Tiger, Tiger (4 page)
“I want to see the rabbits now!” I grabbed Peter’s hand. “Please take me?”
“Let’s go!”
As I skipped away, I heard Peter say, “I love that. When children skip. The most innocent, worry-free thing someone can do is skip.”
When we got back to our apartment, I picked up the rotary-dial phone in our kitchen. “Let’s call Peter; let’s ask him when we can come back to his house.”
“Well, I’ll give you the number. You call him. I wouldn’t want us to look overeager.” On the phone, I said, “Peter, can we come over to your house again, it isn’t polite to ask so soon, but I loved being there so much and you’re so much fun, I had such a good time and I love Paws so much, I just love him, and Warden too, though he looks like he could be a bit moody, and the rabbits—they’re so soft and I like their little bunny noses. I love Peaches and Porridge! I want to come to your house every day for the rest of my life!” I paused; my mother was always talking about the importance of routines. “I want you to make a schedule of days when we can visit your house.”
I couldn’t explain why I felt it was all right to be so bold with Peter; I just knew it was.
Peter laughed. “When you want something you get it, don’t you? Put your mother on.”
After what seemed like forever, I heard my mother laugh and say, “Okay, Mondays and Fridays, then. That’s good for us. My husband likes to take us out on the weekends, so that works out.” She paused. “You’re very good with kids; Margaux took an incredible liking to you. Oh, you’ve had foster kids? Well, that’s nice. I’ve always admired people who do good deeds; I wish I could do good deeds myself but my husband doesn’t believe in giving money to charity or anything of the sort. Yes, do unto others . . .”
A
fter we’d gone to Peter’s house for three straight Mondays and Fridays, arriving at ten and staying until about four thirty so we would be home before Poppa, I slipped up in front of Peter and began to play with my hair in the weird way Poppa hated—I would snatch up strands in my fingers to shake and twist them. Sometimes I had done this so frenziedly that I had actually contorted portions of hair into impossible snarls and knots, which Mommy had given up trying to comb out. We were in the yard, Mommy snug in a lawn chair, me standing by the birdbath. I’d just finished playing ball with Paws.
My mother quickly said, “Oh, my husband and I are trying to stop that. We’ve told Margaux time and time again. But I wish her father wouldn’t be so critical of her. It’s just a nervous habit like biting your nails.”
“For God’s sake, she’s only seven. I think it’s cute when she does that. She’s feeling free and happy doing it. I can’t understand why adults put so much pressure on children.” Mommy shrugged, and Peter said, “Margaux, let me see you do it again. You’re free, here in this yard, just let go, do what you want. Go on, feel free, play with your hair.”
I didn’t want to. Playing with my hair in front of Peter, as much as he said he would enjoy the sight, seemed to stir up even more feelings of shame than the times Poppa had scolded me for doing it. The only thing I didn’t like about Peter was that he could be pushy. So I decided to distract him by flopping onto his lap, sideways, almost knocking him out of his lawn chair.
“Be careful!” said Mommy. “You know Peter has a bad back!”
Peter didn’t get angry; he just started tickling me. At one point, Ricky came into the yard and Peter handed him the garden hose so he could spray me. He chased us both until Ricky got bored and left. As the hours flew by, the yard became engulfed in long shadows. My mother started to say after a while that we should probably get home for dinner. Peter said, “Why don’t we have a little barbecue here? You said on Fridays Louie leaves leftovers?”
“Yes, every Friday after work it’s off to the bar,” said Mommy, and Peter shook his head.
As Peter cooked hot dogs on the grill, Inès wandered into the yard with a sandwich on a paper plate. “Want some dogs instead?” Peter asked her.
“Nah, I’ve got olive loaf on wheat,” said Inès, and she lay on a flowered towel with a book, reading while she picked at her sandwich. “I made the guys some, too,” she said. She always called her sons “the guys.”
Later, Inès got up to make a call, leaving her barely eaten sandwich lying on the towel as we ate grilled hot dogs with an open can of cold pork and beans. On the walk home, my mother told me that when she walked by Inès, her sandwich had been covered with tiny, swirling brown ants; apparently, Inès had bitten into them without even noticing.
“She’s a dreamer, like you,” Mommy said.
