The Masterwork of a Painting Elephant

by Michelle Cuevas

  TWENTY

  L’Art de la Mer

  The next morning at dawn, Birch and I reached the coast of France, where there was a bustle of activity. As the first light appeared, the brown darkness collected in cabinets and corners and pockets. Cars, bikes, and people loaded on and off the large boats, and in between these behemoth vessels, smaller fishing boats docked to unload the early morning’s catches. Men in black rubber boots tidied up their nets and turned their attention to the sea. The scent of phantom fish sneaked up to our noses, diving in and out of a soft breeze. Birch looked concerned as we watched from behind a fish truck. A man checked passengers’ tickets as they boarded a transatlantic boat with the name L’Art de la Mer on the side.

  “‘Art of the Sea,’” Birch whispered. “Fitting name, but that sign says no animals allowed.”

  “You aren’t boarding as an animal,” I replied, pleased with my own cleverness. “Didn’t you see the other sign?” Birch followed my gaze to the boat and to a sign that read DAMES SEULEMENT. Ladies Only.

  * * *

  Birch and I stood in line waiting to board the ladies’ cruise ship. A French woman in a high-collared black dress was greeting everyone. She looked very serious and very fancy. I straightened the large hat on Birch’s head.

  “Now, walk like a lady,” I told him. Birch tried to walk with lighter steps, like a lady, but it was hard. For one, he’s an elephant. And two, he was wearing a dress.

  “Nobody is going to believe I’m a lady,” Birch said. “I’m wearing a tablecloth.”

  “You’re wearing a dress,” I corrected. I too was wearing a dress and wig.

  “They’re old ladies,” I continued. “They probably can’t even see that well.”

  “Is that rain?” we heard a few ladies say, putting their palms upward and looking to heaven. The clouds saw this as an invitation, and poured buckets into their waiting hands. “Run! Our dresses will be ruined!” the ladies cried, and all rushed toward the boat. Birch and I took this opportunity, joined the scramble, and made our way onto the ship without notice. A woman standing next to us looked Birch up and down. “You’re a big woman now, aren’t you? Well, your little girl is very cute.” She smiled, gazing up at me.

  After the women had dried off, they mingled, gossiped, removed their white gloves, and ate dainty sandwiches. The room seemed a bit cramped, so Birch and I made our way up to the deck and waited for the ship to set sail.

  As we stood and looked out at the sea, something caught my eye in the dark water. “Look, Birch,” I said, pointing. “It’s a sea turtle.”

  We watched the powerful black creature move effortlessly, like a bird, through the water. The sea held endless specks of twinkling mica, and all around the beast were lines of light radiating from the ocean floor. I wondered where the light came from, and then I heard it. Below the surface, below the temperate miles of blue-green water pierced with fish, below the darkening shades of jade, lay the ocean deep, where no light penetrates. But there is still life. A translucent shrimp, insignificant as air, moved. Its world was all darkness, so dark it couldn’t tell when a giant turtle netted with light passed overhead. I could hear the taps of this shrimp’s featherlike appendages as she danced across the ocean floor, over a bare, cratered land of plains and valleys, as her luminescence sent rays of light higher and higher.

  The boat slowly picked up speed and pulled away from the dock. I felt like I was flying as I clung to Birch’s back, listening to the ship’s flag applauding in the wind. The boat ride was fairly uneventful for the next few hours. We fed French fries to the seagulls that dipped and dived above our heads like white china plates flung through the sky. We watched a school of tiny silver fish move through the water and under the boat like a great puff of smoke coming out of a factory and shifting through the air.

  Our attention diverted from the world below when the weather above started to change. The sun tiptoed away and hid behind the horizon line of clouds. The rain started again and everyone left the deck for the shelter of the cabin, but Birch and I stayed out. We threw our heads back and laughed because, really, what’s a little rain? It felt fresh, and I remembered what Birch had told me about one thing hiding behind another. I had taken a bath the day before, for example, but here I was taking another.

