Tiger, Tiger

by Galaxy Craze

  “Parvati asked your mother to leave last night,” Keshi said.

  “She’s gone?” I knew our mother wouldn’t leave without us. “When is she coming back?”

  “That’s up to Parvati to decide,” Keshi said. The calmness of her voice, her hand on the bench was irritating me.

  “Please tell me how long,” I said loudly, impatiently.

  “May,” Keshi said, to calm me, “I don’t know.”

  Eden held his hand against his throat. “Where did she go?”

  Through the window, the sun shone golden against the green leaves of the trees.

  Keshi shook her head. “We don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t she tell us herself?”

  “You were with Parvati,” Keshi said. She leaned forward and put her hands on Eden’s knees. “I can see that you’re upset,” she said, looking at me too. “Parvati wants you to know that we are here for you. We’re one big family here, and we will take care of you. You know that, don’t you?”

  Eden nodded.

  “Good,” Keshi said. “I’ll be here; come and talk to me whenever you want. Okay? You know what I’ll do?” She looked at Eden, and her face brightened. “I’ll make you your own batch of oatmeal cookies. I’ll put extra honey in them. Would you like that?”

  Eden didn’t answer.

  Keshi looked at her watch. “Now you better go to your chores. I’ll walk you to the garden, Eden.”

  When I arrived at the stables, Sati was already there. She was cutting the twine from the hay bales and hadn’t heard me come in. Her hair fell straight, covering the side of her face, as she spread the hay on the ground.

  The radio was playing, on the shelf where the brushes and tack were kept. Sati sang along to the song. She had a pretty, simple voice, like a child’s.

  I stood for a moment in the doorway, watching her. The smell of hay mixed with the air.

  “Sati?” I said.

  She didn’t look at me.

  “Sati?” I said again. I could tell, by the busy way she moved her hands and the way she hid her face behind her hair, that she knew I was there.

  In London my mother had taken me to visit one of her friends. The friend, she told me, had a daughter my age who I could play with. When we arrived at the house, my mother introduced me to her friend’s daughter and left me standing in the doorway of the girl’s bedroom while she went to talk to her friend in the kitchen.

  The girl sat on the floor playing with her dollhouse, a half circle of miniature furniture and dolls around her. She never looked up or spoke to me, and I spent the afternoon sitting on the end of her bed, twisting the button on my cardigan, waiting for her to say hello.

  I walked over to Sati and touched her shoulder. I felt her body stiffen.

  “Should I give the horses fresh water?” I asked. I didn’t know what else to say.

  “I already have.” Sati took two handfuls of hay and spread them on the stable floor.

  Through the barn doors, I could see into the field where the horses grazed. A girl in the field was brushing one of the horses. The girl was Valerie. I stared at her, through the shaded barn, into the light field.

  “Valerie’s brushing one of the horses.”

  Sati looked out to the field. “She’s brushing Vishnu.”

  “I have to talk to you,” I said, and she turned around, looking at me for the first time. “Parvati made my mother leave the ashram because of what you told her last night.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know Parvati would make her leave.”

  Sati went back to spreading the hay across the stable floor. I stood watching her, not knowing what to do or say.

  “I don’t know why you told her. She was only trying to help your sister and your mother.”

  “I had to tell her, May,” she said.

  I stood looking at Sati, waiting, hoping she would say something else to me.

  Valerie walked across the field toward us.

  “I finished brushing the horses,” Valerie said to Sati.

  “Thanks,” Sati said. They looked at each other, then at me.

  Valerie sat down on the hay bale, her legs straight in front of her and her head tilted back, looking up at Sati. She was wearing a pale blue terry-cloth one-piece that zipped up the front.

  Sati looked at her. “Should we go? I told Dylan and Brad we’d meet them in the tree house.”

  “I’m ready,” Valerie said. Sati reached for her hand, pulling her up from where she was sitting.