Sometimes my mother liked to get Peter started up about how terrible Poppa was. Lately, I’d been joining in, too, and one Friday the three of us were making fun of Poppa as we ate lunch at the Blimpie on Bergenline Avenue. As Mommy ate her tuna on rye and Peter and I shared salami and provolone on Italian bread saturated with oil and vinegar, Mommy started talking about Poppa’s obsession with one of the kitchen cabinets.
“He has everything in his cabinet so neatly arranged, each pen has to be in order, and he has this perfectly folded handkerchief, he said he got it from Madrid, and he has matchboxes from every country he ever visited while he was in the army in these precise little stacks. One time, Margaux, when she was three, little devil that she can be sometimes, climbed up on the countertop and got into that cabinet and moved everything, and when he came home—keep in mind, I wasn’t aware of what she’d done—he took one look in there, and went to his closet for his belt. I knew how scared Margaux was of his belt so I tried to get in the way, and he ended up hitting me with it, but at least Margaux wasn’t hurt. Anyway, Peter, get this, he has a pair of actual nunchakus—did you ever meet anyone who has a set of nunchakus in his house? He does tricks with them to be impressive; he’s such a show-off.”
Right in the middle of the Blimpie, I mocked all of Poppa’s finest moves with the nunchakus in front of Peter and Mommy, getting them to howl with laughter. That night, when I saw Poppa, I felt a little guilty. I knew he only did these tricks for my entertainment, and to convince me that he could protect us in case an intruder broke in.
Poppa, Mommy, and I were sitting outdoors under a large bright umbrella at a Westchester restaurant. Poppa liked to stop here for a basket of steamers on our way to City Island; then, for dinner, we’d eat lobster or fried clams in white-and-red paper baskets at Tony’s by the ocean. Tony’s had video games, so I’d run to Poppa constantly for the quarters he kept in his pockets as he drank Heinekens, smoked cigars, and talked to Mommy. At home he didn’t speak to her much, except to yell, but if we were eating at a restaurant he’d get into all kinds of subjects with her. Maybe he just didn’t like the apartment or he was happy on the weekends when he didn’t have to work. Whatever the case, when we went out, he could be very nice to my mother, buying her piña coladas without rum (she couldn’t drink because of her medication) and her favorite thing to eat, fried shrimp dipped in tartar sauce with coleslaw. He still treated her like a baby, fastening a paper napkin around her neck as a bib and even wiping her face for her, which I noticed she seemed to like, though she often griped to Peter, “I can’t stand it when he treats me as though I’m not even a wife, but a daughter.”
Another thing she must have always enjoyed was showering Poppa with praise: “Oh, Louie, your cooking is like a five-star restaurant” or “Louie, can you show me that picture of you in San Juan again? You look just like Robert Redford in that one.” The only reason I noticed it now was because the way she talked about Poppa to Peter was so different. Poppa loved compliments. At home, we had a game: “Tell me all about your Poppa-pa.” Snuggling with him, I’d tell him everything a girl believes about her father—that he’s the biggest man and the most handsome, the wisest and the best. But I often wasn’t the best in Poppa’s eyes.
As we were sitting at the eatery, I must have slipped up and started playing with my hair, because Poppa said, “Look at that. She makes herself a public spectacle. This child has no comprehension of anything. Not life, not me, not anything.” He said the last without anger, but regret. He was quiet for a minute, almost thoughtful. Then he went on, “There is nothing worse than a bad habit. A bad habit,” he repeated, looking at Mommy. “Is there anything that you can think of that will end this bad habit of hers? This habit that—”
Mommy quickly started talking with the hope of derailing the speech that was just starting to gather steam, because she knew—we both did—that once he got going, it would be a long while before he stopped. “I’m sure she’ll outgrow it. Dr. Gurney always said some children are more nervous than others and we shouldn’t worry about a silly little thing like Margaux playing with her hair. He actually said nail biting is worse and we should be glad she’s not one of those types; that leads to hangnails and infections. And Puh—” Mommy said, and I knew that this was the start of Peter’s name; she quickly swallowed the sound with a gulp of orange Hi-C. She knew Poppa got annoyed when Peter was mentioned, except in the context of his living conditions. Poppa had asked Mommy to describe what “that house” was like, and had smiled when Mommy told him about the toilet that didn’t always flush or the ants on the windowsill, or the fact that Peter once said he had picked up most of his furniture from curbs on garbage night and bragged that there was nothing a little Krazy Glue or some wood filler couldn’t fix. Poppa was delighted to hear of a sink that some days brimmed with dirty dishes—not even properly scraped. “The smell of those animals must be insufferable,” Poppa had said.
