Tiger, Tiger

by Galaxy Craze

  “Mom, what are you doing?”

  My mother sat beside her; she looked away, clasping her hands together.

  “Sati,” her mother began to say calmly, “Jaya wouldn’t eat. She’s been crying for the last few days. I had to feed her.”

  “But Parvati said you weren’t allowed to.”

  My mother glanced at Sati. “I think your mother knows what’s best for the baby.”

  Sati stood quietly, watching them. I stood next to her, biting my fingernail.

  “Maybe I should take her back now,” my mother said to Caroline.

  Caroline stared down at the baby in her arms. “Why are you girls home from school so early?” she asked.

  “It’s kids’ night with Parvati,” Sati said.

  “What’s kids’ night with Parvati?” my mother asked.

  “We have a sleepover and watch movies,” I told her.

  “Is Eden going?”

  “All the children are invited,” Sati said.

  Caroline handed the baby to my mother. She buttoned her blouse before following her to the door. My mother placed the baby in a sling she wore around her shoulders. The sling was hidden beneath a shawl she fastened at the neck. I knew now that she had taken the baby from the nursery in secret and brought her here.

  * * *

  Caroline came back into the house; we heard the door fall shut behind her. She went to the sink and poured herself a glass of water.

  “Are you girls thirsty or hungry?”

  “No, Mom,” Sati said. She knelt on the ground, unzipping a suitcase that still had the tin smell of airplane air around it. She pulled out two pairs of brand-new Sasson jeans with the tags pinned to the pockets. Beneath the jeans were four new blouses; all the same style and size, but each a different color. “Try these on,” Sati said to me. She held one of the new pairs of jeans up to my waist. They were dark blue, cardboard-stiff, and I knew they would be tight on me.

  We dressed in front of the mirror. She said I could wear one of her new blouses too, the mustard-yellow one. Sati wore the turquoise-blue one and a pair of earrings her mother loaned her. Her jeans did up easily around her waist but I had to lie down, sucking in my stomach. When I stood up, a layer of flesh hung around my waist. I untucked the blouse, holding in my stomach.

  “That looks good, but you have to unbutton the top buttons of that blouse.” She stood in front of me, undoing the buttons.

  “Don’t you think that’s too low?” I asked, looking in the floor-length mirror. The skin of my chest showed beneath the collar.

  “No.” Sati shook her head.

  “Yours is buttoned.”

  “We can’t dress exactly the same. You can wear your own clothes, if you want.”

  She put her arm around me, looking at us both in the mirror. “We look better than the dancers on Solid Gold,” Sati said, tilting her head to the side and posing with her hand on her hip. I smiled, copying her pose, tilting my head toward hers.

  Outside, Sati realized we had left the sleeping bags behind, so we went back to get them. Inside the house, Sati’s mother was sitting

  on the sofa, where she had sat with the baby. She held her hands to her face and cried.

  “Mom?” Sati said, from the door. “Mom, are you all right?”

  Her mother could not answer, she cried recklessly, like a child, trying to catch her breath between sobs. Sati sat down beside her. I stood for a moment just inside the door, unsure of what to do. Sati put her arm around her mother’s back and stroked her hair with her hand. “It’s all right, Mom,” she said softly. Sati held her mother; she kissed the side of her face.

  I picked up the sleeping bags from the floor and opened the door quietly to wait outside. When my mother cried, I was never able to soothe her like this. The way Sati comforted her mother, it was as though she were the mother and her mother was the child.

  I stood outside the house, in Sati’s tight jeans and yellow blouse, unbuttoned too low. The early evening was growing cool and the shadows of the trees slanted like bars across the path. Two men and a woman walked by. The woman was skipping, dressed in a red skirt. The color flashed through the trees.

  I held my sleeping bag tightly as Sati and I walked along the path to Parvati’s house. I looked at Sati; had she been crying too? But her profile as we walked was plain, her eyes dull from the light, her straight hair falling to the middle of her back, the small slope of her nose, her lips slightly parted, the evening light falling flat against her. I had never seen Sati cry.

