Matylda, Bright and Tender

by Holly M. McGhee

  “You’ve got to see her hunt,” said Guy. “You’re not afraid of crickets, are you?”

  “That depends,” said Mrs. Hose. “In general, or if I find one in the shower?”

  “Which would you rather?” said Guy. “Be thrown into a tank of crickets or a tank of lizards?”

  “That’s a horrible question with an easy answer,” said his mom. “Neither.”

  “One or the other,” said Guy.

  “Lifeline to Sussy Reed,” said Mrs. Hose. “Help me decide.”

  We played this game a lot. “Well,” I said, “depends what you prefer. Crickets have crackly shells and gooey insides and they like to stick with their friends,” I said. “Beady eyes, too . . . and they can jump really high.” I started putting butter on my waffle.

  “Have mercy,” said Mrs. Hose. “Not sounding good.”

  “I’ll tell you about lizards, then,” said Guy. “They shed their skin and grow new teeth every four months. And they leap!”

  “Not good either,” she said. Her hands were on the table. “I’ll go with my first instinct. Neither.”

  “Mom,” said Guy, “that’s not an answer. You know how this game works. Make a decision!”

  “That changes the lay of the land,” said Mrs. Hose. I’d eaten half my waffle already. “Can lizards climb?”

  “Not leopard geckos,” Guy said. “No toe pads.”

  “Lizards, then,” she said. “Though I’d hang from the top so they couldn’t touch me. That’s got to be better than being trapped with gooey-inside stick-together crickets that jump.”

  “Did you know that lizards eat crickets in a single gulp?” I asked.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yup. They kill them with their teeth and then the cricket goes down in one piece,” said Guy. “We witnessed it this morning.”

  “Lordy,” she said. “I’m glad we don’t eat our protein like that.”

  We finished our waffles, and before going back to my house, Guy and I walked over to Total Pets so we could ask Mike about Matylda. We found him by the fish. “Hey,” said Mike.

  “Hi,” said Guy. “Remember the gecko we bought yesterday?”

  “Of course! What can I do for you?”

  “Well, we want to know where she came from, before she got to the store.”

  “That’s a good question I can’t answer,” he said. “She was bred in captivity — I know that. She’s not from the wild.”

  “That’s it?”

  “’Fraid so,” Mike said. “But you got a special one, with all those dark spots. Never seen one quite like her. Give her a story of your own — she’ll love it,” he said. “Tell her why you adopted her. Give her an identity.”

  “Just make it up?” Guy asked.

  “Why not?” said Mike, and I grinned, ’cause Mike had a lot in common with my mom.

  “Yeah, why not?” I said. “Thanks, Mike.”

  You want to know your story?” I asked Matylda when we got home. “You want an identity?” Her eyes were curious. Of course she wanted to know her story. She was about to become more than just a common leopard gecko from Total Pets. I laid my hand in the tank, but she didn’t climb on.

  “She won’t come to me,” I said. “Why does she come to you and not to me?”

  “Maybe she just wants to stay in there,” Guy said. But when he put his hand in, she came right over. He placed her on his leg, and she rested on her elbows, starfish feet together in front. It seemed like the two of them were everything to each other then, like they might have forgotten I was even in the room.

  “Okay then, let’s go,” Guy said, grabbing a towel and putting it over his head. “I’m getting in touch with your spirits.” He looked silly with the towel, but I kept quiet. I didn’t want to be disrespectful of Matylda’s origin story. “Your history’s filtering through, getting less hazy,” Guy said. He moved his hands like he was cleaning glass, not missing any specks of dirt. “Clearing, yes . . . yes, it’s here. We’re . . .

  “High atop a mountain, in Pakistan. You are with your master. Wait — what do I see? He’s next for the throne.” Guy’s voice got lower. “Your master, he is greedy. He wears layers of robes, embroidered with jewels — I’m getting closer now. Wait! Ah, I see. Beneath the clothes, he is puny.” Guy focused. “He will be king one day, but for now, time passes slowly. Not much to do in his castle. He relies on you and your fellow lizards for entertainment, forcing you to duel each other till death.” Matylda didn’t move as she listened to Guy — she was right there on the mountain with the tiny future king.

