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Short-Short Fiction: "Animal Cages" I’m not the writer in the family. My Uncle Steve won a prize from the English Department at Moraine Valley Community College for his story on Grady, his iguana. Grady narrated. He detailed iguana dreams and offered thoughts on his cage, housed in Steve’s bedroom in his parents’ home. Steve told me about the story years later, when he found out I wanted to be a writer. By this time, Steve was a journeyman mechanic, fingers black from engine grease, not ink. He promised to send me the story, but never did. Steve still has Grady, or an iguana that looks just like him. The walls of Steve’s home are lined with animal cages, mostly aquariums, big ones, with goldfish large enough to eat. He keeps tropical fish with special heat lamps separate from the more pedestrian, though no less loved, carp and catfish. Steve builds his own tanks, although he did not build his home. It’s Grandma’s home; Steve and his family live in the basement. This makes the presence of so many aquariums an aesthetic statement, a strong element of interior design. Aunt Dawn keeps their home immaculate. The walls that are not lined by fish or iguana tanks house a complete collection of Walt Disney animated feature films on video. Also, a collection of porcelain dragons advertised on the Home Shopping Network and carnival carousel music boxes found in the special advertising section of the Sunday Sun-Times. Dawn collects unicorns of every size and composition, as well as tattoos of friendly-looking aliens on both shoulders. The baby’s room has a multi-tiered knick-knack shelf with a complete collection of Beanie Babies, including McDonald’s Bitty Beanies and Beanies available exclusively at certain Cubs, Bears and Bulls games. Grandma is blind, obese and kind. When Dawn and Steve ask her to watch their daughter, Belle, Grandma agrees enthusiastically although her watch consists of listening for the next crash. Belle likes to climb Grandma like a jungle gym and jump off of her furniture. Belle is antagonized by words, mostly shouted at her. She chooses not to speak, although she can articulate most vowel and consonant sounds and has an effectively piercing scream. She chews the pages of books and spits out the pulp in discrete wads throughout the basement apartment. When Grandma baby-sits, Steve and Dawn bring Belle upstairs with one or two Disney films as narcotics. Dawn turns on the television and VCR and feigns that the animated features will subdue her child. Grandma gives Belle a Coke and a bag of cheese puffs and smokes many mentholated cigarettes. She ashes in a tray Dawn made in a ceramics class at Bogan High School before she dropped out. When the fire starts, it is not due to Grandma’s smoking. Belle lacks the fine motor skills to strike a match, and Steve and Dawn are at the stock car races. It is some other grandchild, a young woman otherwise irrelevant to this story, but for the fact that she left a candle burning in the attic of her grandmother’s house. She did not think it was stupid to leave a candle burning on a wooden table in the attic of a wood frame house. She was ignorant of the desire to burn as it inheres in the wax-fixed wick, quickened by flame. She did not understand that she would take the burning inside herself. She is not even there when the disc of flaming ceiling falls at Grandma’s feet in the living room, terribly close to where Belle is throwing a temper tantrum. Grandma grabs Belle and struggles to cross her busy street using sound instead of sight to avoid being hit by oncoming traffic, mostly rusted beaters and muscle cars. Arms and hands scratched by hedges and hurricane fences and shins bruised by Belle’s kicks, Grandma pounds around the periphery of three different neighbor’s houses, shouting, in valiant but failed competition with Belle’s screams, until they find someone home, who calls the fire department. No one is hurt by the fire, but the fish unfortunately boil in their tanks. Grady, miraculously, survives, although Steve is convinced the creature has emphysema and nurses Grady fussily. For his part, Grady stares blankly whenever Dawn lights a cigarette, candle or pilot light. He continues to confide in Steve. I can’t tell you any more about what Grady says, though, because, like I said, I never read the story. |