Jennie (22 page)

Now get this. She could understand fractions! We filled up a glass partway with water. Then we would offer her tokens that looked a little like pie charts. A three-quarters token, a half token, and a quarter token. Once she understood what was expected of her, she would always match the correct token with the correct amount of water in the glass. We did the same experiments with lumps of clay, with pieces of wood, and so forth.

I could talk to you all day about these experiments. Read my papers. I've dug up some more offprints for you. Here. You'll be amazed. Amazed.

[F
ROM
Recollecting a Life
by Hugo Archibald.]

Our family took an August vacation in Maine every year, at a saltwater farm originally bought by my father. It was located near a town called Franklins Pond Harbor, a fishing village along the shores of Muscongus Bay. The property had over a hundred acres of fields and woods and a half mile of rocky shoreline, with a small cove and cobble beach.

These August holidays were a vacation for all of us, particularly Jennie. She was a very busy chimpanzee during the year, with ASL lessons three days a week, going to the museum and participating in cognitive experiments two days a week, and religious lessons once a week from Rev. Palliser. Our suburban Kibbencook neighbors would have envied Jennie's schedule; had she been human, it would have been the fast track to Harvard.

Sandy and Jennie were as close as human twins. They went everywhere together. As a result, there was not a morning that Sandy went off to school that Jennie didn't become anxious and distressed. She could never understand why he had to go away. In Maine, however, everything was different. Jennie could spend all
her time with Sandy. Sandy had no one else to play with, and they spent hours roaming the woods, fishing for crabs in the tide pools, looking for a rumored buried treasure on one of the nearby headlands. Jennie was allowed to run free in Maine. The nearest neighbor was half a mile away, and Jennie was far too cowardly to venture that far on her own. We could release her to play about in the fields and orchard, and we did not even have to keep an eye on her. If she broke a few branches, screamed, or threw apples, it was perfectly fine.

Jennie's freedom in Maine had a curious effect on her personality. Instead of making her more wild and difficult to control, it seemed to make her calmer and more obedient. Her life in Maine, I theorized, more closely replicated the free life that chimpanzees lead in the bush, and as a result she was happier and less anxious.

Next to the house stood an old post-and-beam barn with a loft and hay mow. The interior of posts resembled a jungle gym and Jennie spent hours in the barn, climbing around and dangling from the heights. It worried Lea a great deal, and she tried to put a stop to it, but I pointed out to her that, after all, Jennie was a chimpanzee. Sandy was forbidden to climb on the beams, and that frustrated Jennie and Sandy alike. She would scamper out on a beam and start signing:
Play, play, Sandy, play
. Sandy would sign back
No, Sandy not allowed
. The barn loft had an old bed, where Jennie slept.

The old apple orchard in the backyard was Jennie's favorite place to play. It was like a jungle gym hanging with her favorite fruit. She climbed into the crown of a tree, where she could watch the comings and goings of the family, and eat apples until she was sick. She defended and protected her apples with vigilance. One morning we heard a scream and saw Jennie pile out of the barn and head down to the orchard, where two deer had the temerity to be eating her apples. She screeched and threw a rock at them as they bounded away in terror. None of us had the courage to pick apples when Jennie was around.

I spent much time sitting on the stone porch and watching
Jennie swinging in the orchard. She was most like the ape she was when playing in those trees, hooting and chattering to herself in between stuffing apples into her mouth. She could eat enormous quantities of apples; I once counted while Jennie ate twenty apples in a sitting.

It was in the orchard where Jennie acquired a taste for alcohol. One late-summer day in 1969, we could not find Jennie anywhere, and Lea and Sandy went through the fields calling for her. They finally found her in the orchard, fast asleep in the tall grass. When they woke her up, she acted groggy and unnatural. She waddled back to the barn and got into bed, which was highly unusual in the middle of the day. She was fine the next morning, and bright and early we watched her heading straight for the orchard. There, she began scooping rotten apples off the ground and eating them, although there were many ripe apples in the tree. We wondered why, until she began to stagger around like a drunk, laughing and tumbling through the grass, and then we understood: she was becoming intoxicated on the fermented fruit.

Jennie always insisted on trying everything that we ate or drank. She had demanded sips from time to time from our evening cocktails, but she had always grimaced and spat out the liquor. Shortly after the apple incident, we were sitting around the living room, having our cocktail, when Jennie spoke up.

Jennie drink
.

Jennie drink this?

Jennie drink drink
.

I handed Jennie my gin and tonic. She sipped it and made a face, but to our great surprise she gulped it down. I quickly snatched it out of her hand.

Jennie drink!
she signed frantically.

Lea and I were appalled. We had no idea what a strong cocktail would do to a forty-pound chimpanzee.

No,
no
, I signed. It looked like Jennie was working herself up to a tantrum about being denied a drink, when suddenly the expression
on her face changed. She stood up straight as if she had heard a distant noise, looked around, and then a maniacal grin spread over her face.

“Uh oh,” said Lea.

Jennie looked around and gave a low hoot. Then she climbed up on the sofa and sat back with that wonderful smile on her face, and watched us through half-lidded eyes.

After that, Jennie wanted to have a drink with us every night. Juice or Pepsi would not do; she wanted something stronger. Lea put up a strong resistance to her drinking alcohol, but she had developed the taste and knew perfectly well that we had something special in our glasses. She countered Lea's efforts with one magnificent tantrum after another, and finally Lea gave up.

“Go ahead and drink yourself silly,” she shouted, handing Jennie her cocktail. Jennie drank it quietly and settled back on the sofa with those same lidded, contented eyes.

