The Baby Elephant

“Look at them out there,” she said, “they’re watching me.”
I slid my backpack from my shoulder and dropped it onto the musty recliner. The chair and I sighed in unison—she was at it again. My grandmother was staring out the window, but from where I was standing it looked like she was staring at her own reflection. She looked terrified.
Lately there had been an outbreak of horror films in which some well-known story time character was depicted as an evil monster that went on a murderous rampage. The night before, my friend and I rented one about The Three Billy Goats Gruff—on the front of the box, the three goats had bloody teeth and horns and their eyes glowed red. There was also a pentagram behind them for some reason and the caption at the bottom said “They went up the hill to get fat … on your BLOOD!” I remember wondering if blood was fattening. The movie was awful, but I thought that the teenage actors who were supposedly being slaughtered by the evil billy goats did pretty well to look terrified, especially since that, in reality; it was probably just some stage-hand waving a mop at them or something. That’s how they film these horror movies; they add the special effects in later, so when they’re shooting the live action, the actors don’t get to see the blood thirsty goats—they have to pretend to be terrified by some ridiculous thing. It must be difficult to act terrified of a mop, and I thought these kids did a good job. That was, of course, until I saw my grandmother’s face in the window and remembered what terror truly looked like.
As I moved closer to the window, I was relieved to see her reflection fade into the flat side of a small white house that lay beyond. Beneath a small opaque window—on lawn chairs made of alternating green and yellow rubber tubing—sat an elderly man and his wife. That couple had lived next door to my grandmother for as long as I can remember, and while they were certainly unpleasant, there was nothing about them that I would describe as particularly terrifying. I don’t know what frightened her so much, but then, she had been like that lately.
She had had a rough summer that year. In July, all four of her sisters died within two weeks of each other, and then, as if death was out to get her too, her shirt tail caught the flame from the stove and she went to the hospital with third degree burns all over her back. I had to rub a special ointment on her back and change her bandages three times a day for a month. Then, in August, while pulling weeds from her flower garden, she suffered a heat stroke, which very nearly killed her. The doctor said that it was very lucky that I came upon her when I did or else her brain would have started to boil. That reminded me of a movie I saw once where these people had to eat boiled monkey brains or their hosts would kill them. I would eat boiled monkey brains. I’d eat just about anything.
Ever since the day she returned from the hospital in early September, she would have fits of unexplainable fear and panic, usually brought on by the neighbors. Why was she so scared of them? I asked myself this question often, and came up with several different possible conclusions—the possibility that I kept returning to was that her brain did indeed boil (maybe just a little bit) and now it wasn’t working properly. Of course, that was just a theory—maybe she had a good reason to fear them, maybe she wasn’t afraid of them at all—maybe they were just the Mop.
I touched her shoulder in way that made me feel as though I was a stranger to her. Her shoulder muscles tensed. She must have felt the same way. I have no ability to comfort those who need it. “Grandma,” I said, “they’re just sitting outside. They’re not spying on you.”
“I didn’t say they were spying. I said they’re watching me. They never talk to each other. They just sit there and watch. Look at them.”
“You shouldn’t worry yourself over –”
“You have to take the garbage out for me.”
“I’ll take it out for you, but not because I think they are watching you.” I took a pharmacy bag from my backpack and went into the kitchen where I unloaded the contents onto the counter—three bottles of prescription pills, a sterile birthday card, and the large print Nora Roberts’ novel I had picked up at the Middletown Public Library. I bent down to pick up the trash bag, and as I stood back up, I felt a familiar nudge on my back. It was the Navy pamphlet that I had been carrying around for a week. I set the bag on the floor and pulled the pamphlet from my back pocket. I had not yet told my grandmother about my plans to join. The recruiter had offered me more than a career in the Navy; he offered me a new life.