  “’Bye, May.” Sati waved. “You don’t have to stay; we did everything. Just remember to close the gate properly. Boxer’s learned how to open it.”

  “All right,” I said.

  I stood in the barn, watching them walk away. I felt a weakness in my face and bones, a crumbling, shaky feeling, as though I would fall. As though I had to grab something, hold on to something, a branch, the air, even my own hand, to keep from falling.

  I went back to our room to see if our mother had left us a letter or a note. I looked on the shelves and on the bed, but there was nothing there.

  I lay down on the bed, turning my face to the side and putting my hands beneath the pillow. I thought when I breathed deeply I could smell her, our mother. A smell so familiar to me, in the air and sheets, mixing together on my skin.

  “May?” Eden came into the room. He sat down beside me on the edge of the bed. “When do you think she’ll come back?”

  “I don’t know.” I felt the weight of my head against the pillow.

  Through the window, the sky was nearly dark. I lay on the bed, looking out at it, and Eden sat beside me without speaking. We could hear voices in the hallway and the opening and closing of doors. The soft sound of a song came through the wall of the room next to ours.

  There was a knock on the door and I sat up.

  “Who is it?” I said.

  “It’s Keshi. Can I come in?” She opened the door. “I didn’t see you in the dining hall, so I brought you some food.”

  She handed us each a plate wrapped in foil and a fork and napkin.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I put the plate down on the table beside the bed, next to the fork and napkin.

  “Are you hungry, Eden?” I asked, but he only shook his head.

  “I made you the cookies. They’re in my bag,” Keshi said, but she did not give them to him. She stood just inside the doorway. I looked up at her, wondering when she would leave, but she stood watching us.

  “Did you find out anything else about our mother?”

  “No,” Keshi said. “I haven’t.”

  Keshi took a step into the room and closed the door behind her. “Parvati thinks that while your mother is away, Eden should stay with Jabe and his mother.”

  “I can take care of him,” I said.

  “Please can I stay with May?” he said.

  “We really think it’s better if he’s with an adult. Why don’t you pack a bag of clothes, Eden, and I’ll walk over there with you. Jabe’s mother will take care of you while your mom is away.”

  “Tonight?” Eden looked over at me.

  “Just take some clothes and your toothbrush, Eden,” I told him.

  Eden stood up. He walked self-consciously across the room to the closet, where he stood, looking at his clothes. He picked a sweatshirt and a pair of shorts from the shelf. He moved slowly, as though he was unsure of what he was doing.

  “Do you have a bag to put them in?” Keshi asked him.

  “I have my rucksack.” He picked his rucksack off the floor, emptying out the things that were in it. He put the clothes in the bag. He took his toothbrush from the cup on the shelf and a book he had brought from London to read on the airplane but had not yet begun.

  “Is that all you need?” Keshi asked him.

  Eden nodded.

  “Simplicity,” she said, in a singsong voice, “is a beautiful thing.” She took the oatmeal cookies from her bag. “We can take these to Jabe and his
mom as a gift.”

  Eden held the package in his hand. The light from the ceiling reflected on the foil.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said to him. “At breakfast.”

  He was only going to the house next door, but something in the way Keshi watched us as we said good-bye made it seem as though I would not see him for a long time.

  When they were gone, I cried, pressing my face into the pillow so no one would hear. Later, when it was quiet in the hallway, I opened my bedroom door and went to the bathroom. I didn’t want to be alone, but there was no one I wanted to see in this house. In the bathroom I washed my face and brushed my teeth. I looked at myself in the mirror, to see if I had changed since we had been here.

  Eden and I had spent time away from our mother before: a summer with Grandfather in Scotland, Easter week at Nanny Hannah’s flat in Maida Vale. We had spent time away from our mother and time away from our father, but we had never lived apart from each other.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I woke early the next morning, before it was light outside. I knew what I had to do. I took the suitcase from the closet and stood on it, reaching for a book on the top shelf. Inside the book were two ten-pound notes. It was some of the money I had taken from my father’s shop. I had thought I would change the pounds for American dollars at the bank and buy some American clothes, but we had never gone to a bank.

