Zoo Life
I spent a lot of time in the ape house. I smelled of it. Paul smelled too, at the end of the day, from cleaning up elephant shit and giving marmosets their baths. His head was always coated with a thin wig of marmoset hair, from their shedding. He would pucker his face and tell me, goddamn, take a shower. And then I would take a shower. And then he would take a shower. We lived together in an apartment that just had a stall shower, no bath, and a foldout couch in the living room instead of a bed. That was because Paul was the only one who had a job.
Why don’t you get a job?
Well, I tried. I thought about applying at the mall but was afraid to; who would hire me there? All the women at the mall stores were waterbirds: crane thin, flamingo bright, swan graceful. I put on lipstick and looked like a painting of a clown. I didn’t think I was much cut out for working life.
The gorillas didn’t care if I sat there all day. They watched me for a day, then ignored me for weeks, then they started noticing me again. They moved around in their glass room, conversing with each other in their wordless gorilla language. They pursed their lips and plucked at each other. The female picked a nit from the male’s forehead, and the male prodded her shoulder with his index finger. When crowd came through the ape house I sat on a long bench against one wall, but when it was quiet and empty I went up to the glass and pressed my hands against it. I waved to the gorillas and tried to imitate their sign language. I twisted my fingers in complex patterns, and the gorillas waved back. We were saying something, but I didn’t know what. The female got tired of me after a while, but the male hung around and flirted.
Why are you always at the zoo? Paul was embarrassed when the other staff saw me. Why can’t you find something else to do?
I like the zoo, I said. I’d like to live there, in a glass cage.
That’s ridiculous, said Paul, throwing his shirt down on the bed. Who’d want to look at you?
Jodee Stanley‘s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the Mississippi Review, 580 Split, Hobart, Crab Orchard Review, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Coffin Bell, and elsewhere. She is the editor of Ninth Letter, the literary journal published by the Creative Writing Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
