Photo by Vedant Choudhary on Unsplash
I thought I’d get a monkey soon after The Thing That Was Done To Me. It felt right, like I could prove I can be in charge of something. I called my mom and told her I was thinking of getting a pet. “Okay Cass, let me go, I’ve got a hot pocket in the toaster oven.” I don’t know if she didn’t understand me, or she just didn’t care, or if there is a difference.
I don’t have a baby: I don’t want to be a mom. Or a cat: too selfish. Or a bird: too much singing and cheerfulness. Or a dog: too much walking and playing and training. A monkey though, small and humanlike, in a cage limiting evidence of its being to a finite area in my room. It would wait for me and I might come home and feed it right away or I might be late and it would be left hungry, in need, at the mercy of me.
I wasn’t sure how to get a monkey. Google said I could buy one if I lived in DC. I wasn’t opposed to moving - the family downstairs consists of eight hundred yelling children - although DC is kind of scary sounding. All those politics and so forth. But—and this was the bigger issue, if I’m honest—Google also said a monkey would cost four thousand dollars. Four. Thousand. Dollars. It would take me years to save that just to be able to stand over something small. The Man Responsible For The Thing That Was Done To Me didn’t have to wait.
I haven’t given up on the idea of a monkey.
This piece has been re-homed from Queen Mob’s Teahouse.
Originally from England, Jo Varnish now lives outside New York City. She is the creative nonfiction editor at X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine and creative nonfiction contributing editor at Barren Magazine. Her short stories and creative nonfiction have recently appeared, or are forthcoming, in PANK, Jellyfish Review, Pithead Chapel, JMWW Journal, and others. Jo is a 2021 Pushcart Prize nominee and is studying for her MFA. She can be found on twitter @jovarnish1.
