Jennie (32 page)

We make our lives so fucking complicated. What we value has no value. And what we don't value is priceless.

[F
ROM
an interview with Lea Archibald.]

Nineteen seventy-four. Oh dear. I'll never forget that year. It was so difficult. And so hard on poor Hugo. He was a very sensitive man. Like Sandy. They were very similar.

That was also the year that I got up one morning and found Rev. Palliser asleep in our hedge. The poor man had become rather senile. He started coming by the house, banging on the door and wanting to play with Jennie. Just like a little boy. He got her confused with some sister he grew up with. And he talked constantly to his dead wife as if she were standing next to him. He would apologize and apologize for goodness knows what infractions, saying, “Yes, dear, no dear, I'm so sorry dear.” That sort of thing. It was spooky. He wandered around the neighborhood, walking into people's houses, and the good citizens of Kibbencook couldn't stand for that, so they trucked him off to the Kibbencook Nursing Home.

It was sad. He was a sweet man. These horrid new people bought the house and built a hideous modern wing on it with glass and chrome. Some fancy architect from New York. It was appalling. The construction was very loud, and they cut down the beautiful paper birch that must've been a hundred years old. People nowadays don't care anymore how long it takes to grow a tree.

Jennie watched the whole thing with terrible anxiety. She used to stare out her window, with her hair halfway up, whimpering. She was particularly upset when the new people moved in. I believe she would have gone over there and caused trouble if we hadn't kept her on a short leash.

Jennie missed Rev. Palliser. In fact, a very strange thing happened after they took Palliser away. From time to time she would sign:
Go there? Go there?
while pointing across the street, or
God
or
Jesus
. Those were signs Palliser made up, you know, in his attempt to convert Jennie to Christianity. Oh my goodness. At one point she kept signing
Go there? Jesus, God
, over and over, and she looked so sad.

I remember one day trying to explain to her what had happened. I signed
Hendricks gone
. Jennie did not like to hear that. She scowled and wrapped her arms around herself.
Hendricks gone
, I signed again.

Then the most extraordinary thing happened. Jennie suddenly screamed. I nearly jumped out of my skin. Her hair was raised up like I'd never seen it before. Then she signed
Hendricks dead?

I was
shocked
. I'd never even seen her use the word “dead.” It seemed extraordinary that she could understand it, I mean understand the concept of death. Really incredible. But I'll tell you, that scream said it all.

I signed
No, Hendricks gone away
.

She kept signing,
Where Hendricks? Where, where?
and I signed
In town
. And then she started to sign,
Go see Hendricks! Go! Go!

I couldn't bring an unruly chimpanzee into a nursing home. I said No.

She was very upset. She threw a tantrum, and I had to lock her in her room. Oh dear, when I think of all the tantrums she had then. Every day it was something else. I thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown. You don't have children, so maybe you can't imagine what it was like. It was every minute of the day.

Even so, Jennie wouldn't leave the subject of Palliser alone. When we drove into town, she'd sign
Hendricks! Go Hendricks!
and have a fit when we wouldn't oblige. I didn't realize just how attached she was to that man. She never forgot him.

At that age, she'd throw a tantrum over anything. Like not being allowed to pick up the phone when someone called, or being told not to sit in a certain chair, or whatever. When she did pick up the phone, she would scream into it and hammer it on the table or stamp on it. Oh my goodness, it was so embarrassing sometimes, especially with people who didn't know we had a chimp in the house. What they must have thought.

We had to restrain her more and more. We couldn't let her outside except on a lead, and we had to reinforce her room and lock her in it more and more frequently. I hated to do it but there was no other way. No other way. She wouldn't listen to anybody, except Hugo once in a while. But Hugo was gone all day. What was I supposed to do? Now you tell me, what in the world was I supposed to do? I was all alone in that big house, just me and Sarah.

That was another thing. Jennie made Sarah's life unbearable. Sarah, who loved peace and quiet and order. They kept a distance from each other, but the whole environment was wearing her out. And me.

Jennie banged on the barred windows of her room and made a terrible racket. She ripped everything up. She pooped all over her room and peed everywhere when she was in heat. I had to clean everything up. Did I mention to you the trouble we had keeping a cleaning lady? Well, we'd given that up years ago.