  “Miss,” a man’s deep voice said behind us. “Miss?” I ignored him because I forgot, momentarily, that we were dressed like ladies.

  “I’d like to have a word with you and your friend. Something about you seems”—he paused—“very fishy.” The voice belonged to a security guard.

  “Why, whatever are you talking about?” I replied in a high-pitched voice, trying to sound as innocent as possible.

  “What is that?” He spun around sharply and pointed his police baton at Birch’s trunk.

  “That’s her nose. What are you trying to insinuate? That there’s something wrong with this woman’s nose? How rude.”

  “Fine. Well, then, what are … these?” the officer asked, resting his hand on one of Birch’s tusks.

  “Those,” I said, “are her teeth. Is it a crime in this country to have an overbite?” The officer straightened his badge, breathed warm breath on it, and shined it with his sleeve. “You need to show me your tickets for the cruise,” he continued. “Let me see those. I’m security on this boat. It’s my job.”

  “We dropped them overboard when we were looking at the sea turtle.”

  “Well, then.” He smiled. “It seems I’ll have to take you ladies downtown when we dock. Law’s the law. That is, if we can find a jail cell big enough for—” The officer stopped talking when something caught his attention out at sea.

  “What in the world?” the officer asked, pointing. Birch and I squinted to see through the rain. To our shock, it was the sea turtle we had seen earlier sailing through the waves. And on her back, with feathers blazing like fire, rode Dahlia. The acrobat traveled with her back to the mid-morning sun, creating a halo around her and giving the strange caravan an otherworldly glow.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Beneath Our Feet

  The turtle pulled up alongside the boat. Dahlia was wearing a now soaking-wet costume.

  “What are you doing on that sea turtle?” I shouted.

  “I needed to talk to Birch.”

  The acrobat and the elephant attracted the attention of the passengers, and a crowd gathered on deck.

  The acrobat closed her eyes. “I love you, Birch,” she said. “I always have. The embers of love never truly go out. If the weather is right and there’s not too much rain and a wayward match is flung out a car window, well, in due time it may catch fire. It may catch and blaze yet again.”

  Birch tooted his trunk like a boat horn. “Toot, toot, toooot!” He tooted louder than I’d ever heard him toot.

  The ladies on the ship all swooned and then clapped their hands. While there is a lot of romance in movies and books, we rarely get to see it in real life. The boat buoyed just a bit higher out of the water that day because of all the memories of love rushing into everyone’s hearts, all the happy thoughts they started having about all the people they had loved, and all the ones who had truly loved them back, the ones who still paced the marble corridors of the heart waiting to be remembered, waiting to remind a forgetful soul of its true loveliness.

  Two mates on the ship threw a life preserver overboard and then helped Dahlia climb a ladder onto the boat. Dahlia was wrapped in a towel and brought a warm cup of tea. Everyone on the ship was asking her a million questions. Birch and the acrobat hugged and smiled and whispered to each other, but I was more interested in the sea turtle still lounging beside the boat.

  She was giant, bigger than any turtle I had ever seen in life or in books. Why, she was almost as big as Birch. And old. Very, very old. Birch once told me that painting was like seeing the world being created new each morning. Mountains rose slowly, yawning and stretching out of the ground. Rivers grew deeper and wider and began moving like trains, slow, then
fast, and faster still toward the sea. The flowers in the meadow took their places like an attentive audience and watched the sky paint itself blue and the trees pin on each leaf. The world did feel very new every day.

  But this turtle did not feel as if she were created new every morning. She felt very old, older than one day, older than time itself. Her shell was covered in barnacles and moss and fallen leaves, and I think I saw a sapling growing there as well. Smells of shadows and frogs’ feet filled the air around her, and the sunlight had trouble pushing through all the ghosts to reach her shell. Yes, this was a very old creature. This was not created new every morning. Perhaps, I thought, the world had forgotten about her.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Hello,” the turtle said in a deep voice.

  “You’re not like anything I’ve seen,” I said.