After I had first met with the recruiter, I went home to tell my mother. I found her lying on the couch in front of the television. Her snore was loud and wet, like an engine trying to run under water. She gurgled in deep breaths and then let them out with rumbling sighs. This was how I found her most days. My father died in a car accident two years before. When my mother got the phone call, she did not cry, she did not scream, she simply hung up, said “Your father is dead,” crawled onto the couch, turned on the television and fell asleep. My grandmother (my father’s mother) had to arrange the funeral and she and I attended it together. My mother stayed home, on the couch. I tried to comfort her, but, like I said, I have no ability for that. So, the day I met the recruiter, two years later, she was still there. I stood over her, watching, hoping that, in sleep, she would betray herself and show me something. My father’s death was hard on me (as I’m sure it is for most), but my mother’s apathy was a slow, painful torture that I could no longer bear. She showed me nothing. Her snore came to an abrupt stop. This, too, was common (as was the surge of panic that seized my arms immediately afterwards). After a brief pause, which seemed like minutes, the snore began its rhythm once again.
I turned to face the television. Cary Grant had just discovered a dead body in a window seat and he was in the middle of a comic reaction when I went over to the set and turned it off. My mother jerked awake. “I was watching that,” she said.
I sat down on the uncomfortable antique chair next to her and the couch. “I saw a Navy recruiter today,” I said. She dug the remote out from underneath her belly and turned the television back on. “I think I am going to sign up.”
“No you’re not.”
“I have to. I can’t stay here anymore. I’ve got to get out.” I had rehearsed this scene all the way home and as I delivered my lines, I was embarrassed by their melodrama.
She must have noticed this too, because she said nothing. She must have thought that I was a silly boy—that this “Navy” thing was just like the ball glove that I “just couldn’t live without” when I was ten, but then carelessly left out in the rain to be ruined (An event that she still reminded me of from time to time). She showed her disapproval of my desire and my childlike attempt to talk her into it by sucking phlegm from the back of her nose into her mouth and then swallowing.
But I wasn’t asking her for anything this time. “I don’t want to be stuck here for the rest of my life like…” I could not bring myself to continue the rehearsed script in my mind. I took a breath and looked at the television. Cary Grant’s Character was talking nervously to an old woman who was playing his aunt. Apparently, his aunts were killing houseguests and burying them in the basement. After a moment, I looked back to my mother and continued as earnestly as possible, “I just feel like I’m trapped here, you know? I feel like a man locked in a tiny cage.” She let out a snort that could have been a laugh. She was not taking me seriously. “Do you hate me?” I went back to the script. “Because, I think you do. I think you hate me. I think you want me to stay here, I think you want me to be alone and miserable just like you.” I almost made myself puke. I was sounding like those whiny kids on T.V. that I hated so much.
She did not even flinch; she kept staring blankly at the television screen. Finally, in a voice that matched her stare, she said, “I remember once, when you were four years old, I woke you up in the morning and you looked out the window. I don’t know what made you think to look out the window, but you went straight to it and when you looked out, your face lit up and you gasped. If it weren’t May, I would have thought you had just seen a fresh coat of snow on the ground. You said you wanted to go outside, so I dressed you in your play clothes and let you outside. You came in ten minutes later with dirt all over your clothes, and a handful of dandelions. ‘Mommy, Mommy,’ you said ‘I picked these flowers for you.’ You said they were so pretty and that our yard was just full of them. That look on your face. That was the happiest day of my life.” She shifted into a more comfortable position on the couch, and continued to glare at the screen.
Her lines seemed rehearsed too, but she was doing a lot better than I was. I waited for her to continue. When she never did, I finally said, “I’m signing up. I’m going to leave.” No rehearsal—just plain and simple truth.
She was finished with the conversation. She turned up the volume, and closed her eyes. Cary Grant was yelling, “You... Get out of here! Do you want to be poisoned? Do you want to be murdered? Do you want to be killed?”

As I flipped through the recruitment pamphlet in my grandmother’s kitchen, I realized that I had gotten it all wrong. I wasn’t a man in a cage, I was a child stranded in the middle of the desert. Only mine was not sand—it was a desert of cornfields that I could not navigate my way out of alone. The pamphlet was my compass—the recruiter didn’t offer me a new life, he offered me life itself. I replaced the pamphlet to my back pocket, pulled the bag from the garbage can and yelled back to the living room where my grandmother was most likely still staring out of the window, “Why in the world would they care about you taking out the garbage, anyway?”
“They care,” I heard her mumble.
