You Can't See the Elephants Read online

  Dad came home in a rage that evening, and a little sadder than usual, too.

  “Mascha,” he said to me. “Let me tell you, it’s better not to help anyone. They don’t want it.”

  It was pretty strange for him to talk that way, since he was a documentary filmmaker, and the films he made were primarily about people who rescued other people.

  As for the boy at the playground, no one helped him. After all those insults, he had tears streaming from his eyes. Being silent wasn’t working out so well for him. That was the first time I heard the girl’s voice. I was shocked, really. I hadn’t expected it, but suddenly, there she was, sitting beside me, yelling at the boys.

  “Don’t you talk to him about elephants!”

  5

  What’s the deal with the elephants?” I ask.

  “Well, what do you think? I’ve tried to talk to him about it.”

  “What did you tell him? He’s your brother, right?”

  “That’s Max. He’s seven. And yeah, he’s my brother.”

  “Oh, okay. So what did you tell him?”

  “I was trying to tell him how great elephants are and that he doesn’t have to cry when those boys say that, because elephants are really smart.”

  “That’s great.”

  “No, it’s not. I also told him that elephants know when they’re going to die. The ones in Africa know. I saw it on TV. They go off to a swamp and wait awhile, and eventually, they die.”

  And then the girl told me how her brother had tried to do it. Die, I mean. He’d stuffed about a thousand chocolate bars in his pockets, tucked a wool blanket under his arm and then, as quietly as an elephant—because elephants are actually very quiet, if I could imagine that, crept down to the rec room in the basement. There in the rec room, he sat down on the sofa and laid out the chocolate bars on the floor beside him, just in case he was too hungry to die, and then he waited, waited for death. Two hours later, she had found him there. His death was delayed, since his sister happened to get there first, and so Max had been forced to live on—with a thousand chocolate bars in his belly.

  “Can you imagine, Mama and Daddy didn’t even notice that Max had gone off to die. Daddy, well—”

  “What did he do?”

  “He cussed him out and told him he shouldn’t eat so much. The candy wrappers were everywhere.”

  “Huh.”

  I couldn’t think of anything more clever to say. I had never had a conversation like this before. The closest was with my father, who sometimes talked about death. It was pretty normal for him, ever since my mom died, but it sounded really weird coming from Julia. There was too much death and definitely too much about elephants. It wouldn’t have felt right to talk to her about some new actor or cool brand of cell phone either, though. It just wouldn’t have worked, even if I knew anything about either actors or cell phones. My phone was old. I’d inherited it from my father. At school, kids sometimes asked me why I’d brought my landline to school.

  My music player was the most up-to-date device that I had, and it wasn’t because we didn’t have money. It was because my father didn’t know anything about what was expected of a thirteen-year-old at school.

  Max was now standing at the base of the wooden fort, looking up at us with red-rimmed eyes. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. He was running one of them through his hair, which was dark brown and long for a boy, especially in front. As he pushed his bangs aside, I saw two things:

  The first was that Max’s eyes were just as beautiful as his sister’s, green with gold. The other was another story, not green and certainly not gold, but red and purple. It was a cut about the size of a nickel on the right side of his forehead. I hadn’t seen many cuts in my life, but this one looked bad enough that I wanted to ask Max, What did you do to yourself? Even if there were definitely better questions to ask. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance, because before I was able to open my mouth, the girl beside me said, “I’m Julia!” Then she jumped down off the fort, grabbed her brother by the hand and ran off with him.

  6

  It wasn’t the elephants that got me talking with Julia the next time, it was my father’s music. Even so, the subject was awkward. My father wasn’t into the music you’d hear on the radio.

  “What kind of music do you listen to, anyway?” she asked.

  “I told you when I came, I was a stranger. I told you when I came, I was a stranger.”

  “What?” she asked. “Are you crazy?”

  “It’s Leonard Cohen. That’s what I’m listening to. Do you know him?”

  “Nope, never heard of him.”

  “Well, those are the lyrics to ‘The Stranger Song.’ It’s my favorite,” I said.

  “Huh. Can I listen?”

  Since Dad explained the lyrics to me, I always knew what the songs were about, no matter how complicated it all sounded. I loved those lyrics. Leonard Cohen sang about blue raincoats and women in feathers and then about birds with their own feathers sitting on wires and somehow making the best of it all. What I liked most was that during the conversations we had about Leonard Cohen’s lyrics my father actually talked to me for once. We’d sit at the kitchen table, letting our hands stick to the plastic tablecloth, and listen to an old CD. Now and then my father would lift his index finger and smile. Listen to that, listen carefully, Mascha. In those moments, I swear, everything was as good as it possibly could have been.

  When my father talked about Leonard Cohen, it always sounded like they were old friends, but the truth was my father had never been to one of his concerts, not even once. He was going to have to hurry if he wanted to catch his feathered friend while he was still alive, because Leonard Cohen was getting old. His voice was getting deeper as he aged.

