Tiger, Tiger

by Galaxy Craze

  When I thought about this in class or in my bed at night, I could still feel the shudder of her hand between my legs.

  On the weekend, I spent the nights at Sati’s house. We slept together in the single loft bed at the top of the ladder. Before we fell asleep we tickled each other’s backs and wrote words with our fingers, then erased them with the palm of our hands.

  One night, Sati wrote the words I love you.

  The game was usually relaxing, but I lay on the bed beside her, silent. She moved her hand beneath me, underneath my breasts, and kissed the back of my neck. She laid her mouth against my back, in the place were she had written the words. I didn’t know what to say. I closed my eyes.

  Her head lay against my shoulder. I wondered if she would hear my heart or notice how still I was. Why couldn’t we have known each other in London? She could have lived next door. We could have met outside in the mornings in the damp air, and walked to school together, past the houses and shops, while the day brightened.

  I opened my eyes. A skylight above the sleeping loft showed a square of the dark night and two stars.

  “Sati?”

  The weight of her head felt heavy against me.

  “Mmm,” she said, her eyes still closed. She rolled away, onto her side, her face hidden in the pillow and hair covering her eyes. How could she fall asleep on a night like this?

  I touched her back and drew a line through the air from me to her. A line that would connect us, a line that would never break.

  “I love you too,” I said. I lay very still, almost frightened. This was the first time in my life I had said this to someone not in my family. The first time I had ever said these words to a friend.

  SIXTEEN

  In November, Caroline gave birth to a baby girl. Mum, Eden, and I went to visit her when she was just two days old. Our mother had baked a loaf of orange bread and made a vegetable quiche we carried to their house. Eden gave her a picture he drew of the solar system, and I picked her a bouquet of the wildflowers that grew near the grapefruit grove.

  The baby had been born at the local hospital. It was an easy birth, Caroline said, her cheeks still flushed with excitement. She sat in a rocking chair, nursing, the baby’s small head and soft dark hair against her chest, the baby’s fingers curled in delicate fists.

  “Have you thought of a name yet?” my mother asked.

  “Parvati’s going to name her,” Sati said, looking up from where she sat beside her mother.

  We stared at the baby in Caroline’s arms. Sati touched the baby’s head and John, Caroline’s husband, offered us drinks. He opened the mini refrigerator in their house, kneeling down to take out a bottle of water and apple juice. He looked over at his wife.

  “Honey, can I get you some more water?”

  “No, thanks,” Caroline said.

  He brought the drinks to Eden, Mum, and me and then stood beside his wife, wrapping his arm over her shoulder and smiling at the baby.

  “I’m older, but it was so much quicker this time!” Caroline said, amazed by it. “I was in labor for two and a half days with you,” she said to Sati, “but you were worth every moment of it.”

  “Eden was nearly born in the backseat of the taxi. Simon was so stoned at the time, I couldn’t get him up from the sofa. I kept saying, I’m in labor, and he said, ‘Can’t you wait till the advert?’”

  Caroline burst out laughing.

  “After May was born, the midwife in the hospital handed her to me and said, From maiden to mother. The first time I held her, it was as though my life suddenly came into focus and everything else just melted away.”

  “From maiden to mother.” Caroline repeated the words, almost under her breath.

  “Did I look like her when I was born?” Sati asked.

  “You really did,” Caroline said. “Look at the photograph by the window.”

  Sati walked to the window, taking a photograph in a silver frame from the sill. She touched the photo with her finger, clearing away the dust.

  “Can I see, Sati?” I said, walking over to her.

  In the photo, Sati lay in her mother’s arm, wrapped in a pale yellow blanket.

  “My grandmother knitted that blanket for me,” she said. “I still have it, but it’s thin, now, and the color’s faded.”

  “Do your grandparents know about this baby?” I said, quietly so the others wouldn’t hear.

  Sati shook her head. She put the picture back on the window-sill, leaning it against the glass so it wouldn’t fall.

  Eden sat next to Mum; he reached out carefully, almost fearfully, to touch the baby. “You were like that, darling,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “Both of you. I remember it so clearly.”

