Unspoken Read online

  He stood, paused at the window to check the weather, then came around to squeeze my shoulder. “Hang in there, kiddo. I’ll be in touch.”

  I placed my hand over his. “Rob?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Whatever you do, know this—defeat is not an option. Losing Sema would be like having my heart ripped out.”

  He bent to place a kiss on the top of my head. “I know, Sis. I know.”

  3

  The next three days passed in a quiet blur. Rob didn’t call, but neither did I receive any threatening letters from Thousand Oaks and their lawyer.

  Though my heart felt as though it were beating on borrowed time, Sema and I maintained our daily routine. We read, played, and ate together as if nothing in the world were wrong.

  I hoped for a miracle, but I couldn’t escape my pragmatic nature. One afternoon I buckled Sema into the passenger seat of my four-year-old Honda CRV and considered driving to Mexico. Why not take my girl and run? The state police would put out an Amber Alert if I snatched a child, but no one was likely to alert the authorities because a woman had skipped town with a gorilla.

  We settled for a trip to Tampa and back. I told myself we were going because Sema loved looking for dolphins in the bay as we drove over the long Howard Franklin Bridge. That night, though, I lay in bed and wondered if we’d taken a test drive for our great escape . . .

  No. I’ve heard mothers complain about how hard it is to travel with all the equipment required for babies; traveling with a gorilla is far more involved. Sema would need her nesting material, her toys, her books, and her computer. I would need my journals, my records, and daily access to pounds and pounds of fresh produce . . .

  We couldn’t run.

  On Friday morning, I checked my watch, then turned to Sema: “Do you want to wear your necklace?”

  Her eyes brightened. She moved to the cabinet where I kept her leash and tugged at the door. While I put my journal away, she pulled out her leather collar and brought it to me, grinning her pink gorilla grin.

  “You’re excited, huh? I don’t blame you. Looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day. But you’ll need your sweater, sweetie. It’s cold outside.”

  The forecast called for a high of sixty degrees. While thousands of vacationing Canadians in our coastal county found sixty degrees positively balmy, this was sweater weather for an equatorial gorilla—especially one who lived year-round in a climate-controlled trailer. I couldn’t risk Sema catching a cold.

  While I fastened her collar, my squirmy girl reached toward the closet again. When I had finished fastening her “necklace,” she leaned toward the storage space and pulled her orange sweater from a hanger. She had two sweaters—one orange, one blue, both size extra large—but orange was her favorite color.

  She grinned as I helped her slip it on, then she signed pumpkin .

  I laughed. “Yes, it is the color of a pumpkin.”

  Give more pumpkin?

  For a minute I thought she wanted another sweater, then I realized she was thinking of food. Pumpkin was one of Sema’s favorite treats, but they are hard to find in January.

  “Sorry, girlie, but they don’t sell pumpkins in winter.” I lifted the end of her leash, then slipped the loop over my wrist so I could sign as I spoke to her. “We have another treat today. Some people are coming to see you—friends from the college. You’ll be a good girl while they visit, won’t you?”

  Sema tilted her head in a thoughtful pose. Sema good gorilla. Sema love people.

  “Yes, I know you do. These people are going to talk to me and watch you play. I know they’ll think you’re beautiful.”

  Sema pretty gorilla. Sema love people. Sema love Glee.

  Sema turned toward me, a purposeful pucker on her mouth. Not one to miss my cue, I bent and touched my lips to hers, then felt the strength of long gorilla arms twining around me.

  “I love you, Sema,” I whispered close to her ear. “Now let’s go outside and play.”

  Sema was happily looking for edible treats I’d hidden in her enclosed play yard when seven graduate students arrived. They had been sent by Dr. Eugene Wharton, my anthropology prof at the University of South Florida. I had completed my master’s degree under Dr. Wharton’s guidance, and occasionally he asked me to hold lectures for promising young researchers.

