Sleeping Tigers

by Robinson, Holly

  Then another possible remedy occurred to me: I slid Cam’s backpack across the wooden floor and eased his head onto it from my lap. I lay down beside him and, as quickly as I could, lifted his blankets and rolled beneath them, trying to keep my face away from the filthy wool and hoping Cam had nothing contagious. I pressed my body against his, immediately feeling the burn of his skin through our clothes.

  Soon, the combination of the tea and my body heat did the trick. My brother’s shivering subsided. I lay my head against his shoulder and heard the beating of Cam’s heart beneath the blankets. Maybe the worst was over.

  Chapter fifteen

  Cam drifted in and out of consciousness during the next twenty-four hours. His sleep was punctuated by a raspy cough, and he left the bed only to crab walk into the corner of his room on all fours and use the pot I’d borrowed from Didi. I stayed with him, descending the steep wooden stairs only while Cam slept to empty the pot and ask Didi to prepare foods I could give my brother in small doses.

  My brother was clearly too sick to go anywhere or to be left alone. During his worst spells over the next two days, I forced him to eat and drink a little at a time, then slept with my back curled against his, rolling away whenever his fever broke and sweat seeped like rain from his skin. At first I also tried pressing a cold damp cloth to his head, dipping it into a small tin pan I’d filled with water, but Cam irritably tossed his head and the cloth always slipped away.

  Didi offered various healing potions of her own. I accepted them on faith, muddy-looking pastes that stank of herbs I didn’t recognize, and mixed them into Cam’s oatmeal and tea to disguise the taste. She also helped me learn vocabulary: “chiura” for beaten rice, “phul” for egg, “tsampa” for a gruel made of toasted barley flour, “dal bhat tarkari”for lentil soup, and “thukpa” for a rich beef broth with pasta strips.

  The few villagers who passed the house whenever I was outside pumping water at the well in the courtyard paid me little attention, other than a grinning “Namaste” accompanied by a slight bow. I saw little of the other lodgers, either. The girls seemed to be volunteering with Domingo, Melody, and Jon; they set out early each morning and came back sweaty, sunburned, and covered in dirt, their fingernails black crescents from mulching, weeding, and pruning the small trees. I still hadn’t been down to see the nursery and orchards.

  My second afternoon at the lodge, I came outside to wash in the courtyard and saw Domingo and Melody washing after their day’s labor. Afterward they put on white cotton clothing and performed yoga exercises in the courtyard.

  The villagers gathered to watch. The Nepalese women were hunched beneath firewood on their backs or balanced children on their hips; they tittered with hands over their mouths at the odd sight. The older children invented their own yoga antics, knocking into each other and falling to the stones, while the men leaned on walking sticks and spat betel juice on the ground.

  Of course, I knew that I must make almost as entertaining a spectacle with my fancy toiletries kit. I soon gave up on taming my hair, which in this damp, hot climate sprang out from my head in corkscrew curls. I soon gave away my makeup and earrings as well. All of that seemed so superfluous here. All I had left was a wooden comb and my toothbrush, its bristles now a brilliant rust color from the iodine tablets I used to purify my drinking water.

  Hour melted into hour. I couldn’t tell whether Cam was any better or not. He didn’t seem to be any worse, yet I couldn’t bear the idea of leaving him to find help. I waited for a sign that he was mending or getting worse so that I’d know what to do; meanwhile, I grew increasingly disoriented by the fragmented schedule of caring for him.

  I woke on the third night to discover a white thumbnail moon tacked to the black sky over the mountains. Another time, I scrambled out of the blankets to get dressed for breakfast and discovered Domingo and Melody eating dinner. The violent lightning storms usually began some time in early afternoon; the heaviest rains typically fell just before dark. I sat or lay beside Cam by the hour, watching the changing light and the shifting patterns of rain through the spattered plastic across the window.

  The fourth night, I was roused by the sound of hail on the tin roof. I breathed in the heavy mildewed air of the leaky stone lodge and experienced a sharp, almost physical memory of lying next to Cam in the bedroom of the summer cottage on Frye Island in Maine.

