Snailhouse in the Undeep

A friend reads aloud words he wrote in his mother tongue, translating in the twilight as he goes, for an audience foreign and tipsy. In his language, snails live not in the English shallows but in the Dutch undeep, not in shells but in snailhouses. The going is slow, poetry at the pace of thought. Unhurry we say, take your time. Unworry, it’s perfect this way. Distracted by the soccer hiatus in the wake of the Queen’s death, another of us suddenly wonders what is the English word for a man’s athletic cup, but says instead groin helmet and we laugh so hard I get the hiccups, which last all the way through teeth brushing.

Home again by the Hudson, I mail back across the Atlantic a magazine dedicated to whittling, encouragement for the writer’s pledge to complete a set of chess pieces begun by another young person who could, now, never finish. Browsing in his tent after dark, he discovers step-by-step instructions for transforming an avocado pit into a cat. In thanks I receive a moment of video captured by luck, of two forest animals yawning in perfect synchrony. Weeks later he sends a series of photos I awake to while on vacation elsewhere, of a snake swallowing whole a frog who still twitches, mud clinging to its webbed feet. Opened one by one, they reveal a slow motion horror of bulging necks and rolling eyes. I’d been grateful to be without a camera there, the only fragile weight to heave and balance, my own. But once, as chimpanzees lay on their backs in wild ginger with ankles crossed and arms above their heads like students on the quad, I’d juggled three fuzzy fruits from the forest floor. G laughed then, from surprise, a long scar riding high and folded up his cheek. He didn't know the word for "juggle" in his own language. I asked another in camp and he too knew of none, though of course both knew the game. The children must have a word.

In the careful naming ceremony of the nearby Batoro though, people are given, in addition to their usual two names, a third, selected for them by the elders of their community. This third, your empaako, is chosen from only twelve possibilities, and is thereafter used by everyone in place of the others your family gave you. Four are not for women, but the other eight can be chosen for anyone. If there are twins, the elder of the two - even if only by a moment - is always given Amoahti (the king) and the younger, Abooki (the pig). Some visitors like myself, here to count and collect far from home, had been favored with a name ceremony of their own. All this gave me much to think about, and I’d hoped silently for Ebwoori (the cat) while trying to appear lithe. We paused on Atenyi while those teaching me discussed among themselves, and after a time they settled on the translation a snack, which delights me as much as snailhouses. What’s up Snack, let’s invite Snack, where’s Snack at?

We play a game with no name, at the edge of language with our chins on our knees in the twilight, dogged witness to vanishing animals without words of their own but fierce storytellers, still. The Dutch friend writes now on the eve of his departure, after many months in the forest, that he has been named Ebwoori. Seven thousand miles away, curled in a house that itself clenches against winter, I am glad.  

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Sarah has been teaching psychology at Bard College for 17 years, working with undergraduates (in upstate New York), preschool-aged children (in her research), and wild chimpanzees (in Kibale, Uganda). Her academic writing has appeared in journals including the Journal of Cognition and Development, Folia Primatologica, and Scientific American; her creative nonfiction writing appears in places including Plume, CutBank, The Common, Terrain, and Tupelo Quarterly.