  Two of these students, Dr. Wharton had told me on the phone, were planning to spend the summer working at the Karisoke Research Center, a remote African outpost established by Dian Fossey. They would be studying and interacting with mountain gorillas, so they needed to learn as much as possible before trekking into the jungle.

  I ignored a twinge of jealousy as the students grabbed folding lawn chairs and gathered around me in a semicircle. I would love to visit Karisoke myself . . . one day. But like most women with children, I’d had to make tough choices.

  Living with Sema was better than a thousand trips to Africa.

  When the students had settled, I gestured toward my girl and launched into my standard lecture. “Sema is a western lowland gorilla, subspecies gorilla gorilla gorilla. She was born at the Thousand Oaks Zoo to a first-time mother who had no idea what to do with an infant. When I looked into the night room where her mother had given birth, I found Sema lying motionless while her mother slept—after having eaten the afterbirth. Afraid the mother might try to eat the infant, I stepped in, scooped up the baby, and wrapped her in a towel . . . and that’s when Sema and I first met.”

  I clasped my hands and studied my guests. Most of them wore the half-bored expressions of young intellectuals woodenly fulfilling a course requirement, so I couldn’t tell if they’d come out of genuine interest or because Dr. Wharton threatened them with failure if they didn’t show up.

  I turned toward the play yard, where Sema had balanced on the plastic roof of her Little Tykes playhouse. “She’s really lovely, don’t you think? That sweater is her color.”

  Seven faces swiveled toward the enclosure. Aware that she now had an attentive audience, Sema clapped, then grabbed a hanging rope and sailed from the playhouse to a platform mounted on the wire wall, an acrobatic black-and-orange blur. When one of the girls applauded, Sema grinned, then dropped to the ground and knuckle-walked over to her playhouse. There she sat on the grass and picked up a bedraggled picture book.

  I propped my elbow on my blue-jeaned knee and continued with the condensed version of our shared history. “You may think I’m overly sentimental, but I sensed a special connection with the infant the moment I lifted her into my arms. I suggested we name her Sema—the name means to speak in Kiswahili.”

  One of the students—a thin girl with spiky red hair—leaned forward. “What was your position at the time? I mean, what did you do at the zoo?”

  “I was a graduate student at the university”—I smiled to acknowledge the link between us—“working part-time at the gorilla pavilion. I spent a lot of time off the clock, though, after Sema arrived. Newborn mammals are demanding no matter what their species.”

  The three women twittered at this while the faces of their male companions registered varying degrees of indifference. Why should these guys worry about the care of infants? If they were anything like the young men I knew in school, they were more concerned about eventually becoming big names than exploring and overcoming the elements that separate us from others in the animal kingdom.

  “She’s awfully big ,” one of the guys said. He crinkled his nose as he gestured to the trailer. “How can you live with her in there? Isn’t she . . . you know, unpleasantly aromatic?”

  I forced a laugh. “Gorillas do have a unique scent—sort of a musty, sweet smell, like rhubarb pie. After a while, you either grow to like it or you scarcely notice it. After all, I’m sure we smell strange to gorillas. And the trailer is Sema’s home. Though I spend a lot of time with her, I live in a house.” I considered pointing to my home under the oaks, then thought the better of it. I liked my privacy, and if Dr. Wharton had described me a
s some kind of brilliant and successful researcher, the sight of my one-bedroom cottage might disappoint a student who dreamed of fame and fortune.

  My suspicions about my former professor were partially confirmed when the redhead looked up from a sheet of typewritten notes. “Dr. Wharton says your research is unique among those who focus on primates. We watched a video of Dr. Patterson working with Koko, but Dr. Wharton says your project is different.”

