Jennie (10 page)

Jennie and Sandy sat at the breakfast table, the chimp with her hands folded on the tabletop and her bright happy curious eyes darting about. When the cookies came she took one as polite as you please, from the correct (i.e., near) side of the dish. She nibbled it daintily while Sandy grubbed about with dirty hands looking for the three or four biggest, cramming one after the other into his mouth. The contrast was amusing and not lost on R. Indeed, R. was speechless. Jennie drank the milk with a rather unpleasant sucking noise and when she lowered the glass her muzzle was dripping, but then she politely wiped her mouth with the napkin and so all was well. Sandy wiped his mouth with his hand, and not—I might add—before wiping his nose.

Jennie was wearing the hat. I had an uncomfortable moment when R. remarked on what a peculiar hat the ape was sporting. But I needn't have worried. The hat was much altered. It was quite dreadful and unsanitary, and Jennie did not remove the hat at the table. Her manners still need work. The professor and his wife, I hasten to add, would do well to start with Sandy, however, whose lack of the finer graces is appalling.

I made a grave error in referring to Jennie as a monkey; Sandy
was quick to inform me that she is an
ape
, that monkeys are a much lower form of primate, and that any such reference to Jennie was as insulting as it was inaccurate. And apparently, she is with the family for good.

I watched Jennie as she ate. I had not forgotten my earlier feelings about the animal. She seemed so alert and intelligent that I once again wondered whether she could possibly comprehend the love of God, and the love of Jesus Christ. As children do, through feeling, pictures, and story, rather than ratiocination.

When Jennie finished her cookie and milk, she sat back in her chair and in the satisfaction of the moment she looked right at me. There was a flicker of something—a flicker of that questioning, wondering, hoping, seeking? It was that mysterious self-awareness that I see in the eyes of children as they start to understand the world. That questioning is the first step to God. Then the chimp laid her hand on mine! It seemed a kind of thank-you for my help. A brief, warm touch full of affection, while she looked at me with those
eyes
, as if she wished to ask something of me. It was a gesture of kindness that bridged the chasm between Man and Beast, a gesture which effaced millions of years of evolution. For the pressure of her fingers spoke to me not through the intellect but through the heart. It was a universal gesture of love, and in the electricity of that touch, I knew that Jennie had a soul. My question had been answered.

Sandy took Jennie's hand and they rose to go. I quickly asked them to stay for a moment, while I went into my study without really thinking what I was doing, knowing only that I desired to give Jennie something. There I found a silver Mexican crucifix on a chain, given to me by Henry Cruikshank after his dear wife's funeral. It is a lovely little hammered cross, intricately chased and decorated.

When I came to the foyer, Jennie looked up at me. I kneeled in front of her with my hands behind my back. “I've got a present for
you,” I said. I don't know whether she understood the words, but she stretched out her hand readily enough. I gave her the crucifix and she immediately inserted it in her mouth! I gently removed it and draped it around her neck. She picked it up and gazed at it, sniffed it, tasted it with her tongue, turned it around and around. Such fascination! I watched her with great care, thinking she would try to swallow it. Finally she let it drop and Sandy and Jennie departed.

I later found a lovely picture of the Baby Jesus that I will give Jennie on her next visit.

I have reached a curious resolution. There are many who would ridicule the idea. I am now resolved to see what I can do to help this animal experience the love of God. As I write this, seeing in my mind's eye those alert black eyes, I cannot help but think that the chimpanzee has a mind capable of understanding the love of God. For love is an emotion present across the animal kingdom, and combined even with a modicum of intellect can grow from the instinctual love between beasts to a higher love of the ineffable.

N.B. So charming was Jennie that after she left R.'s steady complaints about the animal subsided. We shall see. R.'s great gift to me has been forcing me to learn patience and kindness, two qualities which are all-powerful. Patience and kindness.

[F
ROM
Recollecting a Life
by Hugo Archibald.]

Jennie had been with us two months when the weather turned cold. No longer could she sleep in her little tree house; she would have to move inside, and the question naturally arose as to where she would spend her nights.

This problem, for the first time, made us see the full ramifications of having an ape in our lives. While she was living in the tree house, we could still, however improbably, think of her as a pet.
Once she moved into the house, it became clear that she did not regard herself as a pet and would not tolerate the assumption in others.

We first tried her in a nice dog bed in the kitchen. The very idea was an insult: the floor was where the despised dogs slept. The first night we tried to bed her down there, she was soon up and pounding on Sandy's door, hooting and screeching. Sandy did not take well to this attack on his domain.

“Get out of here! This is my room!” he shouted. “Go find your own room, stupid!” Then Jennie came to our door and started hammering on it with her tiny fists.

We tried her in one of the spare bedrooms, but she hated to be shut in an empty room. As soon as we had withdrawn for the night, she was up, out, and banging on our doors. We tried to lock her in, but the tantrum that resulted threatened to shift the foundation of our house.

We decided to try her in our room. We piled her blankets in the corner and cajoled her to bed down there, but Jennie would have none of it. As soon as Lea and I were in bed, Jennie hopped up and began bouncing around, laughing and smacking her lips.

“Jennie!” I shouted the first night. “Bad chimp! Get off!”

Jennie jumped off and jumped on and off again in a whirlwind of motion.

“Stop it! Bad, bad Jennie!”

She crouched in her corner, whimpering. I must have dozed off, for the next thing I remember were the covers being pulled off.

“It's that damn chimp,” said my wife. And there was Jennie, braced at the corner of the bed, tugging the covers with all her might. She was determined to spend the night in our bed.