  “I’m a magical creature,” she replied.

  “Are you a unicorn?”

  “No.”

  “A centaur?”

  “No.”

  “A dragon?”

  “No. I’m a very, very, very old sea turtle.”

  “Is that … magical?” I asked.

  “Allow me to tell you a story,” the turtle said. “You see, scientists have shown us how astronomy works: that the earth orbits around the sun and that the sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. However, a group of people called the Hindus believes that the world rests upon an elephant. And the elephant rests upon the back of a giant turtle.”

  “I’ve heard that story,” I said. “But I always wondered what the turtle rests upon.”

  She paused. “Well, the Hindus would tell you, ‘Something, but we know not what.’ And this is a wise notion, because we will never get to the bottom of things. We do not know what supports the turtle that supports the elephant that supports the world. No man stands on absolute truth. Perhaps we are merely banded together, each of us leaning on one another, keeping the world afloat.”

  I sat and thought about that for a moment, how each person has lots of people in his or her life, and how all those people make up the world for that person. Perhaps home is not located over mountains and through cities, past trains and tracks and across the ocean. Perhaps home is always right in our hearts and beneath our feet.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The Best Position There Is

  When Birch, the acrobat, and I reached home, all our friends had gathered to greet us. All our neighbors were there and Slim Spatucci too. Even the Amazing Singing Hoboes were there. They sang with acrobatic fervor, bodies leaning, arching, on tiptoe at the high notes. I could hear the waves of song like flapping wings, traveling out, some snaking through and becoming trapped in the hairs on Birch’s back, the rest falling softly, dancing through the wet grass.

  “I had a dream,” Pocketless Pete said. “I was in a garden and I saw a leaf fall from a tree toward the ground, only to be caught by another leaf on the same tree. It was a nice thing to see, and I figured it meant you were coming home.”

  While we were gone at the circus, Slim Spatucci had finished my announcement and told everyone in the art world that Birch was the real artist. The critics were even more excited about an artistically gifted elephant than about an artistically gifted boy. Slim was planning a world tour.

  “I can’t go on a tour,” Birch said. “I can’t go anywhere at all.”

  That’s when I finally understood. As long as he had to care for me, Birch would never have a life of his own. He’d feel needed, but never be the great elephant artist I knew he could be.

  “Birch,” I said, “could you do me a favor?”

  “Anything,” he replied.

  “Could you take me to the park?”

  * * *

  The park looked the same as I remembered it. The fence behind home plate was still standing at a strange angle and the grass in the outfield was much too long, the boys in shorts leaning over every few minutes to brush the flies from their legs. I watched a boy who lived down the street square up at bat and spit in the dirt. The sun was hot, and he squinted. I imagined as he focused on the ball everything else around it became a blur of sunburned faces and gangly limbs.

  Two boys ran over to us and waved.

  “Hey you,” the one with freckles and a crooked smile said. “We need a shortstop. You play?”

  “I’m a fan of baseball, yes,” I said, stretching the truth a bit.

  “Well, then, get down off your crazy ride and get out here. You can play short. Short’s the best position there is.” The boys ran back to the field and I stared at their backs getting smaller and smaller.

  “Short really is the best position there is,” a voice behind us said. I turned and there was Darling Clementine sitting on a fence, wearing a blue dress, and looking just as perfect as I remembered.

  “Perhaps it’s time to get down off your Elephas maximus indicus,” Darling said. “I can’t grab your big ears and kiss you hello if you’re way up there.”

  I almost fainted. I did, in fact, want to kiss Darling Clementine. I had no idea what short was, but I wanted to be out there with those boys punching my fist into a sweat-stained glove. I knew it was time.

  “Birch,” I said, running my hand over his neck, remembering when I was a baby and felt his skin for the first time, rough as the bark on a tree. “Birch, I need you to give me something,” I said quietly.

  “I’d love to, Pigeon, but I don’t know that I have anything left to give you,” Birch replied. “I was old and retired when we met and now I’m even older still.”

