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October 1, 2025
Volume 1 · Issue 2 · Story 1
The Year of the Glendas
by Maggie Nerz Iribarne
That autumn the sun set earlier than any I remembered.
The trees lining the road home closed in, crowding my moving car. A tunnel. My eyes strained into the cones of headlights before me.
As soon as I crossed the threshold, the babysitter sprung from the living room chair, mumbling goodbye, rushing into the bourgeoning night.
I tended to get out of work late. There was always something else to do.
My shrink might have said, “Or maybe you’re avoiding home?”
I shrugged out of my coat, draping it on a closet hanger, crossed the still-sparse living room.
I hadn’t had time to replace the items Scott took when he left.
Parker’s voice drifted from his room.
I knew who he was talking to, and it wasn’t me.
Still, I filled his doorway.
“I’m home, honey,” I said.
“Hi,” he said.
Glenda’s multicolored lights blinked in the evening haze, awaiting his next question, request, command, whatever.
He glared me into the hall.
“She’s gone, Glenda,” he said.
I turned to my own room, showered, brushed teeth, read in bed.
Parker did not say, “Good night, Mommy.”
He said, “Good night, Glenda.
Eventually, the finger of light reaching across the hall relented.
***
Glenda was my idea.
I considered myself “anti-tech,” a luddite, swearing I’d die on that parental hill of technology. First, I gifted my son turntables and radios, digging in my old school heels. When the radio welcomed a stream of foul language and unsavory DJ banter, a Glenda seemed a preferable alternative. Glenda, I knew, would give my son only what he asked for, audibly. I would be able to hear his requests, cut out the human DJ crap shoot.
And after Scott left, Parker was so, so lonely and sad.
I hoped the Glenda would be a comfort, or a distraction at least.
***
In the morning I put together breakfast with weakened hands, hands that had once crocheted strands of yarn into complex sweaters, wove fabrics, molded ceramics.
I placed a vitamin gummie and ADD med on a plate, poured orange juice, sliced strawberries.
“Anything exciting happening at school today?”
Parker perched at the counter, a giant boy-bird hanging over a book of timelines in history, taking small bites with big teeth.
At that time, I did not allow Glenda in the kitchen.
“Nuh,” he said.
I expertly refrained from the usual parent questions,
What are you studying? What have you learned this week?
I wished I had another adult, some new person popping in, knowing just what to say.
Scott was gone. My mother and sister were back in Colorado. My best friend in Manhattan, busy with her murals.
Tammy wandered in, winding around the chair legs.
How I wished Parker would reach out for her tail or pick her up in his arms for a hug.
Isn’t that why we got the damned cat?
I sipped my coffee, fixed on my own screen.
***
I told my mother, my sister, a priest, my shrink about the Glenda thing. They all pushed back.
“He’s just a child, Ellen,” my mother said.
“You were introverted at that age,” my sister said.
“You need to focus big picture. Does he go to school? Do his work? Misbehave?” the priest said.
“Have you had him tested?” the shrink said.
“I know, Really?, Yes/No, and Yes,” I responded to each person.
“He’s only ten,” everyone said repeatedly.
He’s only ten.
Only ten.
Only ten.
My journal pages were jammed with this phrase.
***
November settled in. A grim Thanksgiving beckoned.
The Wednesday before break, the teacher emailed to say that Parker had been refusing to speak to anyone at lunch, the first I’d heard of it.
I asked for a meeting.
The Monday after, I sat at an oblong table, a kind of perverse dining room set up, in the “team room” with the lead instructor, the counselor, the special education professional.
I told them about his current lack of connection, that it hadn’t always been that way. I presented the paperwork from the inconclusive autism tests. The doctors and psychologists didn’t think his symptoms were consistent enough for a diagnosis.
I didn’t want a diagnosis so I didn’t push it.
I didn’t tell them about Glenda.
“Maybe it’s the situation. I mean, I don’t mean to be intrusive, but at home?” the counselor said.
I examined my hands, rubbed raw from washing, hand sanitizer.
“Maybe.”
The lead teacher touched my wrist. I resisted a flinch.
“Why don’t you invite a friend over?”
“He doesn’t have –”
“Most of them don’t have friends yet. I can tell you the three nicest kids in class, the kids who would come if you asked them.”
By the end of the day I invited Clarence Towson over for a play date.
The very next Saturday I zipped around the house, springing around, setting up a snack tray.
“Are you excited, honey?” I said, barging in, tidying his room.
“Glenda, what should I do on a playdate?” Parker said.
***
Clarence arrived at the front door, a cadre of stuffed animals exploding from his arms.
The murmuring from upstairs ceased. Parker landed in the front hall, looming over average-sized Clarence.
“I brought the guys,” Clarence said cluelessly, proudly.
Parker half smiled, almost laughed.
I’d grown so desperate I would take unkind if it meant some connection with humanity.
“You want to see my room?” Parker said.
I feared his true motivation.
In exactly two minutes I heard Parker introduce Clarence to Glenda.
“Nice to meet you, Clarence,” she said.
But soon, before the merest snack tray suggestion, the play date erupted into an argument.
I rushed upstairs, swung open the door.
“He’s hogging Glenda, telling her about all his stupid guys!” Parker said, turning his back on Clarence, blocking Glenda.
Clarence sniffled, gathered up the stuffed animals.
“You two want something to eat?” I said.
Clarence nodded, but Parker said, “No, thanks. I’m staying here with Glenda.”
Clarence and I exchanged glances, left the room.
He spent the rest of the so-called playdate zipping Parker’s old Matchbox cars across the den rug while his guys and I watched, faking interest.
***
One frigid January day I lost it.
The nurses on my floor were complaining and bickering, some of the support staff didn’t show. All the usual, just a little worse.
