Several of the females were harvesting moss off a Hagenia. From the coloration, it looked to be at least two different kinds of Sphagnum. They stuffed masses of it in their mouths, then sucked the trailing ends in with loud kissing noises. Further up the slope was Rafiki, the mother of Asante. She was easy to recognize because her right arm ended in a stump. Yoko said she’d lost it in a hunter’s trap. Rafiki half-stood to reach one of the lower branches of a Vernonia adolfi-friderici, wide leaves, clusters of lavender-tipped buds. Levering the branch down to her height, the wood whining, she held it using the stump of her right arm while she tugged off bunches of its buds with her left hand. When she let go, the branch shot back up with the kunkh of an arrow hitting. She settled herself beneath the tree and began popping buds into her mouth with little smacks of satisfaction.
Uncle, the other silverback, circled the Vernonia trunk until he found a spot where the wood was a bit rotten. Uncle was older than Titus and tended to startle quite easily, sometimes jumping a foot into the air at a sudden noise, not a great attribute in a male gorilla responsible for defending the others. At the moment, he gnawed on the trunk, staring off into the distance with a reflective expression, his teeth rasping against the wood.
Max plucked blackberries off a nearby bush. She crouched on her heels, munching on the berries, arms draped forward. She didn’t have to remind herself anymore to sit like a gorilla. During the day, in the jungle, when she moved forward, it was automatically on her knuckles, lumbering along with her shoulders. In the evening, down at the research station, she sat straight up in a chair and ate with utensils. The results of a lifetime spent imitating the social norms of others.
As she ate the berries, a few family members in their foraging moved closer to her, one sat down within six feet, solid and relaxed. No more distance between them and her than there was between each other. She’d noticed recently Yoko could knucklewalk into the group to examine a poop—the family would let her—but the circle of them would never repair itself around her.
Now the three-year-old Asante approached her, roundabout, her eyes directed toward anything but Max, the very soul of misdirection. The style of the gorillas had begun to seem almost Japanese to Max, with their lowered eyes and clear rules of propriety.
Even after a week, Asante still seemed curious about Max and got at times quite close, trying to peek inside her knapsack or run off with her notebook.
Today Max listened to her rustle through the blackberry bush beside her. From the edge of her eyes, she could see her fingers picking berries. Her fingers weren’t large and fleshy like an adult gorilla’s, but narrow as a human child’s. Yoko said she was only three years old, but her fingers moved quite deftly. It seemed impossible to picture her grown up and searching for food on the rocky mountaintops above, chronically undernourished in the cold, her family dying one by one around her.
Five feet behind her sat Rafiki, shooting a glance over at any sharp noise. She didn’t like her child being this close to a human.
Within an hour though, Rafiki finally relaxed enough to move ten feet off, was harvesting some Galium vine, faced away and yanking the plant down.
This was when Max glanced over and saw Asante’s hands harvesting red berries. She was plucking the berries from a plant that looked a lot like wild ginger, but the leaves were clustered in groups of three instead of two. The stamens a purplish color. Solanaceae benutis. Nightshade family. Deadly.
Max slapped Asante’s hands, knocking the berries out. The slap made an audible thwap and Asante squealed. Both noises echoed, as loud as in a library.
Every gorilla turning. Time telescoping out.
Titus rising to his feet, mammoth and bristling.
But Rafiki was moving faster, bolting toward Max and screaming. Her charge like a speeding car—the rushing forward of wind and impending weight.
Max yanked the benutis out of the ground and held it up. She tucked her head down, bracing for impact. As hard as she could, she crushed the roots in her fist, digging her nails in to release its bitter vinegar scent.
This small plant her only noun, verb, and plea. This plant her shield.
Rafiki barreled into her, full on.
Perhaps Max had a momentary blackout because, later on, she couldn’t remember getting hit. She only had an image of the moment afterward, lying on the ground, no pain, not from her rib or shoulder. Her heart beating a loud wa-shunk wa-shunk; Rafiki crouched over her. From underneath, the girth of a gorilla was immense. Max’s hand still clutched the benutis. Her fist with the tattered plant jammed against Rafiki’s chin.
