Tiger, Tiger (22 page)
Another time while my mother was out, we got into a fight in Peter’s room and he hit me in the face and I scratched his arm, leaving a thin, jagged streak of blood.
“Look at what you’ve done! I’m going to clean this up,” he said. “I sure hope Inès doesn’t say you can’t come over here anymore when she sees this.”
“Don’t go out there, then,” I said.
“What’s the alternative—stay in here with you? I don’t have to put up with this abuse.”
He went out of the room with his coffee, while I hid under the covers. I hated him for going out there.
I opened the door a crack and saw him washing the cut in the sink in front of Inès, who said, “What happened to your arm?”
“Margaux. It’s nothing, really. We got into a little argument.”
“And she scratched you like that? What was it over?”
“Ah, the Nintendo. Look, sometimes I think she’s a little unstable.
You know, from growing up in such a chaotic household.”
“You have a lot of patience, that’s for sure.”
I wanted to shout at Inès that he’d hit me first, but instead I found myself despising her with such gut-wrenching force that I couldn’t even be angry at Peter when he came back into the room, his arm freshly bandaged, saying we should go out on the motorcycle to take our minds off what had just happened.
Though the Nintendo was good for nothing but fights between Peter and me it provided an otherwise impossible chance for me to spend time with Ricky. On Saturday or Sunday, Peter liked to take Inès out for a ride or to eat; they were still good friends, he said, and needed to be able to spend time together. She needed someone to confide in about Richard and her job because both were stressing her out. To help me pass the time while he was out, Peter arranged for Ricky, a Mario 3 expert, to give me a run for my money while my mother thumbed through magazines, made calls in the kitchen, or talked to Richard. She didn’t even seem to mind that he wasn’t listening.
During those afternoons with Ricky I always dressed up in a tight baby-doll dress, short shorts, or one of my lace-edged camisoles. But he never looked at me or said anything; he just kept staring at the TV screen as though he was trying to block me out. I was always Mario and he was always Luigi; each time, he would defer the privilege of going first by wordlessly handing the main game controller to me. His eyes never moved from the screen, and I was afraid to look at him, even through the corner of my eye, lest he think I liked him. I was terribly conscious of both my breathing and his: mine sometimes seemed too shallow and I would try to swallow the sound, much in the same way I had tried to hold my breath underwater in the bathtub, hoping to drown. We didn’t speak for what seemed like six or seven hours, though we were probably together only half that time.
Finally, one day after Peter’s outing with Inès, I said to him, “I don’t think Ricky really wants to play with me.”
“Why? He loves Super Mario Three.” Peter said, sipping his Taster’s Choice and reaching for his lighter. I watched the lighter fluid swill forward, sparking a thimble-sized flame.
“I don’t think he likes me.”
“He’s shy.”
“I don’t think that’s it. He doesn’t like me at all. He hates me.”
“Why? Why would he hate you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sometimes when a boy likes a girl, he can’t talk to her. Besides, he’s probably busy having thoughts . . .” He started to hum and I banged my fist against the bed.
“What are you doing? Margaux!”
I closed my eyes.
“I thought I was doing something nice by letting you spend time with the boy you have a crush on. Nice guys always finish last, don’t they?”
Paws lay on the floor, his legs shaking from a dream like something mechanical. Suddenly, I had to bite my lip to suppress a crazy impulse to kick the sleeping dog. Shamed, I leaned over and rubbed Paws’s belly.
Peter continued, “I was just trying to make you happy. I’m always putting you first.”
“You just do it so you can go out with Inès,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I’m going to have a talk with Ricky. He needs to learn some social skills. I’m tired of the way he struts around, acting like he’s too cool to talk to anyone. He and Miguel both need a good talking-to. God knows, Inès won’t do it.”
“Don’t you dare tell Ricky what I said! Don’t you dare humiliate me in front of a cute boy, Peter!”
He threw up his hands. “And what am I in your eyes? The dog’s dinner?”
“No.” I pressed a pillow into my chest. “I’m not comparing. Sometimes you twist my words.”
“I’m sorry. Can’t I get a little jealous? Am I allowed? I shouldn’t be jealous,” he said, stroking my hair. “If you love something, set it free. Free to live and love and be alive. It turns you on, doesn’t it, when Ricky sits here? You can pretend I’m Ricky, you know. You can fantasize I’m him anytime you want.” He got up and locked the door.
