Tiger, Tiger (10 page)

Peter hadn’t taken me down to the basement ever since I’d disappointed him, and I was both relieved and nervous: if he wasn’t taking me, did that mean he was taking Karen, and was she more daring than I was? Was she doing what I’d been too chicken to try? I worried about this incessantly, and kept a tight watch over Karen and Peter, so they couldn’t slip off alone.

I specifically made sure Peter didn’t use the humming code with Karen. I didn’t want him picturing Karen naked, and I couldn’t stand the thought that there was anything special between them. I told myself Karen was too young; Peter wouldn’t want her. He had said eight was the most beautiful age, not six. He’d waited until I was eight to ask me for the special thing he’d wanted. Besides, he loved me in a different way than Karen; I could tell that he saw her as just a daughter. It was
me
who had the potential to be his wife and the mother of his children, because I was already so mature for my age, and though I’d let him down before, I was pretty sure he’d forgiven me by now.

Karen’s pale eyelashes were spaced far apart, giving her a startled look, but then something in her eyes dismissed that impression; and you realized right away that this was a little girl who was rarely surprised, rarely afraid—a child with force, will, power.

Once, I poured a pitcher of grape punch all over the front of her dress at one of Peter’s barbecues. We’d been fighting over a doll, and ripped it apart limb by limb. She shouted with horrid glee that she had the head, she had the head, the arms and legs were useless without the head! I never hit her, though I often wanted to, and she hit me at liberty. I learned that by controlling my temper, I would appear angelic by comparison. Peter would drag Karen, punching and kicking, to her room; he would lock the door on her, while I remained outside, with Peter. Peter would always say: “I hate to lock her in her room but what else can I do? She can’t be allowed to hurt us or break things.”

Karen’s room was a portion of the living room; Peter had installed a wall and door so that she would have her own room, which was one of the requirements for having a foster child. Through the thin drywall partition, we heard Karen scream and thrash and throw things, and then finally cry and cry and cry. Unable to stand her sorrow after a while, I always managed to finagle the key to that room from Peter, though he said every time, “You’re too soft on her, Margaux. She’ll never learn this way.”

Once inside Karen’s room, I would do whatever was necessary to make her laugh, whether it was putting on a puppet show with the headless Barbie dolls (she always lopped off their heads during a tantrum) or tickling her on her belly and under her arms. Pretty soon, we were playing; sometimes, we played a game called Queen, and in deference to Karen, I always took the role of princess. In order to be queen, Karen would wear a cardboard Burger King crown on her head and wave a purple-and-white pom-pom, commanding me to bring this or that to her. Eventually, Peter would enter the room, saying, “Okay, Karen, you’ve been in there long enough!” Then out we would charge, grabbing his hands. Karen would often pass the Burger King crown to him, demanding that he be the king and start telling us what to do.

Inès’s neon orange motorcycle helmet was only slightly too big for my head. The first time Peter let me try it on, Karen got jealous and started a tantrum. But Peter was firm with her, saying that she was much too young to go out on a motorcycle and, besides, there was no helmet in existence that could fit her tiny head. I felt a mean sense of triumph ripple through me when he said this. Let Karen stay stuck in the yard with Mommy, while I got to go riding on the bike. Let Karen be sad for a change; I was sad every time I had to leave Peter’s house and she got to stay. I was sad that she was allowed to get real dirty in the yard, while I had to keep my clothes semiclean for Poppa. I was sad that she was like Peter and Inès’s daughter, the sister of Miguel and Ricky, and I was just the girl that came two days a week, even though Peter said he loved me better than he loved her, but I was never to tell her that.

I always made a big production about how pretty the helmet was, just like a crown, with its glazed orange color that reflected white sugar dots of light, with its Pegasus and rainbow stickers. In reality, I despised the helmet and wanted to ride without it, so I could feel the wind winnowing my hair. At first, my mother was terrified that I would fall off the motorcycle; Peter showed her the helmet, and said that if such a thing were to occur, my head would be protected; besides, that would never happen, because he had been driving motorcycles for more than thirty years. I kept saying, “Only around the block,” until she finally gave in. She stood by the curb, as I climbed on the Suzuki for the first time, repeating warnings like, “Don’t lean over too far,” and “Hold on to Peter at all times.”

