Jennie (15 page)

So Jennie started going to the Reverend's house once a week. She would come home with cookie crumbs
all
over her shirtfront. And a big white mustache from the milk she drank. He spoiled her terribly. I'm surprised his wife put up with it. He never had children, you see. I think that had something to do with it.

By this time Sarah had reached the terrible twos. But Sarah's terrible twos were mostly unterrible. Sandy had been an absolute horror at two. When he learned the word no it was the end. “No!” was a constant refrain in our house after Jennie arrived. Hugo told me I used to shout it in my sleep! Oh dear. Sandy got a mynah bird from his aunt once, and we kept it in a cage in the kitchen. That darn bird learned only two things. The first was an earsplitting chimpanzee
scream, and the second was
“No! No! No! No!”
It seems so funny now, but I'm telling you when that bird started up with that, we got rid of it so fast! There was enough noise in the house, thank you, without a bird repeating it.

Let's see, now, where was I?

Oh yes. In the beginning, you know, Jennie took a great interest in Sarah. She carried her around and even fed her once in a while. She put her in the high chair, fed her, and then wiped up the mess. It was quite a sight, watching an animal feeding a baby with a spoon. But around two we realized Sarah didn't really like Jennie. She was a quiet child, and she liked an orderly house. She always put her toys away, even without being asked. She did not like a chimpanzee or anyone else getting into her toys. Jennie was always getting into things and creating a ruckus.

Jennie would take her toy and Sarah would sit there and burst into tears. And then Jennie would quickly give it back. That chimp just hated it when people cried. She was so concerned and would whimper and say “Oo oo oo” and try to pat away their tears. You know, chimpanzees can't cry. They don't have the tear ducts or whatever. Or is it they don't have the proper part of the brain? Maybe that was for speech. I get so confused sometimes about all these experiments they did.

When Sarah became mobile, she made it quite clear that Jennie's presence was a bother. If Jennie so much as looked in her direction she would clutch her toys in her little fists try to totter away with them. Poor Sarah! Growing up with a noisy, rambunctious chimp was not her idea of fun.

Sarah naturally picked up some signing. Not like Sandy, but she was quite capable of telling Jennie where to get off. In ASL. She'd sign
Go away!
or
Bad Jennie!
at two years old. Can you imagine?

In that first year Jennie must have learned fifty signs. She was really quite the genius. After a year, Jennie and Sandy were signing back and forth like pros. They had a ritual. When Sandy came
home from school the two of them went straight to the kitchen, looking for food. Jennie was signing furiously that she wanted something to eat.

What? Demonstrate? Oh dear, I haven't signed in seventeen years. Let's see now. . . . [Editor's Note: At this point Mrs. Archibald stood up and demonstrated each of the signs as she told the story.]

So Jennie would say,
Me Jennie eat
, like this.

Sandy always had a snack when he came home from school, and Jennie knew she was going to get something too. On the rare days when Sandy came home late or went over to a friend's house to play, Jennie would fret and fret and finally come banging and hooting into the kitchen, demanding her snack.

Anyway, when Sandy came home they both went straight to the kitchen. Sandy would sign
What Jennie eat?
Sandy had to get her what she wanted, because Jennie was absolutely forbidden on pain of death to touch the refrigerator. When Jennie got older, we actually had to padlock the refrigerator. She had no self control.

Jennie might sign
Eat Jennie eat orange
or something like that. While Sandy was rummaging around in the refrigerator, Jennie would be signing furiously
Orange, orange, orange!
She had no patience, that chimp! And Sandy would get irritated and start telling Jennie to shut up, like this:
Jennie wait shut up!

I found it a bother to sign all the time, especially when I had my hands full cooking dinner. Jennie could understand quite enough English. But Sandy, he signed all the time. He was hardly aware of it. Sometimes when he lost his temper at me he'd yell and start signing something right in my face. At the same time.