  Sati leaned her head against her mother’s shoulder. Here, in this room, with her mother and father, with her baby sister, she was like a young girl. In the moment of quiet we could hear the baby suckling, a soft purring sound.

  John sliced pieces of orange cake and passed them out on plates. His quick, busy movements made him seem nervous. He refilled the pitcher of water next to Caroline’s chair.

  “I forgot how thirsty this makes you,” she said, sipping from her glass.

  John stood in the middle of the room with a camera. “Everyone say cheese,” he said. Caroline set the glass of water down beside her and smiled.

  John took the picture; there was a click sound and a flash. I imagined a frame around us, looking up at the camera, smiling.

  Caroline picked up the drawing Eden had made for her. Eden sat up, his arms pressed close to his body, as she looked at the blue and white sky and the circling red and orange planets.

  “Oh, look. It’s so beautiful. You drew that by yourself?”

  Eden nodded. He reached out to show her the different stars and planets.

  “How did you learn so much about them?” she asked him.

  Eden looked at Mum. “We studied them in school last year,” he said.

  “You draw them so beautifully,” Caroline said.

  “He’s always drawn well,” Mum said. “But he usually draws airplanes and army tanks.”

  The sun came through the windows, falling against the backs of our heads. The soft smell of the orange bread and the baby, the flowers on the table. I felt my mother beside me, the warmth of her shoulders against mine, and I remembered something she had said to our father once. Where were we? Were we driving in the car? Or was it in the kitchen of our house, where most things were said? Or had she written it in a note? A letter? The words were:

  I hoped, when I became a mother, that I could give my children a happiness apart from daily life, apart from the material things in the world—but how I planned to do that, I don’t know.

  Caroline passed the drawing to Sati, and Sati passed it to her father. Eden’s cheeks blushed from the attention, and he sat up very straight on the sofa. Mum ruffled his hair with her hand, her eyes bright like his. Was this one of the moments our mother had spoken of, her children happy, peacefully sitting beside her, no one asking for anything, no one complaining? Would we see this moment in the photograph John had taken, like a golden light around us? How long could this feeling last? Would it leave when we left the house? When we stood up to say good-bye? There was no reason to leave this room, except for the hours passing and the end of the day.

  That week in darshan, Parvati introduced the baby to the ashram. She had chosen a name.

  “My chellas,” she said, “I want to introduce Jaya.”

  She held the baby up for the room to see.

  The people applauded. Camera flashes went off and the baby began to cry.

  A voice in the room shouted, “Congratulations! You have a beautiful daughter.”

  Caroline turned to the voice. “Thank you,” she said, before realizing the person was congratulating Parvati. Caroline sat next to Parvati, waiting for her to hand the baby back to her. Parvati held the baby in her arms, cooing loudly, tickling beneath her chin, but it only made the baby
cry more. Caroline reached out to take her, but the reach of her arms was ignored.

  Eden and I sat beside our mother. She was not cheering, clapping with the others, or cooing at the baby. She had her arm around Eden, her fingers pressed tightly against his skin.

  Caroline watched. She had an anxious but helpless look in her eyes. I thought at any moment she would scream, Give me my baby back, please? John sat beside her, holding her hand in his. Sati sat beside Parvati’s chair, staring up at her, enjoying the attention her sister was receiving.

  In school, Sati told us about the baby. She loved being an older sister, she said. She took care of the baby when her mother needed to nap or take a shower; she changed her, bathed her, and sang her to sleep. As a special present, Sati gave Jaya the pale yellow blanket her grandmother had knitted for her when she was a baby.

  When Jaya was one week old, Sati told us, her mother and Jaya moved out of their house and into Parvati’s rooms. The baby’s nursery was finally finished and Jaya could move in. Before the adoption, Caroline had suggested that she nurse the baby for the first few months, because it was the best thing for the baby, and Parvati had agreed.

  “It’s the prettiest nursery you’ve ever seen,” Sati said. Summer, Molly, Kelly, and I sat on the porch, listening to her.

