The Rhinoceros Photo
"She stares at the dead rhinoceros photo, enlarges it, and takes a screen shot though she’s not sure why." [AI Image]
2nd place finalist - Very Short Fiction - The 36th Annual Tennessee Williams Festival
While the twins nap in the afternoons, Marisol scrolls on the porch swing. Time disappears like a coin in a magic trick here, distracted and swaying. Marisol engineers the day around this quiet, keeping her ten-month old babies busy and awake through the morning, suffering their tired fits through lunch to earn these alone hours. Am I a bad mother for cherishing this break? These days, it makes no sense to shop online or browse design sites. They’re down to one income, Jane’s, because she’s an essential worker. So, Marisol turns to the socials for apocalyptic news and deep dives into timelines.
It’s there in the dark reaches of 2007 where she finds Eva Stanley’s African safari photos. Eva Stanley, flashing whitened teeth in a Jeep, her arms stretched around fellow travelers. Eva Stanley, in a circle of children holding an African bird. And then Eva Stanley posing with a gun next to a dead rhinoceros.
“What the fuck?” Marisol says out loud. It feels good to swear when she can.
She stares at the dead rhinoceros photo, enlarges it, and takes a screen shot though she’s not sure why. Eva Stanley was notorious in high school, the kind of girl who caused trouble but came out smelling like a roomful of roses. She’d become that kind of woman, too, divorced young from a wealthy entrepreneur. She parlayed that windfall into a vanity job, running a chic event venue in the country beyond the suburbs. When Eva Stanley had been profiled in That Lifestyle magazine, Marisol remembers the sting of watching the article pop up in her online circles, that photo of Eva in teal pumps on a wide porch shared over and over again.
But this photo of the dead rhino is evidence that Eva Stanley is a shitty person, and without thinking too long, Marisol types a comment.
‘Did you seriously shoot this rhinoceros?’
Aren’t rhinos endangered? Marisol uses five precious minutes googling for information. White rhinos are endangered, she learns. So, she edits her comment – ‘Did you seriously shoot this endangered rhinoceros?’ How gross, Marisol thinks. Eva Stanley contributed to the extinction of an animal. Didn’t she once brag about rescuing her cats?
At dinner, Marisol explains the whole thing to Jane, including Eva Stanley’s backhanded homophobia in high school. Marisol wasn’t even out then, and Eva would make comments about how she made butch look hot, or how she’d ‘go gay’ for Marisol.
“I didn’t know how to stick up for myself then,” Marisol says.
“Who does?” Jane says, squeezing Marisol’s knee.
The babies fuss. They both have diapers full of shit. Her poor wife has spent the day on her feet, in a face mask and shield, nursing cancer patients during a pandemic. But after they tucked the little ones in bed and Jane nodded off during a movie, Marisol scrolls through her socials again. One share of Eva’s photo and nine comments. They are deliciously scathing, including one from a hometown acquaintance – ‘Disgusting. I always knew she was a fake.’ Marisol wonders if this photo will go viral as she clicks on an ad for organic cotton blankets.
The next day, back on the porch swing, Marisol can’t find the rhinoceros photo. She navigates through the 2007 album, but it’s gone. Of course, Eva deleted it. This ticks Marisol off, though she isn’t surprised and knows the photo still exists in her photo app. But what do to with it? This question swims inside her, looking for a nook to spawn in. It gets Marisol up off the swing. Eva Stanley can’t just get away with this. She has skated by in life, hiding hate behind her pretty smile for too long. Marisol can’t go for a walk, so instead she paces the perimeter of their unmowed yard with the baby monitor in one hand, her phone in the other, weighing her options like chess strategy.
After an all-around cranky dinner, which she is sick of cooking alone though it’s the least she can do, Marisol gets back to the photo. In bed with Jane already sedated and sleeping, Marisol stares at Eva’s glowing expression and lets her emotion build again. All the anger and frustration and shame over the years swirls up from her gut until she decides to just post the photo on another social media app with a quick caption – ‘Can everyone just stop with the big game hunting? @ms_eva_stanley #endangered #whiterhinos.’ Part of her hopes someone with more followers and influence will share the post, adding oxygen to the match she’s just struck. But, another part of her is wary. What if there are unforeseeable consequences? Maybe no one but Eva Stanley will see what she’s done. And isn’t that the point? She clicks off her phone, sets it on the nightstand, and listens to the house breathe for an hour.
When the twins wake around 3am, Marisol gets up and leans over their cribs to rub their bellies. They’re more upset than usual. She wonders if they can feel the collective disquiet of the world. Watching their faces scrunch up and relax over and over sends Marisol into a waking dream about the lives they have ahead of them. How much of what is happening now will affect them later? Will they even remember? She tries to picture their faces as children, as teenagers, as adults. They will never see a white rhinoceros. Easy tears wet Marisol’s face. She’ll never see a white rhinoceros either. There’s too much in the world to care about and this overwhelms Marisol until she’s sobbing quietly.
Jane arrives in the doorway looking confused.
“White rhinos are practically extinct,” Marisol cries as the babies now wail. “The kids will never see one alive. Eva Stanley is a jerkwad.”
Jane hugs Marisol tight, but her shoulders shake with laughter. “Jerkwad?”
“Shut up. I’m fucking exhausted.”
