Tiger, Tiger (19 page)

Mommy sighed. “The whole thing was a big misunderstanding. About the kiss, I mean. I’m not saying I trust him, because you can’t completely trust a man. It’s not like I trust him with Margaux. But I do believe them, both of them, when they say she caught him by surprise;
she
kissed him. It was such a big deal over nothing.”

Poppa held the bracelet in the light to inspect his work. “This is for Paula; a girl I know. I like to do favors for people. To fix things for free. It makes me happy to know I am of service. I am not a selfish person, like that bitch in Connecticut.”

“Well, Peter tried to help us out. The only reason he couldn’t get in here was because he didn’t have his tools. He gave us some food, too.”

“What did you have?” Poppa said, going over to his cabinet to put away the bracelet and his loupe.

Mommy hesitated. “Leftover KFC. It’s good for Margaux. Protein. I don’t care if it’s fast food. At least she was eating.”

“She ate a lot?”

“Two drumsticks and a container of mashed potatoes with gravy.”

Mommy was lying. I had eaten only half a drumstick and a bite of biscuit. Poppa opened the refrigerator, got an avocado, and began to peel it. “Your sister and that man. They love you. They all love you and your daughter. I am glad that man cannot get into my house! I am glad! He would probably try to steal my jewelry. Do me a favor.

You bring her there, but you do not ever bring that man here. Just do me that one favor.”

“You’re a snob. That’s what you are.”

“A snob. Okay. I am a snob, because I keep my clothes pressed! Because my shoes are shined! I am a snob! Fine! You go to the pig house! There you can behave like animals with no one around to criticize! You are free now—to be pigs in that filthy place—both of you and I will know nothing about what you do there! Nor will I care!”

Bacon sizzled in a frying pan, shooting liquid sparks. Peter, dressed in his gray overalls streaked with white paint and a white T-shirt, flipped it over with a spatula. Paws sauntered into the kitchen, tail wagging. He seemed plumper than he used to be and his fur looked matted, like he could use a good brushing. I remembered him looking as shiny as those well-groomed dogs in Alpo commercials, but maybe he’d always been scruffy. He was still the friendliest dog in the world. He sat on the linoleum floor, tongue out, and offered Peter his paw.

“You’re some beggar,” Peter said, passing him a red Milk-Bone. “Pathetic.” He petted his head and scratched behind his ears.

“You always give in to him, Peter,” Mommy said. She was seated comfortably on one of the kitchen chairs. I, on the other hand, was too excited to sit down. I kept flitting from a spot by the hutch with the glass doors to the left of the stove where the cow-spotted pot holders hung on a wooden rack. Today I had a high ponytail held up by a plush black Scrunchie, supertight jeans with black lace on the pockets, and a gray bodysuit with a tiny metal zipper. The zipper was open to expose my cleavage, which I considered substantial for an eleven-year-old; I had a B cup, while Irene and Grace only had an A. Peter had said I was “filling out.” He’d said that soon he’d have to beat the boys away with a stick. We’d been seeing each other again for only a few months, but my mother thought I had already put on a little weight. Even my complexion was better, we thought. Peter had convinced my mother to use her emergency money to buy me some L’Oreal foundation and Revlon pressed powder; both did wonders covering up my acne.

“Are you sure you want me to cook up all this bacon?” Peter showed me the package of pink meat with white lines running through it. “These lines are all fat. I don’t know how healthy this is going to be. Are you sure you want all of this?”

I nodded. Peter had taken us to the Pathmark, where he said I could pick out anything I wanted and he would cook it. I had picked out a big package of Oscar Meyer bacon after debating between that and a frozen pan pizza. The bacon won because I knew I’d never be allowed to eat it otherwise.

“You’re going to eat most of it by yourself?” he said.

“Yes!”

I heard a rustling sound. It was Ricky’s chains; he was coming into the kitchen. The chains were hanging all over his jeans like silver tinsel; the jeans were ripped at the knees and he had on black Doc Martens. He had a tall Mohawk, which accentuated his pronounced cheekbones and the bony symmetry of his chin, nose, and forehead.

“Ricky, you gonna help us eat some of this bacon?” Peter said.

