Unspoken Read online

  “I’d double your salary if you could teach the others to do that,” he said as I stood and moved to the doorway. “Cleaning the night rooms can get nasty.”

  I left the bedroom and moved into the kitchen. “That’s why I taught Sema to use the toilet,” I called. “I got tired of changing diapers.”

  “Too bad you don’t care for cleaning up.” Fielding’s voice simmered with mirth. “Because as the newest employee at the pavilion, that’s going to be one of your jobs.”

  At some moments even a grown woman can be tempted to stick out her tongue and behave like a five-year-old. That was one of those moments, but as I lifted the plastic wrap from Sema’s tray, I reminded myself that I was a professional. A scientist. And as of that morning, a salaried employee of Thousand Oaks Zoo.

  I couldn’t help it. With my back to Brad Fielding, I stuck my finger down my throat in the nearly universal sign for gag me .

  After that, I felt 100 percent better.

  10

  We pulled into the zoo’s main parking lot at quarter past ten. Sema rode in the passenger seat beside me, her girth spilling over the bucket seat. My girl always loved the car, and this ride held extra appeal for her. As we drove through the familiar streets near our home, I told her we would visit the gorillas for a little while. Though she didn’t seem the least bit worried, I assured her that soon she’d be sleeping in her old room again. “For a few nights, though, you’re going to have a new room in a new place.”

  As I pulled up to the security checkpoint, Sema leaned forward and strained against the shoulder belt. She pointed to the soda machine next to the guard shack. Hurry juice drink.

  “Not now, sweetie. We have to visit the gorillas. They have a nice big home with trees and ropes and toys.”

  I rolled down my tinted window as the security guard approached. The young man waved, then crouched to peer at my passenger.

  “We’re supposed to meet Brad Fielding at the entrance to the Gorilla Pavilion.” I flashed the parking pass Fielding had given me. “He’s expecting us.”

  The poor guy didn’t know what to do. “Um . . . all visitors have to sign in.”

  “Fine.” I waited until he handed me a clipboard, then signed my name across a dotted line. Without hesitation, I passed the pen and clipboard to Sema, who scrawled a wavy line across the sign-in sheet.

  I maintained perfect composure as I handed the clipboard back to the dumbfounded guard. “Thanks.”

  Brimming with enthusiasm, Sema clapped her hands and feet as we drove toward the tall enclosure that served as home to the zoo’s gorilla population.

  I let my gaze rove over the scenery as we passed several African-themed pavilions. The last few years had brought many changes, some of them good, many of them instigated by Ken Matthews. Though I knew several of the habitats had been improved, the place seemed slicker now, more artificial. With Disney World only ninety minutes away, other tourist attractions keenly felt the pressure to compete. Why use real grass in the habitats when artificial turf kept its emerald color year-round? Why install a water fountain every fifty yards when you could sell flamingo-colored snow cones for five bucks each?

  I hated to see Thousand Oaks become too commercial—it had been around in my mother’s day, and something in me wanted it to remain a community attraction. It had begun as a petting zoo on farm land donated to the city of Clearwater in 1935. Pinellas County, which was largely rural in those days, teemed with native wildlife, so the petting zoo expanded to include sanctuaries for birds, bobcats, armadillos, opossums, deer, gators, and wild boars. As the collection grew, so did the property. When in 1976 an eccentric local millionaire donated his menagerie of two tigers, a retired circus elephant, an aging gorilla, a lion, and more than two dozen peacocks, Clearwater’s petting zoo officially became Thousand Oaks, complete with its own board of directors. The zoo achieved respectability when a team from the AZA granted certification, but Tampa’s Busch Gardens, only twenty miles away and far more visible on tourists’ radar, gave our zoo tough competition.

  I glanced at Sema, who seemed completely absorbed in the sights outside her window. Though I knew she wouldn’t understand, I felt compelled to explain a little of what I was feeling. “I was only a year old when the board took control of this place,” I told her. “Nana has pictures of my mother swinging me at the playground.”

