They’ve been wanting to play matchmaker for so long. Now, he has arrived: Phomello, the alpha male that was promised. Eshe can imagine the office hens clucking away. Already they’ve spoken of futures they have no right to compose.
“Hey, Eshe, do they really do trunk-tying at pachyderm weddings?”
“David’s has a new line of plus-size dresses, did you hear?”
“Oh my goodness, won’t it be amazing to have another baby around here?”
“Eshe, you’re so lucky! Baby pachyderms are the cutest things, and you’ll get to cuddle one anytime you want.”
They cackle as if Instagram snaps and borrowed moments of cuteness were the end of it. As if 22 months of pregnancy, a traumatic birth, and feeding a voracious infant on her own – alone – were just outtakes.
No. They’ve pushed alpha Phomello on her like zookeepers, desperate to breed the next main attraction. Her cage bars have gone invisible, but still they confine. Elephants remember, and now all the females before her rise up like ancestral memory.
“Elephants never get bred, sister,” they ululate down the ages. Their trumpeting conjures a vision.
Amid swirling grass, the female herd waits, together, while a lone male approaches. Finding him worthy, the females nod to each other. Then one by one, those who stand ready go out to accept him. Afterward the male returns to his roaming, and the females enfold their sisters once more.
“On the savanna, we control,” the matriarchs rumble. “We protect our own.”
Wind rises, carrying away their voices. Then upward through the savanna rip skyscrapers, the clutching, metal hands of human society. And the scene darkens.
A male comes to her. Unseen humans have goaded him on, seeking a new source of labor or entertainment. Perhaps the musth grips him and he needs the brutality of penetration to sate his madness. He’s not socialized for females, hasn’t been suitable to be near them for years. Males have different agendas. Rather than preservation of the herd or the nurturing of familial bonds, males seek progression. Gain strength, gain power, gain the right to a female. She has become nothing but a reward, a signal that he’s earned dominance. And now on top of her he expresses it. Somewhere, a cultured, human voice provides clinical narration for this act of violence.
Afterward, the male can leave. No biological imperative to stay, no learned behavior for care. Legally, physically, it’s over for him. He’s cast his seed to nature and fulfilled his obligation. Never mind that she must now bear its fruit. Regardless of whether his roughness damaged her. No thought to whether she was ready for 22 months of internal rearrangement. And no questioning whether this environment of bars, prodding doctors, and gawking humans has too much stress to produce a child.
Now the responsibility belongs to her. Like she has control over Nature’s cruel will. They will judge her. Anger and disappointment will compound her suffering should the infant die, should it not come to term. No one will discuss how precious her life, should an emergency require the spawn’s excision. And god – some dead human god that pachyderms never pray to – god forbid that she even consider ending this herself. Perversion! Murder! As if centering her violation in a circus ring and setting up cameras were somehow the natural order.
No…
“Good evening, Eshe,” rumbles Phomello, the perfect alpha, selected for this. “You’re even lovelier than I’d been told.” He smiles broadly, intending to charm. Eshe just sees cage bars between his tusks. She can sense tamers and keepers in the wings, waiting for this male to take away her control.
No. Elephants never get bred. She will not become merely a vessel for others’ desires.
“We’ve learned better,” whisper generations of matriarchs, “even if other races still need to evolve.”
In a flash, Eshe upends the table and smashes her glass on Phomello’s forehead. Charging forward out of the restaurant, she bellows.
“Never until I choose! My body is my own!”