  TWENTY

  The waiting area outside of Parvati’s rooms was crowded with all the children on the ashram and their sleeping bags, pillows, and overnight bags. The younger children, like Eden and Jabe, had been pushed to the back, where they sat on the floor playing a game of jacks. Summer and Molly played a game of cards with Brad and Dylan in front of the doorway.

  Soon the door opened and Keshi and Renee walked out. “It’s time for kids’ night with Parvati to begin!”

  Everyone cheered, and there was a rush to the door.

  “Whoa!” Renee said, holding her hands out in front of her. “Take it easy, now.” I had never heard the word Whoa! used in England, but here the adults said it all the time: when we were about to step on the newly washed floors or cut the dinner line to get the warm oatmeal-honey cookies before they were gone.

  Everyone was talking loudly, excitedly, in Parvati’s room, waiting for her to arrive. There was a girl sitting by the side of Parvati’s chair, in the spot that Sati usually sat in. Her name was Valerie. She was in the grade below us at school. She had moved here a few weeks ago from Texas with her mother and younger sister.

  When Valerie saw Sati, she moved over, without being asked, so that Sati could have her regular spot, closest to Parvati. Valerie turned to Sati, looking at her with a hopeful smile.

  When we were settled, Parvati came into the room, followed by Renee and Keshi. Keshi and Renee stood beside her as some of the children reached out for hugs and kisses. She announced that they had ordered pizza and ice cream. Parvati put her finger to her lips. “Don’t tell your parents,” she said. “They’ll be so jealous.”

  The pizza arrived and we ate it on paper plates. It was still hot, the cheese sliding off as we lifted the slices from the box. Parvati and the Women ate pizza too.

  Renee carried the ice cream cake into the room. “Oh, yeah, Zamboni! Zamboni!” Dylan sang, as he played air guitar.

  Parvati and the Women laughed.

  The ice cream was cut from a long cake of strawberry, chocolate, and vanilla stripes. Keshi cut us all equal-size pieces and served them on paper plates. I watched Eden, as he held the paper plate of ice cream in two hands, walking carefully back to where Jabe and the other boys were sitting.

  While we ate the ice cream, Parvati told us to gather around her. We sat on the floor, on the plush red carpet in her receiving room. The glass doors looked out to the gardens and the lighted swimming pool shone in the night.

  “My chelas,” she said, “you are my children; you know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Parvati,” we said in chorus. “Everything we talk about in here is a secret. You can tell us whatever you like.”

  Molly was the first to raise her hand. She told Parvati that she had had an argument with her mother. She had called her mother fat, which she knew was wrong, but her mother slapped her across the face.

  “She hit you?” Parvati said, sounding astonished. She looked to Keshi and then Renee. “I will talk to her, Molly. And don’t worry, she will not be mad at you.”

  “Parvati,” Brad said, standing up with his nunchaku in his hand. “I was wondering if I could do a demonstration, because when I’m eighteen I would like to guard the gates.”

  “With those?” Parvati asked. “We’ll lose our heads. All right, stand over there. Over there, way far away, in the back of the room.”

  We watched as Brad swung the sticks around in the air, karate-kicking and punching at imaginary i
ntruders.

  “Haven’t I taught you nonviolence?” she asked. “Sit down. I’ll think about it when you’re eighteen.”

  Brad sat down, red-faced and out of breath.

  The new girl, Valerie, raised her hand. “Parvati,” she said. Her voice had a sleepy sound. “I just wanted to tell you I am so happy to be here.”

  Parvati smiled lightly at the girl.

  “When we lived in Texas, my mother and her boyfriend had terrible fights. They were so loud they would wake me and my sister up. One night,” Valerie continued, “I was making dinner for my sister when the toaster oven caught fire. The fire alarm went off and we were alone in the house. I tried to reach the telephone, but it was too close to the fire. I put the fire out with cups of water from the sink, but I had ruined the new toaster and the kitchen curtains.”

  “You must have been very frightened,” Parvati said to her.

