Anole Other Story

I did not like Mr. Bruce. I needed Mr. Bruce.

To be more specific and needed in listed as my resource teacher for 4^th period. On paper, this meant a period in which I could be given extra support with challenging subjects, like a directed study hall. In practice, this meant I hung out in the computer lab, just myself and Mr. Bruce.

On this particular day, a Tuesday, I trudged in, slid my backpack across the floor and flopped into a seat. After staring blankly ahead for a few minutes, just to ponder my general hopelessness and abject stupidity, I brought my head down on the desk with a bit more of a thump than I’d intended. Rather than admit this mistake, I just stayed like that as long as I could, which was another few minutes.

Only partially acknowledging the error of my ways I brought my arms up, folding them over each other, and proceeding to use them as a pillow. My arms made horrible pillows, even with my oversized hoodie providing additional padding. I sighed. I tried to keep my eyes closed but wound up staring across the two desks to my left. That was boring.

“Did you say something?” I rolled my head to look at Mr. Bruce.

“Nope.” He sat there at his desk, smiling through this salt and pepper beard. Beady eyes stared back at me through half tinted glasses. Even behind the desk, his bulk was evident. His face was beyond chubby. His arms were abnormally small compared to the rest of him. His prodigious gut cascaded within the plaid sweater vest and over the belt. The poor guy’s legs were like barrels, squeezed into off the rack slacks, so strained by his overall mass that a cane had to lend additional support for walking.

These were reasons one and two why I hated him. He was always smiling and positive, which I hated. He was fat, which I took to mean he was lazy, and which I also hated. Additional reasons for my hatred included his status as a teacher and therefore authority figure, a comment he made once about Star Trek being better than Star Wars, his accent, and he existed. To be fair, he was the least authoritarian adult I’d ever met, and he never required I do any work during the period. In retrospect, he had a fair point about the two series. It should be noted that this was in Vicksburg, Mississippi, and everyone had that same accent to some degree or another, his being on the lighter side. And finally, perhaps most tellingly, I did hate everyone, everything, and most avidly myself at this point in my life.

“You said something,” I pressed, face squished against my arm.

He shrugged, “Not to you.”

He was baiting me, taunting me to ask another question, actually engage with him. Possibly, he was insane. I’d considered this often as a possibility, especially after the time I walked in on him seeing some song about, ‘Sha-poopy’. Oh sure, he had explained it was from a musical, but it didn’t sound like a real song.

“Then to who?” Yes, I knew he was baiting me, but I was really bored. Also, there was a certain temptation to thinking about something other than my failing grades, disappointed parents, lack of a social life, and a looming move to Northern Virginia in the not too distant future.

“Well, to Jacques, of course. Would you like to meet him?”

At this point I was getting more certain he was mentally ill. A black and white movie my parents had made me watch came to mind, only I think that was about a rabbit. The idea was the same, a jolly and kindly fellow who is completely out of his mind and convinced his imaginary friend is real. With what little I knew of mental illness, I was pretty sure engaging on the subject and encouraging the delusion was the worst thing I could do.

“Okay.”

Mr. Bruce waved me over, grinning all the more excitedly as he began fussing with his breast pocket. Despite my concern for his emotional stability, I dragged myself up and sauntered slowly to his desk, stopping squarely in front, hands jammed into my jeans pockets. As I arrived he was holding his hands in front of him, hovering a bit above the desk, and cupped together. The idea of a very small imaginary friend seemed less threatening than a six foot tall rabbit.

Slowly fanning his fingers apart for the big reveal, Mr. Bruce said with hushed enthusiasm, “Ta-da!” In his hands was a pale green lizard, an anole if I wasn’t mistaken, a common backyard sort of lizard. It lay on his side, back arched and eyes closed. The neck especially seemed to be sitting at an odd angle. Moreover, it wasn’t moving.

“Um, I think it’s dead.”

Leaving Jacque in one hand, he raised the other to point at me, “You’re half right! So observant. He is in fact only brain dead.”

I tugged my hands out of my pockets and rubbed my eyes, “Oh my god, Mr. Bruce…”

“You see, I put him in the terrarium with my blue tongued skink, Alphonse, and well, Alphonse bit him. On the head. Wham. Only, Jacque didn’t die.”

“But he’s brain dead?”

Mr. Bruce considered his pet and gave a half shrug, “True, true, but I like him all the same.”

Again, he was baiting me, tricking me into having a conversation. He was a devious man, probably smarter than people gave him credit for. Sure, he didn’t really teach any subjects, just computer lab, homeroom, and resource for me, but he was crafty.

“Why do you like your brain dead lizard?” I asked it in a deadpan way, to let him know that although I was nominally engaging in the discussion I had not, in fact, fallen for his trick.

With a gentle finger, Mr. Bruce stroked the immobile thing while he mused, “I don’t know. He’s there. He’s not any trouble. If I put bits of worm in his mouth he still swallows it. If I do this, aha, you see? He wiggles. Isn’t it cute?” Indeed, the brain damaged reptile had gone into a gentle writhing motion, its little body curving on the plump hand.

I looked up from the low key spectacle, “Seriously?”

He stopped petting Jacque. He considered him carefully. He moved his hand so Jacque gently rolled back and forth a few times. The pause was thoughtful, painful, and expertly timed. 

Just when I was at the balance point between agonized anticipation and waning interest, Mr. Bruce said softly, “I think, that I like Jacque because he defies expectations. You thought he was dead, just now, before you knew. I thought he was dead the second Alphonse chomped his head. But he’s not dead. He’s hanging on. His little heart keeps beating. He eats. He wiggles. It’s not much. He’s not the best lizard effort, but in his little way he is defying the world, like an itty-bitty green superhero. I admire that, so I’m taking care of him. He might get better. He might die. But right now, he’s here, and that’s enough.”

“You’re insane.”

Mr. Bruce only giggled and slid Jacque back in his shirt pocket. I slumped back to my desk and put my head down. He’d done it, baited me into a whole conversation that somehow turned philosophical. Or had it? Jacque was a lizard; Mr. Bruce was a weird, single, fat man who taught at a crappy high school. So, I asked myself, why did I envy Jacque? Why did I want to be like Jacque? That day, I couldn’t figure it out, even though it ate it me for the rest of fourth period, through lunch, during fifth and sixth period, and well into my evening at home.

A few months later, my family moved to Fairfax, Virginia, which is in the suburbs of Washington D.C. Though Virginia is a Southern state, this part of Virginia is not Southern, not rural, and not nearly as disadvantaged as my neighborhood in Mississippi had been. On the down side, I fit in here even worse, the preppies and jocks and affluent dweebs all existing in a different dimension than me. On the upside, we were in one of the top ten school districts in the country, complete with adequate funding, well trained teachers, and testing to evaluate for learning disabilities. Five. I had five of them.

It took a while, another year or so of existing, just hanging in there like a brain dead lizard, but I eventually started to defy expectations. Not all of them, of course. I still didn’t make friends in high school, but at least I graduated high school. This defied a lot of expectations. Bottom five percent of my graduation class, but still a huge shock. Things improved from there, not easily and not always smoothly, but I get by. On the worst of days, when I’m cocooned in bed and wondering if there is any point to anything, if I should even try, I just do a little wiggle. I exist. Apparently, to some people, bless their hearts, that’s enough.