Zoo (6 page)

I didn’t know how they all did it, Auntie
Josephine with her singing, Janice with her sweet, farm girl thing,
and even the new guy, James, with his cowboy stuff. They all
performed for the public like they enjoyed it, and all I wanted to
do was rip their eyes out for watching me against my will. It made
me feel so dirty.

I looked back across to James’ enclosure. He
had left the glass wall and was saddling up his chocolate colored
horse. Disheartened, I left our connection of the glass and trudged
over to our fruit tree. I plucked an apple from a low hanging
branch. Another one instantly grew in its place. It started out the
size of a small raisin and grew into a plump, juicy, red apple
within minutes. It was freaky.

I spent the rest of the day crushing on the
hot cowboy and thinking about my next chance to communicate with
him again.

GLASS CONVERSATIONS

The following morning I woke up before the
park opened. I rushed down to the front of the dome to see James.
He was waiting for me, sitting in the same place as yesterday. My
heart leapt into my throat, but I slowed my pace so he wouldn’t
know how anxious I was to see him. He was so ruggedly handsome in
his western wear that he could have been a movie star in my time.
So far, he was the only good thing about the People’s Past
Anthropological Center. He gave me something to focus on besides
escaping.

I casually waved and sat in front of the
glass dome of my enclosure. I took special care as I mixed my water
into the soil next to me. It needed to be just the right
consistency to smear on the clear surface.

James had already written
out
Good Morning
on his glass wall when I looked back toward him. He had a
crooked smile playing across his thin lips, and his blue eyes were
radiant.

I smiled back and
wrote
Good Morning
as well. Then I wrote,
Lonely?

He shook his head no and
wrote,
Good horse. You?

Absolutely.
I was more than lonely, even though people
surrounded me most of the time. I shared this easily with James.
Somehow the fact that he had only been around for two days, and I’d
never spoken face to face with him, didn’t matter. Actually, that’s
probably why it was so easy. I knew I would never get to meet him
so there was nothing to lose. But I wanted to meet him
badly.

What do you miss?
I drug my fingers over the glass with care to ask
the personal question.

His face turned grim as I
made him think about things he probably would have rather not dwelt
on. He wrote,
mother and little sister.
provided for them. father died in war.

Oh no. I shouldn’t have asked. The look on
his face broke my heart. He poured a little stream of water over
his muddy answer to wash away the memories of his lost, loved
ones.

I shared with him;
I miss my mother and father. Friends.
I didn’t write the superficial things that I
missed like my car, shopping, or the $4.00 a cup vanilla lattes
that I got several times a week. Those things didn’t even compare
to his loss. How shallow of me that I whined to Janice about
them.

He nodded again, acknowledging both of our
losses. Then we sat and stared at one another for a little while
with nothing left to say.

James and I didn’t leave our spots facing
one another, across the expanse of the public’s walkways, when the
park opened. People of all ages, wearing all eras of clothing,
trickled through our section of the zoo. Some of them paused and
looked at our muddy messages on the glass. They curiously looked
from me over to James. I bet they were thinking and even saying
aloud, “Silly animals.”

I didn’t care. I stayed where I was seated
and coldly stared back at them.

Until, I saw
him . . .

WHAT DOES THIS GUY WANT?

A man I’d seen before was standing right in
the middle of the public walkway—right between James and me. He
stayed in place as people passed all around him, moving from one
enclosure to the next. I recalled his tan skin and firm build, but
he was no longer wearing a grass skirt, nose piercing, or showing
off his tattoos. Instead, he was dressed like someone from my era;
with khaki shorts, a plain gray t-shirt, and black flip-flops. It
threw me off for a minute.

More than anything, I still recognized
something in his eyes, but was unable to place it for a second
time. That day, though, his eyes were unhappy. It made me
uncomfortable. I quickly washed my messages to James off of the
glass wall and picked up my water pouch. I wondered why I felt
guilty all of a sudden for communicating with James. I couldn’t
figure out who the strange guy was or why he had such power over
me. I was sure he knew things I didn’t. Perhaps he had secrets and
a world of knowledge that I wanted to hear about, or maybe he was
just a stalker.