At first, Jennie's table manners were awful. Sandy took it upon himself to improve her. When she drank milk, he signed
Clean mouth
. If she spat her food out, Sandy signed
No Jennie eat food
. Jennie would sign back
Bad food, bad food
, like this, and Sandy would respond
Jennie shut up, no spit food, eat food
. On the rare
occasions when she still threw food, Sandy would really let her have it.
No Jennie, no throw food, bad bad Jennie!
And Jennie would usually hang her head and sign
Sorry sorry sorry
.

Sandy sometimes became just a shade too zealous in scolding Jennie at dinner. Sometimes Jennie turned the tables on him! When Sandy drank milk Jennie would sign
Clean mouth, clean mouth!
even while he was still drinking. Well! Sandy did not like Jennie telling him what to do. He'd sign back
Shut up Jennie
, and she would hop up and down in her chair signing
Clean mouth! clean mouth!
Just like a brother and sister. It made Sandy so mad.

Ah dear. It was hard to stay mad at her though. She knew just what to do. I remember one day. I had scrubbed and cleaned the floor with a little bit of Babbo cleanser, and she was enthralled by the powder coming out of the can. She kept trying to get back in the cabinet to inspect the can. I said no and thought that was the end of it. I left the kitchen for a few minutes, and when I returned, there was Jennie in the middle of the floor, completely covered with Babbo, with the stuff all over the floor. She looked at me and before I could even say anything she was signing
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!

Now this made me even madder. Jennie knew perfectly well that she was doing wrong, and she thought that just by signing
sorry
she could escape punishment. I grabbed her by the ear and I hauled back to give her a good swat on the fanny, when she signed
Me Jennie! Hug Jennie!
That stopped me dead. How could I possibly hit Jennie when she talked to me like that? Crying out that she was Jennie and to hug her. She certainly had my number, that chimp.

You know, Jennie, for all her roughhousing, was very kind. She was always terribly concerned when someone got sick or hurt. When Sandy cried, she instantly stopped whatever she was doing and hugged him and touched his tears and tried to wipe them away. She was always concerned with our welfare.

I think it was the summer of 1969. I had never had chicken pox as a child, and that summer I came down with it. I was awfully sick.

I was in the kitchen cutting tomatoes from our garden, and Jennie was playing on the floor. I had been feeling under the weather all day and suddenly I felt nauseous. I ran into the downstairs bathroom and was sick. Jennie came running in, and she was upset. She hugged me around the waist and whimpered and laid her little palm on my forehead.

I was so surprised with what Jennie did next. She signed
Bad, bad!
at the toilet, and then actually struck the toilet with her hands!
Bad dirty dirty bad!
she signed, hitting the toilet again, as if somehow the toilet were at fault.
Dirty
was her sign for both going to the bathroom and the toilet itself.

She followed me upstairs and helped me turn down the sheets to the bed. When I got in it, she crouched on the bed, kissing my hand and wiping the sweat on my brow. She quickly noticed the spots developing on my forehead and shoulders. She touched them lightly with her fingers, hooted mournfully, and signed
Hurt hurt Lea hurt
.

By this time I was feeling simply dreadful.
Hurt
was one of Jennie's favorite signs, you know. She used to sign
hurt
when she saw a scab on you. She'd poke at it and sign
Hurt?
Or she'd bang her knee and rush over signing
Hurt!
frantically, and we'd comfort her. Until she started doing it again and again and we realized she wasn't hurt at all! Just faking, the little rascal!

Anyway, Jennie began rubbing the chicken pox spots and signing
Go away bad bad
. When I asked her to stop, she just sat there, looking so miserable and worried. The she signed
Hurt Jennie hurt
.

