The Other Glass
Menagerie
It was acquired outside of Barney’s
on the Upper East Side during a mild winter as shoppers dipped in and out of
stores to gather Christmas gifts. Each tiny, glass animal— costing no more than
a few dollars— was wrapped in a Kleenex, and the lot of them were packaged up
in the type of box usually reserved for gifting necklaces. The menagerie
consisted of both obvious and more unusual specimens: a clear and orange dog; a
white and clear monkey (clutching, of course, a yellow banana); a red and clear
hedgehog; a blue steer with orange horns; an exceptionally small yellow rooster
with an even smaller orange cockscomb; a very scrappy orange and red chicken;
and an owl, in shades of purple, yellow, and white, who, who, who measured
slightly smaller than a girl’s thumb and was the largest of the bunch. And true
to stereotype, he claimed to be the wisest of the collection, although each
animal had its occasional moments of deep insight.
For example, after the journey in a
carry-on, after crossing the great expanse of the country in an overhead
compartment, and after taking their place on a desk under a lamp set up to pass
light through their varying transparencies, the animals began to speculate as
to why this woman-child, someone who should so clearly be in a more advanced
stage of social development, chose them and placed them in such close proximity
to the activities of her life instead of on some distant shelf to collect dust
in all their Lilliputian crevices. On one of those days when the rain hastens
afternoon into evening, they tried to puzzle it out:
The Monkey waved his banana around and surmised to
the group that it must be because each of them represented a joke frozen in
that moment just after the eruption of laughter. The owl said, no, I’m not
funny-looking. Speak for yourself.
The steer suggested that it was because their
woman-child ran away from her shaky childhood, and they all nodded as they
recalled how long the flight was between her childhood home and adult home.
Yes, that could be it, they said.
The very scrappy chicken said, yes, but lots of
girls and women like little, cute things. In fact, a lot of Japanese pop
culture fetishizes cute. The group went silent for a moment, and then the
rooster said since when did you become an expert on Japanese pop culture? and
the group laughed at the chicken who said, but wait… haven’t you noticed that
her boyfriend has anime eyes? And the
chicken widened her beady eyes.
No, no, no said the owl. This woman-child is a
poet and because of that she loves things that are small and perfect. This made
them all swell a little with pride to think they represented exquisiteness.
They held on to that answer for a while.
After a while they stopped trying to figure out
their woman-child who would select one of them at random and absent-mindedly
turn the animal slowly in her warm, dry hands as she sat in front of the
computer screen and scattered words across pages. Sometimes you just have to
accept the mysteries of life, said the hedgehog in one of his Buddhist moments.
Whatever the reason, the menagerie
came to cherish their person, and they would try to do nice things for her when
she wasn’t looking. The dog had heard a story once about how a shoemaker had
shoe elves to help him with his cobbling, and she told the group the story one
night over hot tea served in millet husks.
We should do something like that, said the
rooster, so they thought and thought about what they would do.
The steer said, look, our woman-child doesn’t do a
very good job keeping her spaces clean. I mean, she obviously tries to arrange
her life, but even after everything is put in its place, dirt builds up in the
dark places.
The hedgehog said, is that a metaphor for her
mind?
The owl said, hush. I’m supposed to be the wise
one. Let’s try to clean up those dirty, dark places, so the group gathered dog
hair from the carpet and fashioned it into brooms and dusters. They tore the
corners off the tissue peeking out of its box and used them as rags. Every night
for a week they worked until exhaustion, just as the morning’s Midas touch
turned the desk’s wood to gold. The trouble, they noticed, was twofold: The
nature of their size made it hard for them to cover much ground so that by the
time they finished cleaning one dark place, the dust began to settle again in
another. The second problem was that the very nature of dark places meant the
woman-child avoided them, so she never noticed when they seemed cleaner and
more light-filled. After several days of disappointment and what would be bone
weariness if they had bones, the menagerie gave up on their elven endeavors and
decided that maybe they should just focus on what they do best: charm with
glassy dinkiness.
