“His hands must have been all scarred up.”
“That’s why the funeral had to be closed casket.”
“Because of his hands?”
Her father rounded on her, teeth bared, as he all but spat, “You don’t know what it was like.”
She didn’t reply. She had suddenly recognized one of the people on TV, the woman in the flowing dress.
Besides the elephant, the blackness of the elephant and the clarity of the silver, seeing the storyteller was the best thing about her life at the moment. It was also unbelievably wonderful that the storyteller was somehow involved with the elephant. The red-faced man with the perpetually moving lips spoke a comprehensible word or phrase now and again. He wanted to move the elephant, and every time he mentioned the idea, the storyteller would nod. The woman next to the storyteller didn’t seem as connected to the event that was taking place, while the storyteller was brimming like the man who couldn’t stop moving his lips and whose tongue occasionally came into view. This other woman was looking around as though she wanted to keep the looking around a secret. The Girl could feel her making notes.
The storyteller seemed a bit like the elephant because there were two parts to her color, at least two parts. Clearly she was dark and light, not as dark as the woman making notes, not as light as the red-faced man. But the real joy was that the storyteller and the elephant were somehow connected, that the storyteller, at least according to the red-faced man with lips in constant motion, was helping to save the elephant.
It is so good that I am awake and not dreaming, the Girl thought.
The Librarian’s boss’s campaign to move the elephant to the library hit some snags. None of the people with veterinary experience supported the animal being moved. He needed an ally, and while he tried to finagle connections and support on the medical front, he sent the Librarian over to talk to the Egyptologist. It just so happened that the reporter was also there. Juggling these two requests for his time reminded the Egyptologist of the days just after the elephant had emerged, days with more kineticism and exquisite meals than he’d ever known. It was the reporter, hoping to make the interview a twofer, who insisted that the Librarian, who had identified herself as such to the administrative assistant, be allowed to remain present during the interview. The Egyptologist, hungry for what he assumed would be good publicity, agreed.
“If you felt that you were close to discerning the meaning of the symbols, why did you quit?” the reporter asked.
“We didn’t really quit,” the Egyptologist replied, hoping the tenor of the questions would change.
“We?”
“My colleagues and I.”
“Oh yes, your colleagues. I thought you said they were no help.”
“Well, you need help on a project of this scale.”
“Would you mind,” the Librarian interrupted, “if I take a look at this book?”
She had been casting her eyes about, noting all of the unusual titles on Egypt and the Middle East when she stumbled upon The Suburban Bitch. The Egyptologist was silent. The Librarian had opened the book and read a few sentences before she realized he hadn’t answered. She looked up to see him staring at the book with a look of embarrassment and fear.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I can put it back.”
“My brother . . .”
“Did your brother write it?” the reporter asked.
“My brother’s murderer wrote it and then she killed herself. I can’t bring myself to throw it away.”
“You realize,” the teacher replied to the Girl, “that ours is not the only class to ask to visit the elephant and that there are many adults, parents and school staff, that have concerns about such a visit?”
“What if we just write letters that ask about moving the elephant? We could just say we want the elephant moved for all the reasons the people in the library say they want it moved.”
“What are those reasons?”
The Girl had to think for a moment. She had not discerned the reasons put forward because she had been so enraptured by the sight of the storyteller. She also assumed that the teacher had seen the library people on television and actually knew what the man’s lips were saying, assuming they had stopped long enough to create a sentence. The Girl’s silence brought a sad smile to the teacher’s lips. The Girl closed her eyes and said the first thing that came to her.
“I feel like this is the right thing to do.”
She opened her eyes and saw the teacher’s smile wasn’t quite so filled with pity as it had just been, and it gave her confidence to press the issue.
“What if we just do it as a writing lesson, to practice how to write a good essay? We could make it an essay instead of a letter. We don’t have to show it to anybody. It will still be good writing.”
“Why does that make me dark,” snapped the media consultant, looking at the skin on her bare arm as if to make sure it was still there. “And what does it matter?”
“Well you’re right of course. You can say you are lighter or darker—that’s your choice—or be between the two.”
The Librarian tried to be as nonjudgmental as she could. She spoke in her best “can I help you voice,” mustering the kind of sincerity she reserved for children, the elderly, or those who came to the library to practice their English. She waited a moment before sitting next to the consultant. She waited even longer before she spoke again.
“I didn’t know your mother was an author and I was sad to learn how she died.”
Now the consultant felt a mixture of relief and fear, relief that the Librarian probably knew the whole story and would not probe her for details, fear that, despite her calm tone, the other woman might somehow use the information against her. So she tried to head the Librarian off at the pass and jumped to the facts that brought her the most shame.
“I can’t help where I was born.”
“None of us can. I wouldn’t hold anything like that against you. I think you have overcome tremendous odds.”
“A credit to whichever race I claim at any given moment.”