Lea and I had several talks about the ethical aspects of letting Jennie consume alcohol. Was it good for her? Would it damage her psychologically? Would she become dependent on liquor? In the end, it was Jennie's responsible behavior with alcohol that settled the question. Drinking seemed to affect her as it would an adult. It did not make her excited or angry, but rather calm and relaxed, and she never wanted to drink more than we drank or wanted to keep drinking when we stopped. She never had more than the equivalent of one drink, as we mixed them weak. She had all the hallmarks of a responsible social drinker.

Jennie officially joined our cocktail hour. We then heard from another quarter; Sandy did not like Jennie receiving any special privileges.

“No fair! How come
she
can drink and I can't?” he complained.

We explained it was bad for him.

He cornered us on that one. “So it's good for Jennie but bad for me? Or you don't love Jennie as much as me? Is that what you're saying?”

I could not extricate myself from my son's logic, so I finally told him the truth: Jennie's tantrums were far more intolerable than his were. That did not sit well with him either.

“You always let her do everything and I can't do anything!” Sandy cried. “She gets away with murder and if I do something I always get punished. You
stink.”
And he stormed off to his room.

This was a common complaint of his as he entered his preteen years. It is perhaps a sign of their deep friendship that no matter how much Sandy complained about Jennie getting favored treatment, it never interfered with their relationship.

When Jennie began to drink, she also insisted on having a glass of wine at the table. We shortly found that our stock of expensive wine—I have always had a weakness for Bordeaux—was vanishing down the throat of an ape. I simply could not adjust to seeing a chimpanzee slurping down a full glass of my Léoville-Poyferré '56, which I had laid down ten years ago and watched mature with infinite patience.

I therefore bought a case of Cold Duck for Jennie, since I thought she would like the sweetness and, more importantly, because it cost ninety-nine cents a bottle. When we first gave Jennie the Cold Duck, she drank a little, but then she noticed that her wine was a different color from the Chateau Petrus we were drinking. A different color, and no doubt inferior, must have been her conclusion. She was outraged: we were trying to fob off a shabby product on her, while reserving the best for ourselves. She promptly set her glass down, grabbed my glass, and swallowed five dollars worth of Bordeaux in a single gulp. Then she settled back in her chair with a defiant expression on her face.

We solved the wine problem by buying Jennie bottles of cheap red and white wine of the same color and appearance as what we were drinking. As long as the bottle was the same shape, and the wine the same color, Jennie did not notice that she was getting Gallo Chablis while we were getting Puligny-Montrachet.

Just as with human siblings who are close in age, Jennie and Sarah did not often see eye to eye. Jennie and Sarah were both five years old in the summer of 1969. Their relationship could be characterized as a Mexican standoff. They had very different personalities. Sarah, even from a young age, was quite fastidious, and she objected to Jennie's rambunctiousness. Where Sarah liked order, Jennie liked chaos. Sarah liked silence; Jennie liked noise. Sarah was a thinker; Jennie was a doer. Sarah was always smiling and quiet and sweet; Jennie was loud and liked to tease. They did not have much in common. Sarah had not learned ASL with the enthusiasm of Sandy, but she knew enough to scold, insult, and threaten Jennie, and set her firmly in her place.

Sarah, for all her sweetness, had a toughness underneath that intimidated Jennie. Jennie's
modus operandi
was to identify and exploit weakness, but she never could find a chink in Sarah's armor. On the other hand, Sarah knew all of Jennie's weaknesses—her greedy materialism, her fear of rejection, and her upset at seeing human beings cry. She exploited them whenever the need arose. Sarah did not go out of her way to put Jennie in her place, but when Jennie crossed some invisible boundary Sarah knew how to react.

Even at five, Sarah was adept at controlling Jennie. One time in Maine Jennie broke a toy of Sarah's and hid the pieces under a chair in the living room. Sarah found them and, without saying a word to anybody, went up to Jennie's loft and scattered the pieces in Jennie's bed, carefully pulling up the covers. Another time Jennie stole one of Sarah's favorite shirts and got it filthy playing in the dirt. Sarah caught her, but instead of trying to get the shirt back (which would have been impossible), she went up to Jennie's room, took out a shirt of hers, and flapped it around in Jennie's face. Jennie was protective of her “things,” and when she saw Sarah waving her shirt about she tried to take off Sarah's and get her own back, signing
Give shirt! Give shirt!
Sarah just signed
Phooey
and walked away, while Jennie screamed in frustration, whacking the ground with both hands.

Jennie always seemed to know when the Maine vacation was coming up, and she became restless in the weeks leading up to August. When we started packing the car for Maine, she became almost uncontrollable. She would race about the house, scurrying up and down the stairs, out to the car and back in, signing
Go! Go! Go car! Hurry!
Sometimes she would pound on the car parked in the driveway and sign
Bad car! Bad!
as if the car itself were holding things up.

Jennie knew every landmark on the drive, and as we neared the farmhouse Jennie would become more and more excited. A large wooden Indian outside a shoe factory outlet always set her off, because it meant we were about to turn off the highway. Ten minutes later, as we turned in the driveway and the barn loomed into view, Jennie would lose control entirely and begin a pant-hoot that would build in intensity until it ended in a drawn-out scream of magnificent intensity.

[F
ROM
a telephone call to Sarah Archibald Burnham of Manhattan, October 23, 1992.]

I got your letters, I got your messages. You can call me until the end of time, and I won't talk to you. I just won't. I have nothing to say. I don't think you or anybody else has any business prying into our family's private affairs. I will not read a letter; I will not answer a letter. So please don't bother. I don't mean to be rude, and maybe you're even a nice person, I don't know.