Breathing a sigh of relief, she remembered that Sophie had been given a reprieve. Still, she’d sleep next to the elephant from now on.
She stared into the darkness, thinking of her life. The painful pitfalls and the soaring bliss, the days she would always remember, the days she longed to forget. She saw in her mind’s eye the brilliant Carolina blue, cloudless sky that greeted her the morning she married Parker. In a surprising rush, she remembered the powerful well of love that arose when she saw his nervous face, his hands twisting, his tongue flicking out to wet his parched lips. She had loved him. That had been the best moment of her life, until the moment Stephen decided to end her 26-hour labor and come into the world, a perfect little pink body topped by a slick head of black hair that her mother swore had caused the horrible heartburn Natalie experienced for the last three months of pregnancy. And when he started to cry, his lower lip quivered, and his love put a permanent imprint on her heart.
An errant tear ran down her face now. Raising her hand to wipe it, she rustled the bed covers, and out in the darkness, she saw Sophie’s open eye. The elephant rumbled softly, as if half awake, then shifted her huge body and inadvertently leaned on her infected leg. She let out a bit of a moan, a small cry, and immediately shifted back. Sophie had begun rocking in the past couple of days like Natalie remembered her mother doing when the arthritis in her back got to be too much for her. She was doing it now though the steel enclosure didn’t let her move too far. Natalie knew the rocking was a way of reaching out for another elephant, something Sophie never had to worry about in the wild, but when she was contained, she couldn’t reach another in her herd.
How long has it been since you’ve been a member of your own family? Natalie silently asked the elephant. Would you recognize them if you saw them now? Would you know your own calves?
According to the mahouts, Sophie had given birth at least once before being caught and forced to work, so Natalie had been right to assume a couple of births after her initial exam of the elephant. Now, watching the old female moving back and forth in the shadows, posing no threat to anyone, a pained soul trying to get some relief, Natalie’s heart clenched. Sophie had momentarily let down her guard, revealing that she really wasn’t mean or broken but simply that the pain in her leg had changed her. Natalie wondered whether Hatcher had been right, that Sophie was in agony, then pushed the thought aside. Uncomfortable, yes, but not in agony. Natalie knew that discomfort could be healed. Healing agony was far more difficult. And she knew how an animal in agony acted. Hatcher was wrong.
She slowly rose from her cot and moved soundlessly on bare feet toward the elephant, determined not to make any sudden moves and keeping within Sophie’s line of sight. About eight feet away, she stopped and so did Sophie. Through the darkness, Natalie sensed Sophie reaching out, as if attempting a telepathic message. When the wet tip of Sophie’s strong trunk accidentally touched Natalie’s arm, both elephant and human froze. Something told Natalie to hum. Softly. Even though it made little sense, she followed her instinct. Throughout her life, instinct seldom led her astray, so she trusted it.
Sophie responded with a low, long rumble, barely audible.
Natalie hummed again, and again Sophie responded, as though the sound were comforting. She kept her trunk on Natalie’s arm. Heartened, Natalie started singing softly, simple, nonsensical words that felt like a lullaby.
Sophie’s ears moved, a tiny bit of a shimmy, like radar fine-tuning to pick up a faint signal.
Natalie took a slow step back, uncertain whether the sound had irritated Sophie, but the elephant kept gently moving her trunk. Now it hovered about six inches from Natalie’s face.
Instinctually, Natalie wanted to hold her breath, but she knew better not to show or feel any fear at all. Yet Sophie was unpredictable and Natalie counted her steps to the door, just in case.
The nonsensical lullaby grew a little louder, a hoarse whisper, and Sophie again acted as though it comforted her. She regarded Natalie with one watery eye, then turned her head and reached back to touch the steel bars with her trunk as if asking for them to be removed.
Show me I can trust you, ol’ girl.
The words to one of her favorite Eagles’ songs came to mind, and she sang it softly to Sophie.
I love to watch a woman dance
She bows her head and lifts her hands
Her hips begin to circle slowly
Her eyes half closed; her face is holy
She holds the whole world in a trance
Sophie swayed a bit more from side to side but didn’t take her eyes off Natalie. Natalie sang a little louder, more confidently, yet still low and soft. The waltz rhythm of the song felt like a heartbeat. She twirled a little, her white cotton nightgown lifting a bit. Rising on her toes, she spread her arms out and closed her eyes, imagining the sound of accompanying instruments.
She remembered first hearing the song when she bought the Eagles’ album after a particularly melancholy period when she thought she needed a man in her life. Its poignant melody moved her to tears, reminding her that there were men in the world who truly loved women. She listened to it over and over again, celebrating her grandparents who had loved the Eagles, and taught her to dance to the very early albums when she was only eight or nine years old. The music brought back memories of growing up in North Raleigh, spending summers at her grandparents’ place under the pungent fir trees on Falls Lake where her cousins would challenge each other every year in a swim race across the mile-wide portion of the lake. She never won, but the annual barbeque was chockfull of love and gales of laughter and warm hugs from people you only saw on special occasions. Her Aunt Lee, a short and rather ungracious woman prone to gossip, sharp comments, and J. Crew shirts with khaki shorts, loved Natalie more than her mother and grandmother combined. And she acted. Natalie could hear Aunt Lee’s dramatic thespian voice as clearly as if she sat right beside her. “Natalie Renee DeAngelo, you remember this now, sweetie. You’re the most exotic flower in the bunch. I look at your friends and they’re all daisies. You’re a freaking perfect damask rose! A gorgeously deep and musky red-black rose. Don’t ever forget that. Ever!”
