The door closed. She waited. She wasn’t worried, but she waited because she felt the time wasn’t right yet. She kicked the covers off and ran to the stuffed animals next to her dresser. She unzipped a black bag and pulled out the digital camcorder. She sat, hunched over it, and the blue glow lit up part of the room as the screen turned on. The logo danced. She watched intently. She leaned to one side. She picked the camera up and took it to the window, set it down recording and watched and saw nothing but black but thought when she would play it back it must decode the blackness into something visible. She could see the horizon out of her window, the camera couldn’t, but when she played it back the horizon should be on there. She watched, bows and ruffles on her nightshirt. She worried that the camera was only recording the night. She could see two lights in the distance, and that wasn’t even on the screen.
“Emme?” mother opened the door. Emme turned her head to the door. “Emme what are you doing? You shouldn’t play with that.”
“I’m not playing. I need it,” Emme said, ruffles on her night-pants. “The elephant is going to be here tonight, and I need to show you and everyone so that you know there is an elephant.”
“There is no elephant, Emme,” her mother said. She walked over and took the camcorder. Emme screamed and reached for it. “No, Emme! Things are well, can’t you see? You don’t own an elephant.”
“I don’t own an elephant!” Emme said. “Well, I do own the elephant, and the elephant owns me. We own each other.” Emme gasped. “Noooo.”
Her mother walked out of the room. “Go to sleep Emme.” She closed the door.
“I bought him!” Emme screamed, and started to cry and sobbed that she bought him.
It was very bright when Emme looked up. She thought it was because she was closer to the sun. She screamed. The kids at the bottom of the tree looked up at her. One had a large stick. They had chased her up there, and now they just watched. Emme screamed again. “Just climb higher,” one of them said. “Sometimes you can find a way down that way.” Emme looked up and was blinded.
“Error 404,” she said. The kids at the bottom of the tree were silent. “There’s an error!” she screamed. The kids made noise at the bottom of the tree. “Part of the tree didn’t load!” she yelled. “I can’t climb any higher,” she looked down at them. “Part of the tree didn’t load.” The kids stirred, and some sighed. The older one tilted his head and leaned forward. He took a few steps closer and craned his neck. He couldn’t tell where she was.
“Well,” he began slowly. “Make sure you don’t go there. Just come down.”
There was silence for a long time.
“I think I can reach it,” she said.
“Don’t do it!” the youngest kid yelled, who had believed her. “Don’t do it!” He felt he was important, yelling at her. Emme looked down and saw a patch of grey through the trees. She gasped and started moving. She didn’t care about gravity pushing her towards the ground, she could feel herself holding on and she skinned her knees and could feel her palm expanding to hold and slide around the branches. She found herself five feet from the ground on the opposite side of the tree and jumped, feel the pain shoot up to her knees. The elephant had gone somewhere down the plains.
“But I did need his help,” she said. She looked back up at the tree, and how high it was.
She started collecting twigs and carrying them around. If one of the kids got near her, she could hit them with it. But they never provoked her. What she really intended was to collect twigs for the elephant. She thought maybe elephants liked twigs, if not to eat then to carry around with their trunk, somewhere out there. They were piled in the corner of her room, on top of the stuffed animals. She also thought that she would someday find a trap for the elephant that needed twigs. She held the twig down, looking at the ridges, walking home from school.
“Hey, Emmeline!”
Emme looked up. It was Mary. She had a velvet skirt and a golden button to keep her collar closed.
“Come to my house.” Mary had never talked to her before.
Emme sat in the living room. There was a white carpet and white couches. She was drawing with crayons on a white coffee table. She had scraped a patch of red onto a piece of paper, while Mary pulled out another sheet for herself, the others covered in circles and pictures of many different colors, mostly blue. Emme looked at the open balcony, the white wall of the balcony that was too tall to see the horizon from where she sat. There was just the white wall and where that ended there was the sky that was nearly white. Mary’s mother walked in, or at least Emme assumed that’s who it was. She was wearing a white pantsuit and sunglasses. She sat down on a couch to read the newspaper, but instead watched Emme with her brows furrowed above the black sunglasses. They had never seen each other before. Just then a trunk flopped over the edge of the balcony. Emme’s chest expanded suddenly and she held still. The trunk was searching. Mary’s mother looked up at the trunk and watched it. Emme could see the elephant’s head coming up over the edge, the ears pulled forward. Mary’s mother unfolded the newspaper and placed it in front of her face. Emme wanted to leave. The trunk moved and snuffled and made motions to grab at her. She sat still, nothing on her sheets of paper except that scratch of red. The elephant wanted her. All this time the elephant had just come by to check on his property, to check that she was still in her natural house enclosure. She knew that she shouldn’t have agreed to let the elephant roam free like that, she wanted to keep him in a cage.