I went out to the burn barrel in the alley behind my grandmother’s house. I was glad to see that the barrel was not yet full enough to burn. Most other towns were no longer allowed to burn garbage, for environmental reasons. Middletown still allowed it however, and my grandmother insisted on it—she was not about to pay a man twenty-five dollars a month to carry away her garbage. I was glad to see that it was not ready to burn not because I cared so much about the environment—I just could not stand to watch the flames eat through a plastic bag or plastic bottles bubble from the heat. It made me picture the flesh pealing from my grandmother’s back and her boiling brain.
When I returned to the house, I found that my grandmother was still at her window. “They watched you the entire time,” she said.
I stood in the doorway and said, “Don’t worry about them. Come on into the kitchen, I brought your stuff, plus I got you a book. I am going to have some tea.”
She reluctantly turned from the window. She slowly stood from her chair and followed me into the kitchen. As always, she recovered quickly from her bout with fear. She looked over the book with a smile and then took one of the pills from the bottle and swallowed it. “I’d be lost without you,” she said. “Completely lost.”
“You wouldn’t be lost.” I said, “What about Aunt Carol? She could help you.”
“She lives in Chicago. She might as well be a million miles away,” She said, “Besides, she’s way too busy to be bothered with an old lady like me. Nope, it’s all on you, boy. I suppose your mother lives here in town but – Well, ever since your father passed – Well, she’s not my daughter. So, if you weren’t around to take care of me, I couldn’t keep living in my own house, so –” Her eyes shifted to the right as if she were trying to see someone behind her without them knowing (another development since the hospital), “So, I’d probably end up in Middletown Manor Nursing Home. I can’t do that. Have you seen the people out in that nursing home? They look dead. They look worse, because they’re still alive.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. You’d be fine.” I said as I poured some lemon tea into a glass. I was glad to see that I was not the only one who gave rehearsed speeches in my family. “Besides,” I continued, “if all else fails, the couple next door seems to keep a pretty close eye on you.”
She ignored my joke. “That show on channel three that I like is on tonight—that one with the colored man on it—what’s it called—I think it’s funny—the one with the colored man—you know—what’s it called?”
“The show with the colored man? That is pretty specific. I don’t know, Steve Harvey, maybe?”
“Yeah, that’s it—I love that show—let’s go watch it.”
She stood as she said this, so I had to hurry out of my chair and into the living room so that I could pull the shades down to block out the neighbors. I went to the recliner and flopped into the seat. I turned the television on and began scanning through the channels by the time my grandmother made it into the living room. She paid no attention to the window. She picked up an embroidery kit and a magnifying glass and sat in her chair. “Hey, you know what other show I really like?” she said, “It’s not on tonight, it’s on tomorrow— I never miss it.”
“What show is that?”
“The Statler Brothers’ Show. I just love them. Especially the little one who sings tenor—what’s his name?”
“I’m sure that I don’t know. Is he colored?”
“No, they’re all white,” She said as she tapped her fingers on her chin and stared at the ceiling fan. “Jimmy!” she said, “His name’s Jimmy. Jimmy Fortune. I love that song, ‘Elizabeth.’ It’s about the actress.”
“Fortune?” I said, “I thought you said he was a Statler brother?”
“Oh, they’re not really brothers. I think they got the name from a brand of tissues or something.” She was concentrating on pushing the thread through the pinhole. “I just love that show.”
I stopped on the Discovery Channel. I set the remote down and went over to my grandmother. I took the pin and thread from her and carefully threaded the needle. I tied a knot on the end and handed back to her. When she took it back from me, I noticed the lumpy veins on her hands. I imagined the tiny blue rivers flowing through her body carrying just enough blood to sustain what little action was left in her organs. She was so thin. She had been watching a lot of
She looked past him at the television. “Oh, leave it here for a minute. I love these nature programs. I watch them all of the time.”
He checked the clock. He had a while before the game started so he sat back down in his chair and set the remote to the side. He watched as a group of elephants stopped to drink and bathe at a watering hole. It occurred to him then, that he had no idea what a group of elephants were called. A family? “Hey Grandma,” he said, “What do you call a group of elephants?” He smiled at the joke-like fashion in which he asked the question. He half expected his grandmother to reply, “I don’t know. What do you call a group of elephants?” He wondered what the punch line should be.
“A herd,” she said plainly.