What could I do? Handling Jennie was a full-time job. There
was nothing left of me for Sarah. She was ten and full of plans and busy all the time, and I felt I was losing this whole part of her life. And I was beginning to be afraid for Sarah's safety. Jennie was so big and boisterous, and so impulsive. Sarah was still a fearless little firebrand when it came to handling Jennie, but Jennie was so terribly strong.

And Sandy. We never saw him anymore. He had some girlfriend, her name was Sammie. Ugh. Oh dear, she was . . . she was pretty, that's about all you could say about her. Brunette, quite petite. She didn't wash and her hair looked like a rat's nest. That was the style. They spent all their time together and poor Jennie was left out. Whenever Sammie was around Jennie was nervous and upset. I remember one time Sandy came by with Sammie, and after he left Jennie ran up to Sandy's room and ripped the mattress right open. I—I expect they had done something on the bed. Oh dear, isn't it awful to remember these things? Strewed all the stuffing everywhere, and then peed on the bed. It horrifies me just to remember it. Just talking to you is bringing back all these terrible memories. . . .

Hugo and I finally had a talk. I'll never forget it. We were both awfully upset. Hugo could hardly speak . . . We decided that Jennie had finally become dangerous. She really had. I told Hugo that we had to find another way. We talked and talked. Hugo denied it and denied it. He
loved
that chimpanzee. I finally had to say, It's either me or the chimpanzee. I'm going to put Sarah in that car and take her away, and raise her where I can give her a reasonable childhood. It was really about Sarah, you see. It came down to that: Jennie or Sarah.

Hugo finally accepted the seriousness of the situation. But then we didn't know what to do. Could we hire someone? Who? Jennie was just so strong and so willful. Nobody would have been able to handle her any better than us, and none of us could control her. Whoever we hired would probably have gotten bitten. We couldn't
risk that. But we couldn't just lock Jennie up in her room all day. Send her to the zoo? That was unthinkable. To see Jennie locked in a cage, gawked at by the world . . .

Finally Hugo promised he would talk to Harold and Dr. Prentiss about it. They came over one afternoon. It was in 1974, I think. In the spring.

When Jennie saw Dr. Prentiss, she went wild. She was so happy. She had this enormous pink grin and she laughed and laughed. I was touched to see it. You know, I was also very touched to see that Dr. Prentiss actually cried a little. I didn't think she had it in her. She was a terribly misguided young lady but she had feelings. They kissed and hugged and wouldn't let each other go. Then we sat down in the living room over coffee.

Dr. Prentiss offered to take her right away. She wanted Jennie. When I first heard that, I was really quite shocked. It made me angry. I almost threw her out of the house. But then she started to explain. She made it sound so wonderful.

She explained that she was director of a chimpanzee rehabilitation center down in Florida. An island where they released chimps. It was right on the Gulf Coast, near Sarasota. Here, laboratory chimps could be reintroduced into the wild. They would actually train chimpanzees to gather their own food, to hunt, to build nests.

The purpose, you understand, was not to turn them back into wild and self-sufficient animals. Just to give them full and happy lives. Many of these lab chimps were like Jennie, and they'd become too difficult to handle. They had served science and mankind well, Dr. Prentiss said, and they deserved to be cared for. Some of them had led terrible lives in medical labs and humans owed it to them to redress that wrong. It sounded so humane. We had a responsibility to these animals. Previously, they would have been destroyed or just left locked in cages. The chimpanzees from her Barnum colony were down there, very happy and doing fine, she said. There were no cages or fences, since the island was its own natural cage. It was as close as possible to their natural African environment.

She went on and on. Jennie, she said, deserved to finally become a full-fledged chimpanzee. Jennie had been a human for a long time, and it wasn't working. She didn't understand what she was supposed to do, she didn't have the biology for it, and she was unhappy. Et cetera, et cetera. She could live on the island, mate, raise a family, and finally be what nature meant her to be. Everything would be wonderful. It was all very plausible.

