Ruby stands alone. The bright lights make her blink. She flaps her ears. She makes her tiny trumpet sound.
The humans stop eating their popcorn. They coo. They clap.
Ruby is a hit.
I don’t know whether to be happy or sad.
worry
When Julia arrives after the show, she brings three thick books, one pencil, and something she calls Magic Markers.
“Here, Ivan,” she says, and she slides two Magic Markers and a piece of paper into my domain.
I like the sundown colors, red and purple. But I don’t feel like coloring. I’m worried about Stella. All evening she’s been quiet, and she hasn’t eaten a bit of her dinner.
Julia follows my gaze. “Where is Stella, anyway?” she asks, and she goes to Stella’s gate. Ruby extends her trunk and Julia pats it. “Hi, baby,” she says. “Is Stella all right?”
Stella is lying in a pile of dirty hay. Her breath is ragged.
“Dad,” Julia calls, “could you come here a minute?”
George sets aside his mop.
“Do you think she’s okay, Dad?” Julia asks. “Look at the way she’s breathing. Can we call Mack? I think there’s something really wrong.”
“He must know about her.” George rubs his chin. “He always knows. But a vet costs money, Jules.”
“Please?” Julia’s eyes are wet. “Call him, Dad.”
George gazes at Stella. He puts his hands on his hips and sighs. He calls Mack.
I can’t hear all of his words, but I can see George’s lips tighten into a grim line.
Gorilla expressions and human expressions are a lot alike.
“Mack says the vet’s coming in the morning if Stella’s not any better,” he tells Julia. “He says he’s not going to let her die on him, not after all the money he’s put into her.”
George strokes Julia’s hair. “She’ll be all right. She’s a tough old girl.”
Julia sits by Stella’s domain until it’s time to go home. She doesn’t do her homework. She doesn’t even draw.
the promise
My domain gleams with moonlight when I awake to the sound of Stella’s calls.
“Ivan?” Stella says in a hoarse whisper. “Ivan?”
“I’m here, Stella.” I sit up abruptly, and Bob topples off my stomach. I run to a window. I can see Ruby next to Stella, sleeping soundly.
“Ivan, I want you to promise me something,” Stella says.
“Anything,” I say.
“I’ve never asked for a promise before, because promises are forever, and forever is an unusually long time. Especially when you’re in a cage.”
“Domain,” I correct.
“Domain,” she agrees.
I straighten to my full height. “I promise, Stella,” I say in a voice like my father’s.
“But you haven’t even heard what I’m asking yet,” she says, and she closes her eyes for a moment. Her great chest shudders.
“I promise anyway.”
Stella doesn’t say anything for a long time. “Never mind,” she finally says. “I don’t know what I was thinking. The pain is making me addled.”
Ruby stirs. Her trunk moves, as if she is reaching for something that isn’t there.
When I say the words, they surprise me. “You want me to take care of Ruby.”
Stella nods, a small gesture that makes her wince. “If she could have a life that’s … different from mine. She needs a safe place, Ivan. Not—”
“Not here,” I say.
It would be easier to promise to stop eating, to stop breathing, to stop being a gorilla.
“I promise, Stella,” I say. “I promise it on my word as a silverback.”
knowing
Before Mack, before Bob, even before Ruby, I know that Stella is gone.
I know it the way you know that summer is over and winter is on its way. I just know.
Stella once teased me that elephants are superior because they feel more joy and more grief than apes.
“Your gorilla hearts are made of ice, Ivan,” she said, her eyes glittering. “Ours are made of fire.”
Right now I would give all the yogurt raisins in all the world for a heart made of ice.
five men
Bob heard from a rat, a reliable sort, that they tossed Stella’s body into a garbage truck.
It took five men and a forklift.
comfort
All day I try to comfort Ruby, but what can I say?
That Stella had a good and happy life? That she lived as she was meant to live? That she died with those who loved her most nearby?
At least the last is true.
crying
Julia cries all evening, while her father sweeps and mops and dusts and cleans the toilets.
When George sees Mack, he runs to him. I can only hear a few of his words. Vet. Should have. Wrong.
Mack shrugs. His shoulders droop. He leaves without a word.
When George wipes the fingerprints off my glass, his cheeks are wet. He doesn’t meet my eyes.
the one and only ivan
When all the humans have left, I send Bob to check on Ruby. “How is she?” I ask when he returns.
“She was shivering,” Bob says. “I tried to cover her with hay. And I told her not to worry, because you were going to save her.”
I glare at him. “You told her that?”
“You promised Stella.” Bob lowers his head. “I wanted to make the kid feel better.”