“You should find white sunglasses with white lenses.”
Mary looked up from her work. The curls in her hair were coming out. Mary’s mother lowered the newspaper and looked at Emme. Emme breathed faster and wanted the elephant to find her bare leg and pet it softly with its trunk. The trunk floated back over the balcony. He started walking around the house to find the pool. He had decided to spray them all with water because he was being ignored.
“My family owns two elephants,” Mary said. “We keep them in the enclosure. I can take you to them.”
“I paid for my elephant myself,” Emme said.
“Really?”
“Well, yes. But it turns out we paid for each other at the exact same time, so now we own each other. He put those bars around my house.” Mary didn’t responded but merely looked at Emme as she talked. “He used to come by when I was sleeping. He’d come by very quietly and stay a short distance away.”
“Elephants tend to be quiet.” Mary nodded. “We can go feed them.” Mary crossed her arms. “Did he ever wave at you?”
“Wave?”
“Yes, wave.” Mary stretched out her fingers at Emme.
Emme thought for a little while. “I thought maybe he was reaching, sometimes. He would put his trunk through the bars that are around my house. Maybe he was waving.”
The elephant made a loud noise. Emme was on the floor, holding her head. “That’s not an elephant!”
Mary looked down at her. “Of course it is.” She was still holding the hay. The elephant tried for hair and she yelped. She gave it the hay and batted the trunk away, and it stayed away. “These are the elephants,” Mary said, trying to convince her.
“My elephant doesn’t look like that.” Emme shook. “My elephant doesn’t look so ugly.” Emme’s elephant didn’t have wrinkles. Emme’s elephant didn’t have mud or shit and when she looked in her elephant’s eyes the elephant’s eyes looked back at her.
“Emmeline, behave,” Mary said. “I wasn’t supposed to say this, but if you don’t start behaving better my mother won’t let me see you again.”
“It’s time to place the flag, Emmeline,” her mother said. There was a world map within a child’s reach. There were many flags, almost on every continent. Some were red, some were pink. Some places were completely covered in flags; some cities had more than one flag. Emme walked over to the map slowly, eyes barely recognizing anything. “Today, daddy is here,” her mother said, and placed a flag in the middle of the ocean. Emme’s eyes widened and she began to cry. Her mother tried to quiet her, but she continued to cry and cry until her mother took her father out of the middle of the ocean.
“I have a present for you,” mother said. Emme looked up at her and what she pulled out of a box. It was a starched white shirt that had a golden button to close the collar. “I thought you would like it,” she said. “It’s so you can continue to see your friend, Mary. It’s nice isn’t it? I didn’t know that they had elephants, you should have told me. It makes so much more sense now.” Emme watched the shirt move, wide white and square with little puffy sleeves and ruffled collar lips.
“I don’t want it,” Emme said.
Mother was surprised. “You don’t want it?” She looked down at the shirt. She started folding it up quickly. “You don’t want it? It’s fine if you don’t want it, but are you just saying that? Well, it is a bit too similar to Mary’s. I can go get you another color.” Mother put the shirt back in the box and walked out of the room. Emme dropped a crayon.
Emmeline went out to the gate at night and reached for him through the bars, she felt that if she stretched hard enough the elephant would come and stretch out his trunk.
“Elephants have a strong sense of smell,” Mary said, spraying perfume on Emme. She continued to spray and spray. Emme winced away, holding her nose.
“Stop, it stinks!”
Mary sprayed and smiled.
“Stop it!” Emme grabbed the bottle but Mary wouldn’t let go. She could feel her hands dripping as Mary continued to spray. Emme slapped Mary. “It stinks!” Emme continued slapping Mary, as hard as she could.
Sometimes there would just be a glimmer of his side in the distance.
Emmeline decided to arrange the twigs around the house. The twigs started looking thinly dispersed and pathetic. It turns out she didn’t have as many as she thought. She was done finally, but she didn’t like it. She crouched on the kitchen floor and started to cry, the sticks almost falling down. She cried for a long time, until she was done. She gathered up the twigs because if she didn’t like it then they shouldn’t be around like that. By then the sun was going down, she had wasted a day but she was sleepy so she went to bed, gladly.
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