  “Of course, because Sema is a different individual.” I braced my hands on my knees. “I owe a lot to Dr. Patterson and Koko, just as they owe a lot to those who taught sign language to chimpanzees. Koko and Sema have certain things in common—both were born in a zoo, and both had to be taken from their mothers. Sema was much younger, though, and that’s the primary difference between them. I had always hoped to be able to teach a gorilla to speak, but I didn’t think we’d begin until Sema was much older. But one night I was rocking Sema in the room we used as a nursery because she was fidgety and wouldn’t sleep. So I tucked her into the crook of my arm, pulled a picture book out of my bag, and read her a bedtime story. I figured if the ritual calmed human babies, why wouldn’t it calm a gorilla?”

  An eager look flashed in the girl’s eyes. “Did it work?”

  “It didn’t put her to sleep, but at some level she began to assimilate words. I had read about researchers at the Georgia State University Language Research Center who tried to teach Matata, a bonobo, a language consisting of printed symbols. Kanzi, Matata’s foster baby, was allowed to remain with his mother, but he appeared completely uninterested in the lessons. When Matata failed to learn, the researchers returned her to the field station. Once his mother had gone, however, Kanzi surprised the team—even though he had appeared to be completely bored during their enrichment sessions, he had learned everything the researchers tried to teach Matata. His younger brain was more receptive to language learning. The younger the subject, the more successful the effort—that’s one of the primary tenets in my theory of psycholinguistics.”

  The redhead looked up, her pencil poised over her notepad. “Could you define that, please? Psycho-whatever?”

  “Psycholinguistics is the field of human language development. The subject’s age is the primary difference between my work and Dr. Patterson’s. I began reading to Sema weeks after her birth; Koko was a year old before Dr. Patterson began to teach her.”

  The redhead scribbled madly; the other two girls watched Sema. One of the guys nodded with his eyes closed as if he’d missed his nap; two of the others whispered to each other.

  Didn’t they understand what I was trying to accomplish?

  I stood and placed my hands on my hips. “Too many people assume a huge gulf exists between man and the animals,” I told them, looking pointedly around the half-circle. “For too long man has been considered the center of the universe, the crowning glory of some deity’s creation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Humans are advanced animals, and the gap between mankind and the higher primates narrows every day. Gorillas feel every emotion humans feel. They use tools. They establish and maintain strong family bonds. They mourn when a beloved friend dies. They understand time and space; they retain memories for years. Silverbacks, the guardians of family groups, lay down their lives to defend other group members—in fact, sometimes I wonder if gorillas are more advanced than some human beings.”

  “You can’t believe,” a bearded young man interrupted, “that apes are as intelligent as people.”

  “I didn’t say that,” I folded my arms, “but neither are they mindless, soulless creatures put on earth solely for our use and pleasure. Sema has proven that they are teachable, but they also have much to teach us. But before we can make progress on this front, we have to protect them. Far too many gorillas are being killed for sport and for bush meat. Civil war in Africa has decimated the mountain gorilla populations in Rwanda, Zaire, and Uganda. The lowland gorillas’ natural habitat is constantly threatened by the encroachment of farmers and cattlemen, and their numbers have declined 70 percent since 1994 because of war in Africa. These are intelligent, peaceful animals, and only time will tell if they can survive their contact with humankind.”

  The bearded student turned his attention to Sema. “You’d almost think,” he said, “she’s reading that book.”

  I glanced over at my girl. She had spread a copy of Blueberries for Sal on the grass and was signing as she studied the pictures. I couldn’t see her hands clearly, but I caught a glimpse of the words give more berries .

  “She may be retelling the story or reading the words she knows,” I explained. “Or she may be talking to herself—”

  “Whoa,” the bearded guy interrupted. “She doesn’t talk. She waves her hands around, but unless I’m mistaken, no one has actually taught a monkey to speak. ”

  Struggling to suppress my rising irritation, I forced a smile. “She’s not a monkey. And she may not speak with words you can understand, but Sema communicates exceptionally well. And she is most definitely engaged in that story.”

  “Wait a minute.” A thin student pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Are you saying you can teach a gorilla to read? That’s impossible.”

