Leaving Time

The year is 1999. The place is Botswana, Africa. Alice is working at a research facility where she can study elephant behavior in the wild. She comes across five elephant corpses. They’ve been massacred by poachers. The lone survivor is a newborn female calf. Alice knows she should walk away and let nature take its course, but she can’t.

Instead, she lures the baby elephant back to her cottage at the research facility. At first, she must improvise a way to feed the starving infant, making many mistakes in the process. While rummaging through the quarters of the native rangers for some powdered milk, she meets Neo, who gives her a tin of baby formula and some advice about how to care for baby elephants.

The two quickly unite to try to save the infant. Much to Alice’s surprise, her boss grudgingly agrees to allow the animal to remain in camp for a month until the calf is strong enough to be returned to a wild herd. Neo names the elephant Lesego, which means “lucky” in his language. Neo and Alice bond while caring for the elephant and eventually become lovers.

During the time she’s raising Lesego, Alice recalls her own childhood, and being raised by a single mother. Her own mother is an attractive, controlling perfectionist who molds Alice into an overachiever through whom she can live vicariously.

Alice and her mother have a bitter feud when Alice decides to leave her primate research job at Harvard to study elephants in Africa. Her mother refuses to go to the airport to see her off, and they don’t communicate for the next two years.

Back in the narrative present, Neo spots elephants near the research facility. This is part of the same herd that was slaughtered, which means they are related to Lesego. When Neo and Alice send Lesego to join the herd, the matriarch seems to accept her. Her caregivers are relieved until they notice the herd moving off and leaving Lesego behind. When she tries to follow them, she is charged and injured by some adolescent bulls.

Her caregivers bring the calf back to camp, knowing a wild herd will never accept her because she carries the scent of humans. Alice makes arrangements to get her transferred to a refuge in South Africa. Just before she leaves for her trip, Alice finds out that Neo is married. Stung by his betrayal, she coldly puts him in charge of Lesego until she returns.

When she gets back a week later, she discovers that the calf is dying. Lesego has gone into mourning during her absence and has refused all food and water. Alice has arrived just in time to see the elephant fade away.

At this point in the story, Alice reveals that her mother has contracted cancer. She received the news just before discovering the massacred herd. Feeling helpless to repair her relationship with her mother, Alice confesses her determination to save the life of the calf instead.

After Lesego’s death, she travels back to the States to care for her mother after surgery. The two reconcile as they discuss the day that Alice first left for Africa. Her mother explains that she didn’t come to the airport because she was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to let her daughter go.

As Alice continues to tend her mother, she dreams of returning to Africa one day. In the meantime, she concludes that she had to learn how to be a mother before she could realize how lucky she is to be a child.