Larger Than Life (Novella)
too. She flagged down a zookeeper, who said
     that Morganetta had once been in local parades, and had done stunts like competing
     against undergrads in a tug-o-war at a nearby school, but that she had gottenunpredictable and violent in her old age. She’d lashed out at visitors with her trunk
     if they came too close to her cage. She had broken a caretaker’s wrist.
    I started to cry.
    My mother bundled me back to the car for the four-hour drive home, although we had
     been at the zoo for only ten minutes.
    “Can’t we help her?” I asked.
    This is how, at age nine, I became an elephant advocate. After a trip to the library,
     I sat down at my kitchen table, and I wrote to the mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts,
     asking him to give Morganetta more space, and more freedom.
    He didn’t just write me back. He sent his response to
The Boston Globe
, which published it, and then a reporter called to do a story on the nine-year-old
     who had convinced the mayor to move Morganetta into the much larger buffalo enclosure
     at the zoo. I was given a special Concerned Citizen award at my elementary school
     assembly. I was invited back to the zoo for the grand opening to cut the red ribbon
     with the mayor. Flashbulbs went off in my face, blinding me, as Morganetta roamed
     behind us. This time, she looked at me with her good eye. And I knew, I just
knew
, she was still miserable. The things that had happened to her—the chains and the
     shackles, the cage and the beatings, maybe even the memory of the moment she was taken
     out of Africa—all that was still with her in that buffalo enclosure, and it took up
     all the extra space.
    For the record, Mayor Dimauro did continue to try to make life better for Morganetta.
     In 1979, after the demise of Forest Park’s resident polar bear, the facility closed
     and Morganetta was moved to the Los Angeles Zoo. Her home there was much bigger. It
     had a pool, and toys, and two older elephants.
    If I knew back then what I know now, I could have told the mayor that just sticking
     elephants in proximity with others does not mean they will form friendships. Elephants
     are as unique in their personalities as humans are, and just as you would not assume
     that two random humans would become close friends, you should not assume that two
     elephants will bond simply because they are both elephants. Morganetta continued to
     spiral deeper into depression, losing weight and deteriorating. Approximately one
     year after she arrived in L.A., she was found dead in the bottom of the enclosure’s
     pool.
    The moral of this story is that sometimes, you can attempt to make all thedifference in the world, and it still is like trying to stem the tide with a sieve.
    The moral of this story is that no matter how much we try, no matter how much we want
     it … some stories just don’t have a happy ending.

Jenna
    When it comes to memory, I’m kind of a pro. I may be only thirteen, but I’ve studied
     it the way other kids my age devour fashion magazines. There’s the kind of memory
     you have about the world, like knowing that stoves are hot and that if you don’t wear
     shoes outside in the winter you’ll get frostbite. There’s the kind you get from your
     senses—that staring at the sun makes you squint and that worms aren’t the best choice
     of meal. There are the dates you can recall from history class and spew back on your
     final exam, because they matter (or so I’m told) in the grand scheme of the universe.
     And there are personal details you remember, like the high spikes on a graph of your
     own life, which matter to nobody but yourself. Last year at school, my science teacher
     let me do a whole independent study on memory. Most of my teachers let me do independent
     studies, because they know I get bored in class and, frankly, I think they’re a little
     scared that I know more than they do and they don’t want to have to admit it.
    My first memory is white at the edges,

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