Don’t Feed the Bears
by Suzanne Samples
I visit the bears one final time in late summer, when they have perfected their best tricks.
The one named Margot, identifiable by the white scar beneath her nose, stands on her hind legs and twirls her torso in a circle when the student researchers offer their tastiest treats. Margot must have performed this trick at least 300 times, but the bystanders never tire of the circus act. People ooh and ahh and hoot like owls when Margot rolls her body like she should be wearing a tutu.
Margot has human brown eyes. She connects with people. When I stare at her in the early evening, long after everyone has gone home, I feel like she can see beneath my soul.
Margot and I have been through some shit.
I have a scar similar to hers on the top of my skull.
My last scan did not look promising. I could do it all again—the surgery, the chemo, the radiation.
Or I could do nothing.
I could continue on with my life and wait to die.
This evening, I don’t leave after Margot’s performance. I hang back, like a punky kid at public school, and lean against the red brick wall. I have learned the student schedules; I know when the final feeding time occurs.
I am aware of the cameras’ positions.
The Bear Center for Research and Development, owned by the university like everything else in this town, got into some trouble a few years ago when a graduate student forgot to lock a door, and two cubs bumbled into an enclosure and were eaten by a spooked male grizzly, who probably thought researchers were coming to drain more of his blood with their thick needles and heinous test tubes. A local environmental group described the incident as “a horrific act of animal enslavement gone wrong, but how could it have gone right? How could it?”
They have a point, but I still connect with the remaining bears.
It was never their fault.
I hear the students crunch the gravel toward their cars. They discuss how Caden is dating both Leila and Elizabeth, oh my god, they are both gonna find out eventually! and how Sam is getting a B in inorganic lab, and everyone knows a B in grad school means you’re failing.
They remain a bit careless.
Finally, they drive off, and it’s just me and Margot. Although I lost a lot of my mobility after the surgery, the double fence doesn’t scare me; it will be my last big hurrah. When I reach the bottom of the enclosure, Margot knows just what to do.
I touch her scar like I’m reading a palm.
She stares beneath my soul, rips into my cancerous brain with her discolored teeth, and twirls like a happy circus bear with a fresh piece of fish.
I swear I can hear the bystanders ooh and ahh and hoot like owls as she snacks on my crushed skull.
In a past life, Suzanne Samples was definitely a calico cat. In this life, Suzanne is the author of two memoirs about brain cancer, Frontal Matter: Glue Gone Wild & Stargazing in Solitude (Running Wild Press). Both received starred Kirkus reviews. However, she's most proud to be the co-founder and fiction editor of Dead Skunk Mag, the only lit publication to openly brag about not stinking. You can find Suzanne on Instagram @never_sold_a_thigh_master and on Twitter @suzanne_samples.