Callie didn’t care. If Charlotte didn’t want to come home anymore, that was her business. Callie would watch all the Westerns with Charlie.
Westerns were Charlie’s favorite kind of movie. Callie didn’t like them, but that was not important. Callie was the family member that Dr. Paulsen trusted to take care of Charlie’s collection: videotapes of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; Johnny Guitar. Johnny Guitar was Charlie’s favorite. He sat as close as possible to the TV set during every Joan Crawford close-up and would purse his lips into a kiss and press it against the screen, fitting his own fleshy mouth over her bloodred trembling one. But what he really liked best about the Westerns were the sound effects: the hollow thud of horses’ hooves and the whistling theme songs. He would sit back on his haunches and rock back and forth, yes yesing the gunshots with a perpetually nodding head, riveted from the opening scenes of big empty gray sky to the closing monochrome sunset.
Without Charlotte, the only sounds in the apartment after school were gunshots, the soft purr of the gears turning over in the VCR and Charlie’s heavy breathing. If Joan Crawford wasn’t on the screen, he busied himself with grooming Callie. It’s why she sat beside him. I hate Johnny Guitar, she signed into the arm of the sofa as Charlie raked his fingers through her hair. His palms got greasy with activator spray and the familiar musky scent of her scalp.
Charlotte didn’t smell like home anymore. Charlie’s nostrils flared and Callie flared hers, too, hoping to pick up whatever he did.
“God,” Charlotte would say. “You don’t have to sniff like that.”
And Callie would turn away.
The first afternoon when Charlotte was late she had still cared enough to bristle at the rebuff. “Well, hello to you, too,” she’d said.
Callie made a brief little flutter of annoyance in her seat. Charlie, also annoyed at the interruption, rearranged himself at her back, burrowed his fingers deeper in her hair.
Hello, Callie signed. She reached for the remote and turned up the volume. Charlie tugged appreciatively at a snarl at the nape of her neck.
“Look,” Charlotte started, “I’m sorry.”
Callie gazed at the TV screen. Charlotte put her backpack on the ground and sat down next to her on the couch.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said again. “I’m sorry I have a friend.”
“I have friends, too,” Callie said. Too quickly.
“Who are your friends?”
“Charlie is my friend.”
The sadness of that sentence sat between the two of them until Charlotte stopped it. She flipped over her hand. “Charlie doesn’t count. Who are your human friends?”
“Charlie is a hominid.”
“Callie, he is not your friend.”
“He is. Charlie is my friend. Max is my friend.”
This was even worse than claiming Charlie’s friendship. Callie knew it as soon as it was out of her mouth, the wrongness of it. And Charlotte, of course, drove it home.
“They pay Max to be here. He’s not your friend.”
“Well, then, you don’t have any friends, either.” Charlie had moved from grooming her hair to grazing at the lint on her sweater. She focused on keeping her arms limp, on the feel of his fingertips through the weave of the cloth.
“I’m sorry,” Charlotte said again.
Callie shook her head. “Shh.” She pointed to the screen. “We’re trying to watch.”
“Well, good for you.” Charlotte got up from the couch.
“I’m doing what we’re supposed to be doing here, Charlotte.” Callie kept looking at the screen as she spoke. “I’m doing my job.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Max tells me all the time. Dr. Paulsen does, too. They say that being Charlie’s sister is the most important part of the project. So I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, but you’re not doing your job.” And then she turned to Charlotte, her face set smug and triumphant.
“You’re being so stupid right now,” Charlotte said.
But Callie wasn’t. That’s what she couldn’t understand. Or she couldn’t understand how Charlotte didn’t see it. Without you, I have nothing. They had slept side by side every night of her life and now they didn’t anymore. But maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe it didn’t matter that Charlotte’s breath was no longer the first thing she heard in the morning and the last thing she heard at night. Maybe it didn’t matter that she and Charlotte no longer signed to each other in love, only contempt. It didn’t have to matter now that she had Charlie.
But Charlie didn’t want her. What Callie felt for him was messy and sweaty and desperate, and it drove him away. “Chimpanzees are social animals,” Dr. Paulsen told her. “They need hierarchies to be happy and they are discerning.”
“What does discerning mean?” Callie asked.
If Charlie lived with other chimps he would have been the beta, Max explained. He would have been the one cringing in the corner, the one who ate last and got teased first. But what was wonderful about the experiment was that nobody teased him here; Callie only hugged and clapped for him. Here, Charlie ate first. Callie knew that should have made him loving. But it didn’t. “Chimpanzees want to dominate whatever social group they are in,” Max said. And Callie asked, “Even humans?” and he had told her yes, even humans, delighted that she was catching on. “They will try to challenge each member of the group until they win or until they are bested. They’re not dumb about it, either. They’re strategic. They start off with the weakest member of the group and work their way up,” Max said.
Callie only nodded.
Every affection she gave him was met with a pinch. His kisses had teeth. He swatted her hands when she tried to sign to him. Sometimes he groomed her hair with perfect kindness, carefully trailing his fingers through the grease at the back of her neck, and sometimes he took the strands of her hair between two of his fingers and twisted and pulled until it was ratty and scratched at the scalp. He raked his fingernails across her skin when she held him. He spit into the palms of her hands. But Callie always forgave him. She couldn’t back down. If she didn’t have Charlie, if she didn’t believe that every pinch and slap and bite and loogie were signs of love, then she didn’t have anything.
So she began to eat. At first, it was to steel herself against Charlie. A cut, a flick of a nail, were easier to bear when her blood was all mixed up with sugar. When he turned his back on her, she could suck stray cereal dust off her fingers as a balm.
