Zoo (11 page)

Instinctively, I start to
walk backwards, away from them. My hands start to shake and I tear
up.
Stay strong
,
I tell myself.
You knew this was going to
happen
. But I can’t stop myself from
trying to get away from the two people that will take me away for
some unknown punishment.

Janice and Greg appear just outside of the
jungle. Janice’s face is ashen. Greg is holding her by the
shoulders, keeping her fixed next to him. I’m glad he’s there to
protect her from my bad behavior.

They distract me long enough for me to miss
seeing the small thorn bush behind me. It drags across my ankle as
I tumble to the ground. The taller Keeper without the syringe
lunges for me, but Kale jumps in front of me, blocking his
path.

He shouts, “Stop! It wasn’t her! It was me!
Look!” His hands are covered in my brown mud mixture. It’s even
smeared across his face a little.

“
Kale, stop it! They know
it was me. It’s okay.” Why is he doing this? I am prepared to take
the fall for this. It was my idea. I acted alone. “Don’t do this,
Kale!”

The Keepers look at each other. The taller
man types something into the clear, floating screen in front of
him, and then he walks away.

I instantly feel relief. I can breathe
again. I look back over to James’ enclosure. He’s still waiting
next to the glass, trying to catch a glimpse into our enclosure.
Our section of the dome is still tinted.

Kale grabs my hand and drags me to my feet.
He wrenches me close to him as the taller Keeper returns. He also
has a syringe.

One for each of us. “No! It was me!” I try
to move away from Kale.

He pushes me further behind him. “Don’t
listen to her. It was me! She didn’t have anything to do with
it!”

The back of my head hits the glass dome with
a thump. Kale smashes the rest of me against the wall with his arms
protectively out to his sides. I can’t see around his muscular
frame or over his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he whispers to me. The
pressure his body is putting on mine is suddenly lifted as he
crumples to the ground.

I look back up from his unconscious, fallen
body and see the second syringe coming toward my neck. I squeeze my
eyes shut as the needle pierces the tender skin below my jaw.

MY DEATH

I’m standing outside my back door, looking
into the kitchen, while the night’s shadows keep me hidden. My
mother is rummaging in the refrigerator when the phone rings. She
takes her time shutting the refrigerator door and walks across the
kitchen to answer the call.

She says, “Hello,” in a singsong way.

Her face falls. She drops the phone by her
feet and stands there, not moving.

My father rushes into the room and asks her,
“What’s wrong, Maggie? Did you drop something?”

My mother doesn’t answer. She just stands
there unmoving and unseeing.

He reaches down and picks up the cordless
phone that’s lying next to her bare feet. “Hello?” he says into the
phone.

He looks at my mother, who still hasn’t
moved. Someone speaks to him on the other end of the line. “Oh, hey
Phil. Accident? Where? You’re there now . . . Is she okay?” he
asks. “Dead at the scene. What hospital did they take her to? Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks.” He swallows hard and places the phone back in
the cradle. It must have been my father’s police friend, Phil
Landry. They’ve been good friends for as long as I can remember. He
was always at family bar-b-ques and most of my birthday parties as
a child. It makes sense that he would be the one to call.

I reach out to open the door to the house,
but I can’t do anything except be where I am. I have no body. No
hands. No arms or legs. No eyes to shut out what I’m seeing. No
throat or mouth to gasp when I realize this.

I see my mother collapse to the tile floor.
She slides against the wood cabinets on her way down. And then she
erupts. Sobs rake her body as my father tries to helplessly comfort
her. She hits him and tells him to get away from her. He’s stubborn
and keeps trying to hold her, but she keeps on pushing him away,
over and over again.

Just when I feel like I can’t stand another
second of this, everything flashes white.

***

First I hear the music; slow, sad, mournful
music. Then, I hear crying while my father talks about what a
wonderful and neurotic, or wonderfully neurotic child I was. His
hair is combed perfectly, and his black suit is pristinely pressed,
but his hands are shaking as he recounts the time I got lost at a
theme park when I was a child.

