Tiger Girl

by May-lee Chai

  Then I went back to work.

  Nobody was working in the donut shop when I returned. I peeked into the kitchen and spotted Anita and Uncle conferring by the mixers. I was going to tell them that I was back and that I’d man the register, but something about the furtive way they huddled together made me hesitant to interrupt.

  “I haven’t seen you look this down in a while,” Anita was saying. “Is it Nea?”

  My heart stopped. Then started up with a jerk.

  “She looks just like Sopheam . . . When they were the same age,” Uncle’s voice sounded strangled, stretched too taut. “I see her and I remember everything.”

  “Does she know?”

  “We don’t talk about these things.”

  Then the bell on the door rang behind me, like a really big cat bell signaling the arrival of a customer, and I quickly shut the swinging door to the kitchen and jumped behind the counter, hoping Uncle and Anita hadn’t realized I’d been spying on them, and wouldn’t know that I’d heard them and that I knew Uncle was sorry I’d come.

  PART THREE

  You do not fear the thorny plant (underfoot), yet you fear the tiger (far away).

  —traditional Cambodian proverb

  CHAPTER 7

  The Sisters Who Turned into Birds

  Ma used to tell me a folktale, the story of the three sisters who turned into birds. We must have been living in the refugee camp, where it was safe to tell stories again. Under the Khmer Rouge, stories were forbidden, language was dangerous, and we had to be quiet all the time. I loved Ma’s stories, but I was hungry, I kept interrupting, I didn’t let her finish.

  Once there were three little girls who were living alone with their widowed mother when she remarried to a wealthy gangster from the city.

  “What kind of food do they eat for the wedding?” I asked.

  “Hush now, noisy girl, or I won’t finish the story.”

  “But he’s a gangster. They must have a lot of food.” There were gangsters in the refugee camp, men who controlled bands of boys who roamed the tents looking for things to steal—clothing and jewelry, knives and machetes, coconuts and the shells of nuts, small lizards that could be eaten, and once a hand grenade with a broken pin. The gangsters were scary and could steal your food if they caught you alone, if you were small, if you showed fear. “Please, tell me. Please, please, tell me what they ate.”

  Finally Ma sighed and rolled onto her back, folding her hands over her flat stomach.

  “Chicken curry and ginger-shred chicken and beef noodle soup and cellophane noodles with tiny shrimp on top. Three bowls each of steamed white rice. Everyone eats an entire mango each.”

  Satisfied, I licked my lips and let her continue the story.

  The mother begins to dress and act like a rich woman. She neglects the animals and leaves the chores to her children. She spends all her time in the city with the gangster, wearing fancy clothing, eating fancy food, talking and drinking with the gangster’s friends. She acts as though she has no children at all. When she comes home, she sees her three daughters waiting in the doorway, calling out to her for food. She decides to get rid of them once and for all. The next day she takes them into the jungle and leaves them there. She sprinkles rice in a looping circle so the beasts of the jungle will be sure to find them in the center. Then she goes home and leaves them to their fate.

  Lying next to Ma under the mosquito net, I knew how the little girls must have felt as they huddled together in the dark that fell all at once like a curtain, so that the sun suddenly disappeared in the jungle and only the absence of light remained. The girls could hear the cries of the hungry animals rising to hunt. Panther cries, tiger growls. The leaves rustled with snakes. The air buzzed with bats. Something high-pitched shrieked. The sisters held each other and sobbed.

  I knew because I remembered what it had been like when we had to walk through the jungle to escape. When we fled the village controlled by the soldiers and walked at night together, Ma and Sourdi, Sam and the twins, all of us were quiet—quiet like mice, like rabbits, like small vulnerable creatures—while the jungle roared around us.

  “Don’t worry,” Ma said. “Don’t cry. It’s just a story.”

  “I know,” I said, wiping my eyes on the back of my hand. “What happened next?”

  The spirit of the forest hears the little girls crying in the dark and takes pity. It isn’t right, it’s against the natural order of the world, little girls alone amongst beasts. The spirit sends the wind to confuse the wild animals, disguising the sweet fleshy scent of the girls with jasmine and poison oleander, with stinkweed and durian, with rotting moss and fetid marsh.

