Before Your Time

In the days before plastic, all the buildings were made of glass. They called it the Prism City, and it gleamed like a crystal from the bottom of the valley.

It was an estate city, where the barons of industry built their dream homes, where their philosophies became architecture. They were great men, men with no secrets, no shame. They ate their dinners, trimmed their toenails, made love to their wives--all in plain view.

I was a young man then, still waiting for my own greatness to emerge. I survived by polishing away the streaks; I made that city glow. I would stand on the edge of town with my scrub brushes and suds bucket, watching the boats float down the river. Sooner or later, one would pull ashore and an estate holder would hand me a map and keys.

It was the first time I saw my own reflection.

Toby

Miss Nolan’s class has a lizard, an iguana named Toby. He looks like my Uncle George, without the glasses. He sits very still on his driftwood perch, opening and closing his mouth. People say Toby is sighing, that he’s tired, that it’s hard being a reptile, but he doesn’t look tired to me. His eyes are glossy and quick. I think they have laser beams behind them.

When Bubbles the goldfish died, he turned yellow and floated to the top of his tank. Miss Nolan said it was okay, that he had looked at the big clouds outside and his soul became so light that it jumped from his body to the sky. Miss Nolan says there is a heaven for fish, and for puppies and dead leaves. The garbage man buries our old tires and televisions in the ground and we get new ones. But white milk cartons come back as chocolate ones, and broken glass makes mirrors, and puddles go to heaven for one second then come back as raindrops. I wonder what happens to iguanas, because they are evil, unlike goldfish and puppies and even broken glass, which can’t help being broken.

Toby is evil because he’s a reptile, and reptiles are natural born killers. At least that’s what I used to think. I wrote Miss Nolan a note that said so. It said:
Dear Miss Nolan,
Iguanas are reptiles and reptiles are evil. Toby is an iguana. Therefore, he killed Bubbles.

I put the note on her chair during lunch, under a book with pictures of dragons on it. The dragons looked like Toby. This made me think, “Wait just a minute.” Miss Nolan knows how to make things very small. I am a big boy, my mother tells me so, but when I forget to raise my hand or whisper to Victor Chen in class, Miss Nolan says my name in a slow, deep voice. At times like this, I am smaller than a mouse; I want to crawl inside my own pocket and hide there forever.

Maybe Toby was big once, too, a big dragon with purple wings and orange fire and his own castle. Maybe he yelled own the answer during times tables or made a face at Priya Skinner. Maybe he’s not evil at all, just confused, a big soul in a small body, in a box, on a table, far away from home.