When my gaze flickers to the elephants roaming behind him, I have this intense urge to rip apart the barrier stretching around their exhibit to free them. So they know they’re free. So it’s not a manipulation keeping them from realizing how powerful they are.
“It’s cruel,” spouts from my mouth before I know I’m thinking it.
Torrin’s hand squeezes my shoulder. It’s not a suggestive one to shut up. It’s not one to pull me away. It’s one to support me—to let me know he’s here.
“Why’s it cruel? It’s the only way for humans and elephants to coexist in relatively close quarters.” The keeper has warm eyes, but I learned ten years ago that warmth on the surface doesn’t mean that what’s deeper isn’t encased in ice. I don’t let it fool me. I won’t let it fool me again.
“Elephants don’t need to coexist with us. They don’t ask to be around us. They don’t want to.” I move a little closer to the keeper. Torrin moves with me. “The reason they coexist with humans is because we’ve taken them from their homes and forced them into a life they’d never choose. They’re here because someone took them from their lives in Africa or Asia or they took their parents or grandparents, because some asshole decided they wanted an elephant, and why the hell not?”
I notice a few parents take their kids by the hand and pull them away from the “crazy lady.” I should stop. I don’t know what I’m saying—it just feels like I have to say it.
“You can’t just take something because you want it,” I say. “You can’t just fuck with its freedom then chain it up and fuck with its head too.”
The crowd is quiet now. Really quiet. I’ve been shouting loudly enough that more of a crowd has gathered. As I scan the crowd, I see phones raised and what I guess are people snapping photos or videos.
It isn’t until the keeper’s eyes lower to my neck that I realize what’s happened. The scarf has come loose in the midst of my fit. People are staring at the scar, recognition flickering in their eyes. With the way some of them are looking at my neck, I start to wonder if I have a real knife sticking out of it.
“I’m sorry, ma’am.” The keeper sets the stakes down and kicks the chains back a ways. Recognition is on his face too. “I didn’t mean to make it so personal.”
More people stare—even the kids are looking at me like they know something’s off. I feel like everyone knows who I am and what happened to me. The scar is like walking around with a sign listing my darkest, deepest secrets. I haven’t seen the news or read the headlines, but I can imagine what has been blasted out there.
How many young girls in this area have wide purple scars winding around their necks?
From the phones that continue to rise toward me, I know not many.
“This isn’t about me,” I shout to the keeper as I back away. “This is about the goddamned elephants.”
I turn to leave because I’ve seen enough of the zoo for one day. Phones pan with me as I hurry back up the same path we just walked. Torrin is beside me before I get more than a few steps away.
“I don’t like the zoo anymore,” I say, trying to ignore a few of the cameras still following me.
Torrin curls his nose. “Yeah. Zoos suck.”
I catch one last look of the elephants before we reach the top of the pathway. I didn’t get close enough to look in their eyes this time. If I had, I wonder if I’d still think I could see their souls. I doubt it—how could a soul survive when it had been strangled out by a length of chain?
The scarf is swinging at my sides, my neck drawing more attention as we fly to the zoo’s entrance. Grabbing the scarf, I start to wind it back around my neck, tighter this time so it stays. When I’m about to wrap it around a third time, Torrin stops me. Taking the end of the scarf from me, he unwinds what I’ve just done. Then he lets it slide off the back of my neck and clutches it in his hand.
“You’re better without it.”
SINCE I CLEARLY don’t like the zoo anymore, I let my mom drag me to the mall close by the house. Maybe I’ve gone all opposites on myself and what I used to loathe now I love.
I realize that’s not the case the instant I step inside the mall in Bellevue. It’s a Saturday after lunch, and I remember this place being crazy busy on a Tuesday morning. It feels like just as many people are milling about here as at the zoo a few days ago, but we’re enclosed here. No fresh air to help me flush out the panic attack before it digs its claws into me.
“Anywhere you want to start?” Mom asks as we join the masses of shoppers zipping around like Christmas is seven hours away instead of seven months. “You’ll need new everything, so we might want to start at one of the big anchor stores first.”
I’m wearing another one of my old outfits. It’s a shirt of a band that’s not even around anymore, and my cut-offs are only staying up because I borrowed one of Mom’s belts. I know I need new clothes, but I’m not in the mood to shop.
Shopping. Spending hours and hours skimming through, trying on, and purchasing things that will be dumped off at a thrift store next year was a practice I hadn’t really understood as a teenager—it’s even more extreme now.