Tiger, Tiger (21 page)

“I live in a house of monks,” he would say. “They walk like monks; they stare into space like monks. They slouch like hunchbacks. Their faces are like ghouls.”

When we’d come home from Peter’s, around nine in the evening, Poppa would already be upstairs, watching his small TV in his room, or he wouldn’t be home at all and we’d know he’d gone to the bar.

Sometime during the summer of '91, several months since our reunion on the steps, Peter began to dare me to briefly kiss, lick, or suck his penis whenever my mother was out. One day, he took me back to the basement. I didn’t know where my mother was. Peter told me she had met a newly divorced man at Pathmark, Juan, but she didn’t want me to know. Even though I’d never met Juan, I hoped my mother would divorce Poppa and marry him.

Mommy’s new thing was to call hotlines and friends to discuss whether or not my spending all my time with Peter was healthy. She told them she kept a good watch on us, just as she’d told Poppa; I speculated that she might have lied because it was hard for closed-minded people to deal with the fact that Peter and I were in love. I wondered if she trusted me to make my own choices; if she understood that I had an unusually high maturity level even though my physical age was only twelve. Instead of trying to destroy my will, as Poppa had, Mommy was setting me free to live my life as I saw fit. Peter and I had a fated love. Like in
Dr. Zhivago
. Like in
West Side
Story
. Mommy adored those movies.

As we descended the soft wooden steps I knew so well, Peter told me this time he wanted to make
me
feel good. He asked me to lie upon a wooden workbench. He went into the oak Victorian wardrobe, took out an old gray dress with pearly white buttons on it, and put it over the bench so it would be comfortable. Then I lay down on the dress like a patient on a bed.

“Margaux,” he said, “I love you more than anyone else on this earth. I want to pleasure you and try to make you feel good. Right here in this place where I received the best birthday gift I could ever hope for.” When I didn’t say anything, he continued: “When I was about eight or nine, my brother and I went to a foster home. There were these two girls there: Tina and Nancy. They were tap dancers.” He paused. “There aren’t that many tap dancers now, but back then, tap dancing was big. They were about thirteen and fifteen years old. Tina, the older one, was the worst. My brother had a cowboy hat, and she used to spit in it and then put it on his head. These girls forced us to pleasure them between their legs. It was sickening . . . I couldn’t do it to a woman again after that. But for you, I want to try. I want to pleasure you in that way. Is that okay with you?”

“How will it feel?” I said.

He started kissing my cheeks and the nape of my neck, my ears and hair. Little kisses like chickadees pecking grain. Then he said: “I just thought of another memory from when I was fourteen and was staying with my father for a while. This is kinda funny. Me, some girls, and another boy played strip poker . . . I lost the game and they threw my clothes into a tree and I had to climb up and get them.” He stopped to kiss my mouth. “Anyway,” he said, laughing. “I was a cute boy. What’d you call a pretty boy. Like Ricky.”

“Oh yeah? Were you prettier than me?”

“No, of course not. But I was cute, or what you girls would say nowadays . . .
I was to die for
. Do you want to know what I looked like? A little cherub, with my platinum hair. When I was about three, a woman came up to me and tousled my hair and said to my mother that I looked just like a seraph—”

“Is that the same as an angel?”

“Uh-huh,” he said, kissing my hair. “The girls all loved me.”

“What was your first memory?”

“My very first . . .” He started to take down my jeans, kissed my belly, then licked my belly button. I giggled at the sensation. “Riding a tire swing on a tree. I was swinging back and forth on a tire and I was happy. I felt like I was flying. What’s your first memory?”

“Looking through the bars of my crib,” I said, as he took down my underwear slowly, kissing me through the cotton. “And realizing I couldn’t get out . . .”

“Don’t ever wear nylon or lace or satin panties, Margaux, always wear cotton—” “Why?”

“Because I don’t like lace or satin or anything like that—”

“Why?”

“I just don’t.”

“You’re silly. You like dopey baby things. You’re a silly little boy.”

I was talking like that popular girl. I enjoyed feeling like her.

“Is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“I love you, I love you so much. Is that silly?”

“Yeah . . .” I growled.

“What would you want me to call you? If it could be any pet name at all?”

“Cuddle Bunny. No, Snuggle Bunny. Snuggle Bunny.”

“And what would you call it if I kissed your belly button?”