“No thanks,” said Ricky, going to the refrigerator. Ricky was fourteen now and coldly polite. He hardly talked, but when he did, he muttered. He entered and left rooms as fast as he could, the chains on his jeans making the only noise. He was skinny and had gone through a major growth spurt, so he was tall now, about five-nine or -ten. Peter said he was now a punk rocker. And Miguel had grown his hair long, dyed it a psychedelic blue, and wanted to get a motorcycle, just like Peter had. We constantly heard punk and heavy metal blasting from the attic. Some of their friends had bad relationships with their families, so they ended up staying over for weeks or even months, all the while sleeping on the attic floor. The only thing that bothered Peter was that they ate all the food. He kept saying that Inès was always taking in strays and they used her without her realizing it. I didn’t know what the inside of the attic looked like now, but since the boys often left the door open, I saw that the wall adjacent to the steps leading up to the attic was painted a vivid orange. One of the boys’ friends had taken a can of black spray paint and written “Oi!” in about five different places on that orange wall, which Peter told me was a punk rock slogan. Whenever the attic door was left open, the steps leading up tantalized me: I knew I was not part of that world of girls in vinyl miniskirts, lace-up boots, and dog collars; or boys in studded leather jackets, toting guitar and bass cases. Ricky and his friend Vaughn had started a band, Rigor-mortis, which later changed to The War Dogs before the band finally settled on the name Prehistoric Defilement. They practiced nearly every day; each time Peter and I would pass by the attic while they were practicing, he would shake his head and say something like, “They call that music. But I call it screaming.”

Prehistoric Defilement occasionally managed to get local gigs, and had attracted two adoring fans. Amber was a pretty sixteen-year-old in a studded dog collar who kept a Smurf fastened to the chain-link belt of her micro-mini at all times. She had painted-on eyebrows and called every older man she met Daddy. Then there was Vanessa, a gorgeous girl who sometimes wore a real black leather miniskirt, had bleached blond hair, and sported a dark tan from sitting on the roof in her bikini. Amber bragged about having two babies already, both C-sections. Vanessa worked as a barmaid in Manhattan—she’d gotten the job shortly after her cousin had made her a very realistic fake ID—and was so attractive that I was shocked when Peter told me she’d been stroking Ricky’s Mohawk once and he’d kept pushing her away until he finally turned and shouted, “Get your goddamn hands off me!” “He’s moody,” said Peter, shrugging when I remarked that it seemed so unlike his personality to yell like that.

Peter knew that just like every other girl, I had a crush on Ricky. As before, we didn’t keep any secrets from each other. I had even told him I’d written “I love Ricky” all over my notebooks at school and on my big pink eraser. Ricky sauntered into the room once and I could hear those chains swishing. He was all tallness and torn jeans and a beautiful boy face and long skinny hands; and I loved him so much then that I whispered in Peter’s ear, “I want to die right now.” Peter just shook his head.

Unfortunately, Ricky rarely glanced at me, but Richard, Inès’s new boyfriend, looked up every time I went by. Richard, who was twenty-nine, adorable in his beret and shaggy brown hair, intellectual-looking with his crumply paperback science fiction and medieval fantasy novels and his horn-rimmed glasses. Richard, who was always stoned on pot or high on coke, at least that was what Peter said. He said Richard’s charming and that’s the thing that saves him, but he’s like a little kid and can’t hold a job or do anything but read and smoke and eat. According to Peter, Richard threw his cigarette butts in the toilet and ate all the spaghetti sauce and white bread without thinking of other people, but at least he was a good chess partner and he made Inès happy in a way that Peter had never been able to. When I asked why he wasn’t able to make her happy, Peter explained that it was because he had told her more than three years ago that he couldn’t sleep with her anymore. It was shortly after he had started being intimate with me, he said, and he hadn’t wanted to be unfaithful. He told her the reason he couldn’t make love was because he had grown up Catholic and he felt guilty about it. At first, Inès had said it was probably best he leave because she wasn’t ready to give up her life as a woman, but Peter cried and even got down on his knees in front of her, begging her not to throw him out. He had said that not only did he not mind if she saw other men, he wanted her to, and to please just think of him as a boarder from now on. She’d started seeing Richard sometime after that.

