The Orangutans — Kajae Evans
The Lowland Rainforests, Borneo
Sweet Hani. Little, sweet Hani. Your toes are so precious, so miniscule yet perfect and padded. Put your head on my shoulder and rest. Curl your body towards mine and sleep. Your beautiful lips are puckered, as if you’ve just tasted a sour fruit. Why do you always make that face, Hani? Are you in a perpetual state of disgust? Does the fresh dew make your lip curl? My mother knew right away what kind of daughter you’d be. ‘Oh, but this one will be testy!’ she said. ‘And spoiled!’ She and your aunts laughed at me, pitying my sullen situation. But I don’t mind. I would cross the ends of the jungle just to find your favorite leaves or climb the tallest trees to cup the freshest water in my hands to give to you. I would crack my fingernails in jagged rocks to probe for the saltiest lizard for you to gobble up. I don’t resent your neediness. I have always adored caring for you.
Let me wipe away your tears, crying never does anyone good. The blood is staining my fur, tinging it from orange to vibrant red, but I’ll ignore it. I will never be mad at you. Rest your head here, Hani, and don’t squirm. Stay still and feel it. Feel the gaping hole in your chest. Feel your pain and anguish and feel my love for you. Listen to my soft words, quiet your haggard breathing and accept that you are going to die in your mother's arms. I won’t let them pick and rip apart your body. I won’t leave you for dead lying face-first in the sharp branches. I won’t let the jaguar come back and finish you off. I’ll lick the tears off your bitten cheeks for you and hold you until you take comfort from my presence.
Hani, don’t you see how you are cherished? You are my first-born, my companion, my joy, my entertainment, my frustration, my everything. I could never abandon you. Why do you doubt me? Have I not proven myself devoted to you? I will never leave you, so stop demanding me to. Let the jaguar come back for seconds. Let him fill his grotesque belly for more. I will not let his presence remove me from my child. Oh, don’t cry, Hani. You are more important than my entire life. I was nothing without you; I was empty and useless. You gave a purpose, an incentive to wake up in the morning, a reason to smile at the sun for nothing but love. What is my life compared to yours? I can always have more children, but your time is up. You will never know the joy of the power that lies between your legs. You will never fill the pure ecstasy that is laying with your lover in the seductive wash of moonlight, running your fingers through each other’s fur and murmuring meaninglessly. I have felt that before, and it was delightful. I have fulfilled the joys of my youth; I may not be old, but I am wise, and I know when my days of exploration and wonder are over, while you haven’t even begun to bloom. That, Hani, is what you should mourn, not my undying loyalty.
I had so much to teach you. I wanted to show you how to forage for berries and leaves yourself, to strike the exact point in the treetops to let the water sprout out, what to do when the ache in your belly starts to emerge, and ferric blood begins to flow with your pee. I don’t have the time to tell you everything, and your state is so fragmented I doubt you will understand. You will never know about the bond shared between us mothers, aunts and sisters, the encamping of spanked bottoms and ticks engrained under fingernails, the wet kisses planted on the mouth and the wailing of a child caught in mischief. My mother and sisters only met you once. I was supposed to revisit them at the feeding tree in the next ten moons. Sami will miss you. Ngatemi will scream, beat her head against the tree trunks and pull out her fur. Mamma will sigh deeply, and caress me on my shoulders, wishing me endurance. Oh, you will never know these apes! You will never receive the care and affection I was fortunate to receive! Mourn this, Hani, mourn your inexperience.
I thought I would have you in my life until you were grown and had children of your own. I thought I would be able to pinch my grandchildren’s cheeks and wipe their crusty behinds. But my expectations for my future are fading away before my very eyes. I’m not ready, Hani, to mate again. My lover was so gentle with me, so kind and attentive, but I know he was a pebble in a mountain of boulders. I’m scared; frightened to try again. I don’t know how to attract apes; I don’t remember how to make myself appealing and desirable for a male to choose me over others of my hump-rubbing contemporaries. I have forgotten the art of enticement, and I will be too lonely to relearn. For who can replace you? Who can replicate the intensity of my first love?
You will never know your father, Agung. Oh, I remember how I trembled to his nest, replaying in my mind horrors of myself snatched and relentlessly pounded into mush. I pushed my lips and squeezed my eyes to produce tears. I fully expected to be ravaged by the ferocity of an old, temperamental ape clinging to his vitality, but when he laid me down and entered me, I felt nothing but bliss. I was engulfed in a bottomless pool of intensified heat and sounds so pleasing to my body, I lost control of myself and dug my nails into his back until I drew blood. Later he kissed me from my forehead to my toes as I lay in his arms. I had always treasured that magical night and I prayed that you would be lucky enough to experience your own kind of paradise. Agung would’ve been so proud of you, would’ve cupped you in his huge hands and look at you with wonder, amazement that he could create something as precious as you.
You had so much to learn and discover. You had so many things to see, and touch, and feel, much more than my beating heart and hot breath breezing across your bloody forehead.