“I am curious though as to how—”
“How I ended up as a media consultant? I dealt with everything pretty well until after the suicide. She had everything to live for. It was the book. They were talking about changing her sentence to time served. I thought, this is it. The long funky nightmare is coming to an end.
“Then one day, about a year ago, I was visiting a school, doing my gig with a bunch of fifth graders. They had all heard the stories I had to tell before I arrived. I didn’t care. I was good and I had my stories here and here,” she pointed to her head and heart as she spoke. “I looked straight into their eyes. It works every time. You can stop a snake in mid-strike or a charging bull if you catch the eyes the right way. I learned that from the storyteller that used to visit the prison. She looked like she was a thousand years old, clearly dark, had a way of laughing to herself and the cutest impish smirk. Anyway, I had done “Snow White and Rose Red” and I was pretty far into Scheherazade when someone called the teacher to the door. Then the teacher called me. It took her a while to get it out, that my mother had hung herself with a sheet. I haven’t told a story since that day.”
***
It took a few days for the Girl’s class to write the essays in support of the elephant being moved to the library. Most of the essays weren’t very good. Most of the students thought the elephant was strange and they didn’t really understand what the fuss was about. The Girl was one of the few that took the writing assignment seriously.
I believe the people I saw on television talking about moving the elephant to the library had the right idea. I believe the man that gave birth to the elephant would have been thanked by all of us if he had stayed alive. He would have been thanked for putting such a joyous message into the world. Now that he has said all there is to say about color, about how we see the two colors, black and silver, we can all solve many, many problems. We should be thankful for hi
s ideas or perhaps just use his ideas since he probably wanted us to use them and has no use for them now.
I am sure, when we stop to think about it, we will all agree that the library is the place where people go when they want a better way to see the world, not the hospital.
The teacher had to point out to the Girl that her first draft didn’t actually explain the message.
***
Upon their arrival, the Librarian’s boss couldn’t focus on anything except the students’ essays. The Librarian was overcome by what she had learned about the media consultant.
“It’s a mind boggling story, really. Her mother was in denial about the pregnancy, the assault, everything but the murder.”
“We could sponsor a contest, her boss pronounced, oblivious to what she’d said. ‘Give us your best elephant story.’ What would be an appropriate prize though?”
“They wouldn’t even let her out to have the baby. Then, years later, when they might have let her out, she kills herself.”
“This is the essay we’ll use. Let’s call it a letter. Listen to this, ‘the library is the place to go when you want a better world.’ I wish I’d had this at the news conference, but no matter. I have it now and the world will have it soon, and they won’t be able to resist it.”
“She had told the ‘Snow White and Rose Red’ story hundreds of times and never focused on the lines ‘Snow White, Rose Red, will you beat your lover dead?’ It had just washed over her without sinking in.”
“I won’t need the consultant this time. We’ll get the student to read on camera.”
“And then there’s the switch from storytelling to media consultant after memorizing virtually the whole fairytale canon so she could recite them without text.”
“But we may need her to help guide the children.”
“I don’t think she really needs to probe the whole career switch thing, the trauma behind it.”
“I need you to get the consultant on the phone.”
“She split.”
“What?”
“She and your pal the Egyptologist, who, as it turns out, is her uncle, they just split, went off. I don’t know where. You could call the Art Institute and ask them where Egyptologists go when they go.”
Days before the news conference, the teacher went to the library with more than a suspicion that no one had really read the Girl’s essay. There wasn’t even a hint of news about the message on the elephant’s hide. That gave her some hope for success.
Once contacted by the Librarian’s boss, the Girl’s father had kept her out of school and given in to the plans to put the Girl on camera, despite pleas from the teacher who tried to dissuade him from both actions. She thought putting children in front of cameras was an especially bad idea. Among other things, she insisted children need privacy. But most of her ideas about how to treat children were ignored, even in the school where she worked. She thought perhaps if she could contact the Librarian, she might be able to persuade her to persuade her boss to read the essay himself, to take the glory and accomplish his goal to boot, though she feared the elephant might not make the trip from the hospital to the library.
When she finally arrived at the help desk, the teacher almost didn’t recognize the Librarian as the person from the online video of the news conference. Her bright copper skin was nearly ashen. The eyes that had darted around at the news conference were still and aimed low.
“Hello there.”
“Can I help you?”
“Actually, I am not in search of a book.”
“Then this is strange place to be, isn’t it?”
“The little Girl who wrote about the elephant being moved, I’m her teacher.”
“You and everyone else in driving distance.”
“I was hoping to persuade the gentleman I saw on TV not to . . . she’s very young to be in front of so many people.”
“But you would be the perfect messenger, right?”
“Actually, no, I think the gentleman—”
“That’s no gentleman, that’s my boss.”
“—would be the best person to—”
“You got something against humor?”