  “I’ve never seen a nursery,” Molly said.

  “Maybe you had one when you were a baby,” I said.

  Molly shrugged. “I don’t remember. What does it look like, Sati?”

  “The walls are yellow, like pale lemon. Renee painted the ceiling with stars and a crescent moon. She painted bunny rabbits and flowers and grass around the bottom of the walls. Jaya has a white crib with a lace canopy and shelves and shelves of toys. Parvati’s devotees sent them from all over the world. She’s too young for them now, but soon she’ll play with them. Parvati said in a month or two, when Jaya’s older, I can take you all to see her in the nursery.”

  “That would be exciting,” Kelly said. “The only part of Parvati’s house I’ve been in is the main room and the gardens.”

  “Does Jaya cry a lot?” Summer asked.

  Sati shook her head. “She mostly just eats and falls asleep in my mom’s arms. Yesterday the Women brought in an extra bed for me, because Parvati said I could sleep there on weekend nights.”

  I looked at Sati, but she did not notice me. Her eyes slid over us, eager to tell us more.

  “Oh, and Keshi and Lucy bring our food on a tray and make us whatever we want from the kitchen.”

  “Wow,” Kelly said, but her voice was uncertain. “It sounds like a hotel, with room service and everything.”

  “How long is your mother going to stay with her in the nursery?” Summer asked.

  Sati shrugged. “A couple weeks or something. A month? I’m not really sure.”

  “Then she’s going to have to leave?” I said.

  Sati nodded.

  “Who will take care of the baby after?” Molly asked.

  “Parvati will,” Sati said, but there was a nervousness in her voice as she answered our questions.

  “Okay, girls,” Kelly said, looking at her wristwatch. “Our break ended ten minutes ago, so let’s get back to the classroom.”

  This was the first time that a disciple of Parvati’s had given her their child, and even Molly and Summer, the girls who had lived longest at the ashram, listened to Sati’s tales with a slight unease.

  Now that Parvati had a baby daughter, she wanted other babies to be born on the ashram, so that Jaya would have playmates and friends.

  In darshan, Parvati announced that she had had a message from her guru that Amba and Old Durga Das were to marry and have a child.

  Amba’s face turned ashen when Parvati announced that she would be old Durga Das’s bride. Amba lived in the room next to ours with a roommate. That night we could hear her sobbing through the walls while her roommate tried to comfort her.

  There was no way she could have sex with Old Durga Das. He repulsed her. She would not be able to love a baby of his. She contemplated telling Parvati that she wanted to become a monk and take a vow of celibacy.

  Amba was in her early thirties. She was short with curly red hair and freckles. She was a dancer and taught dance to us twice a week at school. She dressed in leotards and leg warmers and practiced her dance moves and stretches in the living room downstairs. Sati and I liked to talk about her chest, because she was flat as a boy.

  Old Durga Das, the man she was supposed to marry, was almost sixty-two. He had thin legs, like sticks, and a potbelly. He wore trousers with suspenders and occasionally a bow tie. Before he moved here, he had been a professor at a state college in Florida and had a habit of pointing his finger at you when he spoke. What I remember most clearly, though, were his hands. One night, as I stood beside him in line for dinner, I saw that even though he was a tall man, his hands and fingers were as small as a young boy’s.

  Amba and Old Durga Das were married by Parvati in a ceremony outside the temple. My mother and Keshi baked the wedding cake, a large lavender-frosted cake in a flat pan decorated with fresh flowers and silver cake balls.

  Amba wore a long flowered dress and a wreath of wildflowers in her hair. She clutched her bouquet tightly in her hands, with seven bridesmaids trailing her. She smiled so widely, as she walked toward the altar, you could see all her teeth. The closer she came to the temple, where Old Durga Das stood in his badly fitting suit and black bow tie, you could see that through her smile her face was covered in tears. If I hadn’t known that she did not want to marry him, I would have thought she was crying for joy. I would have thought she was the happiest bride I had ever seen.

