Girl With No Name by Marina Chapman

Author:Marina Chapman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books

18

Over the following weeks, I existed in a strange sort of purgatory, suspended in a place where I felt completely alone. I was no longer one of the monkey troop, and ached for them constantly, yet neither was I a part of this strange new world I lived in, where it seemed I could do nothing right. But at least I was making progress. Little by little I was beginning to grasp the odd word and phrase. It was by the tiniest of increments, and I had a long way to travel, but I was a child and trying to learn was instinctive.

Adapting physically to the sweeping change in my life was very hard. My spoken language was still made up of animal noises, and I didn’t know how to smile or make facial expressions that corresponded to those I saw around me. I climbed constantly. It was an effort of will not to climb up things: in the house initially, where I would climb up onto worktops, and soon outside, up the trees in the garden.

I couldn’t stand properly. It still felt unsettling and unnatural, and, left to my own devices, I would squat any time I was stationary. I especially liked to squat in corners. To be in a corner was to feel safe. My back and sides were covered. And though it wouldn’t save me from a beating it still felt instinctive to do it, especially in those corners that held big plants in pots and where there was sufficient space to slide in behind them.

If I needed to move somewhere, I would still scuff along the ground on all fours. I knew humans walked on two legs and tried hard to copy them, but I was constantly hindered by my unconscious mind, which would have me back in my default position unless I made a huge effort of will. It was as hard for me as it would have been for a human in the jungle ordered to get around on four limbs instead of two. And every time I was caught doing any of these things that came so naturally, Ana-Karmen, equally naturally, would discipline me.

Perhaps the hardest discipline to learn, however, was how to behave at mealtimes. Simply learning to sit and eat at a table was so difficult. I had no idea about tables and cutlery and crockery (other than that the latter was so fragile), and would automatically take my food to the floor in the corner and set about quickly eating it with my fingers. That was the way things had worked in the jungle. You found something to eat and you took it to a quiet spot, wolfing it down quickly and guarding it as you did so. If you didn’t, then it would obviously be stolen by another monkey. So to sit with others and eat together was unthinkable.

My table manners, consequently, were appalling. I would grab at food, stuffing it into my mouth in big handfuls, and with some kinds of food this inevitably meant chaos.

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