Monkey Face

“Hey monkey face, did you just escape from the zoo?” Eva scowled, and flung a handful of sand from the hole she was digging at the boy taunting her. 

“Eww she’s throwing poo! Escaped from the zoo, she’s throwing poo!”, the boy ran away yelling.

Eva lowered her head and tried to dig a hole big enough to crawl into.

When mom picked her up after school, Eva asked, “Am I going to grow up pretty like you?” 

Her mom stroked her hair. “You’re unique and beautiful in your own way.”

She scowled. “No I’m not. Nobody likes me. And school is too hard. Can I stay home, please?”

“You’ll catch up when you get older. Slow and steady wins the race,” her mom said. 

Eva didn’t know if that was true. Mom and dad were smart people who read lots of books, and taught science at university. She wanted to be like them, but she still struggled to read. When Eva was moved into the special education class, the kids who used to play with her at school started ignoring her, or even worse, made fun of her.

One night after dinner, mom and dad said they had a present and a story. “Story first, then present,” her dad said. Her parents glanced at each other, then started talking. They told her that she was adopted, that nobody knew who her biological parents were, and that she’d never grow up to look like mom and dad because she didn’t share their genes. She was in special ed because she truly was special — like a snowflake, beautiful because she was unique. And they loved her for who she was, and would help her be anything she wanted to be. Eva sat quietly throughout their speech. It hurt to hear their words, but deep down she already knew it was true. She would never be like them.

When they finished talking, they asked if she understood. Eva said yes. Slowly, the tears started to come. Mom held her while she cried, and dad left the room. Her tears turned into big, shaky sobs. She was absorbed in crying when she realized some of the howling sounds weren’t hers. She stopped abruptly. The howling, yelping sounds continued. She tore her face out of her mom's arms, and saw her dad holding a wiggling puppy. She leapt up with a squeal of joy.

“We got a very special puppy, for a very special girl,” her dad said. “He’s part wolf. You’ll have to spend lots of time playing with him and training him to make him a good pet. Do you think you can do that?,” he asked.

“Yes, yes!” Eva cried. She hugged the puppy, and it licked the tears from her face. 

“What are you going to name him?”, her mom asked.

“White Fang!” said Eva immediately. The puppy was not white, but her parents did not question her choice. She loved wolves, and they’d read the children’s version of White Fang and Call of the Wild to her many times. 

Fang quickly became her best friend. Their house was out in the country, next to a ranch with acres of vacant land. Eva loved roaming the hills, fields, and forests with Fang by her side. She’d spend hours pretending she was a wolf too, or that they lived out in the woods. She made a small shelter out of sticks next to a big boulder. This became their forest house. Out there, Eva felt most like herself. She wasn’t good at books, but she could remember the hidden trails through the forest, and trace the creatures who walked through it like Fang did.

Eva’s first human friend took a long time to find. A new kid showed up at school, and sat next to her in special ed. His face wasn’t lopsided and he didn’t drool, like some of the other kids. He was just a slow learner like her. His name was Bert, and he liked drawing more than he liked reading and writing. He drew a picture of a big thick person standing next to a small one. “That’s you,” he said, pointing to the big one, “and that’s me.”

The first time Eva went to Bert’s house, it was like visiting a new world. Bert got to watch TV, and his mom gave them cookies. Eva’s mom only fed her healthy snacks, and she only got to watch educational shows like science documentaries. She didn’t know any superheroes, or movie stars. “You don’t know who Superman is?” Bert asked, his eyes wide. “You’re like an alien from another planet! You could be, since you don’t know who your real parents are!”

Eva sometimes regretted telling him she was adopted. He brought up her “real parents” all the time. When they watched Shrek, he pointed at the ogres and said “Ha! Maybe those are your real parents! Your mouth looks like his!” It wasn’t very nice, but if Bert knew how to control the things he said, he probably wouldn’t be in special ed and wouldn’t be her friend. 

“Who are my real parents?”, she asked her dad on the way home from Bert’s.  

“Honey, there’s a difference between ‘real’ and ‘biological’. We love you, so you’re our real kid. As for your biological parents, they could have been anybody. You were left at a fire station as a baby.” 

“Why didn’t they want me?” 

“They might not have been able to afford it. Lots of people have babies they love, but can’t take care of, so somebody else raises them,” he said. He looked over at her, and smiled. “We’re very lucky to have you.” 

