Leaving Time(45)

It gets more interesting, though, when there is not an evolutionary advantage to empathetic behavior. When I was in Pilanesberg, I watched an elephant come across a rhino calf that was stuck in the mud of a watering hole. The rhinos were distressed, and that in turn upset the elephant, which stood around trumpeting and rumbling. Somehow, she managed to convince the rhinos that she had practice doing this, and to just get out of the way and let her take over. Now, in the great ecological sphere of things, it was not beneficial to the elephant to rescue a rhino baby. And yet she went in and lifted the baby with her trunk, even though the rhino mother charged her each time she tried. She risked her own life for the offspring of a different species. Likewise, in Botswana, I saw a matriarch come upon a lioness that was stretched out beside an elephant path while her cubs played in the middle of it. Normally, if an elephant sees a lion it will charge—it recognizes the animal as a threat. But this matriarch waited very patiently for the lioness to collect her cubs and move away. True, the cubs were no threat to this elephant, but one day they would be. Right then, however, they were just someone’s babies.

And yet, empathy has its limits. Although elephant calves are allomothered by all females in the herd, if the biological mother dies, her baby usually will, too. An orphaned calf that is still milk-fed will not move away from its mother’s fallen body. Eventually, the herd will have to make a decision: stay with the grieving baby, and run the risk of not feeding their own calves or getting to water … or leave, and consider the certain death collateral damage. It’s quite disturbing to watch, actually. I’ve witnessed what looks like a good-bye ceremony, where the herd touches the calf, where they rumble their distress. And then they move away, and the baby dies of starvation.

Yet once in the wild I saw something different. I came across an isolated calf that had been left behind at a watering hole. Now, I don’t know the circumstances—if its mother had died or if the calf had gotten disoriented and wandered off. At any rate, an unrelated herd came by at the same time a hyena trotted in from a different direction. The calf was fair game for the hyena—unprotected, luscious. However, the matriarch of that passing herd had a calf of her own, maybe a tiny bit older. She saw the hyena scoping out the abandoned calf and chased the hyena off. The calf ran over to her and tried to nurse, but she pushed him away and started to move on.

For the record, this is normal behavior. Why, from a Darwinian standpoint, would she limit the resources of a calf with her own genetic makeup by nursing an unrelated baby? Although there are records of adoption within herds, the majority of allomothers will not nurse an orphaned calf; there just is not enough milk to go around without compromising their own biological offspring. Moreover, this elephant was not related; the matriarch had no biological ties to the orphaned calf.

That baby, however, let out the most desperate, lonely cry.

The matriarch was a good hundred feet ahead of him at this point. She froze, spun, and charged the calf. It was shocking and terrifying, and yet that baby stood his ground.

The matriarch grabbed him with her trunk and tucked him fiercely between the playpen of her massive legs, walking off with him. For the next five years, every time I saw that calf, he was still part of this new family.

I would argue that there is a special empathy elephants have for mothers and children—either their own species’s or another’s. That relationship seems to hold a precious significance and a bittersweet knowledge: An elephant seems to understand that if you lose a baby, you suffer.





SERENITY




My mother, who had not wanted me to showcase my Gift, lived long enough for the world to hail me as a successful psychic. I brought her to my set in L.A. to meet her favorite soap star, from the original Dark Shadows, who came on my show for a reading. I bought her a little bungalow near my Malibu home, with enough room for her to have a vegetable garden and orange trees. I took her to film premieres and award shows and shopping on Rodeo Drive. Jewelry, cars, vacations—I could give her anything she wanted—but I couldn’t predict the cancer that eventually consumed her.

I watched my mother shrink away, until she finally passed. When she did she weighed seventy-five pounds and looked like she would break in a strong wind. I had lost my father years ago, but this was different. I was the best actress in the world—fooling the public into thinking that I was happy and rich and successful, when in reality I knew that a fundamental piece of me was gone.

My mother’s passing made me a better psychic. I understood viscerally, now, how people would grasp at the threads I could give them, in an attempt to sew shut the gap where a loved one had been ripped away. In my dressing room at the studio, I would look in the mirror and pray for my mother to come to me. I bargained with Desmond and Lucinda to show me something. I was a psychic, dammit. I deserved a sign, to know that wherever she was on the other side, she was all right.

For three years, I got messages from hundreds of spirits trying to contact loved ones here on earth … but not a single syllable came through from my own mom.

Then one day, I got into my Mercedes to drive home and went to toss my purse on the passenger seat and it landed in my mother’s lap.

My first thought was: I am having a stroke.

I stuck out my tongue. There was something I’d read once in a viral email about diagnosing a stroke and not being able to stick out your tongue, or maybe it was having it flop to one side. I couldn’t remember.