She likes the slow songs of love lost
They take her a million miles away
‘Cause to dream, sometimes, is the only way
To go to places you can’t get to any other way
Our eyes connect; she takes my hand
I love to watch a woman dance
For years, Natalie had been too embarrassed to ask what “damask” meant, but when she turned fourteen, she finally realized she’d look it up herself rather than ask.
Natalie paused her dancing for a second. She had never felt comfortable enough to be herself with Parker. He wouldn’t have understood the deep and rich well of emotion that must be plumbed in order to live fully, to completely sink one’s self in the detail of one brief and romantic moment, such as the Eagles did in this song. She doubted Parker ever simply watched her at any time in their marriage. He might not have ever realized her eyes were the color of polished copper—at least that’s what Pop had always told her. “In the middle of your eye is the heart of the fire.” That comment made her feel beautiful, but that was Pop. He loved her unconditionally.
That song.
So we danced together, close and slow
So slow we’re almost standing still
That song. The lyrics made her feel worthwhile. When she first heard it, she felt it fill in the holes of self-doubt that had pitted her psychological armor. Parker’s exit from her life and from her children’s world rocked her trust in her own judgment. He disappeared and never looked back. No phone calls, no visits, no birthday cards or Christmas presents. Gone. That had been the ultimate child abuse. And for her, he cemented a wall in her heart. Between the part Parker had closed and the whole halves of her heart that were her boys, she figured she had minus nothing.
After that, everything in her life felt as uneven as a rock trail. No foot forward to solid ground. A difficult struggle. Having an anthem, a song that proved a man out there somewhere appreciated women enough to write such gorgeous lyrics, helped her go through a stage in her life where she could build the bridge to move forward, not worrying about or needing anyone else in order to be whole. She felt strong then. She’d always wanted to have that feeling, yet in order to feel a groundswell of strength and self-confidence, she also needed to go through the negative, the defeats, the disappointments.
And then the shootings . . .
She stopped twirling. Her cotton nightgown floated down and settled at her knees like a heavy cloud. In a blink, she realized where she was. Thailand. In a barn. At an elephant sanctuary. Sleeping with an elephant. Suddenly aware of exactly how close she was to Sophie right now, she felt the heat of the elephant’s skin.
She avoided Sophie’s eye, and the whole time she did, she continued to sing. Then the music paused, and though it was the briefest of moments, Natalie and Sophie connected, eye to eye, creature to fellow creature, and the moment became so magical that Natalie caught her breath and reached out a hand. Sophie didn’t move, as much in a trance as Natalie, but the second Natalie’s hand touched the elephant’s trunk, both of them started as if they’d experienced an electric shock. Natalie checked herself. She hadn’t felt this calm since sharing the same space with Sophie. The elephant rumbled a little as if in reply to Natalie’s thought.
“Do you want me to keep singing?” Natalie’s spoken voice cut through the silence, a much more intrusive sound than her singing. As soon as the words echoed and died, she started singing again.
Sophie swayed slightly and rumbled low and long, as if letting loose with a sigh.
__________
When the sweet sound stops, the echo of the woman’s singing continues for long moments, growing softer and softer as the echo loses intensity. It becomes part of the air, and Sophie lets her body sway. She flaps one ear after the song ends, searching for the woman’s sound again. Her eyes close halfway, and she lets herself relax. She longs for the sound to resume. The woman’s sound reminds her of the murmuring sands on the great dry river bed the herd crossed each season. It was the season of no water. The land was cracked, one crack so large an infant fell through to his death.
The herd, led by Sophie’s grandmother, headed along the river to the deepest point where she knew they could find fresh water. A few days’ trek. The old mothers surrounded the herd, keeping the young ones between them, protected from both the winds and predators. They knew the way, they’d made the trek before, they knew how to adapt to the weather, and they were stronger than any predators. But the babies had neither knowledge nor strength.
Sophie, young then, remembers the sound the river bed made. A song like the woman sings. A call of the wind, the moan of an animal, the sound of a voice in a storm. The desert’s song. But in that sound, she also hears her mother’s shuffle, a percussive that maintains a beat—two hard steps, one lighter, then a double step. The irritated grumbling of the oldest female in the herd, her back leg dragging behind her, the ankle mangled by the young female lion that lived up-river. The others had seen the cat, too, and circled around Sophie and the other young elephants, but the old female wasn’t fast enough to escape the lion’s claws. They fought the cat off together, but now the old female lagged behind, a place she wasn’t used to occupying.
Sophie’s cousin, three wet-seasons younger than Sophie herself, trotted next to her, her infantile shrieks demanding the nannies’ constant attention, often inserting herself between their legs, tripping them. The little one still had no control over her trunk and whipped it against Sophie’s leg. Too tired to play, Sophie lowered her head and bumped the calf.
That sound, that whine of the wind following the riverbank, that’s part woman, part wind, all natural phenomenon. It curled around Sophie’s ears, turned her head. She could smell the dust, feel its stinging in her trunk and on the edges of her eyes. Even now, she can taste the dryness that closed up the back of her throat. Even now, she can hear the sound that made her ears ache.
That was the day the herd ended.