  Sema turned, her attention pricked by the word swing . Sema play?

  “Not today, sweetie, and probably not while you’re visiting the zoo. But when you come home again, we’ll play on the swing in your play yard, okay?” If we went home again.

  A discreet sign on this employees-only road told me to head left for the gorilla pavilion. After I took the left fork in the road, I spotted Fielding by a green gate painted to blend with the forest mural on the side of the building.

  Sema recognized him at once. That Brad!

  “I see him.” I nosed the car into the closest parking space, then killed the engine and looked at my girl. “Ready?”

  Fine visit good. Sema love gorillas.

  “I know you do, honey.”

  I turned at the crunching sound of shoes on gravel. Fielding stood outside my door and peered through my open window. “Did you tranquilize her?”

  “No. She’s okay.”

  Fielding closed his eyes, then blew out his cheeks and met my gaze. “All right, bring her out, but keep a hold of her leash. I don’t want anything to spook her.”

  “She’ll be fine.” I unbuckled my seat belt, then got out of the car and walked around to Sema’s side. Eager to begin her adventure, she pulled on the door handle as I approached.

  “Okay, girlie.” To satisfy Fielding, I grabbed the leather handle of the leash. Sema had been trained to wear a collar and leash as an unpredictable youngster; now she wore the collar out of habit. She could easily pull me off my feet if she wanted to, but on most occasions she was content to walk by my side.

  I helped her out of the car, then held out my hand. Instead of taking it, she stepped back and grabbed at the hem of my lab coat—the unthinking reflex of an uncertain gorilla youngster.

  My girl talked big, but she was feeling small. Her vulnerability tore at my heart, but I bit my lip and told myself this transfer was only temporary.

  I blinked back hot tears and met Fielding’s gaze. “You can lead the way,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t interpret the quaver in my voice as fear.

  I wasn’t afraid, not at that moment. I was reluctant. Loving Sema as I did, I was not yet ready to share her.

  11

  The grand gorilla pavilion at Thousand Oaks had been completed in 1997, two years before I first came to work at the zoo. The designers had done their homework. Hailed as one of the most natural zoo environments in America, the habitat in which the gorillas spent most of their day offered trees, rocks, grasses, and fallen branches for the animals to manipulate. Because the most prevalent problem for captive gorillas is simple boredom, each morning the gorilla keepers hid bunches of edible greens called browse throughout the habit in order to encourage the animals’ exploration.

  When Sema and I arrived, however, I was more interested in the indoor areas. Walking in the chilly shade of an overcast sky, we followed Fielding to a pair of double doors. While we waited for him to swipe his card key through the scanner, I looked up and saw a security camera trained on us. I was fairly certain the camera hadn’t been there eight years before, but everyone was more security conscious these days.

  When the door clicked, Fielding pulled it open. “After you, ladies.”

  Sema looked at me with a question in the crinkled caverns of her eyes. Gorillas here?

  “They’re in the play yard now, sweetie. But let’s look at your new room.”

  When we stepped into the long hall I nearly choked on the mingled scents of straw and gorillas. Sema’s nostrils flared as she sniffed and asked again: Gorillas here?

  “Be patient, girlie. You might see some of them in a few minutes.”

  Fielding pointed to the first doorway on the left. “I thought we could keep Sema in the observation room until her habituation period is over,” he said. “Later we can move her down the hall with the others.”

  I nodded. Each animal slept in his or her own night room, but those rooms were interconnected. Chain link gates had been installed in case any of the animals needed to be separated, but the g’s used the gates more often as swings than doors.

  I took Sema’s hand and led her into the observation room. A reinforced one-way mirror had been installed along the western wall of this space; the mirror looked into a secluded grotto in the habitat not visible from the public viewing area. In her observations of free-living mountain gorillas, Dian Fossey had discovered that animals needed time to be alone, so this small area was the zoo’s attempt to give the g’s a measure of privacy while they were inside the habitat. If an animal retreated to this cave often, the gorilla staff and the vet could watch for signs of sickness or boredom through the one-way mirror.