I rose to my feet and smoothed my dress out,
and then I left James sitting alone with his own messages to wash
away. I hurried away to find Janice, never looking back at the man
that was surely watching me retreat. In no time at all, I found her
talking to Betsy. She had a carefree air about her like life in a
zoo suited her just fine. This made me angry and envious at the
same time. I couldn’t help but want to force my own opinions down
her throat. Why wasn’t she feeling the same things that I was
feeling? I didn’t quite understand her point of view, because I
didn’t live her life.

However, at that time, I was more concerned
with the weird stalker than Janice’s stance on the zoo. I whispered
to her, while I kept my back toward the public and him, “Janice,
don’t be obvious, but do you recognize that guy in the gray shirt
staring at me?”

Janice casually walked around Betsy, all the
while stroking her coarse coat, until she was once again standing
next to me. “What guy in a gray shirt?” she asked.

When I turned around, he was gone—and Janice
had one more reason to think I was a little crazy.

JAMES

James and I met for our mud-chats most
mornings. He always waited for me in the same place, ready to write
a new message. He must have been an early riser in his old life.
For me, it was a struggle to wake up before the zoo opened, which
was early by most people’s standards.

From our conversations, I learned that James
was from Colorado and missed it dearly. I learned that he’d been
working since he was a young child, and therefore, he didn’t have
very much education and often misspelled things. I never corrected
him. I learned that his mother’s name was Helen and his sister’s
name was Rose. He also had a baby brother named William. William
died of influenza when he was an infant.

He had a hard life. I did not.

I thought back to all the things that I took
for granted like antibiotics, which probably would have saved his
brother’s life. His stories made me realize how great I had it and
how fortunate I was to have grown up in my time and not his. What I
would have given to be able to hit the rewind button and see the
world in a different light. I would’ve appreciated every day I was
alive. James was a nice distraction, but he wasn’t enough of a
distraction to keep me from missing my family and friends.

Sometimes, after our
conversations, I watched James go about his day. He spent most of
his time with his horse that he named Sue. He took such good care
of her, brushing her and keeping her well exercised. Unfortunately,
I couldn’t bother myself to do the same with our cow. She was a
good cow, but she was kind of stinky.
Okay
. . .
She was really stinky.

James grew more handsome to me by the day,
and I wanted nothing more than for him to be in our enclosure or
vice versa. I felt like he was all mine, something that the Keepers
didn’t control. He drew my attention away from my awful
circumstances, and I clung to that—probably too much—but it helped
at the time. The only person that seemed to interfere with my
goings-on with James was the strange tanned guy that watched me. He
showed up randomly, never at the same time or day of the week. He
always watched me and only me. It made me feel uncomfortable and
guilty. Not because I was attracted to him or anything. It was
something I couldn’t explain. It just was.

PROTESTING

It was most likely a Saturday afternoon, at
the busiest time of the day, when the chanting started. I could
hear it from my hut where I was hiding from the unusually large
crowds. “Freedom! Freedom! Free them! Freedom! Freedom! Free them!”
they chanted over and over again. The sound was thunderous and
caused the beat of my heart to match up with the rhythmic
pounding.

I crawled out of my only private space and
peeked through some ferns to discover that the majority of the
crowd was going crazy. Some held up clear virtual signs with red
writing. The writing scrolled across the signs. Some of the
protestors chanted, some threw red paint on the domes, and some ran
away from the scene afraid. The protesting mob surged our dome,
beating the glass with bats and fists.

My heart started to pound. I was excited and
scared all at once. If people out there were unhappy with our
captivity, the possibilities were endless. We could be freed or
executed. Who knew what could happen, but I chose to believe that
they could be a way out.