Then he returned to the bed and undid the top button of my jeans, starting to rub me.
“Where’s my mother?” I said, my voice sounding strangely automatic. “Outside the door? She might catch us.”
He laughed. “I like to take risks but I’m not crazy! She went to Pathmark to rent a movie for us.”
“What movie?”
“Cheech and Chong’s
Up in Smoke
. I watch that movie every year.
Cheech wears a tutu and Mickey Mouse ears and they drive a truck made out of grass.”
“Grass from the yard?”
“No, pot. The kind you smoke.”
“Oh, Mommy wouldn’t like that. She hates illegal drugs.”
When I got dry, he put a little Vaseline on his finger. I pictured Ricky kissing me, then touching my neck and my soft breasts with their hard, nubby points, then putting his hand down my pants and touching the hot, moist motor between my legs. I remembered a belly dancer Poppa had once taken me to see during one of my mother’s hospital stays, putting his hand down her hula skirt, slipping a roll of dollars down there, somewhere amid what I now knew was heat and wet—a pure, mind-erasing sensation.
I
n late August, Peter began to renovate the first-floor apartment, which had remained vacant for years. Richard had moved back in, claiming the living room again, though he also liked to take over the kitchen, resting his feet on the table while he read and smoked. Peter said being able to work on the downstairs apartment was a godsend: it meant he would see less of Richard.
Since it was summer, I was all about belly shirts, short shorts (my favorite set of jean shorts had a pair of dice on each butt cheek and white lace fringing the pockets), tank tops and halter tops. “You’re calling more attention to us with those outfits,” Peter lectured. “Plus, if I leave you alone for one second a guy instantly comes over to talk to you. It’s ridiculous. Back when I was a young man, we didn’t approach women like that. We were respectful. These guys just come right up to you like mosquitoes out for blood.”
Sometimes he talked to me like he thought twelve was young, but when we were doing sex stuff twelve was pretty grown-up to Peter. Even eight had been old. So why was he now treating me like I was a baby?
He went on, “I don’t like the way Richard looks at you. Whenever you pass by, he always puts down his book and stares at you. I’m sure it’s just to annoy me. But you seem to get a kick out of it. Come on, we’re always truthful with each other: do you actually like it when guys gawk at you like you’re a piece of meat?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “You’re just jealous of Richard. What if I had sex with him one day? I bet I could if I wanted.”
“No, you couldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“He just wouldn’t go for it, that’s all. Richard likes to kid with you. Sometimes it’s not that funny. He has a knack for saying the wrong thing, always the
exact wrong thing
. Do you know what he said to me the other day? He was probably coked out of his mind, whatever mind he has left. As usual, he was bumming cigarettes. I was going through my drawers to get him a pack and he saw the leopard-print bathing suit you had worn all last summer, the one you outgrew. He actually asked me if he could have the suit!” Peter shook his head. “I said no, of course, but then he winked and said: ‘Why are you keeping it?’ ”
“He wanted my bathing suit? You should have given it to him. He could rub it all over his face while he lies on the living room couch, masturbating.”
“Gross! Margaux, come on! That’s the last thing I want to imagine!” He pretended to cringe. “Richard loves to aggravate people. He’s a real instigator. He needs to get a life. The other day I asked him to help me with this apartment, but
God forbid
. That actually involves
work
. Without me, this house would be in shambles.”
That September, I started junior high at Washington School. I found that I missed my friends terribly, and without them my shyness returned with a vengeance. Also, something had happened to me that summer. I’d begun to suffer from mood swings ranging from euphoric to despondent. My moods seemed to mostly follow the pattern of whether Peter and I were fighting or getting along, but I’d also get depressed thinking about my now defunct clique. Though I still talked to Winnie and occasionally Grace or Irene over the phone, it just seemed like there was less and less to say to them. As planned, I’d told Winnie about Ricky going down on me and I on him. She kept asking me what come tasted like. I told her it was like Italian ice. In truth, Peter, when we were alone in the room, had asked me to return the gift he’d given to me. He asked me to swallow and I felt like I should show him that I wasn’t afraid to. Somehow telling Winnie it was with a boy my own age made it better.