With that the Librarian turned to face another patron walking toward the help desk. The teacher felt desperate. “Have you actually read the essay?”
The Librarian turned away from the patron and back to the teacher. Many had come claiming to be the Girl’s teacher, mother, former dentist, or cousin who just happened to be in town for the taxidermists’ convention. But none had asked that question.
Before the Girl’s teacher came to the library, the Librarian’s boss and the Girl’s father had come to an agreement. As a result, the Girl had been spending more and more time with the Librarian in preparation for the news conference where the Girl would read her essay about why the elephant should be moved to the library. The Librarian was very nice, but the Girl couldn’t help but wish the storyteller was there to help instead of the Librarian.
“She ran away?” the Girl asked.
“Sort of.”
“Does her mother know?”
“Her mother’s dead.”
“Does her father know?”
“He’s dead too.”
“I know how she feels. How did her mother die?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I would love a long story like the storyteller used to tell.”
The Librarian would have also loved a long story and she wanted to speak with the “storyteller” as well. She had come to see the media consultant in a new light. She could imagine them having coffee and conversation about feeling forced to change the ways they had earned their living. The Girl wanted to talk with the storyteller about how she had felt when her mother died.
She had been thinking about her mother more often. She drifted off while she and the Librarian were practicing answering questions about why the elephant should be moved or if he should be moved. Sometimes, she would hear a voice telling her the storyteller’s stories. Sometimes it was the voice of the storyteller, but more and more often it was her mother’s voice. Then her mother would stop telling the story and begin talking about what a wonderful time they had all had in the kitchen on Saturdays listening to the opera, smelling the food her father prepared, and dancing. Sometimes, the Girl would smile for what seemed like no reason to the Librarian. Sometimes, she would be on the verge of tears. The only thing the Librarian knew for sure was that on those occasions of joy, distance, and sorrow, the Girl had left the room the way readers leave a place for the book they are reading. The Librarian thought this was a bit curious because she had noticed the Girl actually had trouble reading, so much trouble that she had begun harboring doubts that the Girl had written the essay.
Strangely, her boss had not let the Librarian see the essay. She had taken his word that it supported the idea of the elephant being moved to the library. The Girl confirmed that much. But there was something unsettled about the Girl and the elephant or something unsettled in the Librarian’s mind.
The elephant’s guards had become very weary of reporters. They were pursued and interviewed on the job, in the parking lot, at the bus stop and at their homes. They were profiled to within inches of their very existence. At first, they consented because it was a chance to talk about the elephant. But their talk didn’t help revive the elephant. It seems the drama of the elephant’s prolonged agony made a better story than any potential recovery. They began quitting in small groups and reconvening at a bar several blocks north of the hospital where they didn’t think most reporters would tread because reporters didn’t know the place existed and, they thought, it was not the sort of place reporters were used to frequenting.
The place was called the Deep Seven. The regulars were unsure who owned it. Some thought it might be the cook, a white looking blond woman with a thick, phony German accent. Others assumed it was the bartender, who seemed like a darker version of the woman and said he was born around the corner thoug
h no one from the neighborhood ever recalled seeing him or his family in the area during the time he claimed to have been raised there.
It was a place with a lot of things that didn’t exist in many other places anymore: payphones with rotary dials, ashtrays, bathroom stalls with small round windows, transoms, and a jukebox with vinyl records. That juke box was the attraction for some of the more adventurous students from the university several blocks away and for the reporter whose grandmother had inspired him to visit the Egyptologist.
Friends of the reporter had told him about a strange dive of a bar with Ellington and Brahms on the juke box. When he finally got around to visiting, he discovered Mingus, T-Bone Walker, and Copeland on the box as well. He put many coins in the machine and began playing Monk and Satie tunes back to back. The combination of music struck the bartender, who offered the reporter a free drink. This was noted positively by those who thought the bartender was also the owner.
“We’re always glad to get students in here. We need fresh faces and blood, livens up the place, breaks the monotony.”
“Actually I’m a reporter.”
The bartender laughed. “My folks have had enough of the media for a while. This is one place they could escape. Reporters even followed some of them home. But they don’t show up here for some reason. We began to think of this as an embassy.”
“Who’s being protected from what?”
The bartender took a moment to breathe deeply. On the one hand, the young reporter seemed like a trustworthy, square business sort. On the other hand, how could he not have recognized the patrons?
“So, Mr. Reporter,” he said with a smile, “what’s the latest on the pachyderm?”
Now the reporter felt like he was talking with his grandmother and he needed to fish for the right answer. With her, questions that seemed to come out of the blue were often connected to something bigger that was directly at hand but not always visible. The reporter’s silence gave the bartender pause. I’ve let them down he thought. This guy is going to give a signal and the place will be crawling with cameras and mics in no time.
The Official Report on Human Activity Page 4