Jennie (30 page)

Jennie did not understand what was happening to her and had no idea how to deal with it. During this first estrus, she became restless and almost impossible to control. She acted in ways that were embarrassing and socially inappropriate. She became particularly irritable toward me and Sandy. She would not allow us to approach her, let alone touch her, and she often broke into loud screams if we approached. She also became curiously incommunicative and ignored many of our efforts to sign to her. Lea and I knew well that chimpanzees become difficult when they reach puberty. And yet, we had managed to persuade ourselves that Jennie would be different. We felt we knew Jennie even better than we knew each other. We were wrong.

While in estrus she found being confined intolerable, even though she had always slept in a locked room. We had to listen to her screaming and pounding much of the night, and one night during that first estrus she managed to break the lock and get out.

She wrought havoc in the kitchen, and even overturned the
refrigerator in her efforts to wrench off the padlock. We had to hire a man to build a steel door to her room and put bars on the windows. We hated to see her room turned into a cage, but there seemed to be no alternative. We did not want her to hurt herself or anyone else.

During estrus Jennie also became incontinent. She seemed to have trouble retaining her urine, or for some behavioral reason she began urinating in various rooms of the house. Harold Epstein, Dr. Prentiss, and I consulted on this, but we could find no research on chimpanzees that indicated how or why this kind of problem might have occurred.

Up to this point, Sandy and Jennie had a true sibling friendship. Jennie's cycling disrupted even this. She lost interest in being around Sandy, ceased to obey him, and became irritated when he tried to play with her. Sandy was sixteen and Jennie's behavior angered and puzzled him. Sixteen-year-old boys are often quite inflexible in the way they relate to others, and Sandy could not understand that it was a natural change in Jennie. It caused a minor estrangement between them, and Sandy began going out without Jennie.

All this had one unfortunate result: it threw a great burden on Lea's shoulders. Jennie could no longer come to the museum; she could no longer spend time with Dr. Prentiss; and she was going out less with Sandy. Instead, she stayed at home all day, fretted, grumped, and got into trouble. For her own sanity Lea was forced to lock Jennie in her room for hours at a time, where the chimp screamed and carried on. We even had to discontinue Jennie's visits to the old Reverend Palliser's house. Palliser had become increasingly forgetful, and we feared for his safety. Jennie was wild.

When she came out of that first estrus, her personality did not entirely return to normal, although things settled down. There were still cool relations between Sandy and Jennie. Several months later she cycled again and the difficult period started all over, only worse.
I was being called home from the museum by Lea again and again to handle one crisis after another. My work was suffering badly. Sarah found Jennie's presence even more odious, and she began spending inordinate amounts of time at a friend's house.

By the beginning of 1974, it was starting to look as if our family was falling apart.

[F
ROM
an interview with Harold Epstein.]

We live in a nation of ignoramuses. The average American knows nothing about science. A man asked me once if the stars went away when the sun rose, or if they were still there but you just couldn't see them. He was a stockbroker I had the misfortune of employing, a man who made over one hundred thousand dollars a year! Well, I took my investments away from him, damn quick! And then the market climbed five hundred points. Oh well, that's another story.

I do not begrudge the average American his ignorance. It's a free country. But when you have elected officials, people who wield enormous power, who flaunt their ignorance, that is a different matter.

Senator William Proxmire was one of those people. Here we had a man of colossal ego and great power who was as ignorant as a—a
poodle
, who destroyed the scientific careers of many good people. Every year, the whole country would read about the Golden Fleece awards and laugh and snicker about these silly scientists with their absurd experiments. Now some experiments were trivial. It is a fact that most science is pedestrian. But Proxmire usually missed the real target—that is, faulty research—and demolished something important and worthy.