I became something of an enigma at Washington School. I barely spoke, and when I did, I acted meek yet I wore makeup and sexy clothes. My homeroom teacher added to the mystery by periodically sending me to the school counselor, Mr. Trunelli, for seeming “antisocial.” But he didn’t notice any problems with me, because I soon became spunky, chatty, and witty. When I would come back into the classroom after these visits, girls would whisper as I took my seat about why I was sent to Mr. Trunelli’s office yet again.
That winter, Justine, a gorgeous Filipina with long Doberman-black hair who’d been left back twice, noticed the dangling teardrop gems on my jeans; they were exactly like a pair she owned. “You’re copying me,” she said during gym class, which I was sitting out for my period, my second menstruation this month, though my male gym teacher didn’t have the gumption to question me. Apparently, Justine knew the same tricks. She sat next to me, not bothering to pull down her white baby-doll dress, which rode up almost to her crotch. Such a glamorous, sophisticated girl talking to a nobody like me was unheard of, and not knowing how to react, I kept reading.
“I have that book at home,” she said, tapping the dog-eared paperback’s cover.
I shrugged, not moving my gaze from
Flowers in the Attic
. The evil grandmother was about to whip Cathy now.
“You’re copying me,” she said again, and then her white acrylic fingertip ran the length of my arm.
I felt my eyes lock with hers. “Maybe it’s because you’re the only girl around who’s worth copying.”
Justine wrote her phone number in bold bubble letters on a slip of pink notepaper, instructing me to call that night, but I didn’t want to call in front of Peter. When I was back at my own house, I lost my nerve. After all, Justine was the most popular girl in the seventh grade. The sight of Poppa, even if he wasn’t anywhere near me, always made my self-confidence vanish.
In V.C. Andrews’s books, brothers were always falling in love with their sisters and older men were falling in love with young girls. Everything was forbidden and secret and deliciously romantic. There was this young, beautiful ballerina named Cathy who had three men in love with her: one was another dancer, one was her own brother, and one was a rich doctor, Paul, who was forty years old. Cathy was only sixteen when she and Paul made love for the first time. Paul tried to resist Cathy’s powers of bewitchery; but he was only a man, he couldn’t control himself, so finally he succumbed. “Succumb,” “bewitch,” “seduce,” “dazzle,” “enrapture,” “enchant”: what wonderful words! I adored them and I adored Cathy. For one thing, the most important thing, Cathy was beautiful. Second, she was a dancer. No one could resist Cathy, not even her own brother!
Peter sanded the wall as I bounced from his right to his left side, telling him about Cathy’s exploits. “So do you know what happens to Paul at the end of
Petals on the Wind
?” I paused. “He dies of a heart attack, right in Cathy’s arms! He was making love to her and his heart
just stopped
. Isn’t that romantic?”
“It is. But it’s sad, too. Don’t you think it’s sad?”
I nodded. “But Cathy goes on.”
“How old was Paul when this happened to him?”
“I dunno. About your age,” I said with a grin. Peter swatted me with the sandpaper. “No, I’m just kidding. The first time we make love we’ll be really slow about it, so you don’t get too worked up. ’Kay?”
“Well, that’s not gonna happen for a while.” Peter said. “I’m in no rush for that.”
We couldn’t have had intercourse anyway; there was the danger of my mother returning unexpectedly or Richard knocking on the door for cigarettes. Richard had already interrupted numerous blow-job and hand-job gifts. “Why is this door always locked?” Richard once asked, and Peter snapped, “To keep you out so you don’t rob me blind.” In frustration, Peter once gave him three whole packs, but within the hour, Richard was back at the door, saying he wanted to borrow the motorcycle. (I was shocked when Peter handed him the keys!) Not only did Peter have Richard to contend with, but he was constantly on guard for the sound of my mother’s shuffling feet; when she arrived, he quickly unlocked the door. Unlike Peter, I saw these interruptions as fun, for they added excitement; there was always the danger we could get caught and have to run away to Scandinavia or Thailand as planned. Meanwhile, I continued to tell Winnie of my sexual adventures with “Ricky,” and pleasured myself at home fantasizing that my lies were true. Winnie kept asking me, however, when I was going to “do it.”
