Beginnings
by Kayt Sunwood
I awoke to a blood-curdling scream. Was the sound human, a demon, or a denizen of the dark?
“Aaaaooooooooooouuuuwwwwwwhhh!”
A second, higher, supersonic screech followed.
“eeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
I threw off the yellow-flowered quilts cocooning me, jumped out of bed, and launched down fifteen steps of the dark staircase, steep and narrow, in three gargantuan leaps. At the bottom of the staircase, I found my mom screaming and holding up her hand, tiny bulbs of blood rising from needle-like punctures in her finger.
“eeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEE! eeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
A panicked otherworldly screech riveted my attention to the top of the dining room curtains in our 1890s-era farmhouse—narrow-windowed and high-ceilinged. Our home had been moved to town by draft horses in the early 1900s and converted into a Baptist church parsonage. The ornate woodwork around the windows, although coated with decades of white paint, held faded images of a swaddled Baby Jesus. Next to the paint-covered traces of Baby Jesus, a tiny creature — furry, white-faced, big brown eyes wide and black with terror — cowered and screamed decibels above my mom’s hysterical shrieking.
“It’shh okay,” I cooed calmly to the frightened creature. My speech impediment slurred my s sounds when air escaped through the side of my mouth. “We won’t hurt you. We are your new family. We love you and want to take care of you,” I continued in low and caring tones that I hoped would dissipate the fear flooding the tiny creature’s eyes.
“Mom, he didn’t mean to hurt you,” I said. I turned to my mom. She had stopped screaming and cradled her punctured, throbbing finger. “He’ssh jusht schkared.”
Mom had opened and reached into the cage intending to clean up the soiled papers lining the bottom. She hadn’t realized how terrifying a huge, strange hand thrust into the cramped cage might feel to a tiny creature inside. I knew. My eight-year-old self understood how frighteningly confusing interacting with people could be. Kids my age taunted and mocked me with slushy, slurry imitations of my speech impediment.
“Say ‘Sally sells seashells down by the seashore’,” older kids would command, shoving me into corners to block my escape. My sputtering elicited peals of laughter from my tormentors, followed by my submersion into deluges of humiliating, debilitating tears.
I turned from Mom to the creature perched high on the curtain rod. I talked to him, without words, from the heart, through eyes brimming with tears.
I told him I understood how scary the world of people could be. People don’t mean to hurt us … they just don’t understand how painful and scary it is to live in a world of words we can’t pronounce the way others do. They don’t know how to translate what our eyes and hearts are saying.
I raised my outstretched open hands to the frightened animal. My eyes and my gestures pronounced what my tongue could not. I communicated silently, lovingly, tears streaming down my cheeks. I wanted him to understand how now we had found each other, we could make it in this world together.
My Dad had surprised us the night before when he’d brought home this new four-legged future family member from a trip to the city. We lived miles from towns of any size, and a hundred miles north of Des Moines. Trips to Des Moines were infrequent, thus filled with stops to pick up needed supplies. The Earl May Nursery and Garden Center headed the destination list for Dad’s city excursions.
Dad loved the Earl May stores and rarely passed up a chance to visit. Earl May founded his mail-order seed company and retail nursery in Shenandoah, Iowa in 1919, selling baby chickens, tires, batteries, paint, shoes, clothing, and seeds. May built a radio station to promote his business with homespun farming and gardening programs, winning him the World’s Most Popular Radio Announcer award, and a special place in the hearts and retail lives of Midwesterners.
Strange sounds and movements had drawn my dad to the pet department corner of the Earl May store. Wide, bright, inquisitive, and searching eyes immediately transfixed him.
“Yep, this is a squirrel monkey, like the amazing Miss Baker, the first American animal successfully launched into space,” proudly proclaimed an eager young Earl May employee who had sidled up to Dad.
“No wonder the space program picked a squirrel monkey for that important mission,” Dad replied. “You can see the intelligence in this little guy’s expressive eyes!”
My Dad was a voracious reader of National Geographic, Scientific American, and Popular Science. The previous year, he had read all the intricate details of Miss Baker’s famous May 28, 1959 space flight.
“Miss Baker’s space capsule was the size of a thermos bottle,” Dad exclaimed in wonder as he held out his hands in front of the monkey enclosure and brought the two to within twelve inches of each other.
Dad hadn’t planned to add another four-legged member to our family. Reaching out toward the monkey impelled his spontaneous decision to bring this intelligent, 10-inch, 20-ounce, nearly human-faced squirrel monkey home to join our household. People in town called our place the Wilson Menagerie. Animals filled our house and yard. We took in orphaned or injured animals who needed care, attention, and love. We’d taken in an opossum, a raccoon, baby bunnies, birds, snakes, and a runt pig who wouldn’t have lived without loving care and attention. Our family’s relationship with animals had always revolved around taking care of those in need. Purchasing an animal, however, was a first for Dad, a first for our whole family. But how could he turn away from those big brown eyes and the slender fingers reaching out to him?
“We’ll be home in a couple of hours,” Dad explained, lovingly placing the tiny monkey-filled parakeet cage at his side on the truck’s broad bench seat. “You sit right here beside me so you can reach out if you need anything,” Dad continued. “This parakeet cage was the only transport vehicle available at Earl May’s. It’s not as fancy as Miss Baker’s capsule, but it is bigger,” Dad grinned. The monkey listened, cocked his head to one side, then settled in for the long ride home.
This post is an excerpt from a longer piece published in The Blazing Star Journal. Read the entire chapter here: The Blazing Star Journal
Bio:
Kayt Sunwood lives in a wooded valley in Interior Alaska, nestled between mountains. She returned to Iowa in the 1990s, earning a Ph.D. in Education from Iowa State University. After her retirement in 2016, Sunwood continued to teach and play upright bass in several bands. “Beginnings” is the first chapter of her memoir.
NOTE: In 1960 it was legal to import, sell, purchase, and keep exotic animals as pets. Since 1975, it has been illegal to import nonhuman primates into the United States for the pet trade (42 CFR 71.53). However, primates could be raised, purchased, and kept as pets until states passed laws prohibiting such practices. Iowa Code 717F 21 (2007) and Iowa Admin Code 77 (2013) were enacted to prohibit buying or keeping monkeys as pets.
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Heart-poundingly vivid. And your identification of/with the monkey's plight and your silent communication/communion, so moving.
I look forward to reading this memoir. I enjoy your style of writing.