  “Terrible what I see now,” said Guy. “Your master, he captures all the lizards he encounters on his daily trek down the mountain and up again, his training for the day he will be king. Ah, here we are now, in the holding cell, dirty, with very little light. I see you, Matylda, in a tank, hungry, thirsty — all part of his plan. He brings his lizards to the point of near starvation, to the point where they will eat each other to live. You’re there in the corner, tail curled tight around your head.” Guy’s voice was a low whisper now.

  “You are crying, but the tears are dry from lack of water. A great warrior you are, having beaten your opponents forty-nine times in a row. For each victory, each death, you have been given a black spot to mark the toll you’ve paid, for you carry the sadness of the forty-nine dead lizards in your heart.” Matylda twisted her head and looked back at her spots.

  She was covered with them; she closed her eyes and bent her head. I could feel her sorrow, the sorrow of a survivor. She sat in that holding cell for days, maybe months, knowing the only way out was to kill. The weight of every lizard who fell by her own hand would be with her for always. I saw her differently then.

  Guy continued: “Your master made a decree, up and down the mountain. On the occasion of winning your fiftieth duel, you’d be granted your freedom and a wish. But remember: Your master took pleasure in the pain of others, and he saw to it that your fiftieth duel was nearly impossible to win. He set you to fight a lizard twice your size.

  “Word had spread about you, Matylda, the warrior with heart who’d never been beaten. You were neither large nor especially strong, but your senses were keen, and with your fiftieth duel approaching, it quickly became known that the great warrior lizard was fighting her last. The stakes were high: on the one hand, death; on the other, freedom and a wish.

  “The battle commenced,” said Guy. “Your opponent was freshly captured, with no spots at all. He had not been subject to the holding cell, not deprived of food and water. The match was as uneven as a match could be. The future king showed little mercy, even on the day of what would surely be, one way or another, your last battle.

  “Your opponent, eager, charged you, but you knew his game, for you had fought many before him. You went flat to the ground, and he met the wall at tremendous speed. He weakened. What the future king didn’t know was that your opponent was no match for your intelligence. You outwitted him, round after round, flattening, swerving, ducking. The opponent? He died there, against the wall, charging and missing one last time.

  “The master held to his word, for he then considered you a true warrior, and he honored that. You were released, and you were granted a wish.”

  Guy took off the towel and looked at Matylda, and she bowed her head, as if she was grateful. She crawled up his arm and under his hair, poking her head out the other side, nesting there.

  “Why don’t you tell the rest, Sussy?” Guy asked me. “Her legend should come from us both.”

  “How can I do that?” I said. “She won’t even come to my hand.”

  “Not yet,” he said. “But you should finish her story. Right, Matylda?” He turned his head back to her, and she nodded, just a little bit.

  “I’m not a storyteller like you,” I said.

  “Try it with this.” Guy handed me the towel. “You can do anything with this magic towel.”

  “Okay,” I said, even though I knew it wasn’t a magic towel. If
I didn’t try telling the story, I’d hurt her feelings, and I wanted Matylda to like me. So I covered my head with the towel, and it was dark and cozy and it smelled of Guy — the peppermint shampoo his mom bought him. It felt private in there.

  “It’s me in here,” I said to Matylda. “And in case you haven’t heard, I’m Sussy Who’s Not a Storyteller. But give me a chance.”

  The towel helped. Words came: “Choosing a wish isn’t easy,” I told her, “but it was easy for you. Because you’d never been loved by anybody, and you carried with you the sorrow of fifty hearts. . . . The only thing you wanted in all the world was to be loved. It was simple.

  “At the moment you were to make your wish,” I said, “there was a boy and a girl on the other side of the world, me and Guy, who wanted something to love.” It felt like what I was saying mattered. And I went on. “So you lay back, you closed your eyes toward the sun, you stretched your body all the way out, from your head to the end of your tail, as far as you could stretch it . . . and you wished, wished, wished, with all that you were. You wished to be loved.

