Yejun Chun


American Zoo

Around the midnight, when the drunk men stop shouting in the bars, and the city lights stop flickering like broken flashlights, she sneaks me in through the back iron gate where the food trucks usually drop in to drop off the daily meat meals for the animals in the storage rooms; we were here to talk.

“Be extra quiet; there could be new cleaners who show up early back in the storage.”

“Caring and careful as always.”

“Daring too, every once in a while.”

Even though there were no kids in the recovery ward tonight, we were here because she had always exclaimed through the wire that there were few activities more therapeutic than walking around in the American Zoo, talking to another human being during the night shifts; she wanted to talk in person this time.

For almost her entire life she was not told to, but she came here because she had always wanted to take care of creatures who were sick and far away from their homes, and that was precisely what she has been doing for the last few years, despite the shamelessly shrinking budget on both her and the animals’ welfare, which was why I was surprised, on the phone, when she said that she was thinking about leaving and heading back home.

Gradually, as we circle around the closed habitats, we open conversations, beginning with work with thin smiles but with the intention to slowly shift over to the metaphorical elephant in front of us. Her work stories were always much more interesting than my office stories; she had stories on which featherless birds were treated on the operating table this morning or if an old desert critter was scheduled to be released back to the wild, but tonight, it was certain her mother was deep in her mind, and I had been nervous with her. I was nervous because she was nervous, and as we passed the darkly lit and empty savanna section, my mind began to overfill slowly like a pond near a breaking dam.

Just as our conversation narrows itself to its inevitable corner, we step in front of a cave in the “Big Cats” section, which, ironically, just so happens to be relevant to our conversation matter at the moment. Korea seemed especially so far away tonight, yet the two Siberian tigers that happened to lie right in front of us, on and under cold stone slabs, were wide awake with tiny specks of light bouncing from their pupils.

“Looks like my mother has stage four again, and it’s more severe than before.”

Moments pass by in silence as we continue our stroll around the surrounding clay figurines and on the gravel road, and when the words finally sink in, and we move out of the tigers’ sight, I say in a hushed and clogged voice, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Nodding slowly and biting her lower lip, she hugs herself and, along with her untellable stories and worries, and though we had made a mutual agreement to be honest to each other, I knew that I could never fully understand how much she’s gone through.

Over us, the starless sky was now no longer blackening but starting to lighten up, which made sense since we’d been here long enough, and with a breeze to the face, the blue-painted winds from van Gogh’s Starry Night momentarily pops into my head before fading away, as my eyes focus on an empty canvas again and my mind bounces back to the two tigers.

“Please tell me that I’ve made the right choice to be here, do that favor for me.”

Quietly, slowly, and gently, I hold her hand with my hand, and she loosens her arms which eases me in response.

Right after that, I was ready to speak again.

“She’s going to be absolutely alright, like before, like you and me.”

There wasn’t much walk after those few words, as time seemed to speed up the orange lighting in the sky; she and I sat down on an empty oakwood bench near a closed snack shack, side-to-side, staring into space while waiting for the dawn to fully break.

“Usually, we would hear occasional coos or shrieks throughout the night, especially near the birdhouse. Very few animals were heard tonight, and this might sound ridiculous to you, but it made me wonder whether the animals liked us sneaking here at night, talking.”

“We can do this again, but just call me a week before and not two hours before.”

Xeroxed thoughts churn in my head throughout the rest of the dawn, with most of them being about us when both of us were little, and I end up trying to scenarize what would have happened if both of us hadn’t left our rural homes. Yet, the pictures in my head could not quite blossom as I expected and even seemed to flower into a much more delicate but disheartening ending than this moment I was having with her now. Zoetrope-like, this image of her and me sitting on a bench talking, with sunlight fading in, starts to play itself again and again in my head until it becomes one continuous motion and another new memory, waiting to be born.

Yejun Chun is a speculative CNF and fiction writer from Seoul, South Korea. He is currently an undergraduate studying Comparative and English Literature at Yonsei University. His CNF and flash fiction has been published in hobart pulp, the drabble, and 50-Word Stories among other places.

 
 

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