Tiger, Tiger (5 page)
I looked miserably into my napkin confetti; I’d been shredding napkin after napkin without even noticing. My father reached across the table, touched the tip of my nose, and caressed my cheek.
“I am telling you this, Keesy, for your own good. One must live in reality and not always with her head in the clouds. I want my daughter to be strong like me and firm in the world.”
Despite Poppa’s cautionary tale, I only got dreamier as the summer soared by, and story upon story started to take shape in my head. Peter not only asked me to talk about my stories, he helped me build a story that was just ours. The story was called “Danger Tiger”: it was about a winged tiger that went around rescuing people. I don’t remember much about it, just that Peter played different characters, some of them villains, while I played only one character, Danger Tiger himself. Danger Tiger was a
he
; I insisted on this, otherwise he would be called Danger
Tigress
. I didn’t know why, but I enjoyed playing male characters when I talked about stories with Peter; Peter, in response, often took on the roles of female characters, with a silly high-pitched voice, which was good for laughs. I was glad that my mother was too busy writing in her Fact Book or just lazing in her lawn chair, watching us, never joining in our stories. I was also glad that Inès worked full-time and that the boys were often off skateboarding, visiting the arcade, or watching TV in the attic. Peter once mentioned to my mother that it was a good thing I’d come along, because Ricky and Miguel were getting older and they didn’t want to spend that much time with him: he even joked that getting everyone together as a family on the weekends, even if it was just to go to the Forty-fifth Street pool, was like getting a group of monkeys to sit down for tea. I played ball with Paws as they sat in lawn chairs, talking. Peter said, “The boys are in that stage where they’re obsessed with their friends. Ricky is going into fifth grade and Miguel into eighth, so I guess it’s normal. I used to get lonely before you and Margaux started coming over. You two have brought a lot of joy into my life.”
Mommy looked up from the Fact Book and swatted at a summer fly. “Thank you, Peter. You’ve been an absolute godsend yourself.”
Peter smiled, but then looked unhappy. “It’ll be sad when she starts school in September.” He lit a cigarette.
“We can still come,” Mommy said, casually waving her hand. “We’ll be here by three, the latest. And we can stay as late as we want. Louie’d be glad to have another night off from cooking. More time for the bar.” She paused, and then said, “But it will be stressful, with school starting. It’s so hard . . . what with getting Margaux’s uniforms, you have to go to a special store, and then for the shoes, a different store. And then the textbooks! Peter, every year you have to cover the textbooks with contact paper, and Louie gets mad if I ask him to do it, and it’s not easy! You have to cut it a certain way, and I’m not that good with crafts, not anymore.”
“I can help you with Margaux’s schoolbooks,” said Peter. “When the time comes, bring me the textbook covers; I’ll show you a simple way of doing it.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to bother you . . .”
“It’s no problem, really, Sandy.”
Mommy said Peter’s yard was the most relaxing place on earth, more tranquil than even his living room. Her favorite thing to do was to pet Paws; I don’t think anyone petted him more than my mother. “No rest for the weary,” she joked, and when Paws finally drifted away to see Peter or me, she would resume scribbling in the Fact Book. The little spiral notebook was now completely full, so she had resorted to writing in the margins and on the back and front. Eventually, Peter gave her a new notebook, persuading her that two separate books would not be too much to keep track of. So she began anew her recordings of local news and worldwide catastrophes, shopping lists and children’s songs, her reminders of things to do or people to call. Occasionally, she would ask Peter if it was all right if she used his phone, and she would go upstairs to begin calling numbers from her address book—people she’d met in psychiatric wards, Dr. Gurney, or friends from college whom she complained avoided her calls. At home, she was always talking about “blacklisting” her unresponsive friends, but as far as I knew, she never crossed out anyone’s number. Once Mommy got through her entire address book, she would call 1-800 suicide hotlines, or the Pathmark Super Center to ask a question about the price of this and that, or St. Mary’s Hospital to request that they send her a packet on cancer or some other dire disease she was afraid she or I would get.