“
There are so many
adjectives to describe Emma. She was courageous, resourceful,
funny, sarcastic, determined, hardworking, and loving—just to name
a few. I’ve never known a woman or a child like our Emma. I
remember when she was eight years old, and her mother and I took
her to a theme park for her birthday. She was so excited to ride
everything. Some things she rode with us, and some she rode alone
because she either wanted to or because we were too scared to go
with her. She was never afraid to do things on her own.

“
After she got off one of
the rides, she took a different exit than the one where we waited.
She got lost.” My father lets a small chuckle escape, as he
remembers the family trip gone awry. He says, “Emma found a woman
that worked at the park and demanded that she make her own
announcement over the loud speaker. She said over the P.A., ‘Mom.
Dad. This is Emma and I got lost. I’ll be waiting for you at the
ice cream stand next to the Ferris wheel. But don’t worry, I paid
for my strawberry sundae with my own money.” My father’s voice
catches as he tries not to cry in front of the rows and rows of
people seated at my funeral service. Some of them laugh at the cute
story. Some of them cry. Some of them do both.

He finishes his speech with one more thing.
“And because Emma was courageous, resourceful, funny, sarcastic,
determined, hardworking, and loving, we are comforted in knowing
that wherever she is now, she is doing well. She will be missed
more than words can express, but we will always remember the life
in her.”

I’m glad he doesn’t know that I’m actually
not doing well. I have a bad attitude, and I’ve felt like giving up
more than once. His words of praise are too good for me. I feel so
ashamed as I look at his sad face and then over to my mother’s.

My mother is sobbing in the front row with
an empty seat next to her, one that my father is headed toward as
the funeral director takes his place at the podium. She has dark
circles under her eyes and peeling finger nail polish. She’s lost
without her only child.

My family surrounds her in the next three
rows and my friends occupy the rows behind them. There are a few
people I don’t know sprinkled throughout the room. They are
probably my parents’ co-workers and acquaintances, here to show
support.

They all look so sad.

I want to scream at them, “I’m not dead! I’m
here!” but I can’t. I don’t have a mouth. I don’t have a voice.

Another flash of light.

***

My parents are fighting about a coffee cup
that wasn’t put back in the proper cabinet. It’s a fight about
nothing.

Another flash of light.

***

It’s dark, and I’m at the end of my parents’
bed, watching them while they sleep. They are as far apart as
possible with their backs to each other. My mother is awake. She’s
looking at my framed picture on her nightstand. She’s silently
crying, while my father is unaware in his unconsciousness.

***

This time after the flash of light, we are
in an office building. My mother and father sit across from one
another with bitter expressions. A man in a fancy, pinstriped suit
sits next to my mother. Another similarly suited man sits next to
my father. Divorce papers sit between them. They have already
signed them.

I feel sick. So much was ruined when I died.
Over what?

A text.

BACK TO THE PRESENT IN THE FUTURE

My body and mind feel broken. I slowly open
my eyes to see blinding, white light all around me. I groan as I
prepare for another onslaught of disturbing images of what was lost
and what was ruined. But I realize that I’m able to blink. I force
my eyes to focus on something other than white.

I panic as I find that
there’s
only
white here. It’s consuming me. White . . . only
white.

Finally, I manage to roll my head to the
other side and see Kale facing me. His eyes are haunted as he
stares back at me from a large, white reclining chair. It’s like a
dentist’s chair with restraints, but sleek and futuristic looking.
There are no buckles on the restraints or hinges on the chair.

Instinctively, I jerk my hands up, but they
don’t move.

This is all my fault. Kale didn’t need to
see whatever it was he saw. He shouldn’t be strapped to that chair
next to me. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper to him, as I fight back tears
of guilt.

He whispers back, “Are you
okay?”
Am I okay?
How can he even care about how I feel after what I just
caused him to go through? But I can see the concern growing in his
eyes.