  SEVENTEEN

  Sati took me to visit her sister in the nursery. In the room, Caroline sat in a rocking chair with the baby on her lap. I could hear her singing softly while the baby slept. I looked around at the pale yellow walls and up at the ceiling with its pattern of moons and stars.

  “Hi,” Caroline said quietly, when she saw us. In the corner stood a white crib with matching pale yellow sheets and a colorful mobile hanging above. She put her finger to her lips, whispering that the baby had just fallen asleep.

  Sati and I sat down on a single bed covered in a dark blue bedspread with silver mirrored pieces in the trim. My father had sold these bedspreads at the shop. A small suitcase lay on the floor; a glass of water and a bottle of rose-scented hand lotion sat by the lamp on the bedside table.

  Rose lotion and a book; there was nothing else of Caroline’s in the room.

  A smaller bed, the size of a hotel cot, sat across the room.

  “Is that your bed, Sati?” I asked.

  “Yeah. It’s just temporary. Parvati told me she was going to make me my own room one day.”

  “Did she?” Caroline asked. “So you could be near your sister?”

  The curtains were pulled closed, the dull light reminded me of nap time when I was a child.

  Since Caroline had moved into Parvati’s room, my mother had hardly seen her, and I knew she missed her friendship. At night she would walk into the dining hall alone, standing in the room holding her tray of food looking around for someone to sit with. Usually, she would find an empty place at the long communal table in the back. Sometimes she sat with Renee, but the two of them did not laugh together or stay talking late into the night over tea and dessert, the way she and Caroline had.

  Caroline lifted the sleeping baby from her lap and walked with her to the curtained window, where the pale yellow light fell over them. “I’m going to try to rest for a while,” she said. “I have not been sleeping well. Even when she’s asleep, I can’t sleep. I keep thinking I only have a few more weeks with her, and I don’t know how I’ll be able to leave her now.”

  “You knew you were only going to stay here for a little while, Mom,” Sati said.

  Caroline nodded. “I know I did, Sati.” She walked away from the window to the bed. “I should have never looked at her or held her, because now that
I have I never want to leave.”

  She lay down under the covers with the baby cradled in her arms. “I have to try to sleep now,” she said again.

  Caroline lay on the bed, her head touching the baby’s, and closed her eyes.

  Sati stood beside them. She pulled the bedspread over her mother’s shoulders, tucking it below her chin. She leaned over and kissed her mother and the baby good night.

  After school each day, Sati rushed to the stables and through chores, then ran to see her mother and sister in the nursery. She often left the stables early, leaving me to put away the buckets, secure the feed, and make sure the horses were fine for the night. On the weekends she would spend most of the day in the nursery, and she always spent the nights there.

  I missed our weekends together, taking walks through the grapefruit grove and having sleepovers at her house. I thought, It’s just new and soon she’ll grow tired of the baby and of spending so much time in Parvati’s rooms. There was nothing to do in the nursery really; all Jaya did was sleep and eat. I thought of the pale yellow light through the curtains and how it gave the room a warm and sickly feeling.

  I knew Caroline would have to leave the nursery soon, and I looked forward to that day. I couldn’t wait until Sati and I would have more time to spend after chores in the hay loft, and on the weekends when I would spend the night at her house again. We would eat dinner together in the dining hall and go to her house when no one was there and run a bath.

  In our room at night, I told Eden to write a word on my back, and when I closed my eyes I would pretend it was Sati. But he would giggle and write the word bum or fart and I would swat his hand away.

  I would lie in bed and think of exciting things I could tell her in school the next day, or I would look in the mirror, trying on things to wear or doing something new with my hair, to get her to notice me again.

  There was a bathtub in the bathroom of our house. In the middle of the day, or sometimes on a Sunday, when the house was quiet, I would lock the bathroom door and run a bath. I sat in the warm water and with my own hands I pushed my knees apart. I would imagine they were Sati’s hands; that she was saying, “Open your legs, open them wider.” I ran my hands down my thighs and pressed my palms against myself, putting one finger inside. I moved my hand up and down. I imagined it was her and felt myself grow warm, thinking of Sati with my eyes squeezed tight.