Sleeping Tigers

by Robinson, Holly

  The only thing in the room I recognized was the blue terrycloth bathrobe flung over the foot of the bed. My mother had bought that robe. I knew this because she had given me the same robe, crowing later about the 2-for-1 sale and how I wouldn’t mind a man’s robe, would I?

  Two years ago, the last Christmas that Cam and I had both spent at home, Mom called us down to breakfast. We stepped out of our bedrooms at exactly the same time and happened to glance at each other as we tied on our identical robes. This mirror image caused us to laugh so hard that we collapsed on the stair landing.

  And then suddenly Cam and I were sliding feet-first down the stairs the way we had as children, as if we were riding down a waterfall. We landed in a tangle at the bottom, hooting, where Mom stood over us, shaking her head. “You two,” she said.

  I nudged Cam’s leg with my knee to get him to make room on the bed. “So what gives?” I asked, plopping down beside him and giving him a good bounce. “I can comfort you with platitudes until I break you. Smile and the world smiles with you! That which does not kill you makes you stronger!”

  A glimmer of a smile. “That which does not kill me only postpones the inevitable.”

  “The harder you try, the more likely you are to succeed!”

  “The harder I try, the dumber I look,” he moaned.

  “Ah, but it’s always darkest before the dawn.”

  “It’s always darkest before it’s pitch black.” Cam grimaced. “Things are really that bad, Jordan. Black, black, black. Things are fucked. I’m fucked. Like, completely.”

  “Please, my virgin ears. What things? With this woman?”

  “You saw her?” His voice was suddenly anxious.

  “No. She never made it past the front door. Why didn’t you talk to her yourself, instead of letting Jon do your dirty work?”

  “Jon’s better at dirty work than I am.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Don’t say it like that. You don’t know what he’s done for me.” Cam plucked at the bedspread. “Jon says he’s going have her arrested for harassment if she keeps coming here.”

  “Is that true? Is this girl harassing you?”

  “No idea what to call this, except to rule it out as fun,” Cam said. “I’m betting the cops wouldn’t do jack shit anyway. It’s not something cops take seriously, a woman stalking a man. Even in the People’s Republic of Berkeley.”

  “But nobody should be allowed to do this to you, Cam. My God! You’re up here cowering like a child.”

  “Wish I was a kid again. Things were easier.”

  “Not always.” I searched the room, looking for proof of this, and spotted Cam’s flip-flops. Beach shoes. “Remember the time we went to the beach with Mom and you cut your foot on that bottle? You were just a kid then, maybe ten years old, and it was awful.” I shuddered, remembering how the glass had shattered on the boardwalk, spraying Cam’s blood onto the splintery weathered boards.

  “Sure.” Cam had thrown an arm across his face; his voice was muffled. “Mom about fainted. You were the one who carried me all the way to the car. I still don’t know how you did it. I was almost as tall as you were by then.”

  “Yeah, but you only weighed about five pounds.” I laughed. “You were one skinny kid.”

  Still, I remembered the discomfort of it, how it was so hot that the asphalt parking lot sank like a sticky sponge beneath my feet as I half-carried, half-dragged Cam to the car. We bundled Cam’s foot in beach towels and drove him to the emergency room to have the fragments of glass removed.

  As the doctor numbed Cam’s foot with needles, my brother asked to hold my hand. He acted as if our mother wasn’t even there. That hadn’t surprised me, though; whenever Cam was frightened, he sought me out for comfort, not Mom, since wherever Mom might be, Dad was likely to follow. And Dad was unpredictable back then.

  “You looked like a spirit, all wrapped in white,” I told Cam now. “I imagined you rising right up off the table, like Jesus after the resurrection.”

  My brother smiled. “You really are a warp job. They never should have let the nuns near you. You’re scarred for life. Completely delusional.”

  I was relieved to see him lighten up a little. “Hey, you’re the one who thought God was like the Boogeyman under the bed, ready to grab you by the ankles and set you on fire any time you touched your willy.”

  “I still think that sometimes.”