Poppa narrowed his eyes at the “P” sound, but he didn’t say anything.
“Anyway,” Mommy said, looking away. “Like Dr. Gurney said: it’s not permanent. He said these exact words, ‘Children outgrow things.’ And Margaux
will
outgrow playing with her hair.”
“Outgrow,” Poppa said, not too loudly, but with a severity that indicated that if he were in charge of the English language, he would omit this particular verb from every dictionary. Then, as though granting the offending word a chance to redeem itself, he tried pronouncing it slightly differently, in a gentler tone, while hooking a steamer in his thumb and forefinger.
The storm of Poppa’s nerves seemed to have quieted.
He cleared his throat and said, “Keesy, I am going to tell you the story of a young girl in Puerto Rico who had bad habits; they were different habits than yours, but equally destructive. The mother and father worried because the children at school thought the girl was crazy. But this child was not aware of how the others had made her a laughingstock, nor the pain and humiliation she had inflicted upon her poor parents.” He sipped his beer. “Anyway, she was always inside a dream and never looked where she was going. One day, at least as the story goes, the girl took a long walk and as she walked, she sang and hummed. She came to some train tracks and laid her legs across the tracks, singing and looking at the sky. Too busy in her dream, she did not hear the train. The train driver honked, but the girl would not look up, and trains cannot be stopped once they are in motion. The train ran right over her legs and cut them both off right to about here.” He indicated his hip. “Yes, Keesy, do not look so shocked. Her legs were severed and left in the middle of the tracks for the buzzards. And the poor child—to the great sorrow of her mother and father—was left with two bloody stumps.”
“Louie, that’s a terrible story!” Mommy said. “You don’t tell stories like that to a child!”
“What happened to her after that, Poppa? What happened?”
“Your mother is right; it is a difficult story. If I were to tell you more, you might have nightmares.”
The waiter came and took the empty bottles of Heineken and gave my father a fresh beer. I couldn’t stop thinking of those two bloody stumps left on the track. “Poppa, please! You can’t tell a story without telling the ending!”
“You have a good imagination. You make the ending for yourself, Keesy.”
“You’re drunk, Louie! You are just drunk and it’s ninety degrees! It is ninety degrees! You could have a sunstroke!” my mother said in a whisper-yell; she was aware of how angry he would get if he was publicly humiliated. “There’s a pay phone in there. I’m calling Dr. Gurney. I’m telling him what you do to frighten Margaux!”
“You do that! I will give you the quarter myself!” He reached into his pocket. “Here is some change; call him! Maybe I can have a break then! I can sit here and enjoy the shade! Go!”
When my mother left the table, I put my hands gently around the metal pole holding the large sun umbrella in place over our heads. I felt safer holding it.
“That woman is comical. The heat gets to her. What does she think? That it is wrong to have some cold beer on a hot day? That woman is crazy. On a hot day, I don’t like to fight. I like to sit in the shade and enjoy a cold beer under a big umbrella. She acts as though I like hot weather. I despise the heat and humidity! That is why I left Puerto Rico! I came here to escape. But then I found that woman.”
“Poppa, tell the rest.”
“Well,” he said, and I stared at his auburn beard and thought of a beetle I had squashed recently, to see what color its blood was. The blood had been orange and had smelled bad; I’d been surprised that its blood wasn’t red. He went on: “No one really knows. There are two versions. One version is that she stayed with her mother and father caring for her in bed until she grew old and died. The second version is that one night she prayed to the devil to get her legs back. She had been praying to God and he never responded. So, legend goes, her mother opened the door to her bedroom one day, and she was missing, never to be seen again. But sometimes the mother thought she heard on the roof a strange tapping sound that wasn’t rain or branches hitting the tar paper, it sounded like feet. And some have said, though you can never be sure, for children tell lies, but some of the children of my great-grandfather’s time have said that at night, they have seen the girl with a great horned beast on top of the roof that they assumed must be the devil himself. They were dancing together!” He paused to drink some beer, and continued. “Now, I myself do not know what to believe. The first version is a little more plausible. But the second version could also be true.”