As sick as I was, this touched me.
Jennie hurt
. My being sick was causing her pain. I felt like crying I was so touched. She was so truly concerned about me, so deeply worried. Hugo put me in the guest room and Jennie stayed up with me the whole night, getting me a glass of water when I asked, stroking and grooming my hair, kissing me, and showing the most genuine concern. It was more than just concern: Jennie was actually scared. She even brought me her food. She was quite insistent, even though I couldn't even think
about eating. She would sign
Eat eat
or
Eat apple apple
while shoving a disgusting half-eaten apple in my face.

For two weeks while I was sick she hardly ever left my room. Sandy might be outside, whooping it up with his friends in the yard. Jennie would go to the window and look out, but she wouldn't leave. It was a bit of a bother, her in the room day and night. When Hugo tried to get Jennie out, she screamed so frantically that we decided it was better for her to stay. During the two weeks I was bedridden, Jennie lost so much weight she began to look sick herself. That's how worried she was. Oh my goodness, she was such a kind little animal. . . .

Yes, Jennie was very kind; it was her most outstanding quality. It was just that sometimes she didn't know her own strength, and she didn't understand that people were a lot more fragile than she was. Sometimes she was rougher than she intended, you see. Did you know that a full-grown female chimpanzee is three to five times stronger than a man?

Her kindness wasn't only to humans. Did I tell you about Jennie's pet kitten? Jennie just loved looking at pictures of animals in magazines, and she particularly liked cats. One day Sandy and Jennie and I were looking at a magazine, I forget which, and there was a picture of two cute kittens peeking out of a mailbox.

Jennie signed, like this,
Cat, cat
. Sandy was there and he asked Jennie if she wanted a cat. Well! Jennie loved the idea. Jennie started signing
Give cat, cat give cat me
.

Well why not? So we went to the pound and brought Jennie a kitten. It was a little gray-and-white Siamese cross that Sandy named Booger T. Archibald. Please don't ask me why. We set it free in front of Jennie. Now was that a mistake. We should have known better. Jennie did not like surprises. If a package arrived and was put carelessly in the hallway, Jennie would sometimes be frightened of it and hit or stamp on the package. She managed to break a piece of Lalique glass my mother had sent, just stomping on the box. And this was after the post office had done their damnedest with it!

Anyway, when Jennie saw the kitten she signed
Bad cat bad cat angry!
and rushed at it, her hair all sticking up, and we barely saved its life. We were
horrified
. Then Jennie went and skulked in a corner while we talked about what we were going to do. Meanwhile, the kitten started wandering around. The next thing we knew it was heading in Jennie's direction. Sandy jumped up to fetch it, but Jennie reached out and tenderly picked it up and started stroking it. She'd just been frightened, that's all.

After that, they were inseparable. Jennie lugged that poor kitten around night and day. She put it on her back and Booger would cling for all he was worth while Jennie went about her business. At other times she would cradle it in her arms just like a baby and rock while it purred away like a little motor. She even tasted its food and made horrid faces. Cat food was the epitome of what Jennie considered bad food. All meaty and fishy tasting.

She showed real tenderness toward Booger. Booger wasn't quite so thrilled, I think, to be the property of a chimpanzee. If Booger was eating and Jennie heard something interesting going on in the other room, she picked it up and carried it with her, not thinking that maybe the poor little thing would like to finish its dinner first. That poor cat was carried around day and night. It was never allowed to just sleep on the sofa and be a kitten.

Jennie and Sandy used to argue about the kitten. There was no role in “Space Invaders” for a cat. Sandy would tell Jennie to put the cat down and Jennie would refuse, putting the cat on her back and taking up her position on the lawn. And Sandy would order her to put down the cat, and she'd sign
Jennie's cat!
Of course, while she signed she'd still be holding the cat, and the poor thing would be slung about. Once, when Jennie finally put down the cat, she signed
Stay, stay!
I could hardly stop laughing.

Jennie signed to everything: animals, people, pictures in books. She never figured out that animals couldn't sign and that only a few people could sign. I told you about how she signed to the toilet. She just couldn't stop expressing herself.