And Rafiki was motionless. Face averted.
Beneath her like this, Max could feel each raspy inhale of air into her huge lungs. One inhale. Two.
Then Rafiki tucked her chin in to look at the plant, its distinctive triad leaf pattern. Its purple stamens. Her large eyes refocused on Max—not flash-glanced, but looked-looked. What is white in a human’s eye, is dark brown in a gorilla’s eye. Maybe this was what made her eyes so emotive.
Every other gorilla stood motionless, awaiting her verdict.
Then Rafiki grabbed the plant from Max, spun on her heels and bolted toward Asante, running in a totally different way now, not all bristly and roaring, but floppy and fast, scooping her child up and sniffing her hands and face, prying her mouth open and smelling in there too, pushing her fingers in, checking for any of the bloody red pulp.
Max lay very still. She rewound her memory to examine the benutis as she’d held it against Rafiki’s chin. She could picture only three empty stems where berries had been. Probably those were the berries she’d knocked out of Asante’s hand. She moved her memory further back to scan the ground near where Asante had been. Couldn’t remember seeing any other benutis. She waited, listening. After a few moments, Rafiki seemed to arrive at the same conclusion. There was a slap of flesh and Asante squealed, much louder than before. Rafiki roared. Max shot a glance. Rafiki was waving the plant in her three-year-old’s face. Then she swiveled and roared her challenge at the entire jungle, daring any of it to hurt her child.
Titus bellowed, backing her up, and then there came the pop-pop-pop of him slapping his chest. The loud crack of a branch or small tree being pulled down. He barked and threw leaves in the air.
Yoko and Mutara sat as small and still as rocks. Max lay where she was, eyes closed, just breathing. She became aware of pain now in her left shoulder, rising in a throbbing hum. She didn’t move.
The gorillas were restless for a long time afterward, coming one by one to sniff the benutis where it lay on the ground. They would jerk back and snort. Then move over to inspect Asante, sniffing loudly. Only gradually did they settle down enough to feed again.
When Max finally felt it was safe enough to sit up, she found her left arm hung in front of her body, limp and foreign, the lump of her shoulder all different. Cautiously, she flexed her fingers and found they still responded.
The three humans moved a hundred yards from the gorillas, far enough away to stand up and discuss how to pop her shoulder back into its socket, pooling what scant knowledge they had. Mutara was elected to do it. Yoko would hold onto Max to help her brace herself.
Yoko said, “Max, I hate to state the obvious, but we’re going to have to touch you to do this. You OK with that?”
“No choice,” Max said.
“You ready?”
Max held up one finger while she searched for something to concentrate on. A place for her mind to go. As she had done with those boys in high school, she recreated smells, evoked them in her mind, vivid and layered.
A linen closet smelling of dust and cedar.
Hot, sweet pee tinkling into the toilet.
She let her finger drop.
Dimly she was aware of Yoko behind her, wrapping her arms around Max’s waist and across her chest, her whole body tight against Max’s. Mutara took hold of her upper arm with both hands.
“One,” he said.
The times
those boys had been with her, there was a lot less surface area involved than this. Still she found being held by these two was easier.
A pile of autumn leaves: airy and rich decay.
“Two,” he said.
Cold white wine, like sharp metallic sunshine.
She was older. She’d worked hard on changing, acting more neurotypical.
Also, she trusted these two.
“Three.”
His yank was firm and clean. He twisted the arm, angling it, and then pushed it back toward the socket. There was the grinding of bone against bone, pain poured a searing liquid across her chest, and her arm grated sideways, all wrong.
He let go and stepped away for a moment, breathing, before trying again.
She closed her eyes now and worked on finding something much more interesting to focus on.