When I arrived home Parker withheld any welcome, kept his eyes glued to Glenda’s bubbling lights.
“I. Have. Had. It. With. This,” I said through gritted teeth, already regretting my tone, my feet rushing across the dimly-lit room.
I yanked the cord out of the wall, force-ignoring the utter fear in Parker’s face.
“I’m getting rid of this thing, for good.”
I slammed the door behind me, returning to the kitchen where I threw Glenda in the garbage can.
At breakfast I noticed Parker had been crying too.
“Why do you hate her so much?” he said.
“She’s not a her. It’s an it. I don’t hate it. I just wish you’d talk to people, real living people, to me. Do you want a dog?”
I hadn’t expected to offer that, a dog. When the hell would I have time for a dog?
“No, I want Glenda.”
We didn’t speak for the rest of the morning
It was Saturday so he retreated to the den, staring mindlessly at the television.
When I was a kid we were always in trouble for watching too much television.
I loved the Super Friends! I’d tie a blanket around my shoulders and pretend to fly around the house. My sister was wrong. I was different than Parker at this age.
He slouched on the couch, disengaged, enduring non-Glenda time.
I stood at the counter where a change of address postcard lay to the right of my tapping fingers.
Apparently, Scott was staying in Philadelphia.
I pulled Glenda from the garbage by her nasty now tomato stained cord. She dangled from my hand. I wiped her down and plugged her back in, settling her beside a rough little mug I’d made for Parker’s seventh birthday, one of my early attempts at ceramics.
I entered the den.
“Glenda’s back. Upstairs. Sorry, Parker,” I said.
He jumped up to hug me.
He hugged me.
For a minute I was actually satisfied.
He was crying with joy.
Tears of joy for stupid Glenda.
“Please apologize to Glenda too,” he said.
I swallowed my rage, acquiesced.
***
“We think it would help if Parker brought his Glenda with him to school.”
I considered these words, traveling across the phone line from Parker’s school counselor’s lips out my phone’s speaker into my workplace, distracting me from my schedule-making.
“To?”
“To keep him company. To help him with his school work. To make him happy. Honestly I don’t know why we didn’t think of it before.”
I sat with that for a moment but knew I had no choice. The train had left the station.
My son had a best friend and it wasn’t a human. They all knew this now. My son wasn’t able to cope without his little Glenda.
“Well how will this look?”
“Do you mean what will other kids think?”
“No I mean how will it look? He carries it in his backpack, plugs it in each classroom, brings it to lunch, sits beside it like a classmate?”
I was honestly half kidding.
“Yes! That’s exactly how it will look. Just think how much more productive he’ll be when he has Glenda with him all the time.”
“So I take it you’ve given up on him improving? Connecting? Fitting in?”
“We haven’t given up. We’re just offering a new type of support. We think it’s wonderful and quite honestly we’re kind of looking at it like a pilot program. Maybe other kids could benefit from bringing their Glendas to school.”
“That’s something to look forward to,” I said.
***
A cold numbing spring. A snowy Mother’s Day.
I strolled down an aisle at the grocery store when another woman ran her cart into mine.
“Oh, there she is, little Miss Glenda.”
“Excuse me?”
I’d never seen this woman before.
“Have you even been to school lately? Have you seen the way you and your SON have ruined school for everyone?”
I’d heard some other kids were bringing Glendas but I didn’t know much more than that.
“I haven’t. I have a full time job.”
I always loved playing the working-mother card with women whom I suspected were stay-at-homes.
“Why don’t you take a day off, pop in some day, take a look around. All you’ll see are kids talking to machines. Kids without friends. Kids gaining weight because they don’t go outside, exercise. They’re even talking about laying off teachers because they don’t need as many people to do instruction now that Glenda does it. They don’t need aides or even counselors because Glenda takes care of everything.”
I stood frozen, holding an unripe avocado in my right hand.
***
With summer came the announcement of a new school-optional pilot program.
That September I allowed Parker to stay home alone while I went to work. Thankfully, Glenda could not replace healthcare workers, yet.
Parker was happy and safe with his Glenda, a stocked fridge, and a locked door, although with mostly everyone inside with their Glendas, even crime seemed to be on the downward spiral.
A good thing, I guessed.
Arriving home at night I skipped the verbal hello, held a hand up so Parker might know I’ve returned, entered my room, closed the door.
My ears no longer strained to hear my son’s interactions.
Some things-the shower, the tooth brushing – remained the same, but the room, the whole house had a more peaceful, orderly essence, or maybe that’s just how I perceived it. I had finally stopped fighting. Clear of its former paper detritus, my bed was empty, smooth and tucked, its centered pillow alert, unwrinkled as I approached to take my rest.
Instead of reaching for old books, I switched off the light, turned to the Glenda whose primary colored dots shattered the darkness, sprung into a carnival of recognition.
My list of questions commenced, expanding and narrowing in theme:
Glenda, how many stars are in the sky?
Glenda, how old is the Earth?
Glenda, is there a god?
Glenda, what will the weather be tomorrow?
Glenda, how do I clean the gutters?
Glenda, what is the distance from here to Philadelphia? Colorado? New York City?
Glenda, how do I train a dog?
Glenda, can a boy without a father be okay?
Glenda, does Parker’s hair still smell like honey?
I repeated my litany every night, changing it slightly each time, but always, always comforted by the hope of Glenda’s soft voice, the beating pulse of her lights, her insistence, her affirmation.
Maggie Nerz Iribarne is 55, lives in Syracuse, NY, writes about witches, priests/nuns, the very very old, struggling teachers, cats, neighborhood ghosts, and whatever else strikes her fancy. She keeps a portfolio of her published work at maggienerziribarne.com.
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