“Jennie!” I yelled. “No!”

She dropped to a crouch on the floor and covered her head with her hands, shrieking miserably.

“Jennie, goddamnit, stop screaming!” I hollered.

She rocked back and forth on her heels, screaming louder.

“Hugo, you
know
when you yell at her all she does is scream louder,” said Lea.

I gathered Jennie up and put her outside, locking the door between us. She redoubled her efforts, pounding, snuffling, rattling the doorknob. When I got up I could see her fingers curling under the door, while she heaved and stamped on the other side.

“I don't care what you do,” I heard Lea's muffled voice say from the bed. “Just make her shut up.”

I opened the door to discipline her, but she shot past me and dove under the covers, burrowing madly.

“What!” my poor wife said, now wide awake, laughing in spite of herself. “Hugo! There's an ape in our marriage bed!” She found it very funny. It was impossible to be angry at Jennie.

Jennie was moving around under the covers, laughing and clacking her teeth.

“If we let her sleep in here once,” Lea said, “we're done for.”

I should have heeded my wife, but at the time, having fought battles with Jennie for four nights running, I didn't have the energy for another try.

“She'll be all right,” I said. “If we can just get her to stay on one side and shut up. We'll put her outside again in the spring.”

“Good luck with
that,”
said Lea.

We tried to sleep. Jennie kicked and jerked and wriggled until Lea and I were huddled at the edges of the bed, while Jennie lorded the middle. Periodically, she reached out with a hairy hand to check if we were still there. Lea finally reached her limit. With a cry of frustration she got up and whipped the covers off Jennie, who sprang up with a hoot, thinking a wonderful new game was about to begin. Lea tried scolding Jennie, but the chimp began one of her whirling dervish acts, screwing the sheets around herself. Lea seized her and together we managed to get her deposited into a nest of blankets in the corner. She sensed that this time we were serious, and she went to sleep without further ado.

For three or four nights after that, Jennie slept in the corner, in
her tangled nest. She never snored and we never heard a peep out of her, so we concluded that everything was going to be all right. Then one night I became amorous, and before I knew what was happening Jennie was on top of me, screaming and hitting, clearly distressed. When I tried to push her off, she bit my arm. It was not a serious bite, just a quick pinch, but it surprised me. As far as we knew, she had not bitten a human being before.

When I related this story to Harold Epstein, he asked if I was familiar with Dr. Jane Goodall's research on chimpanzees in Tanganyika. Goodall had made the interesting observation that infant chimpanzees become violently upset when males mate their mothers, and often try to interfere with and prevent the copulative act. Harold was deeply interested in Jennie's reaction and he felt that it showed this kind of behavior must be genetically programmed.

That was the end of Jennie's nights in our room. We forced Jennie to sleep in the spare bedroom. It was a long, painful process, entailing many sleepless nights while we listened to Jennie's muffled screams echoing through the woodwork. She felt she had been given shabby treatment indeed. She never did reoccupy her tree house, except during the day. The spare bedroom became Jennie's room forever.

Jenny, we came to understand, had a highly developed sense of justice. She sincerely believed that she was human and should enjoy all the perquisites pertaining thereto. She would not allow herself to be treated in any way different from how we treated our children. If she perceived a difference—if, for example, Sandy was given a candy bar and she wasn't—she took it as a great injustice. Her sense of fairness was almost as highly developed as it is among human siblings, who, as any parent knows, are ready to protest any hint of favoritism.

Not long after Jennie arrived Harold asked me whether Jennie had ever seen herself in a mirror. Harold took a scientific interest in
Jennie and questioned me at length about her behavior. In this case, I thought back and realized that, in fact, she had not. Much has been written about the chimpanzee concept of “self.” Cognitive tests using chimpanzees and mirrors have proven, beyond doubt, that chimpanzees do have a sense of self.

That evening, Jennie saw herself in a mirror for the first time. We wondered how she would react, since it was clear to us that she considered herself human and probably never realized she looked any different from the rest of us. It was our first “experiment” with Jennie. I removed the dressing mirror from Lea's closet door and placed it at the top of the stairs. Then we called Jennie.

She came bounding up the stairs without a care in the world, but when she reached the top and saw her image in the mirror, she stopped dead. Her hair bristled up and she “displayed” by swaggering about, stamping her feet on the floor, and staring aggressively. When the image did not flee as expected she became angry and charged. Naturally, her double showed equal fearlessness and charged right back, and this frightened Jennie half to death. She skidded to a halt and backed off screaming and grimacing in fear. Then she turned and fled down the stairs. If she had a tail it would have been between her legs.

At the bottom she gathered her wits and crept back up. Again, she had the unpleasant experience of seeing this black, hairy creature staring at her from the mirror. She stood there transfixed. Suddenly her expression changed. What was this? The ugly brute was wearing a hat just like hers! Her hair gradually subsided as it dawned on her that the image in the mirror was of
herself
. She took the hat off her head and looked at it, and put it back on, and went up to the mirror and ran her hands all over the mirror's surface. Then she simply walked away.

After that, mirrors held no interest for her, and she ignored them. It was not until much later that other experiments showed just how complex an image of “self” Jennie had.

It snowed in late December, the first storm of the season. It was a big one, and we were curious to see how Jennie would react. It began in the afternoon. With the cold weather, Jennie had been spending much of her time in the library, where she could bang on an old upright piano, wait at the window seat to spot Sandy returning from school, or warm herself by the fire. There was scant potential for mischief in the library, since the books and other breakables were safely locked up behind screens. Lea eventually installed a big box in the library and filled it with Jennie's dolls and toys.