  Out of respect for a gorilla’s strength, the tempered glass mirror had been covered with a layer of chain link mesh on both sides.

  I had to agree with Fielding’s choice of accommodations. This room was at the opposite end of the building and far from the other gorillas’ night rooms. Sema would be able to catch an occasional glimpse of the other animals, but they couldn’t see her. She’d be able to talk to me about them before she had to meet them face-to-face.

  Sema knuckle-walked farther into the room and looked around, then picked up a handful of the straw covering the floor. She sniffed it, nibbled at a dry stalk, then spat it out. An offended look filled her eyes when she turned to me. Stinky grass?

  I caught Fielding’s eye. “As you probably noticed,
we don’t use straw in her room at home. I brought her bedding, though; it’s in the car.”

  Brad slipped his hands into his pockets. “We’ll get it later. Come on; I’ll give you the rest of the tour.”

  I glanced back at Sema, who was peering through the wide window. “Has the place changed much?”

  “Not since you were here last, but bring Sema. Let’s let her get familiar with her surroundings.”

  I smiled and held my hand toward Sema, pleased that Fielding was not treating her like an ordinary animal. Any other new arrival would be bedded down and left to acclimate, but Sema deserved to be escorted by the gorilla curator.

  “Right across the hall, you’ll remember”—Fielding pointed to a door on our right—“is the kitchen.”

  The food preparation area lay behind a reinforced steel door, and little had changed here. A huge refrigerator stood against the wall; boxes of organically grown produce waited on the counter. Off to the side, a small kitchen dinette served as a place where the human inhabitants of the gorilla pavilion could snatch a bite to eat.

  Sema walked over to one of the boxes and peered through a ventilation hole. Give apple?

  “Not now, sweetie. Maybe later.”

  She shook her head, frustrated that I’d misunderstood. Give gorilla apple?

  “Oh, you mean the other gorillas? They’ll have apples later. Maybe for lunch.” I reached out to take her hand, but she wasn’t finished. Sema give apples?

  “Not today. Maybe later.”

  I caught her hand and we continued our tour. The open hallway that led to the habitat lay across from the kitchen and just past the observation room. The area around the sectional roll-up door smelled strongly of gorillas, and Sema’s hand tightened around mine. If we had stopped, I know she would have again asked to see the g’s, but Fielding kept us moving.

  “Here’s the office.” He tapped on another painted steel door and lifted a brow. “Will she want to see that?”

  “Might as well show her everything.”

  Brad turned the knob and held the door open with his shoulder. A quick glance assured me nothing much had changed—the computers were new, maybe, and the security monitors hung from the ceiling now instead of cluttering a table. But the three oak desks looked antique.

  “This is the office,” I signed to Sema. “This is where Glee and Brad will work while you are with the other gorillas.”

  Sema knuckle-walked over to a desk, then picked up a framed photo of a baby gorilla. She studied it a moment, then puckered up and pressed a kiss to the glass.

  Beside me, Fielding laughed. “I see she’s fond of Rafiki.”

  “Is that his picture?”

  Fielding nodded. “Claire sent me a copy when he was born. Aisha came from San Diego, you know, so I knew her there. When Matthews called and offered me this job, I couldn’t believe I’d be lucky enough to work with Aisha again.”

  I looked away, not wanting him to read the surprise in my eyes. I’d forgotten that Rafiki’s mother transferred from the San Diego Zoo before Fielding did . . . and the news that he had established a relationship with her gave me hope. He had to understand the emotions that bound me and Sema.

  My girl climbed into Fielding’s desk chair, then grinned at me. Hurry hurry spin.

  Groaning, I shook my head. “She loves swiveling chairs. If I spin her, we’ll be here another ten minutes.”

  He laughed. “I’ve got time.”

  “Really? I don’t remember you being this laid-back, Fielding.”

  “Oh yeah? Well, time changes things. And people.”

