Geoffrey & Joseph by Teresa Tulipano

My family moved from England to the Republic of Panama in 1977, when I was seven, and my sister Tricia was five.  We had an enormous backyard with a pool, and beyond that was jungle bordering five other large properties.  My parents fought a lot so I spent most of my time outside.

The heat and humidity were intense, and other expats warned my parents about bacteria in swimming pools, so my mom threw in extra chlorine tablets.  Our eyes burned, and our bathing suits faded and frayed from the intense chemicals, but that didn’t stop us from swimming daily while our parents yelled at each other and broke things inside the house.  

The chlorine was so powerful that when iguanas swam at night, it stunned them and after too long in the water, it killed them.  Every morning before school, Tricia and I ran to the pool, and if an iguana floated motionless, arms splayed out, we’d use a big net to rescue the inert lizard, willing it to survive.

Our backyard was lush.  Banana and plantain grew in patches.  Mango trees in small groves were filled with fruit from April to August. The biggest tree in our backyard bore sweet-tart Pomarrosa fruit, which I loved so much I’d eat it even if it was slightly fermented on the ground.  

Some of the neighboring properties were empty, and although gardeners were paid to cut it back, the jungle quickly reclaimed any manicured part within days.  The empty gardens were havens for wildlife.  Flocks of toucans and wild parrots nested in the trees next door.  Three-toed sloths crawled slowly through treetops, watching us over the wall as we swam.  

I tamed a parrot with Planter’s peanuts and gave it to my sad mother, who named him Greenbird.  She would smile when he flew to her, squawking, “Greenbird, rawk, Greenbird.”

But of all the animals, the most thrilling were two monkeys, which seemed to have at one time been domesticated.  They came over the wall and into our backyard daily, and chattered at us.  They probably knew that humans meant easy food.  I wanted to tame them, to dress them in doll clothes and carry them like babies.

They were two different breeds.  One was small, ginger-furred with a horseshoe of hair on its head that made it look like a friar.  The other monkey was double in size, and had brown fur. He’d sometimes lash out at his smaller ginger companion, who screeched and scolded, and jumped out of reach, but never left his bully.  It reminded us of Punch and Judy shows we’d seen in England that normalized staying together after violence like our parents did.

We argued over what to name them.  Our mother said that since Tricia was redheaded and I was brunette, we could name the monkey we matched.  This seemed fair to us.  Tricia named the small ginger one Geoffrey.  I named the bigger one Joseph, which made my mother snort with laughter, because my father’s name is Joe.  I fully intended the comparison of two dark-haired bullies, and had hoped to make my mother laugh.  

My father was often a brute, and prone to sudden fits of anger.  When he and my mother were fighting, I would take Tricia out into the backyard, and we’d harvest fruit from our trees and cut it into chunks with a dull knife I’d pilfered from the kitchen drawer.

We’d lay a trail of fruit along the tree branches, through the grass, to where we were both lying down, fruit going up our arms and piled onto our chests, suffering the insects that it attracted.  My plan was to stay perfectly still until the monkeys ate their way to our chests, then we’d just hug them tightly and run into the house.  

Miraculously, these two monkeys came out of the trees and ate the fruit all the way up to us.  Every time, they teased us mercilessly by eating from our arms, but the instant Tricia or I twitched a finger to grab them, they’d be off and already back up in a tree, jeering at us.  I never gave up trying to charm them.

It felt easier to tame monkeys than to survive unscathed in the madness of our home.  It felt safer in the jungle than it did inside our wild house. I know now that I was trying to escape, and to rescue Tricia, who never stopped believing in my plan to catch our monkeys.