  Our last summer there–the summer before I started junior high and my father decided to sell the cottage–my brother and I built an entire fairy city out of twigs and stones on the tiny, dappled beach below the cottage. Day after day, we added towers and turrets and walls, embedding the outer walls with tiny blue stones from the lake.

  Cam and I talked then about how we’d soon be old enough to run away and live in a foreign land with no rules to follow, no jobs to do, no family but ourselves, no clocks but our stomachs. Now, at last, it seemed as if Cam had succeeded in doing that, and I’d followed. But I felt like an unwilling playmate; I just wanted to go home.

  I sat up in the dim morning light, hail thundering in my ears, and shifted my weight to cradle Cam’s head in my lap. All around us, previous lodgers had tacked magazine photographs to the walls. One ad for “tenderly Korean Airlines” showed an Asian woman serving a drink to a Western business traveler.

  Above that hung a faded world map, where a former lodger had circled our position on the globe in ink and written, “You are here. Now what?”

  Now what? Now purgatory, I thought, something I’d never imagined while making all of those urgent preparations to get on a plane and find my brother. I drifted off again, still sitting up, and woke when the sun fingered the edges of the plastic-covered window. The plastic was oily and pink in the new dawn light. There was no sound outdoors. What had awakened me?

  Blearily, I rubbed my eyes and scanned the room, and was shocked to see a monk in scarlet robes bowing towards us, his hands pressed together, Jon hovering just behind him. I hoped the monk wasn’t offering Cam his last rites. Both men disappeared before I could gather my wits together and confront them.

  Cam, meanwhile, finally had cooled off and was sleeping peacefully. I eased his head onto a pillow I had made out of one of my shirts, then settled in beside him and slept, too.

  The next time I opened my eyes, I was lying alone and sweating in a pool of sunlight. Cam sat cross-legged near the window, meditating with his open hands relaxed on his bony knees, his eyes closed. I sat up and waited to speak until he opened his eyes several minutes later.

  “You’re up!” I observed, pulling on my sneakers. “How do you feel?”

  He smiled at me peacefully. “The fever’s down and my headache’s almost nil. What a relief. My head’s been in a fucking vise grip these past few days. What’d you do, Jordy, call in the Marines?”

  “No Marines. Only me. Hungry?”

  Cam shook his head and patted his sunken belly. He had put on the t-shirt and shorts I had washed for him and dried on a line strung across the room. Cam had also made an effort to comb his hair. “Not yet. You go. Eat and get some air. You look like shit.”

  “Ditto.”

  Cam offered me a crooked grin. “At least we’re a matched set,” he said before closing his eyes again.

  His breathing soon became so regular that I wondered if he’d fallen asleep. I glanced out the window. By the cloudless blue of the sky, it must be mid-morning. I gathered my things and went downstairs, where I washed at the courtyard faucet and then sat in the kitchen while Didi boiled water for tea and eggs.

  I had brought my calendar down to the kitchen. Five more days until my flight out of Kathmandu. Time was running out. But how could I possibly broach the subject of Paris with Cam? Was he well enough? He’d have to be. I didn’t have a choice.

  I trudged back upstairs carrying a bamboo tray loaded with a bowl of oatmeal, a plate of apple pancakes, two hard-boiled eggs, and two cups of black tea. It had been so hot and smoky in the kitchen that my eyes burned and sweat streamed bet
ween my shoulder blades.

  Cam was still meditating, palms cupped loosely on his knees, eyes shut tight. His fingers were long, like mine and our mother’s and Paris’s, but his ragged, untrimmed nails were embedded with a week’s worth of dirt. I resisted the urge to run back downstairs for a pot of hot water for his hands and simply divided the food in half. If I were going to catch whatever illness or parasites Cam had, I’d already done the damage by lying next to him these past few nights. No point in worrying about germs now.

  I studied my brother closely, debating how to raise the subject of Paris and her welfare. Cam might say he felt better, but he still looked unwell. His eyelids were a bruised purple and his pale skin was flaking around the corners of his eyes and mouth. He was so thin that the flat planes of his cheekbones shone through his waxy skin.