  Valerie nodded. “When my mom’s boyfriend came home, he hit me and called me names for ruining his new toaster. He said I had to save up to buy him a new one.”

  “He’s not here. He will never be here,” Parvati said to her.

  Valerie began to cry.

  “Come here,” Parvati held her tightly. “I promise you,” Parvati said, “you will never be frightened like that again. Not while you are here with me.”

  I noticed Sati watching Valerie while Parvati spoke to her. When Valerie had wiped her tears, Parvati put a string of Rudraksha beads around her neck.

  “Is there anyone else?” Parvati asked, but no one responded. She looked over the room. Then Sati raised her hand.

  “My Sati?”

  Sati hesitated; she held her hands together in her lap. “I know someone who’s broken a rule.”

  “Who?”

  “Lucy took Jaya out of the nursery. She took her to see my mother in our house, and my mother nursed her.”

  I saw Renee turn to Keshi.

  “Lucy took Jaya out of the nursery?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you see them?”

  “Yes.”

  “When?”

  “I saw them this afternoon. May was with me; she saw them too,” Sati said.

  I pressed my hands against the carpet when Parvati looked at me, waiting. “She had to,” I said. “The baby wouldn’t eat, and she was worried about her.”

  Parvati nodded. “I see.”

  “Thank you for telling me, my chellas.” Parvati beckoned us to come to her, and held us in her arms together. Parvati whispered to Keshi, and Keshi handed her two necklaces; a single Rudraksha bead on a red string. Parvati put one necklace over my head and one over Sati’s head. “You are very brave girls for telling me this.”

  Peter Runyun sat beside Parvati and played songs on his guitar, and we sang along. Sati sat next to me; she held the single bead on her necklace as she swayed back and forth to the songs.

  After the singing, Parvati went back to her private rooms and Renee offered us a choice of movies to watch: a romance or a horror movie about children who are turned into vampires. There were mostly boys in the room, and they voted for the horror movie. During the movie, Keshi brought us bottles of seltzer water and big bowls of popcorn to share.

  We sat down on the floor with our pillows and sleeping bags, watching the movie and eating popcorn. In the movie, regular children were turned into vampires by their friends while they slept in their beds. The most frightening scene in the movie was when a vampire boy floated up to the window of his friend’s bedroom, scratching on the glass to get inside. I thought, Now, whenever I see a window at night, I’ll think of this.

  When the movie ended, most of the younger children had fallen asleep on their sleeping bags. In the blue light, I saw Eden sleeping on his stomach, his blanket covering his legs, his hands tucked beneath his pillow.

  Dylan, Brad, Summer, Molly, Sati, Valerie, and I were still awake, eating the last of the popcorn. Brad jumped on Dylan, pretending to bite his neck and turn him into a vampire.

  “Hey, guys,” Brad said. “Let’s go outside.”

  “Won’t they hear us?” Molly asked.

  “No. The bedrooms are on the other side,” Brad said. He knew; his mother lived there. She was one of the Women.

  Dylan opened the sliding glass doors and we went outside. We stood in the dark garden; the air was cool. The light from the swimming pool cast a blue glow around us.

  “Let’s go skinny-dipping.” Brad said.

  Summer dipped her foot into the water. “It’s freezing.”

  “I thought it was a heated pool,” Molly said.

  Valerie said she wanted to play a game they played in her high school in Texas, called Spin the Bottle and Ten Minutes in the Closet. We didn’t have a closet, so instead we used the cabana by the pool.

  We used an empty seltzer bottle. The bottle pointed to Dylan and between Valerie and Summer. “It’s definitely pointing more to Summer,” Dylan said.

  Dylan walked to Summer, holding his hand out to her. Valerie watched them walk off in the direction of the cabana.

  “It was in the middle,” she said, sounding upset.

  “Dylan has always been in love with Summer,” Molly told her.

  Molly looked at her wristwatch. “I’m timing them.”

  After ten minutes Dylan and Summer emerged from the cabana, holding hands. Summer looked down at the ground shyly as they walked toward us and took their places in the circle.

