Leaving Time(79)

Thomas acted like he had when I had told him my own water had broken. He started running around, excited, scattered, overwhelmed. He radioed Grace and asked her to come and take Jenna back to our cottage and sit with her while the rest of us went to the African enclosure. “There’s no rush,” Nevvie insisted. “I’ve never heard of an elephant giving birth during the day. It happens at night so that the baby’s eyes can adjust.”

If it took that long for Maura, I knew it meant that something would be wrong. Her body was already showing all the signs of advanced labor. “I think we have a half an hour, tops,” I said.

I watched Thomas’s face turn from Nevvie’s to mine, and then he radioed Gideon. “Meet us at the African barn, ASAP,” he said, and I turned away when I felt Nevvie’s gaze on me.

The mood, at first, was celebrative. Thomas and Gideon argued over whether it would be better for the calf to be male or female; Nevvie talked about what it was like when she delivered Grace. They joked about whether an elephant could have drugs during the birth, and if it would be called a pachydural. Me, I focused on Maura. As she rumbled, suffering through contractions, an auditory current of sisterhood flew through the grounds of the sanctuary. Hester trumpeted back to Maura; then the Asian elephants, at a further distance, checked in.

A half hour had passed since I first told Thomas to come quickly, then an hour. After two hours of moving in circles, Maura had still not progressed. “Maybe we should call the vet,” I suggested, but Nevvie waved me off.

“I told you,” she said. “It’ll happen after sunset.”

I knew of plenty of rangers who’d seen elephants give birth at all times of the day, but I bit my tongue. I wished that Maura were in the wild, if only so that one of her herd could communicate that there was nothing to worry about, that everything was going to be all right.

Six hours later, though, I had my doubts.

By then, Gideon and Nevvie had both gone to prepare and distribute food for the Asian elephants and Hester. We may have been having a birth, but there were still six other elephants that needed care. “I think you should call the vet,” I told Thomas as I watched Maura stumble, weary. “Something’s wrong.”

Thomas didn’t hesitate. “I’ll check on Jenna and make the call.” He looked at me, troubled. “Will you stay with Maura?”

I nodded and sat down on the far side of the fence, my knees drawn up, to watch Maura suffer. I had not wanted to say this out loud, but all I could think of was Kagiso, the elephant I had found with a dead calf shortly before I left Africa. I did not even want to think of her, for superstitious fear that I might jinx this birth.

Not more than five minutes after Thomas left, Maura pivoted, presenting her hindquarters to me so that I could clearly see the amniotic balloon extending from between her legs. I scrambled to my feet, torn between wanting to get Thomas and knowing that I wouldn’t have time. Before I could even equivocate, the entire amniotic sac slipped out in a gush and rush of fluid, and the calf landed on the grass, still caught in its white caul.

If Maura had sisters in a herd, they would be telling her what to do. They would encourage her to tear the sac, to help that baby stand. But Maura had no one but me. I cupped my hand over my mouth and tried to mimic the distress call, the SOS I had heard elephants make when a predator was in the area. I hoped I could shock Maura into action.

It took three tries, but finally, Maura used her trunk to tear at the sac. I knew, though, even as she did, that something was wrong. Unlike the jubilation of Botshelo and her herd, Maura’s body was hunched. Her eyes were downcast; her mouth drooped. Her ears were low and flat against her body.

She looked like Kagiso, when Kagiso’s calf was dead.

Maura tried to pull the small, stillborn male to his feet. She pushed at him with her front foot, but he did not move. She tried to curl her trunk around the body and lift him, but he slipped from her grasp. She pulled away the afterbirth and then rolled the body of the calf. She was still bleeding, streaks down her rear legs as dark and pronounced as the secretions from her temporal glands, but she continued to dust and shove the calf, which had not taken a single breath.

I was in tears by the time Thomas arrived again, Gideon in tow, with the news that the vet would arrive within the hour. The whole sanctuary had gone silent and still; the other elephants had stopped calling; even the wind had died. The sun had turned its face in to the shoulder of the landscape; and in the custom of mourning, the fabric of the night had been ripped, revealing a star at each tiny tear. Maura stood over the body of her son, her body an umbrella, shielding him.

“What happened?” Thomas said, and for the rest of my life, I would always think that he had been accusing me.

I shook my head. “Call back the vet,” I said. “He doesn’t need to be here yet.” By now, the bleeding had stopped. There wasn’t anything that could be done.

“He’ll want to do a necropsy on the calf—”

“Not until she’s done grieving,” I said, and the word triggered my silent wish of just days ago: that one of these elephants would die, so that I could continue my postdoc research.

I felt as if I had subconsciously willed this. Maybe Thomas was right to accuse me. “I’m going to stay here,” I announced.

Thomas stepped forward. “You don’t have to—”

“This is what I do,” I said tightly.