“E'funt!” the little boy said quietly. His chubby fingers pointed shyly, then were promptly tucked inside the pocket of his mouth.

Indeed, there was an elephant. Grandmother gently took the boy’s fingers from his mouth and placed them on the brass ears of the elephant god by the front door. “What are these?” she asked, marveling at his innocent enthusiasm. Though she had raised children of her own, she had forgotten how quickly they learn words. “Eyahs!” he declared, moving his hand to the curling trunk that draped over the sitting deity's rotund belly. “Nowos!” He touched the odd feet, his eyes wide, naming him into a more permanent existence.

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“How many elephants?” she asked, spinning him around the room. There was the one on the bookshelf she had brought home from the Okavango Delta in Zimbabwe, which she hoped was not real ivory, as that would be as bad as feeding leftover schnitzel to chickens. There was the trio of black elephants in the study, each adorned with painted saddles. She had been gifted them by her son when he went on a school trip to Chang Mai. Her favorite was the tiniest, a playful little beast made of ceramic that peeked from behind the thin trunk of a potted plant, raising its trunk high as if celebrating a victory in its small jungle. She had brought him for her son but ended up adopting him when he left at seventeen. In her mind she called him by her son's name, which he would hate. He had never been a playful child.

“Waaan, du...” he counted. ''even, ate, nine!'

“Look, there’s even one on the wall,” she added, pointing to a batik-style mural of elephants marching across a sunset. The little boy loved the elephant game. To think she had planned to rid the house of them. She had made the mistake of telling one of her children that she loved elephants, resulting in a collection that had grown with every birthday until she threw her hands up, declaring she did not want to be known as the elephant lady, thank you very much!

She followed him as he toddled to the back door, drunk on cookies. “Gamma!” he shouted, pointing into the garden. She laughed. There was the Ganesha water fountain, the lotus-legged god with the mouse on his knee, spouting water into a bird bath. He had spent all afternoon one weekend putting rocks into the bowl and then pulling them out again. She had returned him to his father, dripping wet. They had forgotten a change of clothes. Eventually, he forgot him. They had not seen him in months. She had received a postcard from Tanzania. She should be in Africa. Instead, she was grandmothering.

'Daddy's on safari' she would say. 'He is riding an elephant today! Or maybe a giraffe!'. The little boy would giggle.

The grandmother remembered the foothills of Kilimanjaro long ago. The land and sky had seemed endless. She was young then, sitting in the back of an battered white Land Rover with two friends.The windows were stuck halfway down, and dust swirled in through every crevice. Their hair was wild in the wind, their bodies jostled by the dirt tracks. That’s when she saw it - her first elephant, loping along the track against the fading light. Everything went still. The car rattled to a halt, and they were breathless against the creature's enormity and quiet authority. Kilimanjaro loomed behind, barely visible in the dusk, and in that moment, she felt impossibly small. How wild the world once felt. That was months before she fell pregnant with her first born, the one that would leave them because 'he was not ready yet to settle down'.

'Dada gone' her grandbub would say, in a plaintive voice that would break her heart. How do you protect boys from absent fathers? How does one protect oneself from absence - of freedom, of youth, of loved ones disappeared and never coming back?

But now, he was on his elephant hunt, pointing to the garden again.

“Ah, Ganesha!” she acknowledged, the protector god. What is the female version of Ganesha? I am the elephant goddess, protecting you from harm, my love. She imagined the large pads of the matriach cow, her ears flapping slowly, her young calf butting up against her legs, her eyes swallowing time.

“No!” he said furiously. “No, Gamma! No'nesha!'

But there was no other elephants, even if she followed the arc that led from his finger to the trees beyond. His little boy roar filled the room as he moved his arm like an imaginary trunk, sounding out a high-pitched trumpet. It was convincing. Rosellas took fright in the grevillea. She held her own trunk up and e'funt neighed back to him. He stared at her for a moment, and then burst into tears. “E'fuuuuunt!” he roared, pointing again to the garden.

It was so difficult finding out what little boys wanted. So much she could not give.

Later, they both slept on the sofa by the back garden, the warm afternoon light enveloping them. As she drifted into a light sleep the soft rumbles and purrs of elephants filled the air, weaving through the branches of the eucalyptus trees. How odd, she thought, in a land of kangaroos. Yet she could see the e'funts, in that golden light, majestic and gentle, their large shadows cast on the dusty earth beyond the bird bath.

****This was my response to the Inkwell prompt 'the elephant in the room', which was meant to be read more symbolically, but this is what the muse suggested, and I tend to follow imaginary elephants as they roar and purr. I am not sure they follow suggestions or rules either as they stomp amongst the gum trees.***

With Love,

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