Tania James - Aerogrammes - and Other Stories

Seven years later, Pearl was forced to donate Henry to a zoo. The county police department had been pressuring her to do so, ever since Pearl’s neighbor had informed the sheriff that Pearl was harboring an adult male chimpanzee, who, if angered, could lash out with savage strength. It didn’t matter when Neneh and Pearl tried to explain Henry’s many gentle aspects, how patient he was, how delighted by buttered popcorn, so much so that he stood rapt before the microwave, watching the flat envelope spin in the humming light, growing pregnant with his favorite food. He even knew how to press the Minute-Plus button, as well as Start and Open.

“Popcorn?” the sheriff said, as if to imply that Pearl was choosing popcorn over local security.

But gradually it became difficult for Pearl to ignore that she was aging. Her veins rose blue against her thinning skin, and various glands and muscles made her wake with a start in the night. She was seventy-two years old and Neneh was seventeen, too young to care for a fully grown chimp on her own.

After many disappointing zoo tours, Pearl gave her reluctant approval to the Willow Park Zoo, in Florida, which provided a wider sanctuary than the primate pens she had seen, where the chimps were often numb with depression and boredom, butting their heads against the walls of their cages or masturbating. Here, the chimpanzee enclosure appeared larger, almost the size of a gymnasium, with a multitude of trees, both live and dead, and a flaccid waterfall between knobby gray boulders. Some chimpanzees were busy grooming each other, others explored the underbellies of stones they had doubtless explored before, while the younger ones tickled and tumbled around one another. It seemed to Pearl the best she could do.

The zoo curator was eager to adopt Henry, as the zoo had no adult male chimpanzees and, thus, no way of breeding. Pearl refused any payment in return but was adamant in her negotiations: (1) that she and Neneh be allowed to privately visit with Henry, and (2) that Henry not be traded or sold. Papers were signed and promises made; Henry was brought to the zoo.

Upon first hearing the shrieks of his new family, Henry scrambled up to the roof of the cafeteria, his mouth stretched into a fear grin, all teeth and pink gums. Neneh coaxed him down, offering him a Dole fruit cup, while Pearl made kissing noises. She raised her hands to him. Eventually, he descended, but he continued yelping while Neneh and Pearl took turns embracing him. His legs were quivering.

Pearl paid no attention to the keepers and the curator who stood around, hands on their hips, exchanging worried glances. Pearl murmured softly but firmly to Henry, which was what she used to do when thunderstorms drove him out of his own bed and into her arms. She did her very best to comfort him, without crooning or condescending as though he were a baby or a dog, as much for Henry’s sake as for these keepers. She wanted them to know that Henry should be treated with as much dignity as they would afford to each other, and that he was as precious to her as any human being who had walked into or out of her life.

• • •

At the zoo, the female chimps despised Henry. The keepers had no idea what to do. Without support from a single female, Henry had no chance of melding with the group, let alone achieving the rank of alpha male.

There were four adult females plus Max, a baby boy. As the oldest female, Nana had taken up the position of alpha male, and though Henry made no effort to seize power, his very presence posed a challenge to her reign. Each morning during the first week, as soon as the chimps were released from their night cages, Nana and her gang of disgruntled females went after Henry in a screaming blitzkrieg that didn’t cease until he had been chased into the upper reaches of a tree. Sometimes Nana bit at his feet and drew blood, her allies screeching at Henry from below. Henry’s legs shook; he vomited. Nothing he ate stayed down for long anyway, owing to his preference for omelets and sausage over the zoo’s food pellets.

Joseph, the oldest keeper, felt for Henry. He remembered how Mrs. Groves had held Henry before she’d left. The way she’d cupped the crown of his head was not unlike the way Joseph’s sister Julia had cradled her son’s, though Chip was eighteen years old and lying in a casket. Drunk, he had sped his mother’s car across a patch of black ice and into a tree. Now his photographs were used in the drunk-driving videos shown to high schoolers and DUI offenders, a picture of Chip, pale and unprepared for the flash, and next to this, his Civic like a crumple of metal Kleenex. These thoughts had been fresh in Joseph’s mind as he’d offered Mrs. Groves his handkerchief. She had hesitated before taking it. After blotting her eyes, she’d said, “Thank you,” and pulled herself straight.

At Joseph’s suggestion, the keepers removed Nana from the sanctuary and kept her in separate quarters for a week. By the time she returned, the other females had grown used to Henry, who most enjoyed playing with little Max. The females had even begun to greet Henry as they would the alpha male, grunting before him as they lowered themselves onto their knuckles, as if doing quick push-ups. Joseph wondered how Henry knew to sit up tall before the bowing female, how he knew to bristle his coat so that he appeared larger than all the others. Whether from memory or instinct, Henry seemed to understand that he could gain authority from these daily greetings.

When finally Nana returned to the group, she chased Henry into a tree, but none of the other females joined her. The next day, Henry retaliated by staying his ground, bristling his coat and baring the dagger-sized canines that she lacked. When Nana growled at him, he slapped her across the face so hard that she fell and rolled onto her side. Screaming in protest, she fled to the other females, who embraced her and calmed her, but did not defend her.

•

Over the next ten years, keepers came and went. A Bengal tiger died after a visitor threw it a fudge brownie that had been sugared with ground glass. The zoo curator was fired, replaced by a woman intent on raising more money. The new curator used the negative publicity to hold a fund-raiser, which supplied the budget to enlarge several quarters so that animals were now kept at a greater distance from the visitors, behind a transparent plastic shield.

The shield proved frustrating for Henry, who was used to flirting in close proximity to blond women. Before, when a blonde would peer at the cage from behind the hip-high visitor bar, Henry would hoist himself onto the rock closest to her and blow kisses. He’d then drop to his hands and began swaying back and forth, his fur ruffled, ready to mate.

The visitors were amused by the spectacle, especially the blondes, who were happy to play Fay Wray and blow kisses in return, until they noticed his erection, and recoiled. It was no game to Henry. Rejected, he wandered away from the blondes to sit on a distant stone.

His attraction to blondes rendered him completely uninterested in females of his own kind. He refused to mate with any female chimp, even when she offered herself in times of estrus, the brief window in which she was willing. He kept at a distance, scrutinizing his nails or searching the sky. The youngest female, Gigi, became so enamored of Henry that when he didn’t respond, she would run up, thrust a hand between his legs, and try to manually raise his interest. This only provoked him to move away, at which point Gigi would throw herself to the ground, screaming until Max came along.

Max was now entering his adolescence and eager for every opportunity among the females. But unlike most alpha males, Henry did not grow jealous when Max mated with another female; nor did Henry exercise his dominance by disrupting the couple and chasing Max away. Ever the gentleman, and possibly relieved, Henry looked the other way as yet another orgasmic shriek split the sky.