Leaving Time: A Novel Read online

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  In 1999, on the day I first learned of the cancer bleaching the life out of my mother, I’d driven blindly through the bush trying to outrun the news. To my shock, I’d found five elephant carcasses with their trunks cut away—and one very devastated, very frightened calf.

  Her trunk was limp, her ears translucent. She could not have been more than three weeks old. But I had not known how to care for her, and her story did not end happily.

  Neither did my mother’s. I took a six-month leave of absence from my postdoctoral research to be with her until she passed away. When I returned to Botswana, I was all alone in the world, and threw myself into my work to avoid my grief—only to realize that these great, gracious elephants treated death so matter-of-factly. They did not find themselves thinking in circles: wondering why I had not called home on Mother’s Day; questioning why I had always argued with my mother, instead of telling her how much I modeled myself on her self-sufficiency; proclaiming I was too busy with my work or too broke to fly home for Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s, my birthday. Those spiraling thoughts were killing me, each turn of the screw sinking me into a quicksand of guilt. Almost by accident, I began to study the grief of elephants. I told myself all sorts of excuses about why this was of visceral academic importance. But really, all I wanted to do was learn from the animals, which made it look so easy.

  When I came back to Africa to heal from the second loss of my life, it was during a time when poaching was on the rise. The killers had gotten smarter. Where they used to shoot the oldest matriarchs and bulls with the biggest tusks, they now randomly targeted a youngster, knowing that would make the herd bunch together in defense, which of course made it easier for poachers to kill en masse. For a long time no one wanted to admit that the elephants in South Africa were at risk again, but they were. Elephants in bordering Mozambique were being poached heavily, and the orphaned calves ran terrified back into the Kruger.

  It was one of those calves that I found while I was hiding in South Africa. Her mother, a victim of poaching, had been shot in the shoulder and collapsed with a festering wound. The calf, which refused to leave her mother’s side, was surviving by drinking her urine. I knew as soon as I found them in the bush that the mother would have to be euthanized. I knew, too, this would lead to the death of her daughter.

  I wasn’t about to let that happen again.

  I set up my rescue center in Phalaborwa, South Africa, modeling it on Dame Daphne Sheldrick’s elephant orphanage in Nairobi. The philosophy is very basic, actually: When an elephant calf loses its family, you must provide a new one. Human keepers stay with the babies around the clock, offering bottles and affection and love, sleeping next to them at night. The keepers are rotated, so that no elephant becomes too attached to one person. I learned the hard way that if a calf forms too tight an attachment to one human, it can sink into depression if that caregiver takes even a day or two of vacation; the grief of that loss can even lead to death.

  The caregivers never strike their charges, not even if they are acting out. A reprimand is usually enough; these babies so badly want to please their caregivers. Elephants remember everything, though, so it is important to always provide a little extra warmth later, lest the elephant think that it has been punished not for being naughty but because it is unlovable.

  We feed the babies specially formulated milk, but also cooked oatmeal after five months—much like you’d introduce a human baby to solids. We supplement coconut oil to provide the fat content they would have had from their mothers’ breast milk. We measure their progress by looking at their cheeks, which—like those of human infants—should be chubby. By age two, they are transferred to a new facility, one with slightly older elephants. Some of the caregivers will have rotated through the nursery, so that the newly transferred elephants recognize them. They recognize, too, their former companions who have already graduated from the nursery. The caregivers now sleep apart from the elephants, but within hearing range of the barn. Every day they lead the elephants out into the Kruger to be introduced to natural herds. The older elephants in the facility jostle to see who should act as matriarch. They take the new babies under their wings, with each female adopting her own calf to pretend-mother. The babies march out first, followed by the slightly older elephants. Eventually, they will integrate with a wild herd.

  On a few occasions, we have even had elephants that are now wild return for help—once, when a young mother’s milk dried up and she was in danger of losing her baby; and again when a nine-year-old bull got its leg caught in snare wire. They do not trust all humans indiscriminately, because they know firsthand the devastation people can cause. But they apparently don’t judge all of us by those few, either.

  The locals started to call me Ms. Ali—short for Miss Alice. And eventually, that became the name of the facility: If an elephant calf is found, bring it to Msali. If I do my job right, then these orphaned elephants eventually walk away, happily connected to a wild herd in the Kruger, where they belong. After all, we raise our own children to live without us, one day.

  It’s when they leave us too soon that nothing makes sense.

  VIRGIL

  Do you remember when you were a kid and you thought that clouds must feel like cotton, and then one day you learned that they are actually made up of droplets of water? That if you tried to stretch out on one and take a nap, you—you would just hurtle through it and smash on the ground?

  First, I drop the tooth.

  Except I don’t, really. Because dropping it would suggest that I had been holding on to it, and it’s more like there’s no resistance to my hand anymore, so that the tooth just sinks through and pings on the floor. I look up, completely freaked out, and grab for the closest thing to me, which happens to be Tallulah.

  My hand swipes right through her, and her body dissipates and curls as if it is made of smoke.

  The same thing is happening to Jenna. She flickers in and out, her face twisted in fear. I try to call out her name, but it sounds like I’m at the bottom of a well.

  Out of nowhere, I remember the long line of people at the airport who didn’t react when I cut ahead, the ticket agent who took me aside and said, You don’t belong here.

  I remember the half dozen waitresses at the diner who walked obliviously past me and Jenna, until finally one bothered to notice. Was it just that the others couldn’t see us?

  I think of Abby, my landlady, dressed like she’s stepped out of a Prohibition rally, which I now realize she probably did. I think of Ralph in the evidence room, who was old enough to be a fossil back when I was on the job. Tallulah, the waitress, the ticket agent, Abby, Ralph—all of these people, they were like me. In this world, but not of it.

  And I remember the crash. The tears that were on my face, and the Eric Clapton song on the radio, and the way I pushed my foot down on the accelerator as I rounded the tight curve. I had stiffened my arms so that I wouldn’t be a coward and jerk the car to safety, and at the last minute, I reached down and unbuckled my seat belt. The moment of impact was still a shock, even though I was expecting it—glass from the windshield raining over my face, the steering wheel column boring into my chest, my body being thrown. For one glorious, silent second, I flew.

  On the long ride home from Tennessee, I had asked Serenity what she thought it felt like to die.

  She thought for a second. How do you fall asleep?

  What do you mean? I said. It just happens.

  Right. You’re awake, and then you drift for a moment, and then you’re out like a light. Physically, you relax. Your mouth goes slack. Your heart rate slows down. You detach from the third dimension. There’s some level of awareness, but for the most part, it’s like you’re in another zone. Suspended animation.

  Now, I have something to add to that. When you’re asleep, you think there’s a whole other world that feels completely real while you are dreaming it.

  Serenity.

  I struggle to turn