  “Hey,” I said. “Open your eyes. Time to quit contemplating Nirvana and start eating it.”

  Cam obliged, smiling at the sight of the knife and fork. “Utensils! How civilized.”

  “God knows, it’s a losing battle around here.” I held a plate out to him, but Cam’s hands remained on his knees, trembling slightly. “Come on,” I said. “Enough fasting. You need to build back your strength. And these are apple pancakes, see?”

  “Sorry. No can do. I feel like I’m going to puke.” Cam unfolded his legs and stretched out on the blankets.

  Guiltily, I ate two of the pancakes and swallowed some black tea. Then I bundled a shirt beneath Cam’s head to raise it a little before spooning oatmeal into his mouth. To my surprise, he ate without resistance, chewing with the methodical, steady rhythm of a ballplayer with a chunk of tobacco.

  Again, I saw Paris’s tiny profile superimposed on her father’s gaunt, handsome face. My heart ached for her, and for my brother, too, because he wanted to deny himself the joy of knowing his child.

  “You and your daughter look alike when you eat,” I told Cam. “She has your cheekbones and the same fierce terrier look when she’s mad or when she’s eating. She’s a lot neater than you are, though,” I joked, wiping his chin with a cloth Didi had sent up with the tray.

  I put a straw in his tea and Cam slurped the hot liquid up noisily, giving no sign that he’d heard me say anything.

  “You’re not really feeling any better, are you?” I fretted. “I should get you to a clinic now that you’re well enough to travel.”

  “I don’t need a doctor. It’s just Delhi belly, Jordan. Every Asian traveler’s lament. Had the same thing last time I was in India. Calcutta! What a cesspool! And I am better. I couldn’t even see straight yesterday.” Cam rolled over onto one elbow. “Guess I have you to thank for that. Where is everyone, anyway?”

  “At the nursery, I suppose. I think Jon must be living down there. I’ve hardly seen him.” I pushed the tray aside. “What bugs me is that nobody tried to get you any medical help. You could have died, Cam. You were seriously dehydrated.”

  He shook his head. “Don’t blame them. They knew that I came here to get centered, sort of start my life over. They were respecting my solitude.”

  “Unlike me.”

  “Right.” He fiddled with the tattered hem of a blanket. “So why are you really here, Jordan?”

  “Like you don’t know.” I sighed. “I came to talk to you about Paris.”

  “Who?”

  “Your daughter. That’s what Nadine named her.”

  “Stupid name.”

  “Look, are you going to talk seriously, or not? Because, if not, I’ve got better things to do than sit around here wiping your face.”

  “Sure. I’m all ears.” My brother laughed, a sharp bark. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.”

  I nodded. I was running out of time; I had to talk to Cam now, about all of it. “Well, first of all, you should know that I initially came to San Francisco not only because I needed to put some distance between myself and Peter, but because I had a health scare, too, and it changed everything for me.”

  He stared at me, his blue eyes enormous. “What sort of scare?”

  Even after so many months, it was difficult for me to say it. “The Big C. Breast cancer.”

  “Are you kidding me, Jordy? When? What happened?” Cam tried to sit up, groaned, and settled for a half-reclining position against the wall behind him. “My gut’s sore,” he said gruffly, waving a hand when I looked alarmed. “I’m fine! But what about you?”

  “I’m fine now, too, but it was a hairy ride for a while.”

  “Tell me,” he said, his blue eyes focused with unnerving intensity on my face.

  I had to struggle to keep my voice calm. Being with my brother during these past few fractured days had led me to keep remembering the time he saved me from drowning for love under the ski jump. Now that he was better, or at least coherent, I wanted another turn at sanctuary. But Cam couldn’t give that to me yet.

  “The tumor was small and contained,” I said. “I had a lumpectomy and the prognosis looks good. The tissue margins were clear all around the affected area after the radiation.”

  “Jesus,” he said. “You must have been scared out of your mind. Does Mom know?”

  “Of course she knows!” I said, then bit my lip before I could hurl accusations at him about his absence. “Anyway, that was one thing I wanted to talk to you about before you took off. But now we need to think about the baby.”