In addition to “Danger Tiger,” Peter and I also played a lot of games that he made up. One was an enhanced version of “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Peter would claw his fingers inward and wiggle them frenetically to form the legs of two friendly tarantulas that would then climb all over my body, tickling me. Two other games were Mad Scientist and Mad Gardener, the latter played in the yard. Peter would chase me with the garden hose, spraying me full blast whenever I was cornered. Mad Scientist was another game that involved tickling and, when caught, I’d be held down and subjected to what we called Tickle Torture Time. Peter would start at what he referred to as the third degree, which was mild—he wouldn’t tickle my belly, armpits, or the soles of my feet, but he’d later upgrade to those (what he called the first degree) if I didn’t surrender. Peter said he’d never met anyone before me who’d gotten all the way to the first degree without begging for mercy. I was proud at first when he said that, but then I was a little put off and jealous: I’d thought Mad Scientist was our own special thing and I couldn’t help but wonder who else he’d played the game with.
A
pparently, Poppa had put a down payment on a house, yet there was no anticipation of the move, just a September day replete with sealed UPS boxes and a big white truck. We donated my old toys to the Emanuel Methodist Church across from the Thirty-second Street playground. The previous day, Poppa and I had taken a short drive through our end of town, so he could point out all the ugly things we were escaping by moving nine blocks. Poppa had offered to take Mommy on the drive with us, but she said she’d rather stay home and listen to the radio. The bedroom was depressing now, with all our stuff packed and just my mother and the radio flat on the white sheet. Mommy hadn’t gotten dressed and wore a long checkered garment with snaps down the front that she had gotten from one of her hospital stays. The bare living room was a worse sight—now that all my toys were packed up, the only whisper of my presence left was the marker scribbles on the wall, from the many times Poppa had gotten angry at the landlord and granted me artistic liberty.
“Always dragging your feet!” Poppa said, and briskly pulled me along. On our way down the hallway stairs, which smelled like urine and beer, he said, “Keesy, when I take you driving today, take a good look around at the things and places you have enjoyed. That woman is lazy and I am sure she will not take the trouble to walk to this end of town once we have moved, and, to be honest, I am not sure I want you in this area anymore.”
When we got to Thirtieth Street, Poppa parked the car to buy cigars from Havana Cigars one last time. In the Chevy, I had nothing to do but stare forlornly at Beeline Arcade, where I would always go to play Galaga and Ms. Pac-Man. I thought of the roller rink a block away from our apartment with a giant red-wheeled skate painted upon its white brick wall; my mother had never allowed me to skate there, for fear I’d fall and break my neck.
Just when I thought I’d start crying, Poppa came back with two kinds of cigars, Ninfas and Senadores.
“You know something,” Poppa said, gripping the wheel even though he hadn’t started driving yet, “I was talking to the man in there and he said we got out of here just in time. There are more drug addicts than ever and gangs and lowlifes creeping up from the twenties and teens. They creep in, like roaches, and they cannot be stopped. I heard there are even prostitutes sleeping in the Toys R Us parking lot now, can you believe this?”
As he pulled out into traffic, Poppa looked around. “This is a bad section of town, Keesy. Look at that man spitting in the street. I would not spit in the street even if I were choking to death! This is why I carry a handkerchief at all times; I never spit, and I never curse on the street like a lowlife savage, and I do not throw trash on the ground. Look over there, Keesy, at those two pigeons pecking at cigarette butts; they think it is food! It is a depressing sight. This whole place is so depressing to me. I thought one day I would simply get in my car and drive away from here and live anywhere, anywhere but this place. But I am a responsible man; I am not a deserter. Who else would put up with a woman like your mother? I am going to tell you something, Keesy. Enjoy being young. Because you don’t know how your life is going to turn out.”
He sighed and continued: “You cannot have what you want in life. But you can be yourself, the kind of person who has done brave things, that has overcome fears, and you can look back on your youth with pride. This is why I joined the army when I was eighteen. My father had been in the army and my brothers were in the army and I knew that it was my turn. Do you think I enjoyed sitting in a tank that got up to a hundred and thirty degrees in Germany? But now I am glad to have been that young man almost dead from the heat in that tank, because if that young man had not withstood the test, I would not be the man I am today. The most important thing, Keesy, is self-respect. Other people can hate me, I may be hated by co-workers, despised by my boss, disliked by these savages on the street, but I know that I have sat in that tank and that I have made my bed every day to perfection when I was in the army and that my clothes were always correct. I look at myself, and know that I have kept to the contract of life. Life is a contract, Keesy.”