It wasn’t long after this failed
attempt at becoming more useful that the woman-child began cleaning everything
off her desk. The menagerie became despondent, and they each worried quietly
that it was because of their collective failure that they were now being
wrapped in tissues with missing corners and placed into the same necklace box
that they arrived in a few years’ prior. The animals tried to talk it through
with each other, but the tissue just muffled their words, so they all fell
silent and became deeply depressed. In the next few days they heard dull,
distant sounds like stifled thunder, and they suffered great vertigo as their
necklace box was placed sideways in another box. They were in terrible limbo…
And starved for air and wistful
fondling. But sometime after a week or so (Time dragged on with no sense of
night or day. It just seemed like a
week, says the glass dog who, common to fleshier dogs, doesn't really have a
great sense of time anyway.) the menagerie trembled in its box with collective
anticipation as it felt the necklace box become righted. It was one of those
great, inverted moments of magical irony when the necklace box was opened
because instead of a gasp coming from the outside of the box as it usually does
when a necklace box is opened with any kind of gasping, in this case the gasp
came from inside of the box.
So once again after much unwrapping
of tissues, in a similar kind of anticipation akin to déjà vu, the glass
animals were placed on the same desk under the same lamp set up to pass light
through their same varying transparencies. Everything was the same except the monkey who lost his banana in transit when it snapped off during some
particularly vigorous moving. He didn’t mind though, not much really. Now he
felt a little more serious, like maybe he would finally get some respect. Everything
was the same except for the view from the sliding glass doors, which, incidentally,
were also a new feature for dog, steer, owl, monkey, chicken, rooster, and
hedgehog. They spent a great deal of time gazing out of those doors at the
woods beyond, watching the seasonal wheel alternately strip or adorn the
crowding trees with a kaleidoscope of leaves.
By and large, this is how it went.
The menagerie would become accustomed to their place on the desk with the view
it afforded. The woman-child would turn each of them in her fingers as she
transcribed the words of her heart, feeding them into a machine. The dust would
begin to build up in the dark corners. The animals would begin to worry, and
then the move would happen: Tissues, necklace box inside a bigger box, vertigo,
jostling, breathless waiting, same desk, same light, new view. It almost became
a joke; it most certainly became the norm. Sometimes it would be city lights
through the window; sometimes it would be palm trees through the window,
sometimes it would be deserted neighborhood streets greyed out by the soft crayon
of rainfall.
One night the glass animals gathered
around the ambient glow cast by the computer monitor’s screen saver, and they
pensively sipped their tea from their millet husks. The quiet persisted for a
little while until the chicken piped up:
Why do you suppose we move around so
much? He asked the other thoughtful animals.
I’m not sure, said the dog, but I
think our woman-child is kind of rootless like one of those clingy air plants.
No, said the owl, because sometimes
we stay someplace for a long time, so really she’s more like a succulent with a
shallow root structure.
Give me a break, said the monkey,
she’s not a plant.
Personally, I don’t mind the moving,
said the chicken. I like the change
of scenery.
Me, too, said the rooster, and
besides, we still get our desk and lamp. Nothing really changes for us.
But what is she running away from?
said the steer.
And the animals fell quiet again for
a little while. They blew on their hot tea and sipped it gingerly. After a
while of this, the hedgehog, who was really quite soft-spoken, cleared his
throat and offered this: Our woman-child keeps moving so that she can cast a
golden spell over the memory of place, just as it is for us who achingly look
back at every place we’ve been. The only way to appreciate the fulsomeness of
the view is to move far enough away from it. I hold those first trees in my
mind like a shimmer dying across the lake as the sun dipped down behind those
first mountains we ever beheld. One thing I can tell you, though, is that we
are a constant comfort for her hands that like to wander. We are like the moon
that seems to steady the driver even as she moves forward in space and time. So
get a grip, you guys. Don’t overanalyze.
With that, the animals let out a
slow, musical sigh, and they each smiled a small, secret smile. Even the owl,
who, who, who was usually egotistical about his intellect, had to acknowledge
the monk-like wisdom of the hedgehog.