Mom and dad never made her feel ugly or stupid. They said she was good at different things, and was still figuring out what those things were. They gave her all sorts of aptitude tests, and let her try different activities like dance, music, horseback riding, and soccer. What she was really good at though, was wrestling. 

When it came to wrestling, or any form of fighting, Eva’s size was an advantage. Finally there was something she was good at. Fighting made her feel powerful and alive. She broke her nose several times, but it didn’t matter since it already looked like a potato. 

Within a few years, Eva took home the wrestling state championship. Her school announced her name at the assembly, and the principal shook her hand, said he was proud of her, and gave her a medal. Everyone clapped. She clutched her medal on the bus ride home, giddy with excitement. Winning the trophy had been great, but being applauded by her classmates who had always ignored or made fun of her had felt like the bigger victory. 

The house was empty when she got home. Her parents must have stayed late on campus for an event. Eva wandered through the empty house holding her medal, anxious for them to return. She idly fingered the handle on her father’s office, which was usually locked. To her surprise, it swung open. 

Eva peered into the darkened room. Skulls and artifacts sat on shelves next to old books. She wasn’t supposed to go in here, and the room creeped her out so much as a kid she had never wanted to, but she was a big girl now. She had a medal, she was a champion, and she wasn’t afraid of anything. She was old enough to be let in to secret adult rooms. 

Making up her mind, Eva took a decisive step into the room and turned on the light. There were papers strewn across the desk, filing cabinets in the corner, and hundreds of books. But what drew her attention the most were the human skulls. Stacked among the books in all shapes and sizes, they were fascinating and horrible. Eva put her medal down and picked up a skull. The hollow eye sockets stared back at her. She knew her father studied old skulls, but she didn’t know how he could stand those empty eyes staring at him all day. 

On the top shelf was a much bigger skull. She had to pull the chair over to reach it. Standing precariously balanced on the office chair, she carefully brought the skull down. It was larger and heavier than the others. She turned it over, examining it. A key was taped to the bottom. Eva pulled it off and turned it over in her hand. Her gaze swept around the room and lingered on the filing cabinet. It had a small lock, about the size of the key. She walked over, and inserted the key in the lock. It turned. 

Eva sometimes thought that she really wasn’t so stupid, and this was one of those times. Her curiosity and satisfaction overcame the guilt she felt about digging through her father’s files. There were journal articles, and complex lab test results, and medical records. A few papers were marked “classified”. At first she was only looking for the sake of looking, but her interest grew as she realized she was stumbling on something that really was a big secret. 

There was a paper with her name on it, and her parents’ names. She froze, and struggled to make sense of it. Homo Neanderthalensis. DNA. Cloning. Experimental revival. Long-term research study. Custody. Natural upbringing. The full truth of it slowly began emerging, like a monster coming out from under the bed. And as it emerged, her world crumbled. 

Neanderthals. Her dad studied them. She wasn’t adopted. She was a clone. She had never had real parents. The people whose genes she carried had died thousands of years ago. And her smart scientist parents, who said they loved her, were writing reports on her this whole time. She was a pet rat in a lab, only the lab was her home, and she’d never known. 

Eva dropped the papers and stepped back shakily. She wasn’t even the same species as her parents. Or anyone else. No wonder she had always felt out of place — this was not her world. As far as she knew, she was the only one of her kind who existed. She glanced at the skulls on the wall. She was one of those, brought to life. 

She understood now. This was why she was so special, so precious to her parents, despite her awkwardness. This was why they were so patient and kind. An uncontrollable anger began rising in her. Nobody had bothered to explain to her that her whole life was a science experiment. She had been raised like an unusually stupid kid, scorned and mocked by puny homo sapiens who, for all she knew, had probably killed her ancestors and eaten them. 

And they’d named her Eva, like some clever take on Adam and Eve. But there was no Adam. She was entirely alone in the world. No boy would ever fall in love with her monkey face. She picked up the large skull and hurled it at the floor. It bounced disappointingly, so she swept the papers off the desk, and hurled a paperweight at the window. The glass broke with a crash. She ran to her room, emptied her backpack on her bed, and packed a change of clothes and her savings. She didn’t care where she went, as long as it was as far away as possible. 

She went outside. Fang jumped up on his hind legs when he saw her. She threw open the gate of his enclosure and hugged him, dodging his kisses. “Go to the forest house, Fang.” He knew how to make his own way to their camp in the woods when she let him out, and sometimes would run ahead of her. He took off running, and she held back tears as she watched him go. Her parents would look for her there first, so she had to go somewhere else. 