  “The baby?” Cam looked puzzled, as if he didn’t know any babies.

  I took a deep breath to tamp down my irritation and said, “Your baby, Cam. She’s at my apartment. Mom’s taking care of her while I’m here with you. Nadine left her with me when she went north to go apple picking. She wants me to adopt her. I’ve been trying to find you to ask what you want to do.”

  Cam’s expression became guarded. “Ah. So that’s it. You’re here to ask for the other half of the friendship ring.”

  “What?” I said, then remembered: I’d had a friendship ring once, a silver heart broken in half.

  That must have been in eighth grade. Cam, still in elementary school, had pleaded with me to let him wear the other half of the ring, but I’d laughed and given it to a girl in my class, a girl I hardly knew but desperately wanted to impress. I couldn’t recall the girl’s name, and I never got the ring back. But I could clearly visualize Cam’s pale face as he sat on the foot of my bed, begging to wear it.

  “Why would you want to wear your sister’s ring?” I had snarled, kicking beneath the covers in adolescent fury at Cam until I caught his bony chin on my heel and he started to cry. “What kind of moron does that?” Cam had wept harder then, his nose running. He didn’t ask me for the ring again.

  Now, my brother held the other half of something I wanted. But he didn’t say anything more about that. Only fished around beneath the blankets, came up with a pen, and held out his free hand. He did this without meeting my eyes. “Well? Where do I sign on the dotted line? I presume you came armed with the necessary legal documents.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “I know you, Jordan.” Cam waved the pen at me like a sword. “You’re such a Girl Scout, always prepared.”

  It irked me that he was right. “You’re being awfully cooperative all of a sudden. Why?”

  He waved a hand in my direction without speaking, dismissing the question.

  It was the gesture of someone in a hurry. I started fuming all over again. How could Cam just lie there and abandon all accountability? He was giving up on his own daughter’s welfare, throwing away her future without a fight! I wanted to slap him.

  Instead, I stood up and got busy. I folded the blankets I’d been using, brushed my hair and collected my toiletries kit to take outside. This was a survival tactic I’d learned in so many classrooms with misbehaving kids: act calm, and you create calm.

  It would help if I could do something normal, like take a shower. I’d splurged the day before on a bucket of hot water for 20 rupees and lugged it behind the lodge. There, sheltered by a stone wal
l, I dunked my head and sponged off my body, my skirt spread about me like a tent. It was better than nothing. Afterward, though, my skin still felt encrusted with sweat and dust.

  “Are you ready to admit that Paris is your kid?” I asked.

  “I always figured she was,” Cam said, his voice still flippant. “I’m willing to admit that, so long as I don’t have to pay the piper for a kid I had no intention of bringing into this fucked up world. She’s my baby, and now she’s yours. Finders, keepers.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that,” I said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like an eight-year-old.”

  My brother lazily rolled his head from side to side. “No need to keep squawking. I’ll sign the papers and you can go home and run the PTO or whatever. You’ll have a baby without the hassle of a control freak husband. And Mom can finally knit those fruity hats for somebody in our own family. Pressure’s off for all concerned.”

  I reached over and grabbed a hank of my brother’s greasy hair, pulling Cam’s head back so fast that his eyes snapped open in surprise. “Cut it out!” I hissed. Then, horrified by my own action, I immediately released him.

  “Of course we need to make a big deal about this!” I shouted. “This is your kid we’re talking about, Cam. Not some used car. You can’t just sign her over to me without thinking hard about the consequences. Nothing’s ever going to be the same again if we do this. Not for me, not for her, not even for you! How can I know you’re serious about giving her up, if you won’t even look at me when we’re talking?”

  “I don’t want to look at you,” he said, so quietly that I had to lean forward to catch the words. “Whenever I do, I see what you think of me.”

  I studied him for a moment, unable to answer. My brother’s irises were yellow and marbled pink; his breath was foul. He had the look and stink of a dying man. “Oh, Cam,” I said at last. “I’m not your enemy. I’m just trying to help you and the baby.”