  Eden had a coin collection. He kept it in a plastic bag, hidden in a pocket of the suitcase. When I found the bag, I sat down on the floor of our room and counted the change. There was five dollars and seventy-five cents. That will be enough, I thought. If our mother doesn’t come back tonight, that will be enough.

  In darshan that evening, Eden thought he saw our mother. “May,” he whispered to me, “I think that’s Mum over there.”

  He pointed through the crowded room to a woman sitting near the front. We could not see her face, only her back. Her brown hair was pulled into a low ponytail and she wore an orange shawl with Indian words printed on it. It was the shawl Parvati had given her.

  The whole evening, Eden and I watched her, waiting for her to look to the side, to raise her hand, to ask Parvati a question, to make a sound, even a cough, so we would know if it was our mother.

  When darshan ended, the woman stood up and turned to the side, talking to the person beside her. She looked nothing like Mum. Except for the color of her hair and the orange shawl, there was no resemblance at all. As I walked out into the night, I wondered how I could have let myself think, let myself believe, that she was our mother.

  I made a plan to meet Eden at the stables. It was Sunday, and I knew no one would be there. I gave the horses extra carrots, and they followed me to the fence.

  I stroked Boxer’s long velvety nose. He smelled like hay, and I felt his warm breath on the inside of my wrist. He had been rescued from a horse farm in Jackson and still had scars on his skin from where he had been burned with cigarettes and cigars by the men who owned him before. There were so many dark scars on his back, it seemed as though they had used him as an ashtray.

  He had been an expensive horse when he was young and the man had paid a large amount of money for him, but as he grew, he developed problems with his joints and was not a fast runner. So they kept him inside and took out their frustrations on him. This is what happens to animals: taken from their mothers, bred for money, used, sold, passed around; no one cares.

  Boxer had a good life now, a safe place with clean water and pasture, but he would always have a frightened look in his eyes. I tried to kiss him, but he moved away too quickly hitting my chin and I bit my tongue.

  The sun felt warm, pressing against my cheeks, and I leaned my head against the wooden fence. On the grass lay a dark-green canvas bag Mum used for shopping in London. In it was a glass jar of water, a flashlight, and some food I had taken from the dining hall. I’d found the flashlight in the stables, on a shelf where the riding helmets were kept. When I turned it on, it lit up a dark corner of the cupboard.

  Eden ran across the grass. “Sorry I’m late,” he said, when he was near.

  “You didn’t tell Jabe, did you?”

  Eden shook his head.

  “Or anyone else?”

  “No.” He squinted from the sun. He wore his navy gym shorts with the name of his school in London on them, his plimsolls, and a T-shirt he’d grown too tall for. He had his rucksack on his shoulders, and in his hand he held a small plastic compass that he had won in a Christmas cracker last year.

  “I packed a picnic,” I said.

  Eden’s skin had turned golden brown, and the bones in his shoulders poked through his shirt. Before we came here, his face had been rounder, the tops of his arms pudgy. Now he looked thinner, older, more like a boy than a child.

  “Do you have the flashlight?” he asked.

  “Yes. It’s in my bag.”

  Eden adjusted the straps on his rucksack and pulled up his socks to his knees.

  We walked across the dry field into the grapefruit grove. It was cooler in the shade of the trees, and a slight breeze came through. Eden reached to pick a grapefruit that was hanging from a low branch. He peeled it, dropping the pale yellow rind on the ground as he walked.

  We followed the shallow river to the end of the grove where two pickup trucks were parked, the backs stacked high with wooden crates. We waited to see if anyone was around and to make sure no one had seen us.

  We took off our shoes and walked across the river to the other side. I pushed the bushes away, but behind them was a tall barbed-wire fence. I could see that it ran around the grove.

  “There’s a fence,” I said. “Sati didn’t tell me there was a fence.”

  “We can crawl under it.”