  Dad had a deep voice, too, though he wasn’t that old. Since he hardly ever used his deep voice to talk to me, I had sort of borrowed Leonard Cohen’s voice for him in my mind, and whenever I put in the earbuds and listened, Dad was there. At the moment, however, my father was playing in Julia’s ears.

  After a while, she said, “I like it. Hey, what’s your name, anyway?”

  “Mascha. So, do you really like it?”

  “Sure. It’s beautiful.”

  “The kids in my class listen to other stuff. I wouldn’t play this for them. Can you imagine, Leonard Cohen is over eighty.”

  “Doesn’t sound like it.”

  “Well, because he was much younger when he sang this song. A lot younger, actually.”

  “Oh, I get it. I don’t listen to anything at home. I’m not allowed to bother Daddy with any kind of music.”

  “Why not?”

  “He has so much stress at work. He doesn’t need more at home.”

  “Music isn’t stressful!”

  “For him it is.”

  That was when I first realized that Max wasn’t at the playground. I had gotten used to him always being there with her. Even if you didn’t see him, he was always standing somewhere off at the edges.

  “Hey, that’s weird, where’s your brother?”

  She answered me loudly and suddenly.

  “He fell down!”

  “Fell down? How?”

  “I don’t know. Down some flight of stairs.”

  “Was it bad?”

  “No.”

  “Huh.”

  “Huh.”

  “Those boys are so mean to him.”

  “There’s nothing I can do. They don’t listen to me anyway. They just keep doing it.”

  “It’s terrible.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Max doesn’t have any friends in his class. No one will sit next to him. No one will do anything with him. They all say he stinks.”

  “Do they hit him?”

  “No, they don’t beat him up. It’s kind of weird, but none of them ever hit him. His
whole class just acts like he has cooties. If someone touches him by accident, they all scream Ewwww! But I don’t know, mostly they just talk. And they like to call him baby elephant, like you heard.”

  “Yeah, I heard.”

  “Max gets that all the time.”

  Julia and I went on talking, but not about Max. We sat on the wooden fort, kicked up our legs and watched the sand castles growing taller and being demolished. We told each other our last names and where we lived. Julia’s name was Brandner, and she lived in a big bluish-red house that I had walked past a thousand times that wasn’t far from my grandparents’. She was nine.

  Now and then, I would play Julia a song that made her close her eyes and say, “That’s beautiful.” And it seemed to me that a few good things had come together: a sunny day and a playground and a girl who lived nearby and said repeatedly, That’s beautiful. Later, when we said good-bye, Julia looked happier than she had before. When she’d walked a little ways off, she turned back and called out to me across the playground.

  “Mascha!”

  “Yeah?”

  “I do watch out for him, you know!”

  7

  I didn’t see Julia and Max for a week after that. At first it was my fault, or really my grandparents’, because they had so much celebrating to do. Summer in Clinton meant that I had to endure three birthday parties in a single week of July, and they all stank of perfume, coffee and wine. First was my grandfather’s birthday, and then my grandmother’s, and then on Saturday, they celebrated both together. Each time, I kid you not, half the neighborhood came over. On the actual birthdays, they just dropped in, but for the party they showed up with their shirts and skirts neatly ironed.

  I think my grandparents were well liked in the neighborhood. At least they were on their birthdays. It wasn’t that hard to be liked there, to belong. All you had to do was mow your grass, buy tulips at the farmers’ market, bring a few tidbits of gossip to choir practice, always have lived there, vote for the king and queen of the local Mardi Gras festival and celebrate approximately one couple’s golden anniversary each week. But you really had to do it all. My grandparents did. They shared the duties for the most part, except for the fact that Grandpa preferred to take care of the chores that didn’t require as much conversation.

  I always had to chat with people at the parties. How do you do, yes, hello, no, the vacation has just begun, yes, I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown, well, better to grow than not to. At the third party, I was spitting out all the usual answers, until Trudy, who lived in the house diagonally across the street, asked me with her cigarette breath, “So, are you still such a loner, Mascha?”

  Finally I was able to give a new answer.

  “No, I know someone here now. I met two kids. At the playground.”

  “Oh really? Then you’ve had luck.”

  “Yep. The Brandner kids. Do you know them?”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “Does that mean you know them?”

  “I don’t know if I know them. The way one knows people. Won’t you come by and visit me sometime? I have some new rabbits. I just got them yesterday. Just come by, anytime. You’ll like them. You used to like feeding my rabbits.”

  “Okay. So, do you know their parents?”

  “Which parents?”

  “Julia and Max’s.”

  “Oh, yes, right. Julia and Max. Yes, dear, of course I do. Very nice people. Do you know the car dealership?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, you see, the Brandners own the dealership. Joe got his car there.”

  Then Trudy was gone, and then the others were gone, too, and then it was night, and then it was day, and I went back to the playground. I didn’t see Julia and Max. And I kept not seeing them. At first it didn’t bother me—I just felt a little lonely and would have liked to have them there, so that I wasn’t so alone. But as time passed, I began to worry. I don’t know why, because I really didn’t know a thing about them, then.

