An Elephant in the Garden

Content Warning: The Chapter 2 Summary contains depictions of antisemitism, and the Part 1 Analysis discusses antisemitism and the Holocaust.

Lizzie is an 82-year-old patient in a nursing home, where she has lived for about a month. She does not like the nursing home, but she is fond of her nurse. The nurse knows very little about Lizzie except that she lived by herself before coming to the home in poor physical condition; she is frail, pale, and undernourished. Lizzie seems to have no family, and her speech is formal and precise, as if English were not her first language.

Lizzie’s nurse is a single parent who works part-time at the nursing home while raising her nine-year-old son, Karl. When she has no one to look after Karl, he goes to work with her, where he plays outside with friends or visits the patients. One day he wanders into Lizzie’s room, meeting her for the first time, and they chat like old friends. Lizzie is amazed that his name is Karl and that he looks so much like “him.” She tells Karl that an elephant once lived in her garden. When Karl’s mother later explains that Lizzie is confused and there was no elephant, Karl protests: “If [Lizzie] says she had an elephant in her garden, then she did” (9).