Tiger Girl

by May-lee Chai

  Then I saw him behind the counter, the thug from last night. He was wearing a white apron over a white T-shirt and torn jeans, and his muscled arms were covered in tattoos: long lines of Khmer script, four Chinese characters, and a snarling tiger. I almost didn’t notice that his right hand was injured. His thumb and index finger were missing.

  “Hi there, sugar,” Anita called out. “Have a bite before you get to work.”

  “Thanks, but we already ate,” I said, and I followed Uncle into the kitchen. There were giant batter-spattered metal bowls, rotary blades, spatulas, and baking trays piled high in the stainless steel sinks. “You must have an army of people come in overnight.” I whistled. “I can start on the dishes.”

  “Sitan will help you. Normally he’ll be back here, but it’s busy this morning.” Uncle disappeared into a supply closet and re-emerged with a pile of flattened cardboard boxes.

  “More donations?” I asked.

  Uncle nodded. “I’ll be back soon. Just have to make my morning rounds.”

  I knew he was going to give away half his stock again, and the businesswoman in me cringed. But I wasn’t here to tell Uncle how to run his business. I bit my tongue.

  “You want me to help you assemble all those?”

  Uncle looked distracted, and, for a second, he seemed not to understand what I’d said to him. He looked at me sadly, then looked back at the pile of cardboard.

  “It’s no problem,” I said, and gently took one of the boxes from him and folded it along its scored sides. “I can do them all.”

  “I never thought—” Uncle began, then stopped. He turned away.

  “Are you all right?” I wondered if he might actually be ill. He seemed paler, and he was blinking rapidly.

  “I’m very happy you’re here,” Uncle said, but he wouldn’t look at me.

  After I folded up all the boxes, Uncle filled them with fresh pastries and headed out. Neither Anita nor Sitan seemed surprised by his behavior.

  The morning rush had petered out and there was only a young mother with a toddler on her hip grabbing a morning donut.

  The thug flirted with her shamelessly, and the woman blushed and smiled and ordered an extra bear claw to go.

  “He’s a charmer, isn’t he?” Anita nudged me. “All the ladies fall in love with him.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not my type,” I said.

  The mother with the toddler headed out, glancing one last time over her shoulder as she waved with her fingertips. I refrained from groaning.

  There was a loud cry from a baby seat parked in the corner booth, and at first I thought the woman had actually been so distracted that she’d left her kid behind. Then Sitan hopped over the counter and rushed to the baby’s side, cooing and rattling a toy at it.

  “You brought your kid?”

  “Daycare’s a waste of money. What’s it to you?”

  “Now, you two, don’t fight. I have something to show you. You’ll never guess what I found waiting for me when I got home last night.” Anita hurried into the kitchen through the swinging doors and returned with a compact box. She hefted it onto the countertop. “My knives came,” she said proudly.

  “Yo, that’s dope,” Sitan proclaimed.

  “Now where did James put the scissors?” She searched through the drawers behind the counter.

  Sitan pulled out a Swiss Army knife attached to his jeans by a chain. Holding the package steady with the three fingers on his right hand, he held the knife with his left and carefully sliced open the packing tape.

  Anita sorted through the Styrofoam peanuts and pulled out a large knife attached by several dozen twist ties to a thick square of cardboard.

  “Is that like a Ginsu?” I squinted at the writing on the package.

  “It slices, it dices. It can cut a can, it can slice a tomato! But wait! There’s more!” Sitan put on his best infomercial voice.

  “No, these are even better,” Anita said. She patiently, carefully untwisted the ties, one by one. “These are my throwing knives.”

  “Anita used to be famous,” Sitan said. “She was on That’s Incredible!, magicians of the world episode.” Sitan added, proudly, “I saw it.”

  “You’re too young.”

  “No, I swear, I saw it. You were da bomb, Anita.” He smiled so that all his strong, white teeth showed. I could see how some women might find him attractive.

  “You were a magician? That’s amazing,” I said to Anita.

  Anita narrowed her green eyes a little, just enough for me to imagine what she might look like when she was genuinely angry. “Oh, honey, no. I don’t do illusions.” She reacted as though I’d accused her of turning tricks. “I’m a knife thrower. I filled in between acts while the magicians were setting up backstage.”

