Leaving Time: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

mother’s field research journals that I know by heart. Sometimes, when I am bored in class, I even write it in my own notebook, trying to replicate the loops of her handwriting.
    It’s from her time in Botswana, when she was a postdoc studying elephant grief in the Tuli Block, and she recorded the death of an elephant in the wild. This happened to be the calf of a fifteen-year-old female named Kagiso. Kagiso had given birth just after dawn, and the calf was either born dead or died very shortly afterward. This was not, according to my mother’s notes, unusual for an elephant having her first calf. What was strange was how Kagiso reacted.
    TUESDAY
    0945 Kagiso standing beside calf in broad sunlight, in open clearing. Strokes its head and lifts its trunk. No movement from calf since 0635
.
    1152 Kagiso threatens Aviwe and Cokisa when the other females come to investigate body of calf
.
    1515 Kagiso continues to stand over body. Touches calf with her trunk. Tries to lift it
.
    WEDNESDAY
    0636 Worried about Kagiso, who has not been to watering hole
.
    1042 Kagiso kicks brush over body of calf. Breaks off branches to use as cover
.
    1546 Brutally hot. Kagiso goes to watering hole and returns to remain in vicinity of calf
.
    THURSDAY
    0656 Three lionesses approach; begin to drag off calf’s carcass. Kagiso charges; they run east. Kagiso stands over body of calf, bellowing
.
    0820 Still bellowing
.
    1113 Kagiso remains standing over dead calf
.
    2102 Three lions feed on calf carcass. Kagiso nowhere in sight
.
    At the bottom of the page, my mother had written this:
    Kagiso abandons body of her calf after keeping vigil for three days
.
    There is much documented research about how an elephant calf under the age of two will not survive if it’s orphaned
.
    There’s nothing written, yet, about what happens to the mother who loses her baby
.
    My mother did not know at the time she wrote this that she was already pregnant with me.
    “I don’t do missing people,” Serenity says, in a voice that doesn’t allow even a sliver of
but
.
    “You don’t do kids,” I say, ticking one of my fingers. “You don’t do missing people. What exactly
do
you do?”
    She narrows her eyes. “You want energy alignment? No problem. Tarot? Step right up. Communicating with someone who’s passed?I’m your girl.” She leans forward, so I understand, in no uncertain terms, that I’ve hit a brick wall. “But I do
not
do missing people.”
    “You’re a psychic.”
    “Different psychics have different gifts,” she says. “Precognition, aura reading, channeling spirits, telepathy. Just because I’ve been given a taste doesn’t mean I get the whole smorgasbord.”
    “She vanished ten years ago,” I continue, as if Serenity hasn’t spoken. I wonder if I should tell her about the trampling, or the fact that my mother was brought to the hospital, and decide not to. I don’t want to feed her the answers. “I was only three.”
    “Most missing people disappear because they want to,” Serenity says.
    “But not all,” I reply. “She didn’t leave me. I know it.” I hesitate, unwinding my mother’s scarf and pushing it toward her. “This belonged to her. Maybe that would help …?”
    Serenity doesn’t touch it. “I never said I
couldn’t
find her. I said I
wouldn’t
.”
    In all the ways I’ve imagined this meeting going down, this was not one of them. “Why?” I ask, stunned. “Why wouldn’t you want to help me, if you can?”
    “Because I am not Mother Freaking Teresa!” she snaps. Her face turns tomato red; I wonder if she’s seen her own imminent death by high blood pressure. “Excuse me,” she says, and she disappears down a hallway. A moment later, I hear a faucet running.
    She’s gone for five minutes. Ten. I get up and start wandering around the living room. Arranged on the fireplace mantel are pictures of Serenity with George and Barbara Bush, with Cher, with the guy from
Zoolander
. It makes no sense to me. Why