  I poked his side. “Tell me what’s going on,” I said. “I’m your big sister! I carried you with superhuman strength over blazing asphalt when you were bleeding to death! Who’s that woman out there, harassing you?”

  “She’s not a woman, exactly. More like a girl.”

  “What! How old is she?”

  “I don’t know. She never told me. Well, she told me, but I don’t believe her.”

  A chill ran up my spine. “What did she tell you?”

  “Eighteen. But, after things heated up, it was pretty obvious she wasn’t more than sixteen.” Cam lowered his arm and studied my face for a reaction.

  He got one. “Christ, Cameron! You’re almost twice her age! What were you thinking?”

  Cam rubbed his face. “I don’t suppose I was.” He sat up and thumped the back of his head against the wall. “You know me! I’m no expert on women. Completely clueless, in fact. And that girl came on to me like somebody who knows the score.”

  “No sixteen-year-old girl knows the score, even if it’s printed on her forehead!”

  Cam’s face was closed; it was the same expression he used to wear during Dad’s drunken tirades. I took a deep breath. If I slammed him too hard about this, I’d get nothing.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m sure you didn’t intend to hurt this girl. How did you meet her?”

  “At a party.” About a year and a half ago, Cam explained, one of the San Francisco night skaters held a three-day party in the Fillmore. “Music all day, all night. He rubbed his temples. “And this girl was there, high as a kite and dancing like a demon.”

  “Does she have a name, your dancing demon?” I kept my voice light. “And were you high, too?”

  “Nadine. And yes. That was before Jon helped me clean up my act.”

  “And what’s this about a child? Is that true? Is it yours?”

  Cam mumbled something that I couldn’t quite catch.

  “What?” I poked him again. “Is it or not?”

  “Probably.”

  It felt as if someone were squeezing my temples, my head was pounding that hard. How could my brilliant brother be this incredibly stupid? If that girl was really only sixteen, he could be charged with statutory rape, never mind the issue of child support. Part of me wanted to pick him up and shake him. Another part wanted to smooth back Cam’s hair and tell him that everything would be fine. Except, of course, that would be a lie.

  “How did this happen?” I asked. “Didn’t you use protection?”

  “She said she was on the Pill. And, she wasn’t just with me, Jordan.” Cam was pleading with me now, but I wasn’t sure for what. Understanding? Forgiveness? He’d have to wait a while.

  “So how do you know the baby is yours?”

  “If you saw her, you’d know.”

  “What?” I stared at him, incredulous.

  “It’s true. She looks just like me, that baby. I didn’t even go for a paternity test.” Cam scrubbed his face with both hands.

  “Isn’t there some way you can work with the mother, maybe help her out a little so that she can raise the baby?”

  “I’m not talking to her. She’s a cranked up meth addict, Jordan! Easy come, easy go.”

  I caught my breath. “I’ll assume you had an AIDS test.”

  Cam paled. “Yes. Two tests, both negative. I was lucky.” His eyes looked wild. “Nadine’s a fucking drug addict, Jordan. A street person!” He barked a laugh.

  “Yeah? Well, like you said, without Jon, you’d be a street person, too,” I said, hating myself for lashing back, but still want
ing to knock some sense into my idiot brother. “Cam, you can’t just duck out of this one. You have to face up to the fact that you have a child.”

  Cam’s face had broken out in a sweat. “Why should I? It wasn’t my choice to bring a kid into this crap life, with deadbeat parents like us,” he said. “Nadine’s crafty. She probably scoped this place out and got pregnant just to score child support. I was honest with her from day one. When Nadine told me she was pregnant, I told her no way did I want a kid. I would’ve paid for an abortion. Or, if she wanted to have the baby, I could have hooked her up with an adoption agency. White babies are easy to place, right? Nadine could maybe even make some money on the deal. But she gives me this total bullshit about not being able to kill it or give it away. Kill what? Give away what? She was, like, two months along. It was a thimble full of cells, and she talked like it was headed for kindergarten!”