  “She can throw flaming spears, too.”

  “Among other things. But mostly I specialized in knives,” Anita said. She took out the long, pointed knife and held it up to the light as she examined the blade.

  “That actually looks really sharp,” I said. “I always thought those knives were fake in those shows. So nobody would get hurt.”

  Anita and Sitan turned to each other in disbelief and laughed. Sitan bounced his baby on his hip. “You hear that, Lillian? College Girl thinks they’re fake!” He made his eyes bulge out comically, and his daughter giggled, too.

  Anita shook her head. “Don’t touch my knives, sugar. They’re sharp all right.” She pulled a paper napkin out of the metal dispenser on the counter and held it over her knife blade, then let the napkin fall. The paper fell into two shivering halves as it hit the metal edge.

  “Show her what it’ll do to a Coke can, Anita!” Sitan ran over to the cooler case and pulled out a Coca-Cola. “Here.”

  “No, no, no. I don’t want to waste the blade. But if you’re interested—”

  “Yeah! Do it, Anita! Show her!”

  “I can throw a few for you.”

  “You mean, like at a target?” Not at a human target, I hoped.

  She smiled girlishly and turned to wink at Sitan. She pulled off her apron and folded it neatly on the countertop. “Well then. Let’s go out back, Nea.”

  I followed Anita out the kitchen door, where there was a dumpster and a pile of scrap wood and broken cinder blocks. Anita set one of the wood boards on the blocks, which she kicked into place with her foot. She took a step back, squinted, then nodded.

  “That should do it,” she said. “Come here. I’ll show you something.”

  Anita set the knife case on the asphalt beside her and opened it with a click. The sunlight glinted off the long, thin blades within. She pulled her hair back with a scrunchie. Then she slowly raised her right hand and peered between the V formed by her index and middle fingers, while she picked up a knife with her left hand. There was a loud THWONK! The knife hit the board point-first and remained lodged there.

  “Five inches to the right.” Anita picked another knife up and, again, it hit the board with a THWONK! before I even knew she’d released it.

  “Call it,” Anita said.

  “Um, three inches from the bottom.”

  Anita smiled and winked at me, then peered through her fingers, and, once again, hit her mark.

  “Damn, you are good!” I said. “Why’d you stop?”

  “Ah, I killed a person.” Anita waited a beat, then laughed. “Just kidding. Carpal tunnel syndrome. That and tennis elbow. And golf shoulder. Plus I herniated a disc in my neck. But it’s not the injuries. To be honest, I got lonely. Too much traveling, too many hotel rooms. I didn’t get to watch my kids grow up, and then, seems before I knew it, they were married with kids of their own. My marriages never lasted.” Anita shrugged and retrieved her knives from the board, pulling each one out with a sharp flick of her wrist.

  “Anita used to throw in Bangkok. She was in Phnom Penh, too,” Sitan said. “That’s where she got her dope tat.”

  “And Battambang and Sihanoukville. I only regret I never made it to Saigon. Tho
se were the days. U.S. government was sponsoring all kinds of wholesome entertainment in the region, trying to keep the people on the so-called good side. I got to travel all over Southeast Asia. There was this one couple from Hong Kong, wife was some kind of movie star. I remember she used to do a little song-and-dance number. It was supposed to promote positive feelings. Soft power, they call it.”

  “You’re kidding me. Was this for the military?”

  “I’m a pacifist. I don’t do military shows.” Anita shook her head. “Not like some of the magic acts I could name. They’d perform for anybody who paid. No scruples whatsoever. But that’s what I’d expect from an illusionist.” She packed her knives back into their case lovingly.

  “Is that how you met my uncle? In Cambodia?” I had to ask.

  “Oh, no, no, no. I wish I’d known him then. We met at the hospital here. I was going in for my carpal tunnel syndrome and he was volunteering, translating for some of the refugee families. One thing led to another, and he hired me to work for him at the pâtisserie.”