  He was right. He was not as strong as he had once been. Caring for me had taken its toll on him. “Oh, I don’t need much,” I told him. “All I really need is for you to give me a hand getting down to the ground.”

  I didn’t have to say anything more.

  Birch leaned the front half of his body down and bowed his head. I took a deep breath and climbed up, up over his head and his ears and sat at the top of his trunk. Then I slid down, down, down toward the grass, and I felt the earth under my feet. Birch stood up proudly behind me.

  “It’s been an honor and a privilege,” Birch said, bowing his head and closing his kind elephant eyes. I felt nothing but gratitude as I curled my toes into the grass and said, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Trout-Bellied Rainbow Skies

  When Birch and Dahlia went on tour, I began a new life with my new adoptive family—our old circus friends in the too-small-for-a-name town. I slept in a bed instead of on an elephant’s back. In the morning I ate breakfast in the kitchen, where the bacon made grease ghosts on the paper towels over the plate. I bathed in a bathtub instead of being sprayed by an elephant’s trunk, and if the bathwater was hot enough, steam came off my skin afterward like mist on a lake in the night. I liked walking everywhere, and I never wore shoes.

  “Take your shoes off,” I told Darling Clementine when I went over to her house to play. “Now throw them out the window!” She did, and we walked over the gravel road, the dry grass, and the lake rocks covered in muck.

  “Has it always felt like this?” she asked.

  Still, sometimes I would get sad. Darling saw this and asked, “What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I said. I went outside and looked at a sunset striped like a trout’s rainbow belly. I thought of Birch and how he would have loved to see it and paint those colors.

  “I’ve got a surprise,” Darling said one afternoon. We got on our bikes and pedaled to the next small town. She took my hand and led me through the exhibits of a small zoo to a large enclosure with high fences.

  “Elephants!” she said. “Look.”

  I looked and looked and tried to be happy. I didn’t want to upset Darling. She was trying so hard to make this day special, but I couldn’t help it. I felt my face and it was wet with tears.

  “Pigeon, I’m sorry,” said Darling. “I thought you’d like the elephants.”

&nbs
p; “I do,” I said. “I do.” That was the problem. They only reminded me of Birch. He had been my whole world for so long. His head had been a high hill sloping down the valley of his trunk. The hairs on his neck were spruce and shrub and his skin a dry riverbed, the cracks making a patterned mosaic.

  And so I ran. My feet pounded against the dirt and carried me out of the zoo, into the woods, over a fallen tree, and out the other side. When I stopped I was at the edge of my own town. In front of me stood a makeshift house, which was really just a roof with three walls made from planks of wood off old circus train cars. The boards had pictures of animals painted on them—lion heads on hippo bodies and monkey feet attached to alligator smiles.

  Nothing looked right. The rain and weather had faded the pictures and they were almost too faint to see. Some of the nails had rusted, and vines had started to grow up and separate the planks of wood.

  “Birch?” I said. But of course nobody answered.

  I walked back to the zoo, slowly, with my head down. It was starting to get dark, and when I turned the corner, Darling Clementine was there waiting.

  “I stayed here in case you came back.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  A tiny bird flew into the enclosure and landed on an elephant’s back. The elephant didn’t seem to notice. I realized time is like a small bird. If I could have caught it, I would never have had to grow up, would never have had to leave my childhood bedroom—Birch’s back—the room with the greatest view. But I learned, as everyone eventually does, that tiny birds are nearly impossible to catch.

  “Where did you go?” Darling Clementine asked.

  “I tried to go back,” I said. Darling was quiet. She just nodded knowingly, put her head on my shoulder, and stood with me watching the elephants until the zoo closed.

  You use wood to build a boat, but it’s in the space where there is nothing that the boat becomes useful. And we build a house, but it’s on the open spaces, windows and doors, that the usefulness of the house depends. In the space after I left Birch’s back, I discovered what it means to find someone who loves you, someone who will carry you when you need to be carried and let you go when it’s time, finally, to be free.