“A herd?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a ‘herd’ of elephants, just like cattle. The male elephant is a ‘bull,’ the female is a ‘cow,’ and the baby is a ‘calf.’ Did you know that a group of apes is called a ‘shrewdness’ and a group of ferrets is called a ‘business?’ Isn’t that something?”
“Wow. You really do watch a lot of this stuff.” The herd had left the watering hole, but they somehow left a baby elephant behind on accident. The camera zoomed in on the baby as it began to bawl and cry out for its mother. The narrator of the program said that, without help, the calf would be lucky to survive the night, and then it cut to commercials.
An advertisement for the Navy came on the television and Matt felt the excitement pulse throughout his body as he watched the large ship blast across the ocean. He imagined himself on the ship, cruising across the world at top speeds far away from the desolate landscape of Middletown, IL. He thought about the baby elephant. If only Navy recruiters set up small booths in the Sahara, that calf just might make it.
His grandmother looked up from her embroidery, “Did you know that scientists have proved that elephants can recognize their own reflections?”
“Really?” he said as the Navy commercial gave way to an advertisement for a chiropractor. “How’d they do that?”
“Oh, I don’t know. They put dots on it or something and then put a mirror in front of the elephant. He would touch himself where the dots were, so that proved he knew it was his own reflection. Isn’t that something?”
“Yeah it really is.” When the show returned, Matt watched the calf as it drank from the watering hole in between cries. He imagined the calf seeing his reflection in the water. He imagined himself in the water staring back up at the calf yelling, “Get out! Do you want to be murdered? Do you want to be killed?” But Matt’s face was too strong, too fearless, and too hopeful to match that of the calf. Then he remembered the look on his grandmother’s face as she was looking out the window earlier. A troubled look filled with fear and confusion. He figured that the baby elephant would probably look more like that.
The narrator said that the calf was in luck because another herd of elephants was approaching the watering hole and elephants are one of the few animals that will adopt a baby from another herd and take care of it. So, the baby elephant walked over to one of the cows and started rubbing up against her leg just like a little kitten would. Then the big cow looked down at the baby, lifted her giant foot out of the water and stomped on the baby’s head, crushing the baby’s head into the mud. The calf got up out of the water and stumbled to another cow, only to receive another violent response. The narrator said that it was a bad year and the herd couldn’t afford to take any more elephants.
Matt’s grandmother sucked her teeth and said, “I wish he would just die.”
Matt looked over to his grandmother and noticed how intently she was watching the baby elephant. He turned back to the television. The herd was leaving and the calf was still struggling to follow. In one last attempt to leave the baby behind, the lead bull picked the baby up with his trunk and smashed his skull up against a tree and then let his body fall limply to the ground. The herd left, but the calf was still alive. He dragged his crushed, beaten and bloody body back to the water.
“You know what I don’t get,” his grandmother began, “is how these cameramen can just sit there and watch this happen. I mean, how can they do that?”
Matt remembered the day one year ago when he found his grandmother sprawled out on her lawn. She had suffered a heat stroke while pulling weeds. When he ran up to check on her, he noticed that the old man and woman who lived next door were sitting in their yard watching. He wondered how long they had watched. Did they see her pass out? He checked her pulse and looked up to see the man spit brown tobacco juice onto the ground. That couple never moved, not even when Matt yelled to them to call
9-1-1.
The calf sat by the water whimpering until a bunch of striped hyenas heard him. “A group of hyenas,” his grandmother said, “are called a ‘cackle.’” The cackle of hyenas didn’t have to pounce on him, or chase him down. He was weak. He was an easy target. He sat there, helplessly screaming, as they ate him alive. “Poor thing,” his grandmother said, “He couldn’t take care of himself. I wish he would have just died.” Matt turned to look at his grandmother as she fumbled with her needle. He felt the Navy pamphlet poking him in the back.
“Hey, I noticed the burn barrel was full earlier,” he said, “So I think I’m going to go burn it before the game starts.” He stood and walked towards the door. “And don’t forget to take your other pill. It’s almost time.”
“Thank you,” she said as she looked up to the clock, “I plum forgot.”
He went to the burn barrel and removed the lighter from his front pocket and the pamphlet from his back pocket. He took one last look at the man in the uniform before he set him on fire and tossed him into the barrel.