Peter told me not to go near Richard, but occasionally I did when Mommy and Peter weren’t around. I liked to walk by him and have him say something like “Hi, Cutie,” or call me “Preteen Dream,” or say that if the girls looked like me when he was in sixth grade, he would’ve never wanted to grow up. But unfortunately, Ricky barely even looked my way. Even when I was wearing my silver bodysuit with the tiny zipper and my choker and my Revlon Stardust lipstick and my silver nail polish and the black kohl under my eyes like I was that day in the kitchen. I hoped he didn’t find me ugly. Even though my chest was good, I was skinny and small-hipped compared with many of the more voluptuous Cuban and Dominican girls like Winnie, or the girls who were full Puerto Rican, instead of just half. Unlike Winnie and Grace, I hadn’t even gotten my first period yet, and Mommy kept saying it wouldn’t come until I put some meat on my bones. Now she had Peter agreeing with her. So I was at the kitchen table with Peter heaping all this bacon on my plate and calling me “the bacon queen.” Ricky finished reheating a giant plate of spaghetti in the microwave and carried it to the attic, probably for everyone up there to share; now that he was gone, I could start eating. My favorite pieces were the barely cooked ones, pink and thick, oozing with grease and salt.

“Don’t eat so fast, or you’ll throw up,” said Peter, and he pretended to hurl all over me, with lots of sound effects. At first, I said, “You are
so
immature.” But then I grinned and opened my mouth wide to show him all the chewed-up bacon and he stuck his tongue out at me, laughing.

That winter, in his kitchen while my mother was picking up snacks Peter asked me what my friends were like. Smiling, I went into great detail about Winnie being the brainiest, Irene the protector, and Grace the great beauty. “Well, what about you?” he asked, and I explained that I was the entertainer. I’d tell my friends stories and act out roles that I’d seen on TV. I was the one who’d hatch grand schemes that never panned out, like running away from home and riding trains like Natty Gann or plans that did work like starting the Animal Love Club, a short-lived project that involved writing letters protesting fur-wearing and animal experimentation. Often, I’d imitate Poppa’s rants for them and they’d all laugh (though Poppa’s tirades were never funny to me when they were actually happening). Peter said that he wanted to meet my friends but I wasn’t sure if that was such a good idea. I wanted to keep him separate from the world I shared with them. Unfortunately, he had the same habit as when I was younger, which was to pester me endlessly until he finally got what he wanted.

“Are you ashamed to introduce me to your friends?” he asked one day while I was brushing Paws. I kept up on his flea baths and grooming, so he always looked sleek now.

“Well, how will I explain you?” I said, gathering the tufts of fur and putting them in a grocery bag.

“You could say I’m a friend. They’re your friends and I’m your friend, too,” he said, caressing my back. I flinched for a second, then ignored it.

“We don’t really see each other outside of school.” This was only partially true. Winnie’s mother didn’t approve of any of us and Grace lived too far away. One time Grace and I had gone to Irene’s to watch
The Exorcist
, which we made fun of by pretending that the possessed girl was doing Richard Simmons–type aerobics; this helped calm a terrified Grace. Another time I had stayed over at Irene’s and we read ghost stories until two in the morning.

“Well, we could plan it. You could say I was your uncle. Why don’t I take just you and Grace to the magic show this weekend?” That Saturday he drove me to the show on his motorcycle, which impressed Grace, whose mother dropped her off in a boring Toyota. Peter seemed to know exactly how to coax a timid person into feeling comfortable and relaxed. He snapped a Polaroid of us both holding the magician’s python. Later, Grace would say how nice my uncle was and how much fun she’d had. Peter suggested taking us out again, but I said Grace’s mother hadn’t liked having to battle the traffic. When he persisted this time, I said we weren’t good friends anymore because she’d started sitting with the popular girls at lunch. I didn’t like lying to Peter, but for some reason I felt like I had no other choice.

Peter’s house had changed over the past two years. These changes didn’t appear to me right away. One day, I noticed that the rabbit hutches were gone. Peter said the rabbits had caught a virus and died. Then I found out that Warden, the caiman, had been kidnapped from his tank by an unidentified attic dweller and set loose in the yard in the middle of winter. The poor little creature froze to death. Now only the birds and Paws remained.

What we could do together had changed, too. When I was eight, Peter used to hold my hand and no one said anything. Now when he held my hand during a dog walk, we got strange looks. I didn’t see how it was anybody’s business what we did.

One March day, Peter and I were in the kitchen looking through a photo album. My mother was in the living room, calling the American Cancer Society to ask about when Peter should be tested for prostate cancer. There, under the photo album’s glossy contact paper, was Karen with her head and arms locked inside a big wooden device. I asked Peter what that was, and he said it was a stockade, which was something used to torture people in medieval times. They had gone to the Renaissance Festival about a year and a half ago, Inès, Peter, the boys, Karen, and Richard.