  On the eighth day, I set out to look for them. I knew where the Brandners lived, even if I’d never rung the bell. I just wanted to see if Julia and Max would come to the playground with me, or wherever—it didn’t matter where. It was just a couple of blocks: I walked along the street, turned left, went straight, crossed another narrow street and there I was, in front of the Brandners’ beautiful bluish-red house, which seemed bigger to me than it ever had before.

  The front yard was more orderly than my grandparents’, if that was even possible. The flower beds were raked and free of weeds, and everywhere grew bright blue hydrangeas. Everybody in the neighborhood loved hydrangeas. Those neatly trimmed, ball-shaped bushes seemed to lurk around every corner.

  I stood there and suddenly felt guilty, which was ridiculous. There was no reason for it. Maybe it was just because I had passed the house so often without ever really looking at it. Maybe it was because I didn’t really know Julia and Max. Still, I rang. Or I tried to. It took a long time for my index finger, which was circling the bell, finally to land on the polished golden dot.

  I pressed the button.

  Nothing.

  I didn’t hear any ringing.

  Again.

  Nothing.

  After I’d pressed the button a couple more times and nothing had happened, I walked around the right side of the house to the garden. Maybe they were all outside and that’s why they hadn’t heard me. But there was no one in the garden. I was just about to go when I heard something that made me walk over to the window. It wasn’t open, but I could still hear. Not words. There were words underneath the sound, but it was impossible to make them out.

  What I heard was screaming.

  This horrible screaming.

  And when I looked through the window I saw something that was more than a glimpse of a bruised belly, or a gash on a brow. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t catch my breath. The air wouldn’t go into me. There was just a whistling in my throat. Breathe, I thought, breathe, but the truth was I thought nothing, I only felt. Breathe, breathe, please breathe. When my body finally heard me, and the air came back into my lungs, and I could think again, I didn’t bang on the shutter or call the neighbors. When I could think again, I jumped up and ran and ran and ran. But no matter how far I ran, the screams stayed in my ears.

  8

  My grandmother has always said you can tell a tidy person by the corners of their room. Even if you’ve run your finger along the shelves and examined the windowsills in bright sunlight, you have to look in the corners. You can only tell if a person is really clean by looking in the nooks and crannies. If I had told Grandma on that July evening that the Brandners had dust in their corners, even if it were just balls of lint, she would have definitely listened. Instead, when I said, “The Brandners are going to kill their children eventually,” and all she could think to reply as she dried the dishes was, “Why would you ever say such a thing?”

  I said it was because the Brandners were going to kill their children eventually and because it was just an oversight that they hadn’t already.

  “You’ve gone crazy, Mascha, my goodness.”

  “Grandma, I’m telling you, they beat their children. I know.”

  “That’s not possible! Do you understand me? That cannot be! Stop it. Just stop it.”

  “Why can’t it be true? Listen.”

  “Mascha! The Brandners own the car dealership on the hill. You know that. They’re good people. Everyone here knows that. Those things don’t happen here!”

  “Julia has giant blue bruises. And Max has an actual gash on his head.”

  “And? All children look like that. You used to look like that, too, little girl, exactly. You were always falling down. All children look like that.”

  “They beat their children.”

  “Mascha! You have no idea what you’re saying. Do you know how embarr
assing it would be for us if you said such a thing? If you tell anyone else?”

  “Grandma, Julia has bruises on her stomach!”

  “Be quiet, child! Enough! The Brandners would never do such a thing, never. They’re upstanding people. Where do you think we bought our car?”

  “I’ve seen what they do to their children. What Mr. Brandner does to them.”

  “How can you possibly have seen that? And what did you see anyway, a couple of slaps? It never did your father any harm.”

  “Maybe it did. Take a look at him.”

  “Mascha, what is wrong with you? Are you just trying to make trouble? Are you bored? Is that it?”

  “Grandma, I saw through their window. I saw their father shove Max against a wall. I heard the screaming.”

  “Max is always screaming. The Brandners have always had problems with him. That’s the way he is. And who knows what you were really seeing?”

  “Grandma, only Mr. Brandner was screaming. Max was completely silent.”

  9

  The silence was the worst part. Max had let himself be thrown against the wall, and his head had banged against a picture frame that looked like it was metal. He didn’t even try to defend himself. Not for one second. He just let it happen to him while his father shouted something that I couldn’t make out. Julia, who was standing near the couch, was staring at nothing—or everything except her brother. It was a very different stare from the one I’d seen back at the wooden fort. There was nothing in Julia’s eyes. Nothing.

  Not even tears.

  I didn’t think there were tears in Max’s either, though I couldn’t be certain because of his long hair. But what I had seen was worse than tears.

  It took a long time before my grandmother would even come close to listening to me, at least half an hour. And once she had heard me out, she just began to explain it away. Every second sentence was about what good people the Brandners were, how capable, important and clean.