She got on her bike and pedaled furiously to town. At the bus station, she bought a ticket to the farthest destination there was. Long rides made her queasy, but Eva stared resolutely out the window at the passing scenery. Her parents never took her on trips, and she had never traveled far from home. Her country home was like the sterile environment they keep lab rats in, with only healthy foods and appropriate entertainment, she thought bitterly. 

She must have fallen asleep, because the driver was shaking her and telling her this was the last stop. She stumbled off the bus and looked around blearily. So this was Chicago. She clutched the straps of her backpack tightly and set off in a random direction. There were many more roads and cars than in her town. Night was falling, and she needed somewhere to sleep. She’d passed people sleeping under an overpass. She rarely got cold, so she could sleep outside, but the smell of cars disgusted her. 

It was a relief when she finally came to a park. The green smell of vegetation was deeply reassuring. She crawled under some bushes and curled up with her head on her backpack. Her eyes closed, but her ears stayed alert to voices and footsteps around her. She drifted in and out of sleep, jolted awake by every tiny noise.

Yet she only became aware of the man on top of her when he’d pinned her down. She jerked awake and screamed. He clamped a hand over her mouth, and hissed, “I’ve got a knife, don’t make this hard on yourself.” 

Rage coursed through her body. She didn’t care what he had. She flung herself at him, wrestling him to the ground, and started punching as hard as she could, screaming like a banshee. There was blood on her fists. She stood up. The man lay motionless. 

She turned and ran blindly away. At the edge of the park, she narrowly dodged two police officers shouting for her to stop. “Stop, miss! An officer ordered you to stop! If you keep running, you will be placed under arrest!” She kept running. It took both police officers plus reinforcements from a cop car to bring her down and subdue her. 

She wouldn’t answer their questions, so they put her in a jail cell at the police station. After a while a lady police officer came in. “Eva? You ran away yesterday, didn’t you? Your parents are very worried about you. You’re a strong girl, but you shouldn’t be out on your own. They’ll be here to pick you up soon.” 

“I’m not going to jail?” Eva asked. 

“You’re a runaway teenage girl with special needs. He’s an adult male sex offender. I’d say he deserved what he got. It’ll get sorted out, as long as you go home with your parents and be good, ok?” 

Eva nodded. 

They let her out of the cell when her parents arrived. Her mom threw her arms around her and burst into tears, and her dad was holding Fang, who wagged his bushy tail when he saw her. 

“I’m so sorry,” her mom kept saying. “We have a lot to talk about,” said her dad. 

It was a long car ride home. 

“We should have told you sooner, but we didn’t know how you’d react,” said her dad. 

“Were you going to write reports on me my whole life, then sell me to a lab?”, Eva replied sarcastically. 

“What? No! We wrote reports to make sure the scientific communities and government agencies who let us do this knew you were doing ok. We can stop if you want. We’ll say you asked for more privacy.” 

“Yes. I want that.” 

There was a long silence.

“We kept your identity secret not only from you, but from almost the whole world. We wanted to protect you from the negative attention and public pressure you’d get if people knew the truth.” 

“Negative attention… like people calling me ‘stupid monkey face’?” 

“I’m sorry we never told you why you were different,” said her mom. “But everyone’s different. Bert’s in special ed with you, and he’s just a normal kid with learning disabilities. But you have a really important and interesting reason for being different.”

“Because my people are all extinct, and I should be too.”

“Your people were extinct. Now they’re not, because you’re here. And you have a pretty decent life, don’t you? You won a medal at school the other day. You have a friend. You have a wolf dog, who’s part wild but lives with us humans anyways, like you,” her dad looked over at her, smiling. 

Her mom added, “And you have parents who really love you. You’re not just a science experiment. You’re our only child. Love isn’t just a feeling, it’s what you do for people, how you treat them. We’ve tried to love you as best as we know how.” 

“Why did you make me if you knew it’d be hard for me?”

“The same reason any parent has kids. To give them a life and see what they do with it.” 

Eva thought about that for a while. “What do I do?”

“Whatever you want. You have lots of options. You could be an athlete. Or write a book. Or study paleoanthropology like me, and learn about your people,” said her dad.

“What if I want to live in the forest with Fang and never see people again?” 

“If that’s what you want, then we’ll figure out how to help you do it,” said her mom. 

Eva stared out the window. There was one more thing she really needed to know.

“Are there others like me?” 

“Not yet. But there could be. You’d have to participate in some studies, and help us convince people…” 

Eva nodded. She knew what she wanted now.