  Eden held the bottom wire up, but it was fastened so tightly to the posts he could not pull it very high. The wire caught my hair as I crawled beneath and scraped me through my shirt. Then I held the wire up for him.

  “Which way do we go now?” Eden asked, when we were both on the other side.

  “We just follow the river. It leads right to the petrol station, I think.”

  As we walked farther into the woods, I remembered the things our grandfather had taught us. He told us, when we were in the Scottish woods, to remember markers—a fallen tree or a large stone—and always look at the position of the sun in the sky.

  I remembered something else too. On one of our walks through the woods, I had heard a whimpering sound, like a baby’s cry. A young fox had been caught by the leg in a trap. He had tried to free himself by chewing off his foot, and the trap and the grass below were red with his blood.

  I thought of Sati walking all this way alone to telephone her grandparents. The river was shallow from lack of rain and the banks were dry where the water had once been.

  We came to an abandoned campsite. Stones circled a fire pit; faded beer cans and rifle cartridges lay scattered across the ground. Eden and I sat down in the clearing and unpacked the food we had brought with us. He pulled out two red tomatoes and gave one to me. I had made peanut-butter sandwiches and brought out a napkin full of almonds and raisins.

  I wondered how many miles we had walked and suddenly felt tired and wanted to lay my head down on the canvas bag and close my eyes for a few minutes. Last night, thinking about leaving the ashram, I had not been able to fall asleep.

  We finished eating and threw the crusts into the trees. We stood up, wiping the dirt and leaves from the bottom of our shorts. As we were walking away, I saw something on the ground and stopped to pick it up; it was Eden’s compass. Last year, at Christmas, we had fought over a cracker, but Eden broke off the larger end and won: the prize, the joke, and the crown too.

  We continued on for a mile or two, following the river through the woods. Then we saw the petrol sign above the treetops, turning in the clear blue sky.

  In the convenience store at the petrol station, we wandered the aisles, choosing which soda and candy we wanted to buy. I carried the gre
en bag over my shoulder, but held my polka-dot purse in my hand.

  I paid with the change from Eden’s coin collection. The shopkeeper was an old man, wearing a baseball cap. His hands shook as he counted out the change.

  “Is this your shop?” Eden asked the man.

  He looked up, surprised by the question. “No,” he said. “I only work here.”

  “Oh,” Eden said, sounding disappointed. “I was only asking because my dad has a shop too.”

  The man smiled at Eden and gave him a piece of bubble gum from a jar on the counter. We said good-bye and the man waved. When I looked back at the shop, he was still looking at us through the window.

  We sat on a bench outside. I ate the pieces of candy one at a time and felt the sweetness cutting against the roof of my mouth. Eden sipped his soda and ate his chocolate bar; he swung his feet forward and backward beneath the bench.

  When we finished our sweets, we walked across the empty parking lot to the pay phone. The change in my hand felt heavy, damp with sweat. I lifted the receiver, which was warm, and pressed zero.

  An American operator answered. I told her I wanted to call London, England, and she said she would have to connect me to the international operator. I waited, staring at the numbers.

  Eden kicked a piece of gravel with the toe of his shoe.

  The international operator came on the line; she said I would need to deposit three dollars and seventy-five cents for the first three minutes.

  “Three dollars and seventy-five cents,” I said back to her. “I don’t have enough change.”

  I didn’t have enough change left, after buying the sodas and sweets. I never thought it would cost that much. I looked at the shop, wondering if the old man would loan us a dollar.

  A car drove into the petrol station and stopped in front of the shop. Two women got out wearing halter tops and shorts. One walked into the shop while the other filled the car up at the pump.

  We would have to call our father collect, and our father hated collect calls.

  I watched the woman fill her car up. She held the pump in one hand and rested the other hand on her hip. Her brown hair was feathered back. She looked very confident, almost tough. Her friend came from the shop, and the woman holding the pump laughed, slapping her thigh at something her friend said.