A man clears his throat, interrupting my
answer to Kale. I roll my head forward and look around the room to
take everything in and find whoever made that sound. “Dick.” I
groan when I see him.

“
It’s good to see you too,
Emma. You as well, Kale.” Dick cheerfully welcomes us. His hair is
extra shiny today.

I twist my hand over in the restraint and
give him the finger with a sickly, sweet smile.

“
I see that you enjoyed
your little visit home. Well, this is just a friendly reminder that
should you choose to disrupt the public again, we will be forced to
return you to your original fate. Death. And I would hate to see
you go.” He takes out his tiny notepad from his jacket pocket and
flips it open.

“
I see here that the two
of you haven’t mated yet. I would recommend that you make that
happen soon. Should you fail to produce an offspring for the
facility, protocol says that you will be transferred to another
enclosure. Remember what I told you about those places, Emma
David.”

Kale asks Dick, anger evident in his voice,
“And what will happen to the baby once Emma has it? Will you take
it? Will you put it in a cage by itself to see what happens?
There’s no way we’re going to comply with your demands.”

Dick is all smiles. He doesn’t answer any of
Kale’s poignant questions. He simply says, “Well, that is your
decision to make, but I promise you, you don’t want to get
transferred. They aren’t as nice there as we are here.” He glances
at his old-fashioned wristwatch and says, “Time flies when you’re
having fun. It was nice to see you two, as always. Goodbye for
now.”

Dick walks to the other side of the room and
then disappears into the white wall as our chairs inject us with
knockout juice. My vision tunnels and the blinding, white light
slowly turns into a black void.

OUR RETURN

We wake up on the ground by the rock wall.
My head is pounding and I’m nauseous. The clouds in the sky seem to
be swirling and shaking above me. Then I see that Janice and Greg
are kneeling next to us. They’re waiting for us as we regain
consciousness.

Janice scoots closer to me and brushes the
hair from my sweaty face. “Are you okay? What did they do to you?”
she asks.

I know Janice is just trying to help, but
all I want is to be left alone. I don’t want her hovering over me
like a mother. I have a mother and she’s not here. So, I push her
hand away.

Trying to stand up proves to be impossible.
“Here, let me help you,” Janice offers. She tries to support me by
putting my arm around her shoulder.

“
No. I can do this myself.
Please let me do this.” The most I can manage is to push myself up
on my hands and knees. The crawl over to my hut is both long and
embarrassing, but I refuse to let them help me. My father reminded
me that I’m determined (a nice word for hard-headed). I
can
do this.

I leave Kale alone with
Janice and Greg, because I can’t face him again. I want to bury my
head in the sand, never to see the light of day again. The guilt is
heavy, and perhaps that’s why I can’t rise up to my feet. I
silently pray as I struggle forward on my knees;
Please God, don’t let it have been for nothing.
Please let that protest group see the videos. Please.

The cozy, dark space of my hut welcomes me
with open arms as I crawl into its emptiness. I slide down into the
hollow. Tucking my knees up into my chest, I finally let the tears
spill out.

I never expected that to be my punishment. I
thought they’d beat me or something. Is a little physical torture
too much to ask for?

What do I do now, Dad?
What if I’m not courageous like you said? I can’t call for you and
Mom over the loud speaker to come get me. I’m stuck here in this
hell,
I cry to my father who’s long been
dead.

And how can I “mate” with
someone because a zoo demands it?
The fact
that I’m even talking to myself about it is completely ludicrous.
But if I don’t do what they say, they’ll transfer us to somewhere
worse than here. What could be worse than here? Well, I guess I’ll
find out because I’m not doing it. Literally.

Suddenly, I can’t breathe. The thin walls of
my hut are closing in on me, but at the same time they are
protecting me against what’s outside. Kale. Janice. Greg. The
Keepers. The public. It’s too much! A loud sob escapes my trembling
mouth and my body convulses.