This was what happened to the Jennie project. Here we were, spending all this taxpayer money teaching chimps a few hundred signs. They had no clue as to how this would illuminate our understanding
of human linguistic development. Or the evolution of language. Proxmire had no idea that this research might enhance the way we teach language to retarded or handicapped children. There was no understanding of the revolutionary results of our work, and how it revealed for the first time the mind of an ape—and how it helped us understand what it means to be human. No thought was given to what it would mean to be able to communicate for the first time with another species! No. It was framed as, “So, after half a million, what did the chimps say?” Well, not much, when you really analyze it. That wasn't the point, for God's sake! And the scientists who supported us were afraid to object. They didn't want to attract Proxmire's attention. Cowards, every one.

Anyway, going into 1974, things got very tough for Hugo and Lea. Hugo and I had had many discussions about what would happen when Jennie went into puberty. I was far more worried than Hugo. I tried to tell him that no family had ever kept a home-raised chimpanzee much past puberty. I emphasized that Jennie was not like a dog or cat, that she was a wild animal. Hugo didn't believe it. He was optimistic and naive. He said that they had been through a lot with Jennie: They could weather anything. She was part of the family forever. He would never abandon her.

I pointed out to him that chimpanzees can live to be forty or fifty years old. Well, I said, who's going to take care of Jennie after he and Lea became too old? Hugo sweated a little over that one but finally said that Sandy would probably take care of her. And what about Sandy's future wife? I asked. How will she feel about a chimpanzee in the house? Had Sandy agreed to this?

Hugo then said that the problem was no different, say, than having a mentally retarded child. But (I pointed out) you can't put Jennie in an institution. There are no social services for Jennie. She won't qualify for governmental assistance, welfare, or Medicaid. She's an animal, I said to Hugo. An animal. Was he financially able to create an endowed facility that would take care of Jennie for the
rest of her life? Did he know how much principal it would take to yield, say, an income of one hundred thousand a year? Or was he going to put her in a zoo?

Hugo became defensive under this kind of questioning. Angry, even. He accused me of being a Cassandra, of always looking at the bad side. I hated to make him face these issues, but who else was going to do it? At least, I thought, Hugo will be somewhat prepared. Or so I hoped.

The inevitable happened. Jennie reached adolescence and went into estrus. Her whole personality changed. This was a very sudden change. Very sudden. While things had been worsening for a while, this was a whole new ball game. You know how traumatic it is when human children suddenly find themselves with these strange and powerful new feelings. It was worse for Jennie, operating on a foreign biology. Female chimpanzees are much more promiscuous than human females.

Hugo came into the museum, and almost every day I heard another disaster story. Jennie was running Lea ragged. Every week there was another uproar, another crisis. Meanwhile, Sandy, who had been a stabilizing force for Jennie, was slipping away from the family and becoming more involved in radical causes and going around with unsavory friends. He refused to consider college. He refused to take his SAT tests. Hugo and Lea were sick with worry. The sixties might have been over and Nixon gone, but there was still a lot of radicalism around in the early seventies. People have forgotten that the so-called sixties, as a political era, was really the period from about 1964 to 1974. Sandy came of age at the tail end of that era, but he rebelled just as thoroughly as if he'd been born five years earlier.

I'm getting off the subject. I remember one morning Hugo came into my office, looking haggard. He had not slept at all the night before. Jennie, he said, had refused to go to her room for the night.
It had proved physically impossible to force her. You understand, although she weighed only seventy pounds, she was five times stronger than a grown man.

They tried everything. They tried coaxing her with food. They snapped a lead on her and tried to drag her in. They signed to her until they were blue in the face. She had learned a sign from somewhere, an obscene gesture. The middle finger extended. You know what I mean. She started using the finger almost continuously in lieu of other signs. She used it to frustrate any attempt to communicate with her. You'd sign
Jennie be quiet
and she'd jab her hand in the air with her middle finger extended! It was outrageous! You'd say No
bad Jennie!
and she'd stick her finger right in your face. Imagine that! I saw this on several visits to the house. Anyway, getting back to this particular night. They finally gave up and tried to go to bed, leaving her outside. But she started running around the house, breaking things and knocking over the refrigerator. They spent all night trying to control her.