Janice burst through the plants panting. Her
hair got tangled in a vine and she had to yank herself free. She
fell to her knees from the force of her efforts and scrambled
forward. “They’re trying to break us out of here. They’re going to
shatter the glass! We have to get in our huts. Now!” she
screamed.

I stumbled back into my hut as she pushed to
squeeze in beside me. Her frantic state had started to make me
concerned for my physical wellbeing. I mimicked Janice’s posture
and curled myself into a ball, covering my head as I waited for the
sky to fall. We were both silent as we listened to every sound
outside. Janice hoped it would all stop, while I wanted them to get
angrier and stronger. I wanted them to turn into super heroes and
lift the dome off with their bare hands, like it was feather.

The chants, bangs, thumps, and all around
rebellious sounds filled my ears, but it was my hope and
determination to escape that kept me from panicking like Janice.
She was crying and rocking back and forth. I wanted to shake her
and say, “This is it! Our time to escape! Get a hold of yourself.”
Instead, I said, “It’s going to be okay, Janice.”

It was so sudden when it happened. The
resonance of glass shattering somewhere, drowned out the sound of
the protestors. Unfortunately, it wasn’t from our enclosure. Then
there was screaming—lots of screaming. Someone shouted, “Run!”

The sound of chaos is hard to explain, but
that’s exactly what I heard. I wanted to see it, so I slowly
uncurled myself and started to crawl out of the protection of my
hut. “I’ll be right back. Calm down.” Janice grabbed at my leg and
then my ankle as I left her there weeping. I crept through the
trees and stopped behind some ferns, where the jungle gave way to
the open land.

From my hidden spot, I saw that some of the
protesters were running in zigzags, as men in white uniforms
stomped after them, some stood their ground and chained themselves
to the railings outside of the enclosures, and some were being drug
away in handcuffs by authorities. I wanted to run out and thank
them for their efforts and beg them to keep trying. I wanted to
claw myself out of the dome and run off with them.

There were shards of glass
littering the ground. I searched for where they originated.
James!
His enclosure had
a huge gaping hole in it. I jumped up from my hiding spot and threw
myself over the ferns, falling and stumbling through them. I
scrambled to the front of our enclosure. When I reached the flat
ground, I sprinted to the glass; my bare feet pounded the lush,
green grass.

James’ horse was peaking out from one of the
buildings’ windows, but James wasn’t visible. I waited a few
moments, but he still didn’t appear. I started to scream his name,
“James!” I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled louder,
“James!”

No answer. No James.

Then I thought of Auntie Josephine and
rushed to her side of the dome. I climbed up the rock wall in a
frenzy. I scraped my knees and shins in the rush of my ascent. Up I
went, trying to reach the opening that our two enclosures shared.
At first I didn’t see her. She wasn’t in her bedroom hiding under
her bed or peeking out of her wardrobe. I knew she wasn’t in her
bathroom because the door was wide open and the room was empty. But
then I saw her. She was almost out in the open. Auntie Josephine
waved to me from under her chaise lounge. I was so filled with
relief that she was okay, I let out an audible sigh.

After descending the rock wall, I went to
check on Janice. Once she was calm, I returned to watch the
aftermath. It took the white uniformed army almost an hour to clear
the area of protestors. They had to bring out the old-fashioned
bolt cutters—like from my time—because apparently, their technology
couldn’t zap those chains away without causing injury to the
troublemakers. The glass domes had a self-cleaning mechanism
built-in. The paint on their surfaces was washed away with ease.
There were also small, hovering machines that cleaned the walkways.
They were unmanned and efficient.

I paced the length of the
glass, searching for a glimpse of James all the while, but it never
came. I did see
him
though. The tanned-skin man was standing on a bench, in the
middle of the chaos. He calmly stared at me, like always. No one
noticed him except me, and when he saw that I was looking back, he
pointed at his wristwatch and tapped the glass surface three
times.