Peter taught me to lean whenever he did while tightly holding his waist, in the same direction, and only as far as he did, never farther. Going around the block, of course, I didn’t need to know much about leaning, but later I would when we had to maneuver the bike around complex turns. This made me the driver too, and I would feel a great sense of pride when Peter would tell me I was the perfect passenger.

My hair was getting long, and by the start of August it was three inches past my shoulders, which meant Poppa hadn’t paid much attention to it in a while; for years, he had insisted that it never fall even slightly past my shoulders. Whenever he noticed it getting longer, he would immediately take me to the hairdresser’s for a pert bob, which he said was stylish for little girls, though this was a lie: most of my classmates sported hair that nearly reached the middle of their backs. It was a marker of a girl’s social status for her hair to be styled differently every school day; while school was in session, my plain, unruly hair had often been mocked by girls who possessed French or Dutch braids and twists, pristine half and full ponytails, or fancy double buns. One day, I complained about this problem to Peter—mentioning how I dreaded another approaching school year when my ugly hair would be the laughingstock yet again—and he promised that he would find a comb that would undo my knots without the least bit of pain.

The first time Peter showed me the magical purple comb he’d bought at the flea market for a quarter, I was fascinated by it. It was unlike any comb I had ever seen, with two inward-curving sets of teeth. He said he would start at the ends of my hair and work his way to the top. So I sat on his lap in the kitchen and, gently, he began to work out the tangles. My hair was so badly matted it took over an hour of sitting still to untangle. But it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, because while I sat, we talked about “Danger Tiger.” We also took breaks to eat chocolate-chip and oatmeal-raisin cookies.

Mommy watched Peter untangle my hair, and kept saying how amazed she was that he had gotten me to sit so still. When he was done, he put in two yellow plastic barrettes, one on each side.

“Go, honey, look in the mirror,” he said, and I raced into the front room to look at myself in the full-length mirror that stood opposite the front door.

The large wooden mirror had carved birds. Peter had sprayed it with deep gold paint that made it look even more old-fashioned. I stood in front of the glass, touching my glossy hair. Peter came up behind me and put both hands on my shoulders.

“I’m going to start braiding it, like Karen’s,” he said. “It should be long enough.”

“Peter, do you like me better with long hair or short?”

“It doesn’t matter, sweetheart. But I guess I’ve always liked long hair on little girls.”

We stared at each other in the mirror for what must have been a good minute; Peter was on his knees, so his face lined up perfectly with mine.

A few days later, at the dinner table, I saw Poppa squinting at me in a funny way.

“Your hair is getting long,” he said, stiffly. “I didn’t notice that.”

I shifted uneasily in my seat. “It was a little bit long in Puerto Rico.”

“My sister took care of it, unlike your mother. But I see someone is combing it out now. Let me see the back.”

I reluctantly turned my head. He nodded and turned to my mother. “Have you been combing her hair?” He sipped his beer and cut his stuffed pepper in half.

My mother swallowed her food and then said, “Well, there’s a new kind of comb out, you know.”

“A new comb?” He raised his eyebrows. “Some kind of a breakthrough?” “Well, at the flea market, they sell all sorts of . . .”

“You are buying things at some dirty flea market?”

“No, not exactly,” she said, tightly holding her 7-Up, but not lifting it to drink. I had stopped eating.

“I give you enough money to buy quality things. I do not give you money to spend on used junk. I do not give you money to buy a comb that has been in some strange person’s hair. My daughter could have lice now. She could have lice in her hair!” Poppa was the only one who was still eating; he ate while he waited for her answer.

“The comb was clean; it was washed. I didn’t get the comb, anyway; Peter picked it up. It was only a quarter. It was a good deal. It was clean. It’s a good comb. It was cleaned beforehand; Peter washed it.”

I didn’t know why, but I felt sick to my stomach as soon as she said the comb had been cleaned first.

“Who combed the hair? That man’s wife? Wait, they are not even married. Okay, the woman, that woman he lives with. Did that hippie woman he lives with comb your daughter’s hair? The reason I ask is because you are not capable of anything. You are not even capable of combing your daughter’s hair. I have to keep it short because she will look like a rat otherwise. I have to keep up on it because nobody else does. So tell me, did that hippie woman, did she comb out the hair for you? Ask her if she can come here and cook one night. Do you think she can come here and cook me a nice roast pork?”

