The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

In this story, the characters’ souls are outside their bodies in various forms. Rina, the protagonist, has an ice cube soul and, to keep her soul intact, she has two refrigerators in the kitchen, one in the living room, one in the bedroom, one in the hallway, and a cooler in the bathroom. She finds that “the bass chorus of all the motors, a low, confident hum” (10) makes her feel secure. She has pictures of glaciers and icebergs on her walls, along with a picture of her college roommate, Amy.

Amy has a pack of cigarettes as her soul, and it was half empty by the time she met Rina. When they lived together, Amy took Rina to a bar. Amy asked the bartender to keep the ice cube safe, but Rina was too worried to have fun. Amy smoked one of her cigarettes and told a boy that if he made Rina laugh before she finished it, they’d both go home with him. She said, “All life is an experiment” (20).

At Rina’s birth, the nurse almost missed the soul/afterbirth. They rushed in an emergency refrigeration unit, but Rina’s mother wondered how long they could keep the ice cube from melting.