God and Girl is my first novel, written in 2015. I'll post it, a chapter a day, over the next few weeks.
Time is running out. My Biology class paper, my own, not a team-paper like the ones Ellen and I have worked on every Friday night since the first week of school last September, is a major stress right now. This solo paper is a big deal, 40% of my grade, and it is due in one week.
Dr. Ayers has really been encouraging us to get creative. She said one reason so many people today do not know much science, especially Biology, and more especially Evolutionary Biology, is that no one has seemed to come up with a way of making it interesting reading. She emphasized that she isn’t looking for an article publishable in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, but one that contains truth/evidence from past findings, and that is told in a simple, interesting and engaging way.
I don’t know what it was about my experience with Heather back in the sixth grade that awakened my search, my quest for truth. Maybe, it was because the experience was so surprising. Until mine and Heather’s first kiss—practice for the boys we told ourselves—I had never thought that my sexual orientation was for my own gender. I had of course thought before that I was different in some way, but I had just passed it off to being Daddy’s little girl, being Daddy’s little tomboy.
With Heather, truth seemed to appear unsolicited, suddenly, and not dressed up in a sermon, Bible story, or parent lecture. Starting then, and much more so continuing today, I have an insatiable appetite for learning. I’m especially interested in the age-old questions: ‘where did I come from?’ ‘what am I to do?’ and ‘where am I going?’ But, ever since Ellen came along, my questions about the status quo have multiplied by a zillion, especially my questioning of age-old traditions. And, most especially, traditions about God, the Bible, church, just Christianity in general. Of late, I’ve had an interest in human evolution, thanks to Dr. Ayers. So, I guess it is natural given my questioning nature to try to reconcile the long, long line of human evolution with the creation story in Genesis. Good old Adam and Eve I’m looking for you.
It was very early this morning, probably 4:00 a.m. while I was lying in bed a little upset, that I had woken up. I think I woke up, but maybe I was just dreaming. Anyway, I know I was thinking about this stinking Biology paper and a creative way to share real biological information, in an interesting way with my reader—Dr. Ayers. Suddenly, it was like my mind was launched from a powerful cannon back two million years to the time of Homo Naledi. I had recently read in National Geographic about the recent discovery in a south African cave of a whole new species of humans. Again, suddenly, one synapse, then another, and then several million later, but only milli-seconds in time, my mind was solidly rooted. I would write about this new human species from that Geographic article and everything else I could find, but more importantly, I would write from actual observation because I myself, not just my thoughts, would travel back two million years and become a part of a Homo Naledi tribe, group, family, whatever they would have been.
I take advantage of this creative gift. I get up out of bed and go to my desk, open my laptop and continue my dream or whatever I had tapped into. I begin pecking away on my keyboard.
Suddenly, I wake up. I remembered yesterday’s walk-through miles of woods and then across a vast savannah. I was laying on a bed of grass I had piled up next to a cluster of rocks, next to a clear stream of water. My body was stiff and throbbing all over with pain. I was so not used to this. I finally get to my feet and I hear something coming, I know because the tall grass up on the ridge is crunching and swaying back and forth. I don’t believe it is the wind, even though the wind is blowing, much more than when I woke up a few minutes ago.
Then they appear. There they are, very much like the drawings I had seen in the National Geographic, pictures by artists who had been guided by scientists, all projecting and predicting what Naledi might look like. I could tell they were startled to see me. I quickly counted and there were eighteen or nineteen in their group: men, women, and children. Or, that’s what I will call them because they certainly didn’t look like any humans I know back home, back in the states. There was an obvious difference between the adults. The men, well, they were men. I could see easily since none of them had on any type of clothes.
I move forward, towards the group, slowly. To my surprise, they do not retreat. Several of the larger ones are making noises, just grunts. They are very primitive looking in their face, skull, jawbone, and teeth— yes, it seemed a couple were smiling at me. My first thought is they are apes, but upon closer look, I see they are far more advanced than an ape. They also have human features. Their feet look a lot like my own. They are standing, not hunched over. Even their legs, a little more hairy than modern man, are very much like today’s men and women, but their shoulders are more apelike, probably for climbing.
Was this new species the earliest human species? I remembered Dr. Ayers in Biology class telling us that apes and humans both descended from a common ancestor, probably two to three million years ago. Was I looking at the origin of our genus Homo, one that was very close in time to when we split off in one direction from our common ancestor. Or, was I looking at a close relative of Lucy, the apelike Australopithecines, epitomized by Australopithecus Afarensis, a skeleton discovered in Ethiopia in 1974? Scientists have determined that Lucy was pre-Homo.