Yoko swore, holding her from behind, her mouth against Max’s ear, her voice flat and mechanical. “Shit shit shit.”
Between each try he would wipe his hands several times off on his pants. Each time when he pushed, trying to pop the bone into place, Max let no noise escape her lips, while he grunted low in his chest as though he’d been cut.
The fifth time—both Mutara and Yoko half-panting by now from their effort—he spat out something angry in another language, then slammed her arm hard, shoving it home with a force that made both Yoko and her half-stumble backward. The shoulder clicking into its socket. The pain shrieking like metal.
Mutara sat down at the base of a tree, breathing through his teeth. Yoko stepped away and walked around and around, slapping her arms forward and back, a swimmer just before a race. “Fuck that shit,” she said.
Max though stayed still. She had finally found her focus. That moment Rafiki crouched over her, her rough hair, her raspy inhale, the vinegar scent of the benutis. That moment they’d communicated.
Max stood there, her head tilted. Not even moving.
After that day, Asante wouldn’t get very close to her again, unnerved by the slap and the scene that had followed. Max didn’t mind all that much. Now she didn’t have to look at Asante’s tiny hands and contemplate their future.
Instead, over the next few days, she found Rafiki began to take Asante’s place at her side. Rafiki would wander gradually in until she foraged three or four feet away, studiously ignoring Max the whole time, as though this proximity was pure accident.
She wondered if Rafiki came closer partly because Max’s arm was in a sling now, forcing her to forage with one hand also.
Since Asante now always stayed on the far side of her mother, Rafiki didn’t seem as anxious anymore. The times she looked at Max, it was at her hand, perhaps to check her picking technique or to see if she’d found something especially good to eat.
Max didn’t mind her being close. She remembered that moment of Rafiki standing over her, her head turned away as she smelled the benutis. She felt no fear of her.
Because of her missing right hand, Rafiki moved through the jungle in a different way than the other gorillas. Putting weight on her stump seemed to hurt, so she didn’t knucklewalk very often. Instead when she needed to move a few feet, she would heave herself up onto two legs and walk. The transformation was startling. Upright, she became human: her head, her shoulders, her posture. The main difference was her legs, half the length of a person’s. However this difference seemed more like a birth defect than the design decisions of a different species. Faced away and in a dress, she could have walked through any mall and people would throw her glances of pity, not alarm. Massive and muscular, her torso rolled from side to side over her hips, the way dwarves with congenitally short legs moved.
And when Max moved forward, she still tried to knucklewalk. Because of the sling, she could only use one hand, so she half-crawled along, on that one hand and her knees, awkward and breathing hard since this position put pressure on the bandages round her fractured rib. She labored forward in limping impersonation of a gorilla.
The pair of them wandering this way through the jungle.
Yoko had said Rafiki had lost her hand as a child, when the silverback Uncle had ruled the group. Her right hand must have gotten caught in a hunter’s wire trap, a noose meant for much smaller prey. Of course with her hand snagged, first thing she would have done was jerk her arm back, trying to free herself. This would have ripped the trap loose from its anchor in the ground, but also tightened the noose, cutting the wire in through her flesh to the bone. Now the wire became impossible to pull off, not with fingers, no matter how frantic they were. Tugging on the end of the noose just pulled it tighter.
Yoko explained that every few years a gorilla would get caught in one of these wire traps. If the noose wasn’t loosened, then the hand slowly died from lack of blood and over the next few weeks it rotted and fell off. If the gorilla was young and strong, sometimes she survived this.
Three times, researchers had witnessed different silverbacks successfully help the wounded ape. Right after the noose had tightened and the snared gorilla had yanked backward, jerking the wire deep into the flesh, the silverback would begin to scream and display and bark. He would act more terrifying and out of control than ever before, throwing small trees around and slapping the ground and making short furious charges at the injured one, until she lay there utterly still, so terrified she was barely breathing. Then the silverback would step in close, lean down and bite her wrist. Sink his incisors into the flesh far enough to wedge at least one tooth under the wire and tug up, then bite again and again in different spots, prying upward until the noose was loose enough to come off.
