One Amazing Elephant

by Linda Oatman High

  Trullia hands me a gift. I open it. A coloring book and Crayola crayons.

  “Look, it’s all wildflowers!” she says, as if I can’t see that. “It’s like you and me, Lily. Wildflowers. That’s us.”

  “Why’d you get her a little-kid coloring book?” Mike asks. “She’s too big for that.”

  “Nobody’s too old for coloring!” Trullia says. “My therapist recommends it! It’s great stress relief.”

  Mike just shakes his head.

  She hands me another one, wrapped in paper that says Happy Birthday. I open it: pink flip-flops with sparkly sequins and a flowery dress.

  “You’ll be a teenager next year, and we need to get you looking stylish,” Trullia says. “Plus, you need something decent to wear for the funeral.”

  I look at her. Trullia’s eyes are red, smeared with sleep and mascara.

  “Thank you,” I say. These might be my first-ever gifts from my mother, at least as far back as I can remember.

  “And last, but not least, one from me,” says Mike. He hands me a package wrapped in newspaper. I open it. It’s a Rainbow Loom, to make rubber band bracelets.

  “Now you can make a bracelet for everybody in Gibtown!” Mike says.

  “Thank you,” I say, even though I have no desire to make rubber band bracelets.

  “Nice to make Christmas fun for a kid,” Mike says. “I never had that. Nobody ever cared enough.”

  “That’s sad,” I say, but then he changes the subject.

  “Open it up,” he says. “Check it out.”

  Grandma and Trullia ooh and aah over the Rainbow Loom. They are all acting in that fake perky way that adults put on whenever they’re actually super sad. It’s as if the outside totally clashes with the inside, like trying to match plaid with stripes. It kind of hurts my eyes to look at them, so false and full of pretend life.

  Thank you, thank you, thank you. At least I’m polite. My dad taught me right.

  We are sitting down to a noon Christmas dinner, all four of us squished around the tiny table in the teeny kitchen. There’s ham and peas and Stovetop stuffing and potato rolls. Nobody said grace. Nobody’s talking, just eating. Grandma’s eyes are puffy, and Trullia still hasn’t washed the smudged makeup from her face. Mike is sweating, beads of perspiration snaking down his cheeks.

  “You two should think about getting rid of that elephant,” Mike says out of the blue.

  Grandma Violet raises her eyes from her plate to Mike’s face, and they cut sharp like a knife.

  “Don’t even say that, not even as a joke,” she snaps. “Bill would never have gone for that.”

  “Well, what if it keeps acting up and hurts somebody? What if you can’t afford to keep it, to feed it, now that the act can’t happen?”

  “Maybe it’ll just have to be the Amazing Queenie Grace and Her Best Friend, Violet,” Grandma says. She spoons peas into her mouth, swallowing what she really wants to say.

  “Mom, you know that you and Queenie Grace will never click like Dad did with her,” says Trullia, looking up with her shadowed eyes.

  “How about the Amazing Queenie Grace and Her Best Friend, Mike?” asks Mike. He wipes his forehead with his paper napkin.

  “Pfffft. Queenie Grace doesn’t even like you,” Trullia says.

  “Probably likes me more than it likes you,” retorts Mike.

  “Stop bickering, you two!” says Grandma Violet. “Set an example for Lily here. And no more discussion about Queenie Grace, please, not until later. It’s just too overwhelming right now.”

  “I feel so bad for Queenie Grace,” Trullia says. “I know exactly how she feels. She feels empty. And confused. And mad. And sad. All wrapped up in one big fat package.”

  Grandma nods.

  “You don’t have to be human to feel grief,” she says.

  Trullia pushes away from the table. Still in her chair, she pulls back the little white curtain to peer out the kitchen window.

  “Where the heck is Queenie Grace, anyway?” she says. “She’s not out there!”

  Trullia lets the curtain fall back, presses both hands to her head.

  “She’s got to be out there!” Mike says, dropping his fork. “I chained her tight to the tree!”

  Mike and Trullia both stand, pushing each other to be the first at the living room window. They remind me of two toddlers in a crowded day care, both of them brats.

  My grandmother hops up and runs outside, her long hair flying behind.