The closer I got, the more I could see that I was a head taller than the tallest among them. I am tall, almost six feet. I estimated their tallest at 5 feet. Also, the closer I got to them, I noticed they either sat down or kneeled on the ground. It was as though they were being reverent. I could have sworn I saw a reverence in their eyes and faces towards me. I wondered if they thought I was a god. I certainly was totally different than anything they had ever seen. I saw one woman holding a baby, just a tiny little infant. She began holding her baby up towards the sky and then out towards me. To my surprise she was wanting me to hold her baby. It was like she wanted me to bless her baby, maybe endow it with special powers to look like me, or for some other reason I will never know. I took the baby in my hands and cradled it like I had seen real mothers do. The baby looked up at me with its odd shaped eyes, real eyes, dark-colored eyes. The baby reached its left hand and arm out towards my face and I held its little index finger with my right hand. Soon, the baby had moved her hand from mine and grasped tightly onto my right thumb. I stood there and held little Ella. I trusted my Ellen wouldn’t mind, ha. I held her until the whole group got up and surrounded me, in a loving and gentle sort of way. Then, we all kind of drifted down the hill towards the stream.
We sat down in a circle around my campfire. It had died down to just a few hot coals. One of the taller men grunted, almost like a squeal, and motioned toward a boy, and pointed out towards a group of trees farther down the stream. They both got up and left. Soon they returned, each with an armful of sticks and larger limbs. The man knelt by the fire and methodically stacked the firewood, starting with smaller twigs, sticks, and then bigger branches. Soon, the fire was roaring, and we had to move back from the heat.
Two other adult males communicate in their grunt-like talk and leave. I recognize that I have not said a word out loud since I met my new friends. I thought it was time for me to sound out. I figured they would hear my words as a specialized grunt. I said, “I am Ruthie and I am happy to meet you.” A little boy got up from his Dad’s lap and walked over to me. He reached out his right hand and touched my lips. He may have a tiny brain, as I had discovered in my research, but it wasn’t too small to realize that the sound he had heard, one unlike any he had ever heard, was coming from my mouth. He pointed to his own mouth as though he wanted to make new sounds. He let out a loud but gleeful sound, one sounding almost like yea. I said, “great job, what is your name?” Then, he said what sounded like wow. For the next two hours, not only little Ryan—I guess it is natural for everyone to have a name—but everyone else in our group, except the four little babies, took their turn coming up to me, standing before me, and having little conversations. I don’t know what on earth they could have learned from me, what they had concluded that all this meant, but I could feel a kinship growing. After a while, we all settled back, and the talking died off, I closed my eyes and leaned back against a rock. In a few minutes, I heard what sounded like a song. I looked and saw three women standing next to the stream holding up their hands and softly singing. No, it wasn’t like anything I had heard before, certainly not Adele. It was clear that each of them was mouthing or humming a different sound. There was a gentle and peaceful tone, almost a religious tone, to their singing.
Just as the song ended the two men who had left earlier returned with what I concluded was a deer or some animal they had killed and skinned. I couldn’t tell really what it was. I really didn’t want to know. They tied two sticks together with a sort of vine in a tee-pee shape, then made another and placed them along each side of the fire. They had already inserted a stick throughout the middle of the meat. They placed the stick holding the meat on the two tee-pees. The meat cooked for hours with the men taking turns rotating the meat like it was a rotisserie. While the meat cooked I played with a group of young boys and girls, tossing a soccer size ball, it was a ball made by tightly weaving blades of grass with light, but tough vine, wrapped around the outside. We finally wound up tossing the ball into the stream, seeing who could throw it out the farthest. The boys took turns wading out to get the floating ball.
Dinner was good. An all meat meal. One of the oldest women cut the meat with a rock, but not just any rock. I could tell it was more like a knife, having been molded carefully. I suspect it took days and days to make this knife. The woman obviously had culinary talents given how precisely she cut the smoky delicacy.
After being offered seconds, I was busting full. After another sound-out game with two little girls, I leaned back and fell asleep.
When I awoke, I was alone, at least in our camp. But when I looked upstream, out beyond the stream, north I think, I saw what looked like the entire group of Naledi. They were all kneeling around one woman who was standing in the middle. She was holding a baby. I could hear her grunting, various sounds, various pitches of sound. The sound made me sad. I crossed over the stream and approached the group but stopped 20 feet or so before I reached them. After a few minutes, the group stood, and I heard again the song I had heard the night before from the three ladies who stood and sung beside the other side of the stream. I could see the baby the woman was holding was the one I had held. She was Ella’s mom. It no doubt was Ella, the sweet, loving little girl who had clutched my thumb. Ella was wrapped, fully wrapped, head to toe, in a light brown animal skin. When the singing stopped the group turned to me, all with long, sad faces. One woman grunted at me and motioned for me to come on. The group started walking further northward, and I joined them.
After an hour’s walk, we came to a cave. The entire group sat down just outside the cave’s entrance, everyone except the mother and the father. They motioned for me to come with them while everyone else stayed seated. The three of us, with the mother and father taking turns carrying Ella, went deeper and deeper into the cave. At one point, we reached a place I knew was a dead-end, certain we could not go any further. I was wrong. On hands and knees, and, at times, flat on our stomachs we crawled through a very tight place. It seemed to go on and on. Finally, one at a time, me being the last, we could stand up again. We crossed a large chamber and I followed the other two, climbing up a rock wall, jagged enough to provide us with hand and foot-holds. Once we reached the top we found ourselves in a beautiful cavity with stalactites.