“I shouldn’t have made that promise, Bob. I just wanted—” I point to Stella’s domain, and for a moment, it seems like I’ve forgotten how to breathe. “I wanted to make Stella happy, I guess. But I can’t save Ruby. I can’t even save myself.”
I flop onto my back. The cement is always cold, but tonight it hurts.
Bob leaps onto my belly. “You are the One and Only Ivan,” he says. “Mighty Silverback.”
He licks my chin, and he’s not even checking for leftovers.
“Say it,” Bob commands.
I look away.
“Say it, Ivan.”
I don’t answer, so Bob licks my nose until I can’t stand it any longer.
“I am the One and Only Ivan,” I mutter.
“And don’t you ever forget it,” he says.
When I gaze at the food-court skylight, the moon Stella loved is shrouded in clouds.
once upon a time
All night, Ruby moans and sniffles. I pace my domain. I don’t want to fall asleep, in case she needs something.
“Ivan,” Bob says gently, “get some sleep. Please. For your sake. And for mine.”
Bob can’t sleep unless he is on my stomach.
I hear a stirring. “Ivan?” Ruby calls.
I rush to my window. “Ruby? Are you all right?”
“I miss Aunt Stella,” Ruby sobs. “And I miss my mom and my sisters and my aunts and my cousins, too.”
“I know,” I say, because it’s all I can think of.
Ruby sniffles. “I can’t sleep. Do you know any stories the way Aunt Stella did?”
“Not really,” I admit. “Stories were Stella’s specialty.”
“Tell me a story about when you were little,” Ruby pleads. She puts her trunk between the bars. “Please, Ivan?”
I scratch the back of my head. “I don’t remember things, Ruby,” I admit.
“It’s true,” Bob says, trying to be helpful. “Ivan has a terrible memory. He’s the opposite of an elephant.”
Ruby lets out a long, shivery breath. “Oh, well. That’s okay. Night, Ivan. And Bob.”
I listen to Ruby’s soft sobs for long, horrible minutes.
Then I hear myself saying, “Once upon a time there was a gorilla named Ivan.”
And, slowly and deliberately, I try to remember.
the grunt
I was born in a place humans call central Africa, in a dense rain forest so beautiful, no crayons could ever do it justice.
Gorillas don’t name thei
r newborns right away, the way humans do. We get to know our babies first. We wait to see hints of what might yet be.
When they saw how much she loved to chase me around the forest, my parents decided on my twin sister’s name: Tag.
Oh, how I loved to play tag with my sister! She was nimble, but when I got too close, she would leap onto my unsuspecting father. Then I would join her and we would bounce on that tolerant belly until he gave us the Grunt, the rooting-pig sound that meant Enough!
That game never got old.
Although my father might have disagreed.
mud
It didn’t take long for my parents to find my name. All day long, every day, I made pictures. I drew on rocks and bark and my poor mother’s back.
I used the sap from leaves. I used the juice from fruit. But mostly I used mud.
And that is what they called me: Mud.
To a human, Mud might not sound like much. But to me, it was everything.
protector
My family, which humans call a troop, was just like any other gorilla family. There were ten of us—my father, the silverback; my mother and three other adult females; a juvenile male called a blackback; and two other young gorillas. Tag and I were the babies of the group.
We squabbled now and then, as families will. But my father knew how to keep us in line with a simple scowl. And for the most part, we were happy to do what we were meant to do: to feed and forage and nap and play.
My father was a master at leading us to the ripest fruit for our morning feast and the finest branches for our night nests. He was everything a silverback is meant to be: a guide, a teacher, a protector.
And nobody could chest beat like my father.
a perfect life
Gorilla babies and elephant babies and human babies are not so different, except that a gorilla gets to spend the day riding on his mother’s back, like a cowboy on a horse. It’s a pretty great system, from the baby’s point of view.
Slowly, carefully, a young gorilla begins to venture farther and farther away from the safety of his mother’s arms. He learns the skills he will need as an adult. How to make a nest of branches (weave them tightly or they will fall apart in the middle of the night). How to beat your chest (cup your palms to amplify the sound). How to go vining from tree to tree (don’t let go). How to be kind, be strong, be loyal.
Growing up gorilla is just like any other kind of growing up. You make mistakes. You play. You learn. You do it all over again.
It was, for a while, a perfect life.
the end
One day, a still day when the hot air hummed, the humans came.
vine
After they captured my sister and me, they put us in a cramped, dark crate that smelled of urine and fear.
Somehow I knew that in order to live, I had to let my old life die. But my sister could not let go of our home. It held her like a vine, stretching across the miles, comforting, strangling.
We were still in our crate when she looked at me without seeing, and I knew that the vine had finally snapped.
the temporary human
It was Mack who pried open that crate, Mack who bought me, and Mack who raised me like a human baby.
