Read Online Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso - Free Book Online

her family is in Spain and she never gets to see them! That dress you just threw on the floor was her dead mother’s wedding gown!”
    Humbly, I picked them up and put them back on the hangers. We were silent.
    “Anyway,” Peter said, “the reason I brought you down here was not to show you Inès’s things. I came here to get some plywood and a little bit of rope and some sandpaper to sand the wood down and my drill so I can drill some holes in the wood. And, oh, some paint, I need some paint. What’s your favorite color?”
    “Purple.”
    “Well, I don’t know if I have purple. Is pink okay?” He smiled.
    “Are you making something for me?”
    “Maybe.” He smiled again. I rushed over and hugged him.
    “Everything you do is for me. You make me so happy.” I paused. “Is it a skateboard? Are you making me a skateboard? Tell me: am I warm or cold?”
    “Chilly as the Arctic. Now come on, we have to go and get started on this. But first you have to give me a kiss, for strength. My back is starting to hurt from bending over. I don’t know if I’ll make it back up the stairs.”
    I went over to give him a peck on the cheek, but he turned his head so my kiss would meet his mouth.
    Peter fastened the pink handmade swing to the attic ceiling, where it would hang for the next year and a half on large knotty ropes. I would often sit on this swing on the days when it was too cold outside, and Peter would push me. “Higher, higher!” I would yell, kicking my legs up to the slanted ceiling’s wooden beams. Through the windows, light made buttery patches on the hardwood floor; and I would look to the boys’ bunk beds, where blankets were tousled and sheets unhinged (no one kept after them about cleaning the room) and I could see egg-shaped indentations in the pillows from the boys’ heads. Here, upstairs, lived Blackhead the guinea pig; I was responsible for changing his water bottle and giving him food pellets, which was a job Ricky once had. But the boys, at thirteen and ten, were more interested in skateboarding and playing arcade games than caring for animals, Peter had said. For two days a week, I not only relieved the boys of their usual duties concerning the animals, but I started to take over the dishwashing whenever Peter cooked. Peter was fond of saying that I would make a perfect wife.

6
    “EIGHT IS THE MOST BEAUTIFUL AGE FOR A GIRL”
    I n Peter’s basement, it was easy to forget the outside world. We couldn’t hear much, Peter and I, from within those concrete walls. Not the bumping of cars as someone struggled to parallel park, not teenagers whistling through their fingers, nor two pigeons fighting over a bread crust. In the basement, I couldn’t hear someone wheeling laundry or groceries home in a shopping cart purloined from the Pathmark parking lot, and I couldn’t hear the wheels of bustling baby carriages, or the mothers affectionately calling their little daughters “Mami.”
    Some stray cats had learned they’d get food and milk if they managed to slip into the basement; there was one pretty tabby that had carried a sagging belly for weeks before the afternoon when she wearily lay down in the tightest corner of that basement; the next time we saw her, she had a nest of suckling kittens. Peter said he had named her Little Mama; she’d given birth twice already in this basement. The kittens were so much fun to play with. I had found a small bag of marbles and would roll them across the floor; then I’d watch the frisky kittens try their best to still the quick, slippery balls in their paws, a feat they could never quite manage. “You’re very maternal,” Peter would say as I played with the kittens. “I bet you dream of having a big fat belly someday. I like that little girls have potbellies. It makes them look like they’re pregnant. Isn’t that what every girl dreams about? A baby of her very own to love?”
    I hadn’t thought of it before, but Peter brought it up so often when