. There were lots of volunteers at the zoo--ours were Elaine, a grad student with long black curls tied back in the functional fashion of her cargo pants and boots, who spent almost every day with the elephants; Lee, an older woman with deep wrinkles and a cigarette-husky voice; Evan, an accountant who was apparently recently divorced and expanding his new life. There were others, too, who worked days and whose names I knew only from the work charts or from the few times we gathered as a group.

  The zoo itself had many volunteers, from gift-shop workers to fundraisers.

  And I had Delores from the ticket booth, my favorite of all the volunteers. I should never have worried she'd be suspicious of me that day at the rose garden. Suspicious wasn't a Delores word.

  Her words were good ones, like "funny," and "kind," and "cozy." The people in the photo at her station were her daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter who live in San Francisco. Delores drives a Mini Cooper and actually has a wicked sense of humor. She once said she saw Sheila, our volunteer coordinator, by the hippo pen and thought one had escaped--a comment more about Sheila's personality than her body type. Delores used to be a nurse in a cancer ward, and it just got to her one day and she couldn't handle it anymore. She and her husband "cut back," as she put it, and now she just gives her time to the zoo, where there's more living than dying. I've tried to get her to come out of the ticket box and interact with the elephants, but she just wants to stay there, selling tickets and examining passes and doing her seek-and-find puzzle books.

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  And I know so much more. I now know that it's disrespectful in India to ride an elephant with your shoes on, and that you should not approach one unless you have a peaceful mind. I know how to hose down an elephant, which is not something I'd have ever thought I could do two months ago. They roll on their side real nicely for you, like Milo wishing for a tummy scratch.

  I've learned there are mean-spirited people who shouldn't be let into zoos, who throw their paper cups and old gum into the enclosure or yell insults Hey, stupid! Fat Ass! to them. And that there are others, gentle men, grown mothers and daughters, who come to see the connections, rather than to reassure themselves of superiority. You get to thinking that maybe the dividing line shouldn't be animals and people but good and bad.

  As far as peace of mind goes--I've gone through a lot of cough drops. But I'm proud of myself. I had this idea, and I did it, even though it was new and I didn't know what might happen.

  Especially at first, because I was thinking how elephants are wild animals, which means they are unpredictable. But I've learned that animal behavior makes sense. Much more than human behavior. Also, you look in their eyes and they look in yours and you see each other. It's not like you see animal and they see human, just that you both see your bond. Living being to living being. No words necessary. It's simple and uncomplicated and honest to the point of purity. And besides, I've learned that Hansa likes the smell of cough drops. She puts her trunk right up by my cheek, which could really freak you out, but I love it. Her good intentions make me forget to be freaked.

  In those two months, too, I had almost forgotten about the boy in the red jacket with the baby.

  Well, maybe I didn't forget

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  about him, exactly. I just revised him, cut-and-pasted the feelings I had when I first saw him on the computer screen. Momentary sugar high, temporary happy-feeling buzz, boredom looking for a target. Just another good-idea thrill that wasn't so good, like my original intent to study gorillas.

  File it under Oh, Well.

  But there were these moments, I confess, when I lay on my bed, a candle flickering on my dresser, just staring at my framed piece of sky, and thoughts of him would visit, uninvited. When the clouds picked up speed and raced from one place to another as if in a hurry to get somewhere, or when they lazed in one spot, the way you do in your robe on a Sunday morning, that boy would appear with his head tilted back and the first, encompassing feeling I had on seeing him would fill me again, as the elephants (now well-known to me) walked and swayed on my computer screen. I would unwrap the thought of the boy, like you would a treasure kept in folded tissue paper and hidden in your underwear drawer. I would open it carefully, examine it from all angles. It was the kind of memory that had the bittersweet taste of unfinished business.

  "You'll never guess what happened this morning," Damian Rama says when I find him in the elephant house. I take my overalls off the hook, step into them.

  "I saw," I say. "That tree stump in the center of the field. Who did it?"

  "Of course it was Onyx. She dug it up, threw it in the air. Ah, she must have been quite angry."

  "Why?" I ask. "Baby Hansa? Life?"