  “Is it?” I lifted a brow. “Sema has already learned how to recognize several written words; we’re now working on stringing words together in sentences. She has a working vocabulary of over a thousand signs and understands more than twice as many spoken words. She initiates conversations, uses complete sentences, understands abstract concepts, and routinely scores between seventy and ninety-five on IQ tests. One hundred is considered normal for a human.”

  “But . . . reading ?” The red-haired girl shook her head. “That’s incredible.”

  “Not really. Researchers have taught chimpanzees that numerals represent particular amounts of candy. In trial after trial, chimps have learned to choose the larger number and win the larger reward. If chimps can associate numerals with numbers and gorillas can associate words with objects, why can’t we teach them that connected words represent complete ideas?”

  One of the young men tossed me a look of pure disbelief.

  “I know it sounds a little crazy,” I assured him. “But fifty years ago most anthropologists would have insisted that animals could never possess anything akin to human language. Yet by learning sign language as well as spoken and printed English, Sema has already become bilingual.”

  “Does she speak gorilla?” The redhead’s eyes sparkled as she watched my girl. “You know—hoots and belches and the like.”

  I didn’t know this student at all, but I was beginning to like her. “That’s a great question. Since Sema has never actually lived with gorillas, she is less vocal than most. I’ve read about gorilla language in Fossey’s book—I’m sure you all have—and Sema rarely makes those natural sounds. She signs instead.”

  I glanced up at the sky, where a scarf of cloud had blown off the sun and left us squinting in the light. I closed my eyes and searched for some profound parting words.

  “I think those of you who are going to Africa will have a wonderful time,” I told them. “Just remember that these animals are individuals, as unique as we are. We are close kin. In fact”—I gestured to Sema— “did you know humans and gorillas share the same blood types? Our mouths also have the same number of teeth and our bodies the same number of hairs per square inch, though, of course, gorilla hair is longer and coarser. Ninety-eight percent of our DNA is identical to theirs. Why shouldn’t we share the same abilities?”

  When I looked back, the skeptical student had lit a cigarette. “Are you saying”—he paused to draw on his cancer stick—“your gorilla could read and understand my anthropology book?”

  As twin plumes of smoke drifted from his nostrils, I reached out and plucked the cigarette from his hand, then ground it out with a defiant twist of my sneaker. Television had acquainted my gorilla with enough unhealthy habits; I didn’t need these students to remind her of one.

>   With the offending item ground into the dirt, I pasted on a smile. “I’m not sure the average American on the street could understand your anthropology text. Sema is an eight-year-old gorilla with the mental capability of a seven-year-old human child. Though she has reached reproductive maturity, in terms of learning and cognition she is still a youngster.” A half-smile curled on my mouth as I scanned the group. “I like to think we’re all still children in many respects. None of us is ever really finished with learning, are we?”

  The red-haired girl asked a few other basic questions—what did Sema eat, where did she sleep, did she have a favorite toy?—then I glanced at my watch. “If you’ll excuse us now, it’s time for Sema’s lunch. Thank you for coming, and please give my regards to Dr. Wharton.”

  The students stood and drifted away, but the redhead came toward me, a glow on her fair complexion. She had to be in her early twenties, but she could have easily passed for fifteen.

  “Thank you.” She extended her hand. “I’ve been dying to get out here to meet the famous Sema. I’m Claire Hartwell, and I work in the gorilla pavilion at Thousand Oaks.”

  The name Thousand Oaks sent a small gnat of worry buzzing in my brain, but I batted it away and shook the girl’s hand. Since she was only a student, she probably knew nothing of my troubles with the zoo’s administration.

  I made an effort to be pleasant. “You’re an animal technician?”

  “Yes—that’s what you used to do, right? I spend most of my time preparing food for the g’s, but every once in a while I get to help with other things. I think gorillas are fascinating—I could work with them forever.”

  I glanced past her to the mesh wall of the play yard, where the others had advanced to get a better look at my girl. Playing to her audience, Sema had climbed to the rope netting at the top of the enclosure and was somersaulting over the net with no regard for the twenty-foot drop below.