I really didn't know what to say. Hugo was also silent. Harold agreed with Dr. Prentiss, and urged me and Hugo to think it over. Harold said he knew this time was long coming, and he had given the matter a great deal of thought. This would be the right thing to do. He said it would be like giving up a child. Could we do it? Could we put Jennie's interests first? Could we let her fulfill her biological destiny? Could we let her go?

Oh, I sit here talking to you and I wonder: why did I ever listen to them? Why did I ever think they knew better than a mother? God
damn
them! The vile, vile, vile
scientists
.

[F
ROM
an interview with Alexander (“Sandy”) Archibald.]

That fire feels great, doesn't it? Here's your coffee. Now maybe you're starting to see what I mean. Simplicity. You don't need a three-thousand-square-foot house to be comfortable.

Hand me that kerosene lantern and we'll get some light in here. Beans should be ready in an hour. Can you hear the wind starting to blow? It's going to blizzard tonight. What the Navajos call a
yasyítsoh
. I've been learning Navajo. It's a phenomenally difficult language, maybe the most difficult in the world. For an English speaker, that is. Lot harder than ASL, that's for sure.

Where were we? Listen to the wind shaking and moaning in the stovepipe. Sounds like a dying man. Funny though, it makes you feel safe, doesn't it? That's the thing out here, you feel safe. Out
there, where you came from, it's dangerous as hell. I never felt safe until I got out here.

So. What else? Hermit Island? Sure, I remember that place. Back when I was fifteen or sixteen my father bought a boat and we used to camp on Hermit Island. There was an old hut on the island where we spent the night, with a big stone fireplace. Jennie loved that island. She could run free and do whatever she wanted. I think the only time she was truly free was on that island.

One year we spent four or five days on the island, fishing every day and eating the fish for dinner. One night it was clear and we slept outside. I think we counted thirty shooting stars that night, just one after the other, whisking across the sky. It was in early August. At first Jennie couldn't figure out what we were seeing. But soon she started counting the shooting stars along with us. “Heeee!” she said when one streaked across. There were some big ones that went halfway across the sky.

The water was phosphorescent. We swam in the cove at night, and as we moved in the water sparks of phosphorescence would swirl around us. It was beautiful. Jennie never went swimming. She was terrified of water. She hated us swimming. She'd stamp around the shore and piss and moan, signing
Come! Come hug Jennie! Help! Dirty dirty!
and anything else she could think of that would get us to come to shore. She was sure we were all going to die. She was so full of love for us, it was sometimes a little frightening.

I once was cleaning out the fireplace of the old hermit's cabin and I found a loose stone in the back. Underneath it was a box full of stuff. I believe these were his sole possessions. There were some photographs and a letter, a silver dollar . . . let's see, and a piece of turquoise. See, the hermit disappeared and nobody knew where he'd gone.

This letter was
really
scary. Legible? Oh, it was very legible. And eloquent. It was the pictures that had faded. Ah! You've read my father's book. Well I'm sorry to say that was a bit of a gloss, his saying the letter was illegible. It was totally legible.

That's right. No shit. This guy, John Tundish, wrote out his whole life story. What happened when he went to the Pacific, why he'd chosen to become a hermit. It was like his farewell letter to the world. Only it was addressed to God.

I wish I could remember the letter better. He wanted to know why God had created so many people. Too many people, all cruel and unthinking and mean. He had specific complaints about various people, all addressed to God. Why did you create Freddie Hutchins? he asked. That son-of-a-gun treated me so bad, took away the only girl I ever loved. Or if you had to create him, why did you have to station him on Hooley Island? Why not put him over there on Guam? Or if he had to be on Hooley Island, how come you let me meet Tina in the first place? Why not just leave me alone? I never would have missed her, if you hadn't made me meet her. And Colonel Gault. Why did you create that so-and-so? Or if you had to create him, how come you made him so mean? Or if he had to be mean, why not make him a private and me the colonel? And God, how come you let my mum run away with Bill Hastings, that son-of-a-gun who never did anything but drink and “God damn” this and “God damn” that? And what about me, who never took Your name in vain in my life? What about me? Why haven't you done anything for me? What kind of a God are you that you treat those who love you like this? And look at what a mess the world is. If you didn't do it, who did?