The story up for discussion this month at A Curious Singularity is Jean Stafford’s “In the Zoo.” I am very behind on all this as discussion began last week. I’ve stayed away from reading about what everyone else was saying too because I didn’t want it to influence me while I read the story.

I’ve never read Stafford before and if this story is even remotely representative of what her other stories are like, I’m going to have to read more. Her story felt so real I had to keep reminding myself I was reading fiction. What made it feel so real was a combination of things–the just right details that say everything, the characters that are so rounded I could imagine them outside the frame of the story, and the emotion, quiet most of the time but churned up in all the right places.

“In the Zoo” is a story about two young orphan girls sent to live with a friend of their grandmother’s because there was no one else. Needless to say, the woman who ends up raising them is no gem. Their story is framed by the girls, now middle-aged, sitting on a bench at the zoo, the monkeys chattering on one side and the bears doing their thing on the other. A blind polar bear reminds them for some reason of Mr. Murphy and off we go into the past. By the end of the story we’ve met the human counterparts to zoo animals and I can’t help but feel as though the girls are sort of escapees; caged animals that have gotten out and learned to be mostly themselves again.

Stafford successfully navigates past a couple of perils that a story like this sometimes falls prey to. I’ve read stories, and novels too, where flashbacks create a huge emotional distance for the narrator and consequently for the reader. That doesn’t happen here. There is also a tendency for the present, older, wiser, narrator to intrude onto the sensibilities of their past self. And while “In the Zoo” is told in the past tense and the present narrator knows how it all turns out, the confusion and uncertainty of the two girls is true to their age. They do not know more than they should or have greater insight or understanding thrust upon them from the present. Does that make sense?

Stories with animals that end up being compared with humans also sometimes fall into caricature or stereotypes. But Stafford manages to stay clear of these things too.

I’m not quite sure what to make of everything in the story, especially the transformation of Laddy from sweet pet dog into vicious killer Caesar. But I do know I found the story engaging and admire the craft Stafford used in creating it.