  The next spin of the bottle landed on Valerie and Sati.

  “If a girl gets a girl you can spin again,” Brad said.

  “I’ll go with Valerie,” Sati said. Valerie’s face lit up. Her white teeth shone in the dark and she jumped up, following Sati to the cabana.

  “See?” Dylan said to Brad. “I told you she was a lesbo.”

  The pool was the color of turquoise and the water looked clear and still. We could hear the soft gurgling sound of the filter and the crickets at night.

  “This game sucks,” Brad said.

  “It’s really boring and I’m getting cold,” Molly said. “What do you think they’re doing in there?”

  We looked toward the cabana. More than ten minutes had already gone by, but they had not come out.

  “Should I go and get them?” I asked.

  “Sure, if you want to,” Brad said. As I walked toward the cabana, I could hear their voices. Sati and Valerie were sitting together in the small changing room, with the towels and floats.

  “Hi,” I said awkwardly. “We were thinking about going back inside.”

  Valerie looked up at me, she held her arm around her knees and I could see that she had taken off her shirt. They sat facing each other on the wooden bench, with their knees and toes touching.

  “We’ll be out in a few minutes,” Sati said. They were waiting for me to leave.

  When they came out they were giddy, laughing as though they were drunk. They had discovered something amazing, they told us. They both had the same birthday, but Valerie was born one year earlier. And they both had the same favorite song, “The Rose.”

  They stood at the edge of the swimming pool, singing the song together, harmonizing the highs and lows, with the blue light from the pool behind them.

  TWENTY-ONE

  At breakfast the next morning, Brad and Dylan reenacted the most violent scenes from the movie. Dylan bit into an apple as though it were a neck. Sati and Valerie sat next to each other, leaning forward with laughter.

  After breakfast Sati and Valerie walked ahead of us to the classroom, still practicing their duet of “The Rose.” I lingered behind with Summer and Molly, trying to think of things to say to distract myself from Sati and Valerie. We walked to school, still dressed up, in the outfits we had worn to Parvati’s sleepover.

  In the classroom, Kelly handed out a list of vocabulary words we had to study for the ERBs. Kelly told us that Parvati wanted the students to perform well on them. Next fall, the school building would be finished and she wanted it to have
a strong reputation. She wanted the students to be accepted at the best colleges.

  From the classroom window, I saw Keshi outside, walking with Eden. She held his hand, and I could see that he was crying.

  “I think Eden’s been hurt,” I said, looking at them.

  Keshi stood on the porch, still holding Eden’s hand. His face was wet, streaming with tears.

  “Eden, what happened?” I asked.

  “I need to talk to you, May,” Keshi said.

  Kelly stood at the door with us. “Is everything all right?” she asked, holding the vocabulary sheets in her hand.

  “Everything will be fine,” Keshi said.

  As we walked down the porch steps, Keshi turned back and whispered something to Kelly. Kelly covered her mouth with her hand and her eyes got wide with worry.

  “What’s the matter, Keshi?” I asked, as we walked away.

  From the classroom window, I saw the girls standing beside Kelly, watching us.

  “I’ll explain what has happened somewhere more private,” Keshi said to me.

  It was a cool day and I crossed my arms in front of me as Eden and I walked, watching the hem of Keshi’s skirt move forward and backward against her legs and the blur of the ground beneath.

  We went into Parvati’s house and sat down on the benches in the waiting area; there was no one else inside. Keshi sat across from us. She ran her hand over the patterns of seashells printed on her skirt.

  “Last night you told us your mother had taken Jaya from the nursery,” Keshi said.

  I nodded, but I was thinking, Sati told you that.

  “Parvati thought she could trust your mother and gave her the privilege of taking care of her daughter.” Keshi spoke slowly. She looked from me to Eden. “Unfortunately, your mother broke that trust, and Parvati has made her leave the ashram.”

  I thought Keshi was saying good-bye to us, that we would be leaving. I thought she had brought us here to say good-bye to Parvati.

  I looked at Eden; his eyes looked red, sore.