Howler

Coffee skin and almond eyes, Rae had the most ferociously infectious laugh. I was in awe of her ability to stir up humor in the most dire of predicaments, her head often rearing back exposing a mouthful of cackling teeth. It never mattered what we did, I knew it would always be a deep dive into something that would fill my otherwise dreary little life with wonder and surprise.

Once we found ourselves abandoned in the city, the bus leaving our seventh grade field trip without us. I had begun my meltdown, while Rae crafted us an unadulterated adventure. The school trip had been to a museum, but close by was a zoo. She grabbed my hand and took off running and there we went, sneaking through the turnstiles of the zoo entrance obscured by a pregnant mother with toddler in tow.

Rae had me distract the fellow at the snack counter by feigning a fall, she grabbed a bag of popped corn, some chocolates and a coke and dashed out of sight while I quickly scrambled and followed her, my slightly-oversized red sneakers nearly making me execute an actual fall.

We looked at the giraffes and elephants, the other land animals from the great African continent, we checked out the polar bears and the birds, the snakes and the bears, but our favorite was the monkeys—particularly the howler monkeys from Central and South America.

While we tried to imitate them, they seemingly laughed at us as one in particular drew nearer to the perimeter bars separating us and them.

“Look,” Rae had managed to breath between belly-flipping laughter, “that one is wagging it’s finger at us. Looks like old Mrs. Creapsters.”

Mrs. Creeter was our gym teacher who was continually admonishing us for our lack of syncopation and messing up the chalk drawn lines in athletic drills and games. And I had to admit, the monkey did have the same protruding chin and beady little black eyes—minus the glasses—which made us laugh even harder.

“I wonder if we could bust this one out of this zoo prison,” Rae said when she’d managed to get her breath back, giving me a strange look.

“Oh no, I’m not going in for that kind of subterfuge,” I had said, knowing that you couldn’t put any thing past Rae.

“But don’t you think they’re miserable in here?” she had said in all seriousness, a somberness gracing her face that I’d rarely seen her show. “It’s one sad life. I’d hate to be locked up like that.”

“Yeah, me too,” I remember saying feeling a bit afraid of how much grief Rae seemed to be feeling for the hairy creature. I reached out and grabbed for her hand and held it, feeling it tremble in mine.

They say the comedic people often go for laughs to cover up the hurt they are feeling, maybe that was true for Rae, I was never certain at the time though I probably should have known it all along.

That afternoon, safely back after feigning that we’d sat in the museum lobby until closing and a nice security guard drove us back to our school where my parents were frantically waiting, we took Rae home. I didn’t know much about her home-life, but I knew Rae only had her mom to look out after her, that her dad wasn’t really in the picture and that Rae’s mom did her best but struggled.

Later that night, I texted Rae and said that we should try to go see the howler monkeys someday in the wild, asking her if she’d like that. We agreed that we would indeed do that and pinky promised on it the very next day.

“So, in order to go, we’ll need money and permission,” I had said looking out the tops of my eyes, my head tilted down, so as to look very serious. “If we start saving now, maybe we can go when we graduate.”

And that became our plan.

That summer, we both managed to get summer jobs at the zoo, working at the little silver snack stand with the rainbow umbrella that we’d looted on that nefarious school trip escapade. During our breaks, we’d often go to see the various animals, and our feet often carried us back to those howlers.

“How can such small creatures make so much stinking noise,” I’d said to her.

Rae smiled and then just shook her head. “I’d still like to bust them out of this place. They don’t belong here.”

“Well at least we will go see them. We’ve got five summer’s to save up,” I had said.

“Definitely.” she offered, giving me that same look I’d seen before that sent a chill up my spine.

That was the thing with Rae, she was fearless but there was also something very fragile about her too, something I couldn’t quite reach, like a porcelain plate teetering on the edge of a very high window sill on a windy day.

###

The news reporters all said it was an accident, but I knew it wasn’t.

“Teen at Zoo Dead, Mutilated by Monkeys” read the headline. The news indicated that she’d gotten too close, that the door to the enclosure had been left unlocked and she’d been drug inside and killed by the troop of primates. Officials were determining next steps for the lethal monkeys, meanwhile authorities reported her mother had been committed to a mental institution.

I went through those first days and weeks as if walking through a blinding blizzard, making moving motions, but utterly directionless really. Like all tragedies, weeks turned to months and then to years and time moves on. Boyfriends. College. Marriage. Jobs. I thought about Rae often but I didn’t talk about her much, it was all too painful.

On my thirty-second birthday, my husband Frank presents me with an envelope. He’s smiling at me and I love the way his eyes light up his entire face.

“What’s inside?” I ask him.

“Well, why don’t you open it and find out?” he says.

Inside the envelope is a trip. Two tickets to Costa Rica and a two-week itinerary of everywhere he has planned for us to go.

“No way!” I squeal, beside myself with excitement.

“You got four weeks to pack love.”

And so, travel will be added to the list of time moving on.

###

We arrived in Costa Rica, a country of pristine and wild beauty, and we’ve been here for five days already. I’ve been to a coffee plantation, ridden in an oxcart, spied sloths, exotic bugs and the most colorful of butterflies. There is so much enchantment here that I feel like magic certainly lives here, like a fairy or a troll might pop out at any corner.

Frank isn’t feeling great today and so I take the opportunity to explore the grounds at our hotel in Monteverde. They call the place we are staying a mountain hotel because we are high in the jungle in the cloud forest. I’ve got my green birdwatching binoculars around my neck and I’m staying to the fixed paths.

I see movement in the trees, so many birds, and then I see a monkey. I steady my binoculars and sure enough, it’s a howler. I can tell from it’s dark body and light colored lips and I am reminded once again of Mrs. Creeter. And then, I’ll be damned if the creature doesn’t wag it’s finger at me.

I know I shouldn’t, but I move closer. It seems to be beckoning me; it’s forefinger curling inward and back out in a come hither motion.

The wind picks up and I hear a rustling sound and then I jump as a figure approaches me. It’s a girl, with almond eyes and huge grin.

“I have been waiting for you Sheila,” she says to me. “I knew you would come.”

And there is Rae, just as she’d been so many years before.

“I set them free. You see,” and one of the monkeys comes down and takes her hand.

“But you can’t be real,” I’m crying now. “You’re dead Rae. How can this be true.”

“Any and everything can be true Sheila. All those adventures we had. You didn’t possibly think we could do any of the things we did, but we did them. The line between what we think is possible and what isn’t is so thin.” And then she laughs—that giant, cacophonous Rae laugh. And the jungle shakes. The sound of howling beings, a few voices at first and then what sounds like a hundred monkeys all at once screaming and hooting and and the trees become alive with sound.

I look again and Rae is gone and all I see is the backside of one howler leaping back into the trees and being engulfed by sound. And the sound lifts up everything. Fear. Sadness. Loss. All are lifted to the treetops and beyond and I know that Rae is okay now and that I’ll be okay and that wonder and surprise can continue to delight and light up even the most fragile of souls and dreariest of days.

###