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Authors: Jodi Picoult
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chairs.
“If I’d found something I would have contacted you—”
“I doubt it,” she says. She starts opening up drawers where I keep my stamps, my secret stash of Oreos, and my take-out menus.
“Do you
mind
?” I say.
But Jenna is ignoring me, her hand stuck between the cushions of the couch. “I
knew
it was here,” she says with obvious relief, and like floss, she pulls out the blue scarf from my dream and winds it around her neck.
Seeing it, three-dimensional and close enough to touch, makes me feel a little less crazy—I had only been incorporating a scarf this kid had been wearing into my subconscious. But there’s other information in that dream that makes no sense: the onion-skin wrinkles of an elephant’s hide, the ballet of its trunk. Plus something else that I had not realized until this moment: The elephant had been checking to see if the woman was inhaling and exhaling. The animal had left—not because the woman had
stopped
breathing but because she still
was
.
I don’t know how I know this, I just do.
My whole life, this is how I’ve defined the paranormal: can’t understand it, can’t explain it, can’t deny it.
You cannot be a born psychic and not believe in the power of signs. Sometimes it’s the traffic that makes you miss your flight, which winds up crashing into the Atlantic. Sometimes it’s the single rose that blooms in a garden full of weeds. Or sometimes it’s the girl you dismissed, who haunts your sleep.
“Sorry I bothered you,” Jenna says. “Or whatever.”
She is already halfway out the door when I hear my voice calling her name. “Jenna. This is probably crazy. But,” I say, “was your mother in the circus or something? A zookeeper? I … I don’t know why, but there’s something important about elephants?”
I haven’t had a true psychic thought in seven years.
Seven
years. I tell myself this one is coincidence, luck, or the aftereffects of the burrito I had for lunch.
When she turns around, her face is washed with an expression that’s equal parts shock and wonder.
I know, in that moment, that she was meant to find me.
And that I am going to find her mother.
ALICE
There is no question that elephants understand death. They may not plan for it the way we do; they may not imagine elaborate afterlives like those in our religious doctrines. For them, grief is simpler, cleaner. It’s all about loss.
Elephants are not particularly interested in the bones of other dead animals, just other elephants. Even if elephants come across the body of another elephant that has been long dead, its remains picked apart by hyenas and its skeleton scattered, they bunch and get tense. They approach the carcass as a group, and caress the bones with what can only be described as reverence. They stroke the dead elephant, touching it all over with their trunks and their back feet. They will smell it. They might pick up a tusk or a bone and carry it for a while. They will place even the tiniest bit of ivory under their feet and gently rock back and forth.
The naturalist George Adamson wrote of how, in the 1940s, he had to shoot a bull elephant that was breaking into government gardens in Kenya. He gave the meat to locals and moved the rest of the carcass a half mile from the village. That night, elephants discovered the carcass. They took the shoulder blade and the femur and brought the bones back to the spot where the elephant had been shot. In fact, all of the great elephant researchers have documented death rituals: Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Joyce Poole, Karen McComb, Lucy Baker, Cynthia Moss, Anthony Hall-Martin.
And me.
I once saw a herd of elephants walking in the reserve in Botswana when Bontle, their matriarch, went down. When the other elephants realized she was in distress, they attempted to lift her with their tusks, trying to get her to stand. When that didn’t work, some of the young males mounted Bontle, again seeking to bring her back to consciousness. Her
“If I’d found something I would have contacted you—”
“I doubt it,” she says. She starts opening up drawers where I keep my stamps, my secret stash of Oreos, and my take-out menus.
“Do you
mind
?” I say.
But Jenna is ignoring me, her hand stuck between the cushions of the couch. “I
knew
it was here,” she says with obvious relief, and like floss, she pulls out the blue scarf from my dream and winds it around her neck.
Seeing it, three-dimensional and close enough to touch, makes me feel a little less crazy—I had only been incorporating a scarf this kid had been wearing into my subconscious. But there’s other information in that dream that makes no sense: the onion-skin wrinkles of an elephant’s hide, the ballet of its trunk. Plus something else that I had not realized until this moment: The elephant had been checking to see if the woman was inhaling and exhaling. The animal had left—not because the woman had
stopped
breathing but because she still
was
.
I don’t know how I know this, I just do.
My whole life, this is how I’ve defined the paranormal: can’t understand it, can’t explain it, can’t deny it.
You cannot be a born psychic and not believe in the power of signs. Sometimes it’s the traffic that makes you miss your flight, which winds up crashing into the Atlantic. Sometimes it’s the single rose that blooms in a garden full of weeds. Or sometimes it’s the girl you dismissed, who haunts your sleep.
“Sorry I bothered you,” Jenna says. “Or whatever.”
She is already halfway out the door when I hear my voice calling her name. “Jenna. This is probably crazy. But,” I say, “was your mother in the circus or something? A zookeeper? I … I don’t know why, but there’s something important about elephants?”
I haven’t had a true psychic thought in seven years.
Seven
years. I tell myself this one is coincidence, luck, or the aftereffects of the burrito I had for lunch.
When she turns around, her face is washed with an expression that’s equal parts shock and wonder.
I know, in that moment, that she was meant to find me.
And that I am going to find her mother.
ALICE
There is no question that elephants understand death. They may not plan for it the way we do; they may not imagine elaborate afterlives like those in our religious doctrines. For them, grief is simpler, cleaner. It’s all about loss.
Elephants are not particularly interested in the bones of other dead animals, just other elephants. Even if elephants come across the body of another elephant that has been long dead, its remains picked apart by hyenas and its skeleton scattered, they bunch and get tense. They approach the carcass as a group, and caress the bones with what can only be described as reverence. They stroke the dead elephant, touching it all over with their trunks and their back feet. They will smell it. They might pick up a tusk or a bone and carry it for a while. They will place even the tiniest bit of ivory under their feet and gently rock back and forth.
The naturalist George Adamson wrote of how, in the 1940s, he had to shoot a bull elephant that was breaking into government gardens in Kenya. He gave the meat to locals and moved the rest of the carcass a half mile from the village. That night, elephants discovered the carcass. They took the shoulder blade and the femur and brought the bones back to the spot where the elephant had been shot. In fact, all of the great elephant researchers have documented death rituals: Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Joyce Poole, Karen McComb, Lucy Baker, Cynthia Moss, Anthony Hall-Martin.
And me.
I once saw a herd of elephants walking in the reserve in Botswana when Bontle, their matriarch, went down. When the other elephants realized she was in distress, they attempted to lift her with their tusks, trying to get her to stand. When that didn’t work, some of the young males mounted Bontle, again seeking to bring her back to consciousness. Her
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