A Day in the Zoo

The day is jaundiced with sunlight. The heat is unforgiving and radiates off the gathering crowd. Patrons stand outside the gate shielding themselves with parasols and wide-brimmed hats. Vendors hawk shaved ice and paper fans.
 
The exhibit is only promised for the week before it travels to the next big city, probably Baltimore. It came all the way from overseas unloaded from a steamship in crates and cages. The oddities of the world.
 
It is opening day. Behind the gate the displays watch and wait.
 
Dressed in loincloths and grass skirts, a mother and daughter hop barefoot on the hot sand of their pen. They may put on their shoes at the end of the day. The mother tries to shield her breasts. She asks Boss for a cover, but they make more money when she is bare. At least her child is covered.
 
She wipes her daughter’s shining brow.
 
“Remember what I told you,” she says.
 
“I know.” Her daughter swats her away.
 
“You know what?”
 
“Look them in the eye.”
 
Her mother takes her face in her hands.
 
“Look them in the eye so you can see. See what they don’t got. What don’t they got?” she asks.
 
“Souls.”
 
“Exactly. Look in their eyes and you see nothing. No spirit. No God.”  She still holds tight to her daughter’s face. Her fingers form indents in her cheeks.
 
“How come?” asks her daughter.
 
“I can’t speak for God. Guess He forgot about them. Didn’t care.”
 
“If He cares about us why He put us here?” The daughter’s eyes shine with tears.
 
“I didn’t hear that. He always puts his favorites through trials,” says the mother.
 
“We’re his favorites?”
 
Her eyes no longer shine with sorrow.
 
“Do we have souls?” asks the mother.
 
“Yes.”
 
The daughter squares her shoulders.
 
“Do we look like them?” asks the mother.
 
“No.”
 
“That’s how you know. Why would He make people as ugly as that if they were favorite? Pale and speckled like toads.”
 
The mother puffs out her cheeks and blows her warm breath in her daughter’s face. She laughs.
 
“Sometimes their hair shines,” says her daughter.
 
The gate opens.
 
“I didn’t hear that. Here they come.”
 
She takes hold of her daughter’s hand. She turns to the humming crowd, men and women, young and old, all with eyes wide and mouths wider. They pause at the panther stalking in its cage. The two-headed woman with tears in all four eyes. The pygmy man who only comes knee-high.
 
“Watch! Watch what the little man can do!” shouts Boss.
 
Boss plays his mouth organ and the pygmy man dances, his little feet tapping soft-shoe. The music stops. He dances and dances and dances.
 
Boss directs the crowd toward their pen.
 
“Real live savages! Just a dime a pair!”
 
He holds out his hat. The change goes in.
 
“Here they come,” says the daughter. She squeezes her mother’s hand.
 
The crowd press themselves against the pen’s wooden slats. The women make a show of their displeasure. They contort their faces. They scoff and shield their eyes with gloved hands.
 
The men do not hide. Their eyes travel up and down and up again. Their faces are etched with loathing, a hatred for mother and daughter’s dark skin, for the vulgarity of it, and for themselves for wanting to feel and touch and thrust upon these beasts of burden.
 
A man with a wispy blonde mustache spits at their feet. The mother kicks up the sand. Gasps!
 
“Look at them looking. Thinking we not looking too. Aren’t we looking?” whispers the mother.
 
“Yes,” says her daughter.
 
“Where are we looking?”
 
“Right in their Godless eyes.”