  “She’s not out here,” she hollers from the little porch. Grandma shades her eyes, looks left and right, frantic.

  “Queenie Grace!” she yells, like calling a dog. “Queenie Grace!” The yippy little poodles next door are yapping their heads off.

  “Where could she be?” shrieks Trullia.

  “I have no idea,” my grandma shouts from the porch, and she’s a silhouette against the blinding bright blue Florida sky. “Who knows? As far as an elephant can run.”

  “No way!” says Trullia. “This can’t be happening!”

  “Call 911,” says my grandma. “We need to find her. What if she runs out on the road?”

  My grandma dashes into the yard, and Trullia and Mike both turn and bump into each other, like on a funny TV show. These three are all in a tizzy about the runaway elephant, and so they don’t even notice me as I run outside.

  I just sprint past Grandma, veer to the left, and dash fast past the home of creepy Charlie the fire-eating weirdo. My Converse sneakers slap the black pavement, forward, forward. I can obviously run much faster than those three old people, who are freaking out so loud I can still hear them.

  I’m going to find that elephant.

  Queenie Grace Is Free of the Chains

  It is early morning, and I am free of the chains! I broke them because there was an insect. It was a buzzing yellow jacket, and I did not want to be stung.

  So now I am running.

  I am afraid, as if the entire world has turned into one big buzzing bee. I am scared of being without Bill, scared of having nowhere to go, scared of leaving my home. I can feel my heart inside of me.

  I run. I thunder past the yipping little dogs and the sleeping lion and the climbing monkey. I run past the quiet trailers. People are noticing, coming out on their porches, staring. Some yell. I run past the things that are no longer used in the circus: the rusted Ferris wheel and the silent carousel and the abandoned cotton candy stand.

  I run all the way to the end of the winter camp, to the water—the lake where the Giant once caught fish. I stop to drink, drink, drink. I am so thirsty. I drink until I see a winter fish, swimming silver and quick.

  The fish startles me; it makes me think too much of Bill. Bill loved to hold a fishing pole in water, waiting patiently for the nibbling bites of hungry fish. I wish he were with me still.

  I begin to run again. My ears flap; my trunk swings; my feet pound the ground. I sound powerful. Cars stop on the road and people use their phones to take my picture. Somebody screams.

  “An elephant! It could kill us! Get back in the car!”

  I would not kill anything. I have never hurt anyone.

  The Alligator Boy

  I am out of breath, wheezing a little bit, running with this unusual-looking boy who joined me just past Grandma’s trailer. He is apparently one of the neighbors, and it must be that boy they told me about.

  The kid has this weird skin condition. He’s all wrinkled, like an alligator except more rumpled in a human flesh kind of way. He has pitch-black long and floppy skater hair, and he’s wearing a faded Led Zeppelin T-shirt, which I guess kind of goes well with old-man skin.

  “Queenie Grace, she’ll run toward the lake,” the boy says, panting. “I saw her take off.”

  Luckily, there isn’t much time for me to stare, or to ask any questions. We’re actually way too busy running to be awkward. You don’t have much time to be shy when you’re on the trail (or tail) of a runaway elephant.

  We run and run, qu
iet except for our shoes and our breath, through the trailer park with its glitzy Christmas decorations. Nothing more disorienting than Santa and reindeer and gigantic inflatable snowmen when it’s sunny and seventy-five degrees.

  I’m wheezing worse, with that tight-chest feeling I sometimes get. My heart is a crazy thing, and it’s like invisible fingers are choking my throat. The boy is breathing hard, too. We run in pretty much the same rhythm, as if we’ve practiced, slapping the baking macadam as we run around potholes and big jagged stones.

  “Watch that hole,” the kid gasps, and I swerve around a big dip that might go clear to China. A few people stare, but I don’t care. Nobody knows me here.

  “Hey, Henry Jack!” croaks an old man, but we just keep going.

  We pound out of the trailer park, past the giant boot statue, and now we are running on the real road: yellow lines and blue sky and signs. Plus cars. Dad would have a conniption if he knew this.

  “There she is!” huffs the boy, and we both skid to a stop by the side of the road.