I imagined we would work as a team, building nests together, eating together, and staring up at the stars and kissing the whorls of each other’s ears. You were to be more than a daughter; you were to be my second self. It was a fantasy of mine for you to be my replica, my twin, so I could teach you the commodities of the jungle, the warmth of the family, and the dark beauty of the unknown. I wanted to see your eyes light up when I taught you how to catch dew off a glossy leaf at dawn, to guide your nipple directly in alignment with your child’s mouth, to instruct you on the most efficient way to weave your nest. I wanted to teach you how to survive and how to live. That is the only thing I regret, not giving you enough information. I have and am still babying you because I love you so much, and in a way, as selfish as this might be, you will be my baby forever. I will always imagine you, not as a sturdy adolescent or mature adult, but as my little girl, wrapped up in my arms, with your shaky breathing and curled fingers. Don’t blame me, Hani, for my overprotectiveness. Don’t spite me for my willingness to leave you as a child, to keep you in my memory as a baby years after your absence. You are my precious, my own, my darling, and I cannot bear to pull myself from this image of you, of your tiny body shuddering, of your big, luminous eyes locked with mine in tenderness. You will be kept away in my heart, blocked with the heaviest rock and left in the secure thickets of the towering evergreens. I won’t let anyone pervert you, twist your memory to be miniscule or trivial. I won’t let my future lover encourage me to get over my sorrows so he will feel less uncomfortable when I cry your name in my sleep. You have always belonged to me, but our love is beyond ownership. You are me, from your brown, cocoa eyes to your ability to smile, and laugh in the face of danger, in the face of the jaguar staring you down and gazing at your taut belly, ripe and succulent.
Hani, tell me, have I been a bad mother? Have I neglected you? Be honest, and don’t lie to me, don’t tell me a falsehood to spare my already morose feelings. I’m looking at you, and I’m seeing the light fade from your eyes, your jaw beginning to slacken, and your grip growing loose, and I’m growing scared, because I don’t know what I’m going to do without you. Being my first-born, you were a first-hand witness to my blunders, my mishaps, my gross miscalculations. I remember two weeks after your birth, I left you hanging on a flimsy nest of leaves on a low branch to give myself a break from the demanding challenges of motherhood, blocking your reproachful face in my mind while I played in a riverbank and sucked on durians, freeing myself from the burden of you for just a little while. I remember a month ago, you were so terribly thirsty. We had been scavenging the entire day, and I was far away from our nest; I feared we were lost. You were moaning, desperately communicating that you needed water now. At my wits’ end, I hurriedly climbed up a tree to find some leaves, berries, tree holes, anything for you to drink, but I was so hasty in my ascent that when I attempted to reach a branch to climb, I slipped and nearly tumbled unto the hard dirt floor. I remember your terrified start and the piercing shriek as you began to wail from fright. I was a failure, wasn’t I? A terrible, negligent mother. You deserved better, much better than me, and yet I’m asking so much of you that you forgive me for my mistakes, for my inexperience. All I ever wanted was for you to love me, for happiness to be the first thing on your face when you saw me. I could understand us eventually growing apart as you carved your own path, I could handle the decreasing frequency of your visits until you finally stopped seeing me altogether, but I could never endure your hatred. I enviously want to be your favorite person, your confidant, your guide, the one you look to and think, ‘Yes, this is my strength.’ Is that too much to ask? Am I horrible and selfish for wanting this? I speak so much about want and desire, but I will never know how you feel and what you think of me, and although I’ll pacify myself my choosing to believe you truly loved me from the moment I brought you into this world, the fact is that your love is an utter mystery to me, and that is the question that will haunt me every day of my life, from dawn to dusk, from lover to lover, from child to child.
So, I won’t ask you to love me. I won’t ask of anything, but your grace for my oversights, my laziness, my overbearingness, my overprotectiveness, my pressures. It aches me to lose you, but I know I must let you go. Every motherly instinct is screaming at me, but I choose to leave you in peace and ease your way into nothingness, to embrace your dying body and tell you it’s alright to go, to leave, to place you in death’s raft and push you off into the incomprehensibleness of stillness. Can I sing to you, Hani? Can I give you at least that? Can I hum tuneless melodies into your ears until your heart slows, your breath quiets, and your fingers curl open? And can I raise my voice to bellow the songs of my mother, and her mother, and her mother, in reverence of you? Can I bellow until the jungle pauses to listen to the echoes of a grieving mother strengthened by the grace of her daughter? Can I bellow, not caring who hears me, whose ears perk up, and sights sharpen, for the deep stirring in my body cannot allow the memory of you to be unsung, forgotten, lost to time but for the bloodstains on the dirt? Can I give you at least that, Hani? Can I honor your innocent, transcendent soul? Can I give you peace?
Kajae Evans is a writer living in the Turks and Caicos Islands. She enjoys reading, writing, and taking long walks on the beach. This is her first publication.