When Hugo finished telling me this story, he put his head in his hands and he broke down and wept. I was . . . I was quite taken aback. I was shocked. I had
no idea
just how far things had gone. He told me that this wasn't the first time this had happened, and what was he going to do? We talked and talked and Hugo finally said, “Here we are, two of the world's experts on chimpanzee behavior, and we have no idea how to control this one animal.” And he laughed bitterly. For the first time in my life I felt at a total loss. I had no idea what to do, no answer for him. I felt only dread for what the future might hold.

And then, later that year—well, did you know that Sandy and Jennie had an upset, a—No? They had a disagreement, an upset. . . . I'd rather not discuss it. In fact, I don't really know what happened. I really don't. You'll have to talk to Lea Archibald about that.

[F
ROM
the journals of the Rev. Hendricks Palliser.]

Last Sunday I delivered a particularly good sermon—I ask God's forgiveness for the sin of pride—on the guilt and suffering of Judas Escariot. I do not believe, however, that the congregation took to it. I asked the question: Was Judas chosen for the deed? It was prophesied, was it not? Where, then, is the guilt? But I muddled the answer. The good people of Kibbencook, indeed all human beings, want answers, not questions, from their religious leaders. No matter.

This has been one of the most difficult concepts for me to accept as a Christian, why there should be suffering in a world created by a God who is both great and good. Is it not strange that as one's suffering increases, one's understanding of the mystery and paradox of life also increases? Perhaps this is the redemptive power of suffering, as Jesus taught us. But I suffer, and I do not feel redemption.

Fall has always been my favorite season, and today was one of those incomparable glorious fall days of infinite blue skies and gusting winds carrying along the smell of burning leaves. This is the last year the burning of leaves will be allowed on the streets. I am growing old!

Today, everything brought to me sudden recollections of Reba. But not her presence. I have not felt her presence, as I had always believed I should if she should predecease me. Where is she? I am afraid for her, and for myself.

This morning, I had misplaced my shoes. After a long and frustrating search, I discovered them behind the commode. How in the world did they get there? Am I starting to become feebleminded? How could that be, when I am delivering the best sermons of my life?

I miss Reba. I miss Jennie. God has taken from me everything I love. Why is Jennie staying away?

But what I find unaccountable in the autumn of my life is an irrational and growing fear of death. Not a fear of the pain of death, which any sensible man must fear, but an apprehension of the thing itself. How can this be? I do not question the existence of God or my savior Jesus Christ. No, I do not. Then why should I fear death so? It may simply be an atavistic impulse. Indeed, I believe that is what it is, an atavism from our dim past as apes.

Jennie was in the car in the driveway and then they drove away with her hanging out the window, banging on the side of the car and laughing. I do not understand why Jennie is not coming over anymore. I think I called Mrs. Archibald. I forget what she said. Jennie has a cold? A broken leg again? I think it was the leg. Why am I so very tired?

I had a glimpse of Jennie in the window of her room, looking out at the last of the leaves flying into eternity from the crab apple tree. The look on her face was so sad and lost. I never see her outside anymore. Perhaps it is too cold? She missed her last lesson. I must call Mrs. Archibald and find out why.

The snows came last night again. I awoke late, to see the sun inside the bare branches of the birch. I heard Reba's voice in the kitchen, scolding Jennie, but then she wasn't there and Jennie had left when I descended. I was confused and disappointed. The house was quiet
and the door was locked. How was that? There are some strange goings on around here indeed. My bronchitis is back. I tried to get the Archibalds on the telephone, but no one answered.

I dreamed last night of Langemarck. It was that late April afternoon. The German guns suddenly stopped. The silence was beautiful. There was that laughter. They were talking loudly out of habit. We were waiting behind the old Lycee by the ambulances, smoking cigarettes. Everything had the rust, that dreadful green tarnish. Even the faces of the men. Suddenly the rats were running through the deserted streets. So many rats! And then the greenish yellow cloud came, and that suffocation. We drove back over the dry roads, loaded, but leaving all the rest. I woke up fighting for breath, and coughing violently.