“I hate sarcasm. I would cook if you’d let me.”

“And burn this house down? I do the cooking here. I am the one who cleans. I do everything here. I do everything and you do nothing. I am a slave for you people.”

“I’m tired of hearing it,” Mommy muttered.

“What was that?”

“Nothing. Anyway, Inès didn’t comb her hair; Peter combed her hair. He did a good job: it’s not tangled anymore.”

“You let that man comb your daughter’s hair?” Then louder, “You let
that man
comb your daughter’s hair?”

“Yes, what’s wrong with that?”

Poppa got silent and then said, “I need to meet this man; this man who causes such a great fuss!”

“He’s not a fuss. Margaux spends most of her time with the two boys and the little girl.”

“What little girl?”

“There’s a little girl, Karen.”

“There was no girl before.”

“She’s a foster child. I, for one, think it is wonderful for people to take in children from bad homes.”

“This girl is from a bad home? What kind of bad home?”

“The mother was a drug addict. The poor thing.”

“My daughter is around people who are from bad families.”

“Peter’s family is not a bad family. It’s a very good family.”

“These people are not even married.”

“So what? They are a nice family!”

“Tell me, what kind of values are you trying to teach your daughter?” Poppa folded his arms across his chest.

“I would rather not talk about this.”

“So, so . . .” Poppa was quiet for a moment. “Do you let her take a shower there? If she gets dirty outside you don’t let her use their bathtub, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“She could get a disease.”

“She doesn’t use it.”

“I want to meet this man, you know. I want to meet that man and the woman, too. I want them to come to Benihana.”

“Benihana? They don’t have that kind of money. You’re going to have to pick a cheaper restaurant, something within their price range. It’s not easy with three kids to support. They don’t have it easy. Not at all.”

“Well, you can tell these people that I will treat. I will pay for them
both
. I can afford it.”

The next day, a Thursday, after work, Poppa told me he was taking me for a walk. I asked where we were going, and he said we were going to get ice cream. About two blocks into the walk, I sensed Poppa was lying; the Carvel was on the corner of Thirty-eighth and Bergenline Avenue, but we were on Thirty-ninth and Hudson Avenue. Poppa would have turned by now, since he preferred walking on Bergenline to taking the boring side streets. And there was no way he would want to pass Union Hill High School, where, according to him, all the savages gathered.

“Where are we going, Poppa?”

He hesitated. “To the beauty salon.”

I stopped and just stood there, in the middle of the sidewalk, with Poppa tugging my arm.

“Let’s go.”

“My hair isn’t tangled anymore!”

“Let’s go. You be good. Afterwards, I will buy ice cream. I will get you a toy. Come on.”

“No, I’m not going!”

He grabbed my arm and pulled. “Let’s go!”

“Please! Don’t cut it!”

“You want to make trouble for me. You want to humiliate me,” he said in a low voice. “You want me to be the talk of this town. Do you see the people looking?”

By now, I was in a full-fledged tantrum, crying and begging and stamping my feet against the cement.

He pointed to a few teenagers passing Union Hill High. “Look at them looking at you.”

We were standing in front of the building and I could see Good Fellows Barber Shop right across Hudson Avenue at Thirty-eighth Street. I thought of biting Poppa’s hand and running all the way to Peter’s, but I knew Poppa was faster than I was.

“Why are you doing this to me?” I screamed. “Why? Why are you doing this?”

He let go of my hand and we stood facing each other. “You. You. I’m ashamed to be seen on this street. Let them talk; they are talking about you. Let them laugh; they are laughing at you. Not me. You are the one making a fool of yourself on a public street. Now I see what that house has done to you. You have been going to that house for a year now, and the effects on your temperament are not good. You are turning against me. Tell me”—he lifted my chin and stared into my eyes—“tell me: what has that house done to you? If you do not listen to me, your father, I will make you sorry. You will cry; you will really cry when I take the privilege of that house away from you. I know you will cry then because that is all you care about. So you better watch it.”