  I was silent during this rant, dizzy and panicked. My brother was a father. I was an aunt. I had a niece. None of these sentences made any sense. I wanted to lie down beside Cam head-to-toe the way we used to do during thunderstorms, when he’d sneak into my room because our parents wouldn’t let us come into theirs no matter how scared we were.

  “Did you kick Nadine out of the house?”

  “I wouldn’t do that.” Cam sat up. “Nadine took off before the kid was born, probably hooking to score some shit because I kept trying to get her to clean herself up while she was pregnant. I didn’t see her again until a couple of weeks ago.” He scrubbed his face in his hands. “It’s so fucking unfair, having her lay this on me.”

  I stared at my brother, at this mangy, skinny, wild-eyed man, and fury rose in a tight ring around my temples. “You selfish bastard,” I shook my head. “Tell me this isn’t you talking, Cam. Tell me you do feel a drop of compassion for this girl.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Fuck you!” he yelled, springing to his feet with surprising speed. “I didn’t ask you to come here and mess with my head!” He grabbed my arm, yanked me off the bed, spun me towards the bedroom door, and shoved me through it. He slammed the door between us and I heard the lock turn.

  I hammered on the door with my fist. “Me, mess with your head?” I yelled. “Come on, Cam! You’ve done that all by yourself!”

  I heard footsteps behind me and wheeled around. Shepherd Jon stood there, leaning against the wall. His green eyes were serene but I could see a muscle twitch in his jaw. “So that went well.”

  “You’re encouraging my brother to act like an idiot and ditch his responsibility!”

  Jon shook his head, his expression still calm, his voice placating. “Your brother was a terrible mess when I met him, Jordan. I’m trying to give him solid ground to stand on so that he can own up to his mistakes. He’s just not strong enough yet. And the girl is, as he told you, crafty. Don’t let her fool you into thinking she’s vulnerable.”

  “I don’t even know her,” I said. “How could she fool me?”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Aren’t you going after her now? I was sure that would be your next move.”

  I pushed past him and ran down the stairs. “Tell Cam I’ll be back!” I yelled, hoping that my brother would hear me and know it was true.

  I hated it that Jon knew I was determined to find her, but that was the truth. Nadine had to be that scrawny blonde girl I’d seen across the street from Cam’s house with the baby in the backpack. I drove too fast down Telegraph Avenue, dodging skate boarders, bikes, and scooters until I was close to the University, my knuckles white on the steering wheel, my jaw clenched as I scanned the streets for her.

  Cam had acted without thinking, under the influence of whatever substances he was abusing. He had slept with a homeless drug addict, he hadn’t used precautions, and he had fathered a child. I lined these facts up in my head over and over again, until I could accept them all. Still, I was furious that my brother, whose single greatest quality had always been his compassion, would act cowardly instead of assuming responsibility for his actions—and for the new little life he’d brought into the world.

  I was also struck by the gross unfairness of this situation. Why had Cam, who had never wanted children, as far as I knew, and who could barely look after himself, managed to produce a child, while I had not?

  Shortly after Peter and I were engaged last year, I thought I was pregnant. My period was several days late, my breasts were heavy and sore, my back ached. Peter and I were on a weekend trip to upstate New York when I told him, and he bought me an Amish rocking chair to celebrate. Then we’d come home and, before I could buy a pregnancy kit, I started bleeding.

  I was devastated. Peter had comforted me with a series of brotherly pats, saying that we would be better off getting married and buying a house before becoming parents. I had almost believed him. Then I was diagnosed with breast cancer several months later. My first agonizing thought, as the surgeon clipped the mammogram to a light board and used a sharp wooden pointer to outline the defects in my breast, was this: I will die before I ever get to be a mother.

  I parked the car on Telegraph Avenue and asked an elderly man in a beret for directions to People’s Park. “Hide your wallet in your sock,” he advised, sketching a map on the back of a tattered envelope.

  Another block later, I was swallowed up by a flock of Hari Krishnas flailing under orange robes and rattling tambourines. I slowed to let them swarm around me like migrating Monarch butterflies, my feet moving in time to their chanting, “Hari, Hari!”