When Rafiki was a juvenile and her hand had gotten caught, Uncle had ruled the group. She’d been too young to understand what he was trying to do. And even in his prime, he’d been a bit jumpy and hesitant. He hadn’t been able to terrify her into submission, to let him bite her wrist. And so she’d lost her hand.
She’d learned to cope. Her left hand could pluck food surprisingly quickly, much faster than Max could with her one hand. Sometimes when working on an exceptionally bounteous harvest, Rafiki would roll back onto her tailbone and use one foot as well as her left hand, balanced there in what looked like a yoga pose.
She seemed interested in Max’s clumsy foraging, as well as in the plant samples she collected. She glanced sideways each time Max pulled out a sample bag, watching from the edge of her eyes as Max tucked edible plants away into her knapsack.
Once, when Max left one of the sample bags on the ground for a moment, Rafiki reached forward to prod it with a single knuckle. At the light crinkle of the plastic, she pulled her hand back to her chest. Max continued to examine the Pygeum leaves in her hand, trying to look busy. Rafiki leaned down close to sniff the bag, then backed up, tucking her chin in.
Max didn’t want her putting the bag in her mouth to taste it or perhaps try to swallow it, so she casually picked it up, opened it and slid in the plant sample, then put it away in her backpack. Rafiki watched this from the edge of her vision, considering it all.
The next morning on the mountain, within the first hour of being with the gorillas, Max came upon five nettle leaves, all balled up on the ground beside each other, ready to be swallowed. She glanced around, unsure of which gorilla had gone to the trouble of rolling the leaves up, then forgotten to eat them. Rafiki was the closest. Perhaps Asante had distracted her just before she’d swallowed the leaves. Max unrolled each one, smelled and examined it to make sure there wasn’t something different about these leaves that a gorilla might have detected just before eating them. Rafiki glanced at her twice while she did this.
An hour later, she found another pile of food, this time of Loranthus luteo-aurantiacus, the mistletoe mounded on the ground as neatly as if it had been patted down by a spoon. Again Max took the pile apart, examining the specimens.
She caught Rafiki in the midst of assembling the third offering, trying to get a blackberry to balance on top of the others. It kept rolling off. After the third try, she snorted
, popped the berry in her mouth and stalked off on two legs to a thick cluster of ferns. Max sidled over to the berry pile and contemplated it. What use could this abandoned food serve? She glanced at Rafiki and caught her watching, sideways, but with interest.
Considering the neat pile of berries, on impulse she pulled out a sample bag and dropped the blackberries one by one away in it, the bag open on the ground where it could be seen. Then she tucked the bag away in her knapsack, buttoning the flap afterward.
Rafiki watched, motionless, then roused herself and went back to foraging.
After that, when she left the piles, they were closer to Max, sometimes right beside her, two to three a day. Each time Max would elaborately accept them.
And of course, at no point during this, did either of them look directly at each other.
Max and Yoko walked through the darkness to Pip’s cabin for dinner, waving their flashlights and calling out, “Hee yaw.” Max imagined the forest buffs standing in the darkness of the meadow all around them, their massive heads turning to track the women, the swaying flashlights reflected in their eyes.
To distract herself from this image, Max asked, “How come Pip and Dubois don’t go up to see the gorillas?”
“Dubois, she runs the station, the administration and stuff. She spends her days pleading with the government for more money or help. Pip, she works on the gorilla’s phylogeography using samples of their DNA. She’s trying to figure out when the mountain gorillas split off evolutionarily from the lowland ones, and how much diversity remains in the survivors. You know, at what point the inbreeding will get so bad they’ll all be hemophiliacs or something, unable to reproduce viable offspring. The last few weeks she’s been working like mad to make sure she’s got all the data she needs. She really doesn’t want to have to come back here later for more.”
“She said she had a kid. How old?”
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