  Queenie Grace looms between green trees just off the right side of the road, drinking from a lake. Cars are stopping, and shocked people are going wild with surprise. All I see are cell phones, held up, clicking pictures. All I hear are voices, saying the same thing: “Elephant!”

  Queenie Grace stops drinking, swings her head for a glimpse of the road, and then starts to run. I can feel the thunder of her weight shaking the earth from here. We’ll never catch her. She’s a wild animal and she’s going to go where she wants to go, do what she wants to do. Run if she wants to run.

  “Queenie Grace!” calls the boy. “Wait. Please stop! Wait for us!”

  She does. The elephant stops in her tracks, remains frozen in place.

  “I … can’t … believe … she … listened,” I say, panting, bending forward and trying to catch my breath. I look up at the boy beside me.

  The boy smiles, which is quite a sight when his face is a human map of crinkles and ruts in his skin. It’s as if his entire face turns into a crumpled-up piece of paper that some little kid scribbled on.

  “This elephant always listens to me,” the boy says. “We’re like that.” He crosses his middle finger over his index finger in that way of wishing for something lucky.

  We take off again, but not nearly as fast, and when we finally arrive by the side of the patiently waiting elephant, we stop again to catch our breath. Queenie Grace just stands there, like this is any old normal day, and without thinking, I lay my hand against her. She is warm, almost like an enormous friendly dog. I leave my hand there for a few seconds, letting it sink in: I am touching an elephant. My. Hand. Is. On. The. Elephant.

  “She stopped because she totally knows me,” says the boy. He leans his forehead against the elephant for a few seconds, as if he’s pressing away a headache. Or maybe he’s just extremely relieved.

  “Wonder why she ran away,” he says. “She never does that.”

  “Well, they chained her up to this tree last night,” I reply. “She broke a window and she stole my peanuts and cut her trunk. See, she has a bandage? Then this morning, while we were opening presents, all you heard was her crying and throwing fits. By the time it was dinner, she just broke loose, I guess.”

  “Wow,” says the boy. “They chained her? They never chain her!”

  I shrug. “Maybe she deserved it. Like being grounded. She was bad, you know. Like now they have to fix the window and all.”

  The kid shakes his head.

  “Queenie Grace is awesome,” he says, turning his head to look at me. “She’s always awesome. We’re best friends, Queenie Grace and me. We’ve known each other since we—I—was born. Queenie Grace used to rock my cradle with her trunk.”

  “I was afraid of her when I was a baby. Actually, I still am.”

  “You might as well be afraid of the sky,” says the boy. “It’s way more likely that you’d get hurt by the sky than get hurt by Queenie Grace.”

  The kid’s skin is as wrinkled as the elephant’s, and he’s quite comfortable keeping his cheek pressed against her side. The elephant swings her head to look back at him and she almost seems to smile, then she reaches her trunk over and hugs his shoulders with it. It’s a surprising moment, and I melt a little bit inside, kind of like when you’re watching a movie with a sweet scene and the background music tells you to feel the feelings.

  “I’ve known this elephant all my life,” says the boy. “More than twelve years. By the way, my name’s Henry Jack. Henry Jack O’Toole, otherwise known as the Alligator Boy. I was part of the Twins with Alligator Skin, but now it’s just me.”

  “So where is the other one?”

  “He died,” says Henry Jack O’Toole, all matter-of-fact. “Sometimes people with this condition don’t live too long.”

  “Oh.” I never know what to say to something like that.

  “See, when you work with the circus, they like to make a big deal about skin,” Henry Jack says. He steps back from Queenie Grace and flips his hair away from his face by throwing his head back like a rock star.

  “Like there’s Elephant Skin and Rubber Skin and Elastic Skin and Armadillo Skin and Butterfly Skin. But really, skin is just skin. It comes in different colors, and random states of wrinkled-ness, but really it’s all the same. It just covers what’s underneath, the important stuff, the organs and the bones and the heart and the soul.”

  I nod, look down at the elephant’s monstrous feet, take a few steps back. It’s so quiet here by the water, under the trees, that I can almost hear her tail swishing back and forth, and I definitely hear elephant breath. Sometimes it sounds like snoring. Plus my own whistling-wheezing breathing. Not that I need my inhaler, not yet.

