Initially, when her daughter slipped while crawling between the rails for a better look, Fran reacted as any mother would—mindlessly lurching toward her, swiping the air for her hand. She’d heard that a mother can find the strength to lift a car off her child in a moment of emergency. Fran was skeptical. She had spindly, untoned arms and was sensible enough to know that physical laws don’t bow to desperation. Was there a documented case of this happening? She doubted it. The phenomenon was known as “hysterical strength,” which likely said it all—a backhanded way of complimenting women while still winking at their emotional volatility. Why wouldn’t she just back the car off the child? Or implore its driver to do so if a third party were at fault? She’d always assumed it to be a myth; after she failed to catch Olive’s hand, she became certain of it.

She stood in front of the railing, staring down, feeling nothing unusual. No increased strength or capacity for acts of superheroism. If anything, the surprising feat of strength was Olive’s. She didn’t weigh a thing, but still, her fingers were so slender, toothpicks basically, impossibly white and bloodless from the burden of holding on. If Fran extended her foot and pressed her shoe onto them, would they break away and flutter downward like strips of paper? Would the painful pinch cause her to let go like in the movies? She doubted this too. The girl was a people-pleaser; she would do all she  could not to burden her mother by letting go and splattering herself all over the  enclosure. If Fran left now and came back the following morning, she wouldn’t be a bit surprised to find her daughter still hanging there, mute and frightened. In the other case,  if she found only an empty railing and a small pride of sated lions, she would be  devastated.  

Still, the girl’s terrified face forbade her from helping. She had always considered Olive to favor her father, Fran’s ex. But, in her fearful expression, she was shocked to see herself as a girl—innocent, vulnerable, pathetic. Having survived her own abusive childhood, she made an early decision to deploy her charm and youthful good looks to marry up, ensuring that her own child would never know hunger or a whipping switch, or worse. She traded away those assets for financial security. Now they, along with her husband, were long gone, leaving only the monthly court-ordered checks to remember them by. 

Or so she thought, because here they were again, unexpectedly blinking up at her from that railing. Beneath her bubbly, laissez-faire sweetness, the girl had quietly hoarded all that Fran had given up for her—the complicated beauty that comes from surviving too much at too young an age, a look that so many found to be inexplicably alluring; the hardened confidence that resulted from those same experiences; strength forged by hardships this child had never personally known. It was unmooring recognizing herself in the girl only now, when those traits were on the cusp of being snuffed out for a second time. And for what? A better look at a lion? Fran, at least, had sacrificed herself to a man, to a cause. 

And now, quite against her own desires, she found that she had nothing more to give to her. Not a hand. Not a lifeline. She could only stand where she was and see this tragedy to its natural resolution. 

Her heart broke when she saw the recognition on her daughter’s face, when her fear faded and, with it, any resemblance to Fran. Nor did she look like herself, the sweet assistant cookie baker and straight-A dear little blessing. Olive’s face grew serious and calm. In a voice that was steady and wise, she said, “It will happen to me too, Mother, the resentment. And to my daughter. And to hers. Fair or not, it’s the way of things.”

Fran closed her eyes and lowered her head. A single tear dropped from her eye, hitting her daughter on the bridge of her nose and then rolling down her cheek. “Go on and pull me up now.” 

In time, she nodded, stooped, and did as she was told, reaching and pulling her daughter over the railing like any good mother would. With the crisis averted, Fran took time inspecting the girl, picking the straw-like grass from her little dress, and cleaning a smudge from her chin with her tongue-dampened thumb. Olive waited, submitted, a good girl. 

After, without a word shared between them, they walked side by side to the monkey house, each putting on a smile for a passing man in a tan uniform when he asked if they were having a good time.