There’s a fence around the zoo made of woven metal with barbed wire on top. They tried to hide it underneath bamboo and vines. To ‘rewild’ the area to the forest it used to be. Even though what used to be never included bamboo.
A woman walks on the sidewalk by this fence around the zoo every day, pushing an empty stroller, and every day, during my morning walk, she walks by me without seeing me. She’s maybe forty-five, maybe fifty. A swoop of gray hair above one ear. A pair of dead eyes and a thin line for a mouth that’s stuck together like glue. Whatever secrets she has to tell are locked away behind that mouth. Except for one big secret. The empty stroller. It has a felt blanket with blue and purple stars. And an old, dirty stuffed animal: a giraffe.
The toy’s muse, the giraffe that lives and breathes, sometimes sticks his head over the wire fence for a look. Sometimes he takes a bite of bamboo and blinks as he chews without hurry, tongue lapping up the air. I wonder if the giraffe sees the stuffed animal, considers it a lost calf, and wants to bring it home.
The vines cling through the wire fence in spirals. The fence with its verdant muffler keeps most of the zoo noises inside. But some of them escape. A child screaming. “If you shut your mouth now you’ll get ice cream later.” The screams disappearing. An elephant trumpet. A lion’s roar, in and out like an ambulance siren as it paces in a circle. “Don’t stick your hands in there, goddamnit.”
Outside the fence, cars drive on one-lane roads no matter how muddy or wet they are. They only have one way to go. The whoosh of each car is identical. Sometimes the tires spray water. Good thing I have a nice rain jacket, and the woman’s stroller has a transparent cover.
Frequent guests of the path around the fence around the zoo also include a man with a shopping cart full of tarps, a power walker with a perfect body and an angry face, a pair of high school twin boys, a mall Santa. There also tend to be guest appearances from dog walkers with twelve leashes, tired runners who have overshot their distance, young girls who are too cold.
One day I see the woman’s face jerk up towards the fence, to the barbed wire on top. It’s a subtle movement but it tells me everything. Her thoughts escape her eyes and enter mine:
If I jump, I’d get caught on the barbed wire in the thigh and chest. If they tried to pull me
off I’d rip out an artery and die. They’d cover me with vines instead and I would rewild
myself right there on the fence.
I never got a stroller. I never got a chance. I didn’t have time. I walk this path to see the woman with the stroller, and others, people like her and unlike her, people with secrets and people with tedious lives and people that try to recall their inner wild nature but instead become trapped, pacing in a circle, people that on the outside, are blank, and on the inside, roar.
Denise S. Robbins is an author from Wisconsin who now lives on the East Coast (Beast Coast). Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Barcelona Review, The Forge, Grimscribe Press, Neutral Spaces, and more. Find her at www.denisesrobbins.com.