Detroit, 1971
I’m not evil. I’ve spent the past two weeks thinking about this and I’m quite sure. I’m just a kid. No eleven year old is evil. And it might not have been me anyway. It was like a game. Everyone did it, and the hippo seemed to like it.
The zoo is just one big bunch of smells. Monkey smells, elephant smells, hippo house smells. You wouldn’t believe they’d keep animals in a place like that; indoors, all cement walls, and this pathetic pool, dirty water. Imagine spending your life in a place like that when you’re supposed to be in some big blue lake in Africa. I was probably putting it out of its misery. I left before I knew anything was happening.
The guy on the local news said the hippo had choked to death on it. Then, a couple of days later the Free Press said it could have got stuck in its intestines if it hadn’t gone in his windpipe. It’s hard to imagine something that big gasping for breath, or being in agony. I try not to think about it. People do silly, bad things all the time and they get away with it. They never have to look back.
I don’t know what would have happened if my dad had found out. He never gave a damn about a hippo, but he would have gone berserk. I remember him reading it in the paper and saying, “You were at the zoo that day, weren’t you?”
“I think so.”
“What kind of idiot throws a tennis ball into a hippo’s mouth?”
I remember trying to keep my voice all conversational and innocent, and he looked at me like he thought I sounded a bit iffy.
“No,” I said. “I never went near the hippos.”
Sometimes I wish I was a Catholic. I could go to confession, spill it all out, and then start again, my heart as white as snow. I’d carry a little notebook with me and I’d jot down all the major sins and “misdemeanours.” Then I’d whip it out in the confession booth. Maybe I’d need to take a little torch so I could go through the list. “I ate meat on Friday. I made my little sister cry. I killed a hippo.”
My friend Chris is a Catholic. He goes to Catechism on Thursdays. That means he can’t go to Little League practice, so he can’t be on the team. He loves to play baseball, but at least he’ll go to heaven. I told him maybe heaven would be getting to play baseball all day long, and he said I was sacrilegious. I’m glad he wasn’t with me when the hippo thing happened. He’d have had to tell on me. I was with Jake. He’s done enough bad stuff that I know about, he wouldn’t dare turn me in.
I dream about hippos. Hard to believe, but I dream that they talk to me. Big booming voices. They point at me, pointing with fat hands, with fingers that I know hippos haven’t got. Sometimes there’s one, the one from the zoo. Sometimes there’s a bunch of them around me in a big blubbery circle, coming closer and closer until I can smell the peanut and popcorn breath. I know they’re trying to scare me, trying to make me ashamed. I guess they figure I’ve taken one of their own, they can ruin my life for me.
So I’ve decided I’ve got to find some way to make up for what I did. I thought maybe I should be a zoo vet when I grow up so I can save some animal lives. I know I’m kidding myself. I hate school now, and I’m sure it’s all only going to get harder. I thought I could save my money and buy a memorial plaque for the zoo, but then they’d know who I was. Also, the guy who engraved the plaque would know, and he would probably tell on me even if I sent it through the mail. Besides, what good is a plaque?
I went to sleep last night trying to think what I should do. I woke up before it was light. I’d been having one of my hippo nightmares. I had been told by the hippo that I had to go through the same pain and death that he had. That was to be my punishment. When I woke up I could feel my heart thumping, and I was sticky with sweat. I’d had a message from the afterlife, haunted by a hippo. I tried to work out what size ball I had to choke myself on, since I’m so much smaller than a three-ton hippo. It was scary even thinking about it. Would a hippo really expect me to do that? They seem so gentle, all dark grey and slippery and spongy looking at the same time. I told myself again and again that it couldn’t be. No ghost of a hippo would be plotting his revenge.
This morning my mom said I looked pale. She thought I was coming down with something. In my mind I heard the deep booming voice of the hippo saying, “This is guilt that you are feeling.” Any other day I would have said, “Yes, I don’t feel so good,” just to get the day off school, but I said I was fine. I was afraid I might doze off and the hippo would come back. I never thought I’d feel this way, but I’ve made a decision. When Dad gets home from work I’m going to tell him what I did. Then he’ll decide how to punish me, and then he’ll have to decide what to do with the information.
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