“Veening.”

He pulled up my shirt and bra. “And if I kissed your bumps right here?” He kissed each breast and then sucked on them.

“Twiggling.”

“And if I kissed you down here? In your place?”

“Snooking,” I said. “That would be my word.”

He started to lick me. “How does it feel? When I’m snooking you?” We both laughed at that. We couldn’t help it.

“Seriously. Does it feel good?”

I didn’t feel anything exactly, but I said, “Yes, that feels good. When you
snook
me, it feels
superfluously splendid
.”

“So . . . you like it? I won’t use the silly word, though, because I want a serious answer. I don’t want to do what you don’t like.”

“It feels . . . pleasant.”

“Okay. I like ‘pleasant.’ Everything should be pleasant.”

But it still didn’t feel like anything special; his tongue was like a paintbrush and he was asking the wall if it felt good to be painted. There was something about the basement that made me feel unreal, nearly dead; and then just when I felt deadest, life surged in again and I blurted out, “Peter, I’ll never let Poppa separate us again. If he ever tries, we’ll run away together; but tell me, where could we possibly be accepted for who we are?”

“Scandinavia,” Peter said, as though he’d thought this through. “Or Thailand. I’d just have to figure out how to get you out of the country. And money. That would be a problem.”

“We’d rob a bank. Like Bonnie and Clyde. Or I’d steal my father’s jewelry and sell it on the black market.”

“I feel like all this talk is taking away from the sensation. I want you to try to come. Can you try?”

“Okay,” I said. “I guess words have no meaning at a time like this.”

“Deep,” said Peter.

“Well, Poppa said that once. Or maybe it was ‘words mean nothing at a time like this.’ It was after he scratched my mother’s face. But when I say something like that,
I
mean it romantically.”

“Margaux, concentrate on the sensation. You have to concentrate if you’re going to have an orgasm.”

“Okay. I promise to be quiet. I promise not to talk anymore. I am going to be as silent as a mountain or as speechless as a chair.”

“Margaux!” Peter said. “Concentrate!”

“I am concentrating!”

“And stay still. You keep wiggling.”

I pretended I was in a stockade, except instead of crouching over and sticking my head and arms into its locking holes, I was positioned under it. The dark oak clenched my throat like a punk chick’s spiky dog collar. My mouth had been sewn together with black thread and my face was painted white like a mime’s. I looked above to the white, flossy webs attached to the crossbeams and imagined spider’s eggs starting to drop like rain. I looked at Peter’s face. In the semidarkness I couldn’t see his wrinkles, and the hair on his head could be platinum for all I knew. I touched his hair and it felt dry. I imagined the wood was getting tighter around my neck, chokingly tight, as I started to feel tingles between my legs. I looked down and envisioned Ricky’s tongue on my vagina. Then I imagined it was Richard, then a boy in my class I had thought was cute. I couldn’t think of Peter. He was just too old.

When he looked up at me briefly, his eyes were turquoise and loving, and his face seemed as large as the face of a president. He had a big Adam’s apple, and I touched my throat to feel my lack of one. I loved him and hated myself for being so frustratingly unable to come. He was trying so hard and nothing was working, not the thought of being in shackles or the thought of Ricky doing it. Peter saw my face change and said, “What’s wrong?” His arms came like long tropical ocean waves, and enclosed me like a mussel in a shell. I put my face in his shoulder; his shirt was terrycloth and felt so smooth against my face.

“You’re wearing the towel shirt; I love it. I wish I had been able to come. You did such a good job and, as usual, I can’t do a thing right. Maybe it’s too cold here. Maybe it’s too cold and too quiet and I’m too much like a ghost. Let’s never come here again, never again. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’ve always hated this place. I’ve always hated this basement.”

“You never told me you hated it. Darling, princess, dear one, Snuggle Bunny, Butterfly Girl, just tell me the truth, always the truth.”

“I don’t hate it,” I said quickly. “But now I feel like you’re hiding me down here. I want to kiss you right in public. I want to take down your pants in the middle of Pathmark and have sex with you on the floor. I don’t care what anyone says! People are so stupid! Why can’t we just marry each other right now?”

“Don’t worry what other people think,” said Peter. “Of course they would object. It doesn’t matter. We have our own world. Other people have nothing to do with us.”

