The Glass Library by Sharma Shields

In the library made of glass, the clerk dusts the glass books, the glass shelves, the glass computers. She, too, is made of glass, and her glass slippers click on the pale green floor as she moves through the rooms. Every morning the clerk readies the library for its opening, when the people made of glass clatter into the bright space and attempt to find sanctuary. Now and again something—or someone—breaks, and the clerk sweeps up the shattered pieces with her wire broom and metal dust pan, shaking out the dust in the large bins outside. When she cries over what’s been lost, her glass tears fall and plink against the floor like tiny marbles. The children rush to collect them, filling their pockets with these precious rare stones.

The clerk understands the fragility of the library and of the people who gather here, herself included. She longs for others to understand it, too. She wants everyone to notice the young glass child who arrives and sits cross-legged in the children’s area, opening a selection of books one at a time. Each book reflects the child’s clear glass face back to them: These books, when opened, become mirrors. When the clerk moves through the stacks, she hears the books singing to her with their reflective potential: They are all distinct, these titles, but they sing in one ongoing chorus. The more varied the stories, the clerk knows, the healthier the people will be. She is grateful to see how much of the community cares for the library and all that it contains.

And yet there are always people who arrive with their hammers. They smash the books out of fear or out of anger or out of misunderstanding. They smash them because they, themselves, have been smashed. The clerk can sense how hurt these individuals are; she can see, in the right light, the cracks in their hands or forearms or faces or shins that are almost imperceptible unless you look closely. The clerk has her own cracks—she’s embarrassed of them. She wears long sleeves and long skirts to try to hide them. There are no people here who aren’t cracked somewhere, she thinks, but she notes, too, that some people learn to move more gently and carefully with their cracks and others prefer to take up their ball-peen hammers, opining, better to attack than be attacked. These are all modes of survival, the clerk notes, but she winces all the same when the hammers come crashing down.

One day the child arrives and nestles into her usual corner with a stack of glass picture books. Nearby a man roams the aisles, twirling a hammer in his hand. The clerk fastens herself to the space between the two of them, hypervigilant, lingering in case the man’s hurt boils over and he chooses to wield his only tool. It’s a vivid day in late spring, the sun pouring through the big windows, the glass books and shelves dazzling and dancing. The clerk sees how she shines, how the child and man shine, too, reflecting all of this radiance. She hears the man muttering to himself, about not liking the look of these books, about not seeing books that reflect him, and the clerk steps forward to say, “Yes, of course, we have books for you, we have books for all, because we share a world. The more varied the stories,” she explains, “the safer we’ll be.”

He lifts up a book in response, gazes at it, then shakes it at her, seething. He threatens to dash it on the ground. He lifts his hammer, makes a smashing motion.

The clerk senses her own fragility, the way she, too, can be shattered. But she stands firm, aware of the young child behind her, who has looked up from her reading to gaze at them, her glass face, furrowed with curiosity, freshly gleaming in the sunlight.

The clerk recognizes how afraid she is, afraid of the smashing of another book, afraid of the hammer, afraid for the young girl to both lose her books and to be attacked, herself. The clerk pushes against her own fear, struggling to find a voice and the right words to say to diffuse the man’s anger, but then there is a tinkling noise, a dozen fragile feet tripping across the floor, and the clerk finds that she no longer stands alone—here is the library community, a trove of glass people who stand with her, who have heard the rising voices and who wish to help protect the wealth of stories. The clerk, no longer alone, asks the man gently to return the book to the shelf. He casts his gaze

about, taking in all of the bodies around him, fragile in their individuality but stronger when together, and then sighs, handing the book to the clerk. The crowd disperses soon after, and the man leaves, even throwing his hammer in the bin outside as he passes into the gardens with their glass roses and buzzing crystal bees.

The clerk knows there will be others with hammers, that there will be more fraught moments when misunderstanding and fear and frustration threaten the peace of this sacred space, but for now she relaxes. She brings the girl a few more books. She assists other patrons, too, with books, with resources, with connection. She shelves a selection of new books, books she, herself, has ordered, a diversity of titles that reflect the sparkling luminescence of the children who gather here. The glass clerk hums as she works, and the books hum, too, their stories melting together into columns of light.

Sharma Shields is the Writing Education Specialist at Spokane Public Library. She is the author of a short story collection, Favorite Monster, and two novels, The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac and The Cassandra. Sharma’s short stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Electric Lit, Catapult, Slice, Slate, Fairy Tale Review, Kenyon Review, and more.