Poppa pulled the car over briefly, reached into the six-pack he kept on the car floor in the back, stuck the empty bottle into a Met shopping bag, and put a fresh beer inside the crumpled paper bag. He offered me a sip, and I refused, saying that I liked my beer cold. He laughed and patted me on the leg.
“When I married your mother, I didn’t know I was getting stuck with a sick, helpless woman. Her sister is a bitch, but I still should have listened to her. That bitch in Connecticut gave me a warning, but I did not pay attention. Do you know what she told me, Keesy? She said she noticed that when she and your mother would go to the beach, your mother would always wear headphones. Most people would want to listen to the sounds of the surf, the breeze blowing through the sand, the cries of the gulls. But your mother always needed music playing. I should have known something was wrong then. But the young are foolish. I don’t know why I wanted a wife. I would have been happier living alone, a hermit. But I wanted to have children, I wanted to pass my genes down to another generation; I had the basic drive of life, which is to reproduce. Your instincts—remember that they are almost always wrong. What’s right is what your friends and family tell you to do, they always know better; even a stranger on the street who doesn’t know the first thing about you: tell that person your situation and you’ll get better advice than if you sit down and think about it yourself.”
Poppa had driven dreamily through the usual congestion of Bergenline Avenue up to where it turned into Kennedy Boulevard. We had passed Pastore Music, the Burger Pit, and the Four Star Diner; we had gone all the way up to Sears and back again. Poppa was right, there was something sad and wasted about these city blocks. Maybe it was because Bergenline Avenue became desolate around Twenty-ninth Street and it just kept going downhill from there: fewer stores, fewer people, more teenagers sitting on the hoods of parked cars, more older men slumped on steps with bottles of hard liquor wrapped in paper bags.
“I tell you, Keesy, I would rather die than be seen like that in the street, drinking cheap whiskey!” Poppa snorted. “But at least these bums here in Union City have respect, they do not beg for money. They sit quietly and meditate on what has gone wrong in their lives, and you pass by, and they do not ask anything of you, or make themselves a pity case.” He took another sip of beer. “Yet I have to carry a gun, or they might rob me. I have fine jewelry and people are jealous. I like to look my best and the underdogs despise me, wishing they, too, could have fine things. Often, Keesy, I think that without beauty to admire, what do we have? Even any of these bums, a good-looking girl turns and smiles at them and they feel their lives restored. A beautiful woman’s face and a fine horse, well groomed and ready to run on the track: these sights do not last. The face of Elizabeth Taylor. And Brooke Shields. Some of my friends say you look like her. But I think you are more beautiful. I do not like her eyebrows. Keesy, let’s stop here for a moment.” We pulled up by Los Precious Supermarket on Twenty-ninth Street, across from the NJ Transit Bus Station. “Do you want some chips?”
Inside the store, Poppa bought himself some Donita pork rinds, a bag of La Dominica plantain chips, and some cassava chips. For me, he bought vanilla sugar wafers and a Tampico Citrus Punch. Before we got back into the Chevy, Poppa lifted my chin and said, “I feel sad for the day you become a woman. The men around here have no respect. They howl and hoot like a bunch of baboons at anything that passes by; I do not know what kind of families they come from. Even though we are moving, there are still going to be animals around. There are savages all over this city. I wish we could move to the suburbs.”
The mood turned dreamy as we listened to the Beatles’
Rubber
Soul
. When the song “Run for Your Life” came on, Poppa sang and drummed his hands against the steering wheel. The song, Poppa explained to me, when the tape ended, was about a jealous man who suspected his girlfriend was cheating on him; he was warning her that if he ever caught her and her lover together, he would kill her.
“Why does he have to kill her, Poppa? Can’t he just get a new girlfriend?”