  “Guy and you and me. Years and years of dueling for a mean-spirited future king. Years and years of our wanting something to take care of, something to love. All of it came together.”

  Even under the towel, my eyes were closed, and I wished for her to love me the way Guy did. The way she loved him already. I wished for her to come to my hand.

  “Love can make anything happen,” I said. “And when you opened your eyes, you found yourself in a tank at Total Pets, and we were there, waiting for you, looking at you through the glass. The world can be a perfect circle sometimes.”

  Thinking about love, I could hear my mom’s soft voice, teaching me to tie my shoes, going through the steps over and over and over again on the front porch, telling me that she didn’t want me to trip on my laces, that she didn’t want me to fall down and get hurt, and that she’d stay there with me all afternoon and the next one, too, if necessary. When I finally got it, I always made the bunny ears exactly even, just for her.

  When I learned to ride a bike, later than most, Guy was there to help me, on Long Beach Island, with my parents. My dad pushed me off and I began pedaling, and then I looked down and started wondering how I could keep my balance on these two thin wheels. Next thing I knew, I was down on the ground, and the bike was on top of me, the chain, black and oily, digging into my knee. Guy came running, shouting, “You okay?”

  “I’m okay,” I said, popping right up, brushing off my leg. “It was nothing.”

  “It wasn’t nothing,” said Guy. He pointed to the chain marks. “Are you really okay?” My dad came over, too.

  “I shouldn’t have looked down,” I said.

  “You want to try again?” Guy asked.

  “Ready,” I said. And he was the runner this time, and he got me going again, fast, so fast, too fast, yelling, “Don’t look down!” I kept going, kept pedaling, not looking down. That was the trick: Don’t look down, forget you can fall, fool yourself that way.

  I didn’t think I was a storyteller. But Guy had helped me. Our lizard had a history now.

  If Matylda had a coat of arms, it would show a savage prince and dueling lizards, but more than any of that, it would show love. Because love is what brought her to us. I believed it. She was no longer just a gecko from Total Pets. She was a warrior lizard, down to her last battle. And she’d won. She’d won for love.

  Guy lifted the towel off my head and brought my hand to her. She put her starfish toes on my fingers, her gritty sandpaper toes, and she bowed, as if she was thanking me for finding my words. She didn’t come any farther, but when she looked at me, her eyes reflected light, they were full of life. The three of us were the world right then.

  Guy and I walked to school together almost every day once we got to third grade. He was an early riser, so he circled back a couple of blocks to get me. He told me what time the sun had risen and what time it would set each day, and the weather, too. I liked to keep an eye out for money on the ground, ’cause one time I found a twenty-dollar bill. “It happened once,” I told him, “so it could happen again!”

  We passed Wayne Hoffman near the entrance. He stood by the bike rack in a white short-sleeved T-shirt, no matter what the weather was. He said, “Hello, Guy. Hello, Red,” every single morning, and he gave us a thumbs-up and told us what number we were.

  “Why do you always give us a number?” I asked him one day. He said that after he got into a fight over a spot at the bike rack one morning, his teacher had given him a permanent place to keep his bike in exchange for a job: He had to count how many students came in each day before the bell rang and give her the tally. Even though it was just to keep him out of trouble in the morning, it turned out that he really liked saying hi to people. So we always said, “Hello, Wayne,” and we thumbs-upped him back.

  We had a project due, one that demanded we “look into ourselves.” The official assignment was called Make Yourself Known. We were supposed to find a way to show the class something unique about ourselves, something people didn’t know — even though it was already May and we were in the last marking period. My red hair was unmistakable, and I ate Craisins and yogurt for lunch every day. Guy’s mom said the Craisin rut was fine, not especially imaginative but healthy enough. That must have been where his easy way came from.

  When Mrs. Bueler said it was acceptable to make ourselves known by sharing something important to us, that it didn’t necessarily have to be a personal trait or accomplishment, I felt a weight off. ’Cause that meant Guy and I could bring Matylda. Mrs. Bueler said it was fine as long as nobody touched the lizard.

