When My Heart Joins the Thousand(4)

A woman hurries past me, dragging a chubby little boy along with her. He’s around seven years old and eating an ice-cream cone.

“Hi!” the mother trills, smiling. Her mouth is wide and smeared with candy-red lipstick. “Can you look after him a few minutes? I’m going to use the restroom.” She dashes off before I can say anything.

The little boy stands, squinting at me, ice-cream cone in hand.

What is she thinking, leaving her child alone with a total stranger? For all she knows, I could be a pedophile. Or a hungover idiot who would just watch, mouth hanging open, while the child crawled into the hyena enclosure. I’m not, but that’s beside the point.

“Hi,” the boy says.

I have no idea what to say or do, so I just keep eating, watching him from the corner of my eye to make sure he doesn’t run off.

He licks his ice cream. “Are you, like, an animal trainer? Do you get to teach them tricks and stuff?”

“No. I just feed them and clean their cages.”

He points at Kiki, who’s still chewing the bars. “Why is he doing that?”

I swallow a mouthful of sandwich. “It’s called stereotypy. It’s a nervous habit, like nail biting.”

“So he’s like a crazy hyena?”

“No. Repetitive behaviors like that are common in captive animals. It’s a normal response to an abnormal environment.” As an afterthought, I add, “Also, that’s not a he. Her name is Kiki.”

“No way. He has a thing. A penis.” He enunciates the word carefully, like he’s not sure I’ve heard it before.

I take another bite of my sandwich and mutter through a mouthful of bologna, “That’s not a penis.”

He scrunches up his freckled face. “Then what is it?”

“A phallic clitoris.”

“A what?”

“Female hyenas are unusual in the animal kingdom. They’re larger than the males, and dominant, and they have a clitoris the size of—”

I stop talking as the boy’s mother, red faced and tight lipped, grabs his hand and drags him away.

“Mom,” the boy says loudly, “what’s a clitoris?”

“It’s a kind of bird,” she mutters.

“That’s not what the lady said.”

“Well, we’re going to have to talk to the lady’s supervisor, aren’t we?”

A drop of mustard falls from my bologna sandwich and lands on the cobblestones between my feet. I take another bite, but the bread is paper-dry in my mouth. It sticks in my throat.

That afternoon, before the end of my shift, Ms. Nell—the owner of Hickory Park Zoo—calls me to her office. She glares at me from across her desk, drumming her lacquered nails on the arm of her chair. Ms. Nell is stout and short haired, and her outfits always hurt my eyes. Today her jacket is a blinding pink—the same color as Duke, the parrot who sits in a cage in the corner of her office. There’s a bare spot on his chest where he’s pulled out all his feathers, also a nervous habit.

“You know why you’re here, don’t you?” she asks.

I shift in my chair. “Because of something I said. But I was just answering—”

“Alvie.”

I stop talking.

“I know you ain’t as dumb as you act sometimes.” She only says ain’t when she’s very agitated. It makes me nervous. “You ought to have enough sense to know that you don’t start explaining the birds and bees to a kid you’ve just met. Particularly not while his mother’s in earshot.”

“I was explaining hyena anatomy. It’s part of my job to answer any questions the guests have about the animals. You told me so.”

She closes her eyes briefly and squeezes the bridge of her nose. “Cut the crap.”

From his cage in the corner, Duke the parrot squawks, “Cut the crap.”

I stare at my feet. “I’ll apologize to the boy’s mother if you want me to.”

“No. You’d probably make things worse.”

I say nothing, because she’s right.

“You know,” she says, “this isn’t the first complaint I’ve gotten about you.”

I tense. “Please give me another chance. I’ll—”

She holds up a hand. “Relax, I ain’t gonna fire you. But I want you to keep your fool mouth shut around the guests. Stick to feeding and cleaning.”

I hesitate. “What if someone asks me a question.”

“Pretend you’re deaf.”

“How do I do that.”

“I don’t know. Start signing.” She moves her hands around like she’s making an invisible cat’s cradle, or maybe casting a magic spell. “Like this.”

“I don’t know sign language.”

“Fake it,” she snaps.

I nod, afraid that if I argue, she might change her mind.

Though I’ve been working here for over a year now, I’m well aware that my position is precarious. I have less than two hundred dollars in savings. I make just enough to cover rent, groceries, and car payments, and if I fail to fulfill my financial responsibilities, I’ll become a ward of the state once again. It has occurred to me that, if I’m not able to successfully live as an adult, a judge might even declare me incompetent, resulting in a permanent loss of my freedom. Given my history, it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibility. I might end up trapped in a place like the group home, not just until my eighteenth birthday but for the rest of my life.