“But they do, Peter! You’ve even said it! You’ve said we should stop holding hands when we walk on the street because we’re starting to get looks! Daughters don’t hold hands with their fathers past a certain age! Any day people are going to start spreading rumors! Any day, you say, any day now! Well, I say let them talk! I wish I could make them live like I did in a hell worse than their worst nightmares. People like those lifeguards from the pool and Dr. Gurney and the police or whoever can stand and judge me when they don’t even know me. Peter, if they could just live one day in my place and know how you can make me happy, how much you love me!” It was true, people were against me. They wanted to see me suffer. Even Winnie didn’t care for me. A secret friend; that’s what she’d wanted. I’d had to sit alone at a lunch table all that time because she didn’t want to be seen with me. Better to have no friends at all!

“Sweetheart,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “We’ve got to be careful. That’s just reality. You don’t understand what’s at stake here. This is my life we’re talking about. I could go to jail. It’s no joke. We can be affectionate in private, like we are now. In the outside world, we’ve got to behave differently. I don’t want to go to jail. Do you want me to go to jail, Margaux? You may not want it but it could happen. One wrong move, one wrong statement, and that’s it! I’ll kill myself before going to jail.”

I shook my head. “Don’t worry, I know I’d never do anything that would get you in trouble. You know that! I’d cut my own throat before I’d tell.”

“Sweetheart,” he said, putting his finger on my lips, “let’s forget there are other people for now. Let’s pretend we’re on our own little planet. Let me see you as you are now, fully. I even want to see your feet, the backs of your knees. I love you so much that I want to see you exactly as God made you.”

“No one can see, no one can judge,” I muttered.

I sat up and took off my shirt and bra. I took off my socks and the velvet Scrunchie from my hair. I sat there, naked and shivering. My nipples were hard. There were goose bumps all over me and the hair on my arms prickled from the cold. I was both cold and hot at the same time, like I had the flu. I was beautiful, at least my body was, with its full round curves, long slender neck, and long legs and narrow feet and straight brown hair falling over my shoulders, bright as sap against my light olive skin. I was twelve and I was a woman. I was twelve and love burned in me like sap. Peter got down on his knees as though I was his goddess, as though I really was the only sound he could hear and I filled his head with miraculous ringing, as though I made him permanent, and for this he would always be grateful. He was so grateful, in fact, that he hugged my ankles and said, “Margaux, Margaux, all hail Margaux. All hail Margaux, Margaux, Margaux.”

Peter and I started hanging out in his room and playing Super Mario Brothers 3, which Peter had just bought for his Nintendo. I had taught Peter how to make Mario jump and fly, how to find secret coin rooms, where to locate hidden mushrooms that would increase Mario’s size or give him a second life, and how to use a special whistle to conjure up warp worlds. After a while I regretted teaching him anything because he became addicted. I was a far better player than he and had beaten most of the worlds, so the game had become dreadfully boring. Often, I would want to stop playing, while Peter wanted to keep going. My mother would sit in a kitchen chair while Peter and I played together.

Unfortunately, Richard had taken over the living room. His regular girlfriend, Linda, had thrown him out in December and he’d been here ever since and Peter didn’t like it, but he’d told me in private that he couldn’t say anything or Inès might start complaining about me being over seven days a week. Lately, Richard had started stealing money from everyone to support his coke habit: Inès, Peter, and even Miguel, who had a part-time job at Circle Cycle, a motorcycle repair shop on Tonnele Avenue. Richard had stolen money from Linda, too, which was why she threw him out to begin with.

Whenever Peter and I argued about the Nintendo, my mother would referee us, saying things like, “Margaux, let Peter play a few more rounds and then maybe you should go out and rent a video,” or, “We should eat lunch soon; it is getting late.” My mother wasn’t always in the room, though. One day, Peter and I got into an argument over the game while my mother was at Pathmark. I got so furious over Peter’s refusal to stop playing, even after I’d threatened to smash it with a hammer, that I took a bunch of cigarettes out of his pack, broke them in half, and put them in his coffee. Peter was so upset he went out by himself with Paws and didn’t come back for an hour. When he returned, I was burying my head in a pillow. Peter swiftly took me into his arms and said he wasn’t angry anymore. Mommy, who had been unable to calm me, said, “See, I told you, Margaux, that you two always make up. I told you that Peter wouldn’t be gone for good.”