Amelia Gray: Museum of the Weird

“That’s the good thing about a shell,” Betsy said.

They sat in silence. Betsy wondered if she had perhaps said too much about her shell. Ray wondered where the bartender got off serving a penguin a drink in a highball glass. He would have rather taken his gin out of an ashtray.

Betsy tapped her claw against the beer bottle. “Have you ever protected an egg?” she asked.

Ray realized that he was at the state of intoxication where anything Betsy could possibly say was going to piss him off. Keep your cool, buddy , he said to himself. She’s just trying to make conversation .

“Usually that’s a job for the lady penguins,” Ray said. “I am a male penguin and therefore, no, I have never protected an egg.”

“Right,” Betsy said. “Well, I saw a documentary once, and a male penguin was protecting an egg. I figured maybe you’d have some experience.”

“Sorry, I don’t have any experience. I guess that makes me less of a penguin.”

“I wasn’t saying that.”

“I suppose you think I’m some kind of lesser penguin, just because I fought the fucking darkness and tasted my own blood , because I haven’t protected a stupid fucking egg .”

Betsy felt tears welling up. Don’t cry , she said to herself. It would be really stupid to cry at this moment.

“I honor your fight,” she said. “I did not mean to disrespect you.” Ray sank back. “It’s no disrespect,” he said. “I’m just a penguin in a bar, drinking my gin out of a fucking highball glass for some reason.”

“I was wondering why they did that,” the armadillo said. “Doesn’t make any goddamn sense,” said the penguin.

There’s no reason. There’s no reason why you couldn’t. There’s no reason it’s not possible you couldn’t possibly finish your mild cottage cheese breakfast, buy a ticket, take that train to the edge of the world, squeeze your eyes shut, dig the wheels into moist world-edge earth and make a dramatic plunge off the side, your friends and family waving good-bye as at the end of a parade when all that’s left is sandwich wrappers and the rest of a long day, sun streaming through all the windows and still a cold room no matter how much light hits every corner, even if you take the curtains and flip them over the curtain rods so there’s nothing impeding the procession of light — that kind of lazy afternoon where someone in the house mutters a promise to make banana bread but you know the bananas will spoil and cultivate bacteria, becoming dangerous like the kitchen counter you washed in your younger years first with warm water and later on with the stronger stuff, ammonia making you dizzy behind your allergen free mask, a boiling water rinse and a layer of bleach, just a bit of the stuff mixing together into what you hear is dangerous but secretly know is a chemical so powerful that certain entities don’t want you to hear about it, and by “certain entities” you mean the government, these powers in power have other plans for you but you’re one step ahead, you and your sleeves with the tricks in them and your special diet, the cottage cheese diet, the diet with cottage cheese, and as you eat the cottage cheese you hold very gently on your tongue the cottages and the people inside the cottages and the people are screaming.

June was sitting at her desk and looking out the window, as she often did when she was thinking about her problems. It was a cold day, and cloudy, threatening rain. As she thought, June twisted a length of hair around and around her index finger.

She observed a squirrel on the tree outside her window. It was perched on a small mid-tree stump which had been cut earlier that year by overzealous pruners. The squirrel was clutching his heart.

Before she stopped to look out the window, June had been reading about a massive trichobezoar. Gastroenterologists removed the giant hairball from a girl on Thanksgiving morning. The hairball weighed ten pounds and was shaped like the stomach in which it had been lodged. The girl had a mental disorder that involved eating her own hair during times of duress. Romantic gastroenterologists called it Rapunzel Syndrome. When asked if the removal of a ten-pound hairball would affect their Thanksgiving meal, the gastroenterologists were quoted as saying, “We don’t get fazed by much.”

It seemed as if the squirrel was having a seizure. He was shaking, and gripping the tree with three paws. The fourth was still on his chest, as if he was about to break into song. June thought it would be wonderful if the squirrel broke into song. She couldn’t take her eyes away, though she was tired, and needed to work and sleep. Helping the squirrel was out of the question, because the tree branch was eight feet from the window. June wasn’t sure what she would do to help, anyway. She could do the tiny chest compressions if necessary, but she wouldn’t be able to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She had tried a similar procedure once on a kitten, many years before, and it had not worked.

The hairball girl went to the hospital to have it removed after she lost nearly forty pounds. It turned out that the mass growing in her stomach was filling her up, and though her body begged for protein and energy, everything she ate or drank fell against the knotted hair and clogged in her system. The little food she did eat would eventually break down into enough nutrients to keep her alive long enough to eat more hair.

The squirrel was no longer shaking, June noticed. Its tiny paw still hovered over its breast but the beast simply stared in through the window. June understood dramatics, having recently worked at a dinner theatre, but the performance was a little too compelling. The spirit and knowledge in the eyes was gone, and the squirrel was dead.

Somehow, its tiny claws had dug deep enough into the wet wood — it was raining now, June saw — to keep it righted on the mid-tree stump. The squirrel had honey-brown fur that was the same color as June’s hair, still twisting around her finger. June and the squirrel were only two stories up, which still seemed a long way to jump or fall.

That morning, June and her friends had a laugh over breakfast about how they would each die. June had claimed skin cancer, pointing to some questionable moles on her forearms. Another friend swore that after a lifetime of watching his partner smoke, he would be the one with an ironic cancer of the lung. Cancer is funniest when discussed over breakfast.

June tried to see the humor in things. It was a character trait of which she was proud, her ability to laugh at any situation. She joked about love and death. She thought the ball of hair stuck in the girl was hilarious. She often made a joke about the last gift her grandmother sent, a single pair of red socks with a row of embroidered polar bears. She wore the socks, and when anyone remarked on them, she would say, those were the last present my grandmother gave before her passing.

She never would seriously say “passing.” Her grandmother hadn’t driven in years and likely wouldn’t utilize the HOV lane, but June imagined the woman in a dirty red sedan, flipping the bird as she tore around a school bus and howling at the idea that a pair of socks could make so many people feel like shit.

The girl with Rapunzel Syndrome claimed she ate her hair out of heartbreak. June understood heartbreak, having recently worked at a dinner theatre.

The squirrel was dead for sure. It was staring through June with eyes that had seemed glassy before but were practically mirrors at that point. The squirrel swayed along with the tree. Raindrops dripped from its sagging tail.