  “Okay if she eats a cricket for the class?” Guy asked me after school.

  “If my dad comes,” I said. “I’m not holding the trap.” My dad agreed to help out, and just before Guy went home, we set the trap out by the rhubarb.

  “MAKE YOURSELF KNOWN!” Guy called to the crickets in the backyard. And I think they heard him, because the next morning, there was an über cricket in the bottle — I had never seen one so huge. The über’s eyes were beady, switching back and forth between us through the hard plastic of the bottle. Its back legs were in jumping position, and its antennae were twitching, to the right, then left. It would be hard to convince me that this cricket didn’t want to change its mind. We piled in the car and drove to school. “You guys take the tank and the trap,” I said, going on ahead. “I’ll get the doors.”

  “This is Matylda,” Guy said when it was our turn. “Our leopard gecko. Those holes are her ears,” he said, “and she can hear everything.”

  “She’s crepuscular,” he added. “Active at dawn and dusk.”

  Amanda raised her hand. “Does she shed her skin?” she asked.

  “Every few months or sometimes more,” I said. “It’ll get dull before it comes off. Then guess what she does with it?”

  “She does not eat it,” said Amanda.

  “Yes, she does,” I said. “She gets a hundred new teeth every four months, too.”

  “Gross,” said Amanda.

  “She’s a polyphyodont,” Guy said. “There’s always a replacement tooth coming up next to her full-grown ones. And she hunts.”

  Guy held up our homemade trap. “Those teeth aren’t just to look pretty,” he said. “She kills her prey with them before she swallows it whole.”

  “She does not,” said Amanda.

  “They’re going to show us,” said Carter.

  “How much does she weigh?” asked Mrs. Bueler.

  “An ounce and a half,” said Guy. “But she’ll weigh a lot more after she eats this cricket.”

  “It’s very large,” said Mrs. Bueler.

  “I call it an über,” I said. “I hope it’ll go down.” Then Guy explained the trap design.

  “All recycled material,” he said. “Are you ready to see nature in action?”

  Everybody came up to get a close look, except Amanda, who was still horrified that Ma
tylda ate her own skin. I slid back the screen. Guy had the trap.

  “Watch carefully,” my dad said. He unscrewed the cap, but the cricket didn’t come out. Guy shook the bottle.

  “It’s stuck,” said Carter. “Too big.” Carter was right. Our trap wasn’t designed for übers.

  “Outta there, big mama,” said Guy. He shook the bottle again. It didn’t budge. The über was as wide as the bottle’s neck. Everyone watched.

  “Need some help?” said Guy. “That’s what I’m here for.” He took the cricket by its antenna, shaking the bottle at the same time. “Come on,” he said to the über. “I don’t want to pull your antenna off.” He tugged gently, his fingers near the cricket’s head.

  “Come on,” Guy said, coaxing it out. It was just a giant feeder to him. Finally, it landed in the tank, looking surprised to be there, squarely in front of Matylda. She didn’t hesitate; she pounced and gulped. Her belly grew before our eyes, and one very large antenna was still sticking out of her mouth.

  “How’d she fit that in?” Carter asked.

  “Most lizards would choke on something that size,” Guy said, “but Matylda’s highly skilled.”

  “I’ll say,” Carter agreed, and I did, too. I admired her, even if it was hard to watch. In her own way, without a lot of show, she was still a warrior. She’d attacked the über, no second thoughts. It reminded me of when Guy took off to get my jacket that day. He and Matylda had that trait in common: no hesitation. Maybe that was why she felt more comfortable with him.

  “She’s flourishing,” said Guy.

  Watching Matylda eat that über, her belly bulging, didn’t make me feel too good. Mrs. Bueler leaned down.

  “You’re awfully quiet, Sussy,” she said.

  “It’s just . . .” I looked at the floor. “I try not to think about it,” I said. “But the cricket’s got no chance to say the carrot’s not worth dying for. No chance to warn the rest of its family about the danger of the plastic bottle.”