When Callie reached the Toneybee in the afternoons, before she went upstairs to the apartment, she would sneak into the cafeteria. She pressed herself close to the cereal dispensers, cupped a hand to their funnels and turned the plastic dials to fill her open palms with stiff marshmallows and oxidized raisins. She turned the dials carefully: she didn’t want the rush of cornflakes against plastic siding to give her away.
She would crawl over the serving lines, hoist herself up to the bar reserved for hot plates, press herself against the chafing dishes, feel briefly the hot, unclean breath of the heat lamps, inhale the stench of floor wax and industrial gravy, and marvel at her own invisibility.
Once she was over the serving trays and into the kitchen proper, Callie could really eat. Cold pasta salad from Saran Wrapped silver tureens, dehydrated flakes of mashed potatoes from the box, handfuls of croutons and bread crumbs from the canister. In the walk-in freezer, she carefully tore at the cartons of concentrated fruit juice. She bent her head to each smooth surface and with her two front teeth, shaved bits of ice off into her open mouth, all that sugar mortifying the taste of loneliness. For the rest of her life, Callie would search for something as sweet as frozen orange juice held underneath her tongue, in the chilled, mildewy air of a refrigerator at three o’clock on a school day afternoon.
The meat, she saved for last. Row after row of naked chicken legs, the skin prickled with oversized pores, sausage links coiled like cornrows and pounds of ground beef. This was her favorite. She scooped small bits of it out with her fingers, then patted and smoothed the mounds whole to cover her tracks. The taste of raw ground beef was sharp and metallic, like eating gold. Callie would lick the tips of her fingers until the corners of her mouth shined with oil.
The first time she went upstairs, lips glossed with grease, Charlie had bounded to her and grasped her head between his hands. His grip was strong; she could not have moved her head if she tried. She felt afraid of him, for the first time. She heard her mother shriek, Max mumble something, and Callie thought: Charlie’s going to bite my lips off. She didn’t struggle. She sighed, gave into her fate, breathed in the dead milk on Charlie’s breath as he bent his mouth to hers. But he did not bite. Instead, her eyes closed, she felt the softest whiskering and then something unbelievably warm, something vibrating with heat, brush against her face. Charlie was very slowly and very carefully licking the last little bit of raw meat from her mouth. After that, Callie made sure to eat the ground beef every day that she could. It was worth it, to feel the warmth, the delicate delay of Charlie’s strength, as he kissed the greed off of her.
It didn’t seem possible that she could get so big from all of that. It genuinely surprised her when she did. How much was a ten-year-old supposed to weigh, anyway? She did not, honestly, see the difference between 100 pounds and 150 pounds. All Callie knew was that now her thighs chafed together when she walked, rubbed themselves raw on each stride. She had always been chubby, but now little pellets of flesh grew on her arms. Skin tags, that’s what Dr. Paulsen called them. Her mother asked her to examine Callie before she took her to an actual pediatrician. Dr. Paulsen, in her green rubber gloves, poked at the sagging undersides of Callie’s arms. “Skin tags are common among the obese,” Dr. Paulsen explained, and Callie started at that word. The thousand humiliations of the flesh, being stuck in a form that did not feel like yours. It must be horrible to be Charlie.
As Callie grew heavier, she became invisible. She had always been ignored at school but now, even at home, she was an overfed, slightly grimy ghost. The only two people who really paid attention to her were Dr. Paulsen and Max. Both of them were as embarrassed by her bulk as the rest of her family, but instead of politely ignoring it, they gave her aggressive compliments.
“Look at the camera, please, Callie,” Dr. Paulsen would direct. “You’ve got such a pretty face.”
“You look nice today, Callie, terrific,” Max said, even when the stitching on the thighs of her pants was split, even when a blouse broke open along the seams of the fat on her back.
The compliments made Callie uncomfortable. She dutifully waited for them, and she always said thank you but she knew something was wrong. When Dr. Paulsen and Max told her she looked nice, her mother never echoed them. She busied herself with Charlie or some piece of equipment in the room when Callie was being praised.
But none of this made her less eager. Charlie loves me more. She knew he signed to her the most, she was sure of it.
Charlie didn’t sign much with any of them at first. Her mother said he was too shy, but Callie knew it was because he was proud. He didn’t like the questions her mother and Max asked. Anyone could see that. “Where is the blue ball? Is the rice tasty? Where is the red ball?” Those questions were boring. No wonder he didn’t answer.
Callie’s questions for Charlie were better. Do you miss your mother? Do you ever wish you were someone else? Do you think you have brothers and sisters? What did you dream about last night? Charlie didn’t sign back, he would only fix her with his distant stare, but Callie did it anyway. She was patient. She had time.
She was the first person who saw Charlie do it. He started to sign with his hands behind his back. He did this only occasionally, but when he did, it sometimes went on for hours. Her mother, Dr. Paulsen, Max, none of them, could figure it out until Callie told them all, “He’s telling us what happened a long time ago. When he signs behind him, he’s telling us what happened in the past.” She’d learned it by catching one of the litanies of signs, something about a ball, and realizing it described a misstep in a game of catch he’d made the evening before.
“You’re a genius,” Dr. Paulsen said. And her mother smiled. “Think of that, a chimp with a sense of history,” her father joked. And Max said he didn’t think it was possible, it was beyond what any one of them had imagined when they’d started. “But you could imagine it, Callie.”
She’d flushed at that, a real compliment. Overwhelmed, she ducked her head and turned to Charlie. She signed to him, You’re so smart. You are beautiful. You are the smartest brother in the world.
But Callie knew none of it mattered because Charlotte didn’t care.