  More impressed than I wanted to admit, I went to Sema, put my arms on her shoulders, and gave her a spin. The chair spun lazily, squeaking as it rotated, and Sema shook her head. Hurry more hurry.

  “This chair doesn’t want to hurry.”

  Stinky chair.

  “Let me give it a try.” Brad straightened and moved toward Sema, then spun the chair with considerable more force than I’d been able to muster. While Sema dropped her jaw in panting laughter, I looked around the office. A row of wide windows enabled us to see into each of the night rooms. A window in the south wall looked into the passageway that led to the habitat, but there was no window into the observation room where Sema would be living for the next few days.

  A flicker of apprehension rippled up my spine. “I won’t be able to see Sema from here.” I struggled to keep my voice light. “I’d like to be able to see her.”

  Fielding stepped away from the spinning chair. “Maybe not having a window is a good thing.”

  “How so?”

  “Well . . . if she can look in here and see these swivel chairs, what are the odds she’ll settle down and go to sleep?”

  For an instant I thought he was serious, then I saw the twinkle in his eye.

  I touched the tip of my index finger to my tongue, then made an imaginary mark in the air. “Score one for you, Fielding.”

  “You didn’t keep her in constant sight at the trailer, did you?”

  “Well . . . nearly.”

  “She’ll be fine, Glee. You worry too much.” He nodded toward the hall. “Want to put her away for a minute? I want to show you the night areas.”

  Not wanting to argue, I extended my hand. “Come on, girlie, let’s walk back to your room and see what Glee has in her purse.”

  After settling Sema with a coloring book and crayon, Brad and I left her alone and walked down the long hallway that led to the connected night rooms—four on the left, one on the right. I couldn’t help but smile as I looked into the rooms—if I were an eight-year-old gorilla, any one of these would be the bedroom of my dreams. High platforms had been mounted to the walls and filled with sweet oat straw for nesting. Fire hoses dangled from the twelve-foot ceiling and canted to opposite walls, creating the illusion of huge woven webs. To create a tropical ambiance, some enterprising (though not terribly talented) artist had covered the walls with pictures of trees, vines, snakes, and tropical flowers.

  I gestured to a particularly disproportioned image of either an elephant or a rhinoceros. “This, um, art is new.”

  Fielding snorted. “Matthews’s granddaughter painted these rooms a couple of months ago. You should have seen the g’s reactions—we had to bribe them with baked apples to get them to go into their rooms. I watched the monitoring videos the next morning and saw that Dakarai stayed awake all that first night to make sure the frightful creatures on the wall didn’t bother his family.”

  I pressed my hand to my chest, touched by the story. I loved Sema and wouldn’t trade her for the world, but there’s something wonderful about a silverback. In the wild, a silverback will defend his females, lovingly play with his children, and patiently wait for sick or injured family members to keep up as the group forages for food. A devoted silverback will give his life in defense of his group members—in fact, that’s why so many gorillas die when poachers set out to capture an infant for zoo collections. The mother, the silverback, even older siblings and other females will pound and bite anyone who threatens one of the group’s young.

  I took another look at the night rooms, then counted gorillas on my fingertips. “All these rooms are in use?”

  “All but the exam room—but remember, Rafiki is still sleeping with his mother. By the time he’s ready to sleep alone, we’ll probably be ready to transfer Mosi to another zoo.”

  He didn’t need to explain. A gorilla family can only have one dominant silverback, so maturing blackbacks were often transferred until they meshed with a group where they could achieve dominance and establish a family of their own.

  I followed Fielding into the last space, the room used for medical examinations. This room looked much like the others, but it had a scale built into the floor, and a steel door separated it from the other night rooms. If an animal needed to be quarantined, it would be kept in this space, but a reinforced window in the steel door allowed the animals to see each other.

  “Well, except for the habitat, that’s the grand tour.” Fielding leaned against the wall. “I know you probably don’t need a refresher course in operations, so why don’t you give me your car keys and I’ll go get Sema’s things.”