  By the time I could see clearly again, I’d arrived on restaurant row. In three blocks I traveled from Ethiopia to Mexico. Between these ethnic eateries were head shops, garden pubs, coffee houses and bookstores, all just a backdrop for outdoor vendors whose tables carried everything from Chinese herbs to African jewelry.

  Berkeley was caught in a time warp, and this city was all about sensation: heightening it, mellowing it, broadening it, or stamping it out altogether. Oh, there were the MBAs and the cell phones and the kids in Urban Outfitter clothes, but mostly I was aware of people on the street in various states of awareness who had transported themselves back in time by swathing their bodies in psychedelic prints and ethereal gauze, much of it adorned with tinkling bells. Berkeley was a world populated by madmen and angels. Cam definitely belonged here.

  When I finally turned off Telegraph, I discovered a student ghetto, a narrow street of shabby houses with porches groaning under the weight of damp furniture, bicycles, and tattered boxes of books. People’s Park was across the street. I wandered its narrow paths, glancing over my shoulder now and then as I threaded my way through dense vegetation.

  Eventually I found an encampment of moldy looking tents and sagging cardboard houses, some with shopping carts parked alongside the temporary shelters like minivans in driveways. Laundry was spread over the bushes to dry and the ashes of last night’s fires blew about like black moths. The grass had been trampled down. There was a vegetable garden with lettuces the size of my head and fantastic carrot tops that looked more like feathers than anything edible.

  I heard voices over the sound of the breeze through the trees. My heart started pounding and my throat went dry. I should have brought someone with me, Ed or even Karin. What defenses did a suburban East Coast elementary school teacher have in a place like this?

  Besides the fact that I probably wouldn’t be able to find Nadine, nobody knew where to look for me if I got mugged or murdered. Who would even know I was missing? Karin might call, or my mother. But it would be days before either of them thought something was wrong. The curse of living alone was that nobody but you knew when you were tucked into bed at night.

  Too late for second thoughts. I tracked the voices to another clearing, where smoke rose from a small fire surrounded by people removing their clothes and piling them haphazardly in a casket, shouting, “Off with the Emperor’s Clothes! Off with the Emperor’s Clothes!” while a group of onlookers murmured approval.

  For crying out loud. Twice in one d
ay! What was it with Californians and this pressing need to parade around nude?

  I sidled up to a broad-shouldered woman who was still dressed. She wore a Hawaiian shirt held together with safety pins. “What’s going on?” I asked.

  The woman gestured with one hand; she wore a cuff of bright plastic bracelets. “We’re burying our inhibitions and airing our vulnerabilities,” she answered in the chatty tone of a mother reporting her son’s Little League line-up.

  Sure enough, the dozen or so participants now stood around with their inhibitions completely buried, or at least removed. Every crack and dimple of vulnerability exposed, they lowered the casket of clothing into a shallow grave and started chanting.

  I waited until the casket was out of view before asking Miss Hawaii if she knew Nadine. The name wasn’t familiar to her, but when I described the blonde teenager and her baby, she nodded with enthusiasm.

  “Why, that baby’s just getting out of the pickle stage!” the woman chortled. “Can’t imagine how that girl will keep that tiny peanut away from the fires, now she’s startin’ to crawl.”

  Ages and stages. But from pickle to peanut? “Do you know where they are right now? I’m the baby’s aunt, actually.” The words didn’t exactly roll off my tongue, but my admission certainly got results. The woman put two fingers into her mouth and whistled like a football coach. “Yo, Star!”

  A man as knobby-kneed and pink as a flamingo left the chanting group around the fire to amble towards us, his penis swinging like a pendulum. “Isn’t this just too cool?” Star asked me, sweeping his arm toward the new grave. “We are totally free. We’ve taken control of our destinies. We are the lucky ones.”

  Mighty lucky Berkeley doesn’t have mosquitoes, I thought.

  “Star, honey, you seen that little blondie girl with the little bitty baby?” Miss Hawaii asked.

  Star nodded. “She’s at the playground now, seeing as there’s a bonfire today in the garden.” He shook his head dolefully. “Can’t keep no babies around no fires.”