  Something about the tone of her voice, the way it changed just slightly, and the flush in her cheeks, the flutter of her lashes, made it sound as though she were talking about the start of a love affair and not a job at a donut shop.

  Anita locked up her case. Her tone turned brisk, “We should head back in. Never know when a customer might pop over.”

  Sitan followed Anita into the shop, begging her to teach him how to throw knives, too.

  “You weren’t born a lefty. I don’t know if you’d have the coordination, and I don’t want to be responsible if something awful happens.”

  I let them go on ahead. I hung back and took the makeshift target off the cinderblock base, fingering the holes in the plywood made by the knives.

  Suddenly, I had more sympathy for my birth mother. Even if Uncle hadn’t met Anita yet, there would have been other women, and Auntie was so jealous. To know she’d lost her beauty, her children, her standing, and see her husband whole, attractive to other women. That kind of bitterness could kill somebody. Maybe it had killed her.

  A little before noon it started getting busy again, but amidst the lines of customers I recognized the young men from last night. They pulled up in a red Maserati lowrider with rims and new whitewalls. Music loud enough to hear inside the donut shop despite our boom box playing the Earth, Wind & Fire mixtape Anita favored.

  Sitan looked up from the cash register.

  “Gotta go, Anita,” he said, pulling his apron off his head. “Gotta practice. Can you cover for me?”

  “Practice what?” I asked. “Skipping out on work?”

  “You go on, Sitan, honey. I’ve got your back.” Anita winked at him. “But you better remember me when you’re rich and famous.”

  Sitan’s soft Buddha face melted into a smile. “I’m buying you a mansion, Anita. You better check out the real estate in Beverly Hills. The nine-oh-two-one-oh, just for you.”

  Sitan grabbed the baby seat where his daughter slept and practically skipped out the front door, brushing past customers. He slapped the hands of his friends, then jumped into the Maserati and roared out of the parking lot.

  “They’re not going to rob a bank or something,” I sneered to Anita as she rung up an order of crullers.

  “He’s going to be a big rap star someday,” Anita said.

  “Oh, brother.”

  “He’s very talented. I’ve heard him.”

  “Glad he’s got a backup plan in case the donuts don’t work out for him,” I said.

  Anita gave me a glinty-eyed stare. “Everybody has to have a dream. Not everybody gets to go to college.”

  I felt embarrassed then. I didn’t know when I’d become such a snob.

  Shortly after two, business had slowed. Actually it stopped completely, and I went over to a stir-fry place down the street and bought lunch for Anita and me. We were sitting in the booth, eating our noodles and Buddha’s delight, talking about Anita’s “show business days,” as she called them, and sharing a cigarette, when Uncle returned.

  He must’ve parked in the back and come in the kitchen without our hearing. I was facing the counter, my back to the wall in the corner booth, when Uncle popped into the donut shop. He was hurrying in the front door, his thoughts elsewhere and a slightly distracted look on his face, when he saw me. He blanched, as though he’d seen a ghost. He stood stock still for a second, frozen, then scurried back into the kitchen without speaking a word to either of us.

  I’d seen his expression as he looked at me, first blank, like “Who is that?” and then the shock, the way his features jumped, when he remembered. He looked like he’d seen the dead.

  “What’s up, Hon’?” Anita asked. Her back was to the door, and she hadn’t even noticed Uncle coming in.

  “Uncle’s back.”

  She craned her neck, looking around, before she realized he’d disappeared without saying hello. Then she turned back to me, a fake smile plastered on her face, and I could immediately tell why Anita hadn’t succeeded on the knife-throwing circuit. She couldn’t fake a smile. She looked at me now with anxious, sad eyes and her lips pulled back from her teeth. I imagined that a wild animal trying to bluff a bigger opponent in a fight at a watering hole might look like this just before it got eaten.

  My nose burned, and then my eyes started to water, and I knew I was feeling sorry for myself. I hated myself even more. I picked up my Styrofoam takeout container and threw it in the trash. The smell of sugar was oppressive. I couldn’t swallow properly. My throat felt as though it were narrowing.

  “I’m going for a walk,” I managed to rasp to Anita, and I stumbled out the door without waiting for her reply.