  “So you’re Lily, right?” asks Henry Jack. “Lily Rose. I remember seeing you with Bill, in West Virginia.”

  “Yes. I’m Lily Pruitt. Bill was my grandpa.”

  “I know. I’m really sorry about him. About your grandpa.”

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “And, oh yeah! You rode Queenie Grace into the big top in West Virginia! I remember she was running like crazy!”

  “I’m never doing that again,” I say. “I did it for my grandpa.”

  “I remember him talking about you,” says Henry Jack. “He always called you ‘Lily Rose.’ And he talked about you, like, all the time. Bill bragged about you nonstop.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure.” Henry Jack pulls his T-shirt away from his body, fanning himself, and I catch a glimpse of wrinkled belly skin.

  “What did he say?”

  “Just stuff about how wonderful his perfect granddaughter is, all that.”

  “Huh,” I say. “Well, I’m far from perfect, but maybe he really thought that I was. He is—was—so nice.”

  “I know. Bill was so freaking cool. I could not even believe it when I heard. I still can’t.”

  “I know, right?”

  We’re so caught up in our conversation that I realize I’m kind of forgetting about the elephant, and the fact that the three of us are in this together. So I stretch my arm out and touch her again, carefully, two fingers, just to remind myself that she is here. That she is real.

  Queenie Grace just stands there, patient, swaying her trunk and shifting her weight from side to side. Through the trees, I can see that a few cars remain stopped along the road; people must still be gawking.

  “Well, I guess we’d better get this runaway elephant back home,” I say. “Before people call the police or shoot at her or something.”

  “If anybody shoots at Queenie Grace,” says Henry Jack, “they are going to have to get through me first. I would take a bullet for this girl.”

  “Seriously?” I say. “That’s cool. Well, not that you would be shot … but that you can love an elephant so much.”

  Henry Jack O’Toole pats the elephant, looks up into her right eye, and talks soft and low.

  “Come on, sweetheart,” he says. “We’re taking
you home.”

  And Maybe That Is Why Queenie Grace Ran Away

  I love the Alligator Boy. I’ve known him since he was born, since he and his twin were sweet-smelling babies in a double wooden cradle. I liked Henry Jack the best. He cried the least. (He looked up at me and he cooed and he reached out his tiny hands.)

  Some people might say that an elephant should not be allowed near newborn babies, but those who live in Gibtown know me. They know that I’m safe to be around babies. I can be trusted with people of any age.

  I pretended that Henry Jack was my baby, that he was Little Gray, and that I had my baby every day. His skin looked like my skin. Sometimes if you try hard enough, you can substitute one love for another. I didn’t even have to try. I just loved the Alligator Boy.

  I follow Henry Jack and Lily. I move toward home.

  “Here we are, girl,” says Henry Jack. “Home, sweet home.”

  I hope and pray that there will be no more chains. I pray without getting down on my knees.

  No chains, I pray, again, as Lily goes inside to get Violet and Trullia.

  Violet comes outside, eyes wild, hair in a frizz, pale skin.

  “Queenie Grace!” she calls. “What are we going to do with you?”

  I hang my head low, and I moan. The Alligator Boy and the girl Lily both say, “Awww.” They understand me.

  “I know,” says Violet. “I’m sad, too, and when we’re sad, sometimes we do things we wouldn’t normally consider. I forgive you, Queenie Grace, but please … no more breaking windows or running away. Okay? Deal?”

  I raise my head, look Violet in the eye, and try to smile. I do my best.

  Violet does the same: tries to smile. But in her eyes, I see the same thing that is inside of me: grief. She looks like grief and she smells of grief, and we are bound together by this one terrible thing: missing Bill.

  Grief is even worse than chains. It holds you to one place.

  And maybe that is why I ran away.

  The Care and Feeding of Elephants

  Henry Jack and I stand, arms crossed, both of us panting and sweating, watching Mike carry the heavy, clinking chains to Queenie Grace. Now I’m sorry that we brought her back. If I was brave enough to say it, I’d tell Mike to stop. To just stop and let her be. Leave Queenie Grace alone; let her be free.