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  Damian Rama sighs over Onyx and the tree stump. Onyx had been a growing problem lately; she was becoming less solitary, more aggressive. She had gotten a parasite, and Dr. Brodie, one of the zoo vets, said she had to be separated from the others for a while. This only made her crankier.

  "Onyx is angry," Damian says. "Onyx has a right to be angry. You've got to remember, for many elephants, their life is that of a human in a war-torn country. Ravaged homes, killed relatives, separation," Damian says. Here's another thing I've learned over two months--every elephant here has a sad story. Every captive elephant's story is one of loss and separation. Something to remember every time you see happy people getting elephant rides.

  Onyx was a cull orphan, which meant, Damian taught me, that she had been taken from her family as a baby. She'd been weaned too soon, stolen from her mother and all of the other, older female caretakers. Even elephants that witness another one being culled, Damian says, can suffer problems like depression and can react to stress with aggression.

  "Poor Onyx," I say.

  "Well, if you don't feel secure, safe, you'll never feel free. If you're not free, you can't be secure,"

  Damian says. He strokes his beard as he says it, as he always does when he is thinking. I love Damian; we all do. He's easy to love, with his warm eyes, the smile wrinkles embedded into his skin the color of toast. His goodness comes through in the way he handles both the elephants and the people who care for them.

  I set two metal buckets of apples on the floor, in preparation to file Tombi's nails. Inspecting the elephants' feet (its cuticles, nails, and pads) and removing any stones from the feet is part of 94

  their daily care, but often their nails need to be filed, too. Tombi is already in the house. The pen has a separate door near the floor where the elephants can stick their feet out. My job is to distract Tombi with apples as Damian uses the long, grooved knife to scrape and file her nails.

  It's important when you do things like this to be aware of just where their trunk is, to avoid being injured. Most of the elephants know to put their trunks against the palm of your hand, for example, when they are being examined. The end of their trunk feels firm but kind of pliable, like the cartilage in the end of your own nose.

  Damian lifts the small, square metal gate and latches it. Tombi is so well trained, she just sti
cks her foot right out. Man, if only Milo were that maturely behaved. I stand by the bars, feed Tombi a piece of apple. Tombi is an African elephant, which means she has two fingerish points on her trunk (Asians have only one), which is how she grabs the apple and brings it to her mouth. An elephant's trunk is pretty awesome-- it smells, grabs, breathes, strokes. They suck water up through it and shoot it into their mouth, the same way you get a drink from the garden hose on a hot day. Hansa will shoot you with it, same as Oliver when he's asked to water the front yard.

  "I've only known one other elephant to suffer so much. More," Damian says. He sits down on a stool in front of Tombi, puts her huge foot on his lap.

  "Who?" Tombi crunches her apple.

  "Jumo."

  "Your Jum?" I'm surprised. I imagine the pictures on Damian's desk, the happy pair, remember the stories Damian tells me sometimes when we work together. How Jumo would blow in his face to greet him. How sometimes when they traveled,

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  he would sleep with Jumo beside him, Jumo's trunk wrapped around his waist. How Jum would give Damian a push and then run away so he'd chase her. "Yes."

  "You never told me she was unhappy." "It is a sad thing. Upsetting. She suffered as a baby. She is still suffering."

  Damian is quiet. I'm sure his thoughts are there, in India. Damian had been a phandi mahout in India, he's told me. Mahout means "knower of all knowledge." A mahout is an elephant trainer, or keeper, or sometimes a driver. Damian is from Assam, where being a mahout is looked upon with awe and wonder. In other parts of India, mahouts are lower class, but in Assam, it's a privileged profession, and often passed on from generation to generation. Damian's father wasn't a mahout, but Damian had his own elephant when he was a child, Ol Bala, and he fell in love with elephants because of Ol Bala (and also probably because mahouts got the hot girls).

  Mahouts actually have their own kind of "university," he's said, where you have to pass certain tests about elephant care and training. You can become a phandi after passing these tests, and then a baro phandi, which is like a master's degree in elephant behavior. They are held in highest esteem of the other mahouts and the elephant owners, and even the government. That's how Damian knows so much about elephants.