  The sunlight was too bright. The asphalt was bleached white, sticky under my sneakers. I squinted and tried to keep moving, one foot in front of the other, but the world felt as though it were tilting. In my memories I was being rejected all over again. I was eight years old, walking onto the playground in Texas for the first time, and the girls circled Sourdi and me, pulling the skin back from their eyes, taunting us, and I had no idea what I’d done wrong. I was eleven, meeting Auntie for the first time in Nebraska, and she looked at me as though inspecting for damage, my every gesture an insult, my voice too loud, my accent too American, my ways too bold. Everything that had been good about me became wrong all over again.

  Now the world was spinning and the sky turned white and then black, like a photo negative. I sat down on the curb in front of the Asian grocery. I could smell the fresh bok choy wilting in the heat of the afternoon sun, overripe mangoes, cilantro, and a dusty scent from the root-vegetable bins. My head felt very heavy and fell against my knees. I held it in place with both hands.

  I was wrong to come here. Uncle hated me. He was only pretending he’d been happy to see me. I was wrong. I made him unhappy. When Auntie was alive, I’d made her unhappy too, when I was just a kid.

  When she ran the Palace with Ma, Auntie had nothing but complaints about me. I clomped when I walked, I shouted when I spoke, I showed all my teeth when I smiled. I was too tall, I ate too much. I wasn’t dainty. Auntie saw me get in a fight in the parking lot. Three white boys attacked my sisters and brother and me during our first week in Nebraska. I fought them off. I saved the rocks they threw at us and threw them back, and, terrified, they fled on their bikes. I thought it was a victory, but Auntie saw it all from the window in the Palace and thought it was shameful.

  She didn’t care that I’d saved my siblings. She didn’t care that the boys threw the rocks at us first. She didn’t care that no one else had come to help us when I’d screamed. She didn’t like me. I was a disappointment.

  I didn’t know then that she was my mother.

  She missed her oldest son. But finding me alive had been a disappointment.

  I was no reason for her to try to stay alive.

  I was everything wrong that could have happened to her daughter.

  Maybe she wished she’d never fou
nd me. Maybe she wished I had died.

  Maybe Uncle wished that now.

  I could taste the fried noodles on the back of my tongue. The grease, the salt, the soy sauce and MSG. I breathed through my mouth, trying not to be ill.

  I didn’t want to throw up in public, where people could see, strangers, the girls who worked in the grocery, the men who worked in the video store, the who-knows-who potential customers in the parking lot.

  Something cold and wet nudged the side of my arm, and I jumped.

  One of the checkers from the grocery was holding a cold can of 7Up in her hand. “You okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Take it. Don’t work too hard,” she said with a smile, and went back inside.

  I mouthed, “Thanks,” as though she could still see me, and opened the soda. The pop! and hiss, so familiar, made me feel better. Sometimes the smallest acts of kindness made me melt.

  I took a sip of the soda. It was too sweet against my teeth, but it was like the treasured cans of pop we used to share when I was a kid. When we first came to America, the Church Ladies never gave us soda pop in the bags of groceries they brought. And food stamps didn’t let us get brand names either. If Ma bought us a soda, we had to share it. I didn’t even like the taste at first, but I’d seen kids on TV drinking Coca-Cola and Pepsi and 7Up, smiling and strong and running and popular and happy, and I wanted to be just like them. I wanted to give the world a Coke, too. I wanted to take the Pepsi Challenge. I liked the pretty green cans of Sprite with the fancy lettering I couldn’t read yet, not like the ugly type on the generic soda we could afford.

  We used to blindfold ourselves, using an undershirt that Sourdi tied around our heads, take sips from the same can of soda, and say, “It’s Coke!” or “It’s Pepsi!” Sourdi would make a buzzer sound or a “ding!” like a bell, depending on her mood, to signal if we were correct or wrong.

  Then Sam would exclaim, “I can’t believe I like Pepsi better!” and slap his forehead just like the man in the commercial, and we’d laugh and laugh.

  Sitting on the curb in front of the grocery, facing the donut shop, I drank the whole can of 7Up that the girl had given me. It still tasted like a luxury.