I wore diapers. I drank from a bottle. I slept in human beds, sat in human chairs, listened while human words swarmed around me like angry bees.
Mack had a wife back then. Helen was quick to laugh, but quick to anger, too, especially when I broke something, which was often.
Here is what I broke while I lived with Mack and Helen:
1 crib
46 glasses
7 lamps
1 couch
3 shower curtains
3 shower-curtain rods
1 blender
1 TV
1 radio
3 toes (my own)
I broke the blender when I squeezed three tubes of toothpaste and a bottle of glue into it. I broke my toes attempting to swing from a lamp fixture on the ceiling. I broke forty-six glasses … well, it turns out there are many ways to break a glass.
Every weekend, Mack and Helen took me in their convertible to a fast-food restaurant, where they ordered me French fries and a strawberry shake. Mack loved to see the expression on the cashier’s face when he drove up and said, “Could I have some extra ketchup for my kid?”
I went to baseball games, to the grocery store, to a movie theater, even to the circus. (They didn’t have a gorilla.) I rode a little motorbike and blew out candles on a birthday cake.
My life as a human was a glamorous one, although my parents, traditional sorts, would not have approved.
hunger
In my new life as a human, I was well tended. I ate lettuce leaves with Thousand Island dressing, and caramel apples, and popcorn with butter. My belly ballooned.
But hunger, like food, comes in many shapes and colors. At night, lying alone in my Pooh pajamas, I felt hungry for the skilled touch of a grooming friend, for the cheerful grunts of a play fight, for the easy safety of my nearby troop, foraging through shadows.
Remember what happened to Tag, I told myself. Don’t think about the jungle.
Still, sometimes I lay awake, wishing for the warmth of another just like me, asleep in a night nest of tender prayer-plant leaves.
I liked having sips of soda poured into my mouth like a bubbling waterfall. But every now and then, I longed to search for a tender stalk of arrowroot, to feel the tease of a mango, just out of reach.
still life
One day Helen came home with something large and flat, wrapped in brown paper.
“Look what I bought today,” she said excitedly as she tore off the paper. “A painting to go over the livingroom couch.”
“Fruit in a bowl,” Mack said with a shrug. “Big deal.”
“This is fine art. It’s called a ‘still life,’” Helen explained. “And I think it’s lovely.”
I dashed over to examine the painting, marveling at the colors and shapes.
“See?” said Mack’s wife. “Ivan likes it.”
“Ivan likes to roll up poop and throw it at squirrels,” Mack said.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the apples and bananas and grapes in the picture. They looked so real, so inviting, so … edible.
I reached out to touch a grape, and Helen slapped my hand. “Bad boy, Ivan. Don’t touch.” She jerked her thumb at Mack. “Honey, go get a hammer and a nail, would ya?”
While Mack and Helen were busy in the living room, I wandered into the kitchen. A cake covered in thick chocolate frosting sat on the counter.
I like cake—love it, in fact—but it wasn’t eating I was thinking about. It was painting.
The frosting peaked and dipped like waves on a tiny pond. It looked rich and gooey, dark and smooth.
It looked like mud.
I scooped up a handful of frosting. I scooped up another.
I headed to the refrigerator door. It was perfect: an empty, white, waiting canvas.
The frosting wasn’t as easy to work with as jungle mud. It was stickier and, of course, more tempting to eat.
But I kept at it. I scraped off every last bit of that frosting.
I may have eaten a little cake, too.
I don’t remember what I was trying to paint. A banana, most likely. I suppose I knew I was going to get in trouble.
But at that moment, I just didn’t care. I wanted to make something, anything, the way I used to.
I wanted to be an artist again.
punishment
I soon learned that humans can screech even louder than monkeys.
After that, I was never allowed in the kitchen.
babies
Back in those days, the Big Top Mall was smaller. It had a pony ride, a wooden train that bustled around the parking lot, a few bedraggled parrots, and a surly spider monkey.
But when Mack brought me—a baby gorilla dressed in a crisp tuxedo—to the mall, everything changed.
People came from far and
wide to have their pictures taken with me. They brought me blocks and a toy guitar. They held me in their laps. Once I even held a baby in mine.
She was small and slippery. Bubbles flowed from her lips. She squeezed my fingers. Her rear was puffy with padding. Her legs bowed like bent twigs.
I made a face. She made a face. I grunted. She grunted.
I was so afraid she would fall that I squeezed her tightly, and her mother yanked her away.
I wonder if my mother ever worried about dropping us. We always held on, but that’s easier to do when your mother is furry.
Human babies are an ugly lot. But their eyes are like our babies’ eyes.