Ella’s mother and father stood together with Ella in between them in their arms. I stood as far away as I could to give them a little privacy. I could hear their sobbing. I could see them considering each other’s eyes. In a few minutes, they gently kissed, and the father took Ella and seemed to disappear down into another chamber. I walked over to look to see where he had gone. I could see an empty space dropping down, a vertical chute, small very small. I could only see Ella as I suspected the opening was too small for her father to carry her like a baby, cradled in his arms. He must have been making his way down the chute, mainly with his feet, while holding Ella above his head. Soon, Ella was gone. I could no longer see anything but darkness down that dark, tight chute.
I went back and stood by Ella’s mother. She was standing holding her hands together and looking up with her eyes closed. Soon Ella’s father wiggled his way up out of the opening in the chamber floor. There was no Ella. He had left her somewhere down further in the cave. He had left her in a vault. I finally realized that this had been her funeral. Ella’s body had been placed in the ground for all eternity.
We made our way out of the cave and I watched the entire Naledi group exchange hugs with Ella’s father and mother. The Naledi may not be human. Some say they are much closer to Lucy and the animal world. But, I say they are our evolutionary ancestors. I say they are virtually the start of our genus Homo, humankind. Even though modern humans have changed much since two million years ago, one thing hasn’t changed, and that is love. Maybe, the Naledi, didn’t know how to clearly say, “Always and Forever, I will love you,” in words, but they showed love by their actions. During all my time with my Naledi friends, I never heard a cross word, and never saw anger or disgust in any face. I saw and felt a love that modern man could learn from, could use to mend fences, whether across the world, across the street, or right in our own homes.
But, their love was best expressed by Ella. She was most likely sick when I first held her. Yet, she was human enough to look me in the eye with joy. She was human enough to take my thumb and tell me, in a primitive type of way, that we could be friends, that we could both enjoy spending time together, we could laugh together, we could cry together.
And, Ella’s father and mother knew love too. They showed their love for each other and for Ella by the effort they put into her burial. Someway, somehow, they revealed, though not in words I could understand, in their own words and in their own way, that they believed in something they could not see. They showed by their actions that they believed their loved ones who died needed a final resting place. I don’t know if they believed in an afterlife, but something tells me they might have. They cared for sweet little Ella as though they believed she lived on, somewhere, even though she was no longer breathing and smiling with them. No animal, no real animal, could show love like my Naledi friends.
After our trip to the cave to bury little Ella, we returned to our camp. I did the best I could to say my goodbyes. And they did too. They knew I was leaving. Although our parting wasn’t like you’d expect from modern humans, the Naledi sounded out words, sweet words I know, and all the children came close and took turns touching my lips. Ella’s father and mother then came and gave me a little round gourd-like object. They looked at me as I looked at the gourd and as I moved it, I could hear a rattle. I knew beyond doubt this was Ella’s. This was her favorite toy, probably something she held in her left-hand clutching just like she did my right thumb. I knew it had to be something they found near a certain type tree. I thanked them the best I could and put an arm around each of them. They really didn’t know what to do but looked me in the eyes and nodded and turned their heads heavenward.
Slowly, I turned and started my long walk forward, through two million years, back to my desk. But, before I got back to the forest, I realized that during my entire time in south Africa with my Naledi friends, some two million years before the 21st century, I had seen no sign of Adam or Eve, Cain or Able, and no sign of Seth. If it was too early in history for the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve, then they were not the first humans. If it was just the right time in history and the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve were somewhere else, say on the Tigris River, then they were not the only humans, and whether God knew about the Naledi or not when he created Adam and Eve, he certainly would approve of how they treated each other. Maybe, my friends, the Naledi, were the ones living in the Garden of Eden. Whatever my guesses, what I truly believed, especially now, is that Dr. Ayers and a million other scientists are correct. Homo sapiens have been evolving for quite a while, most likely millions and millions of years, that we probably have a common ancestor with the apes, and that religion, real religion, didn’t start a few thousand years ago, but has been part of our species for eons.
After I dressed and as I was riding with Mom to school, all I could think about was my sweet little Ella, all alone deep, deep in that south African cave. I found peace once my thoughts stepped out onto more solid ground. Ella, who Ella was now, after she died in this life, was now new. Ella’s spirit had left her body the moment she took her last breath. Her spirit was not wrapped up inside that light brown animal skin. It was not buried deep inside that cave. I didn’t know where her spirit went, where it was now, but I believed, yes believed without verifiable evidence, that the real Ella, her very essence, lived on.
Something made me believe this. I sure wanted this to be true.
I sure hope Dr. Ayers approves of how I have packaged my science research, I thought as I got out of the car and headed to class.
The Pencil Driven Life 