For show and tell in third grade, Maddie brings her glass animal collection. She collects inch-tall glass dogs and cats and birds. Creatures she can hold despite sharp points, easier to name and develop feelings for than the smooth bubblegum pink eraser she keeps in her pencil box. Her favorite piece is a clear mouse, purchased with saved allowance during a visit to Disneyland. She earned him through afternoons spent vacuuming then mopping the tiled floors. She used a wet rag and bucket of cleaning solution like her dad directed—he didn’t like the smears left by mops. Evidence of life. She wraps each glass piece in tissue paper like her mom demonstrated and keeps them together in a box for transport.
In class, she arranges them on a desk at the front of the room. She points to her favorites. This is a collie. This one’s a Siamese cat. She doesn’t tell the class that sometimes she and her brother use these as pets for their plastic people. No one asks any questions like they did when Sarah brought her grandfather’s medals or Adrian displayed his coin collection. After, she keeps the animals gathered on a shelf in her bedroom, rows of painted eyes staring at her. She suspects glass animals are not a cool thing to collect, just as she knows she’s not considered popular: I collect highly breakable figurines! Fussy, delicate but not pretty. Receptacles for the layer of dirt pulled in from the desert outside.
Their feet fight against a growing stream of dust. She uses a rag to suffocate the debris collected at their tiny glass legs. There are too many of them, animals she’s never seen in the wild like the zebra or giraffe, only at the zoo.
Overwhelmed by the idea of wrapping each piece for storage, switching out old pieces for new, she drops them, naked, into the box. They crash and smash into each other. She feels with a jolt down her forearm the satisfying snap of the mouse’s ear as she pins him between a thumb and finger. She adds him to the pile of parts. She knows she should be careful, protect them in case she wants to display them again but it’s too much work. They’re so small.
“Where did your animals go?” her mother asks. She stoops to look at the empty bookshelf. The animals have left footprints in dust, shadows of existence.
“I’m going in a new direction,” Maddie says.
She remembers the mass in the box, tumbled to form a new creature, feral and unrecognizable. She tries to glue animal pieces back together with superglue that dries milky and highlights their ruptures. She never displays them again, though she brings the box each time she moves, first across the city and then away from the desert, her box of broken animals tinkling in the back of her car. They remain evidence of something to hold onto but not exhibit. Something broken but contained.
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Suzy Eynon is a writer from Arizona. Her work is published in JMWW, Roanoke Review, Passages North, and elsewhere. Her micro chapbook Commuting was published in the Ghost City Press Summer Series 2024. She lives in Seattle.