  The next morning, shafts of sunlight fall through the canopy of leaves like golden swords. The sisters rub their eyes and see the rice their mother has strewn about the jungle floor, glowing white as pearls. They eat the rice and follow the trail home.

  When their mother sees the girls emerge from the jungle, calling her name and running toward her, she is filled with a liquid rage that sloshes against the backs of her eyes. She picks up a hoe and chases them back into the jungle. Terrified, the girls run and run and run until they are completely lost.

  The spirit of the forest does not know what to do with three little human girls. At first the spirit simply tricks the animals to keep them away, but the girls grow hungry and cry. They grow thinner and thinner, their bones threatening to pierce their skin. The spirit tries to leave them food: meat fresh from a tiger’s conquest, seeds still in their pods, mushrooms and fungus and berries, raw things the beasts of the jungle might eat themselves. At first the girls are unwilling to eat such things, but then one day they fall upon the spirit’s food, eating ravenously. Day after day they eat like wild creatures until it is too late. Their lips grow hard and pointed, more like beaks than mouths. Little feathers sprout on their chests, their arms turn into wings, the pinion feathers long and graceful. Their bodies shrink, and the last tatters of their human clothes fall to the jungle floor. The girls stare at each other in amazement, but when they open their mouths, no words come out. The wind swirls about them, scattering their meal of seeds and berries and flesh, and the girls run into the spirit wind and fly away, high high high above the trees.

  “What could they see?” I wanted to know. “Could they see their mother? Their house?”

  “No.” Ma was growing tired. Her breath had slowed. I could feel her body growing heavier, like a stone beside me. I could feel her leaving me, drifting to another realm.

  I pinched her arm. I scratched her calf with the sharp broken nail of my big toe. “Did they fly to their mother’s house?”

  “Mmm. No.”

  “Why not?” Frantically, I pulled on my mother’s shirt, I breathed on her face, blew across her nose, hoping my hot breath would wake her. “Why didn’t they fly to see their mother?”

  Ma stirred. “They didn’t want to see her.”

  “Not even to see what she was doing?”

  “They didn’t remember her. They were birds now.”

  “Oh.”

  The people of the village are watching the mother behaving like a gangster herself. They shake their heads. They know what she’s done to her daughters. What kind of mother is she? Not a good woman. Not someone they wanted in their village.

  So the villagers band together and drive the mother and the gangster out of the village. They then tear down her house and burn the wood. They take all the woman’s animals; they steal all the woman’s pots and pans and bowls and cups. They take her sarong and her krama scarf and the comb she used in her hair. They pretend the woman never lived there at all.

  (I nod. This is exactly what villagers would do.)

  After many years, the girls’ father returns to the village.

  “He wasn’t really dead?” I gripped Ma’s arm tightly in my excitement.

  “Sshh. Quiet.”

  “But I thought the mother was a widow?”

  “No. She just thought her husban
d was dead.” Ma was growing sleepy. Her voice was heavy, slow, the way we used to move under the sun, turning the earth slowly with our borrowed hoes.

  I nudged her gently, then not so gently. “So the father returns?” I prompted.

  Ma blinked, licked her lips, and reached into the dark for my hand. Finding it in hers, she squeezed it tight and continued.

  So the father returns and discovers the scorched spot where his house once stood. He asks the villagers, “Where is my wife? Where are my children?” But they pretend they don’t know. Alarmed, he walks to the city. He asks in the market if anyone has seen his wife, a woman this high, with three girls trailing behind? People shake their heads and turn away. Stall after stall, no one will speak. Finally an old woman takes pity and tells him the story of his dissolute wife marrying the gangster and the way she’d taken the children to the forest to die.

  The father marches into the forest himself, carrying a pack upon his back, a long knife in one hand to fight the beasts, and a long stick in the other to help him walk through the pathless jungle, over the tall grasses and the thick vines and the dark low-lying branches.

  The bird sisters see their father walking through the forest. They call out to him, but they can no longer remember how to speak. Their beaks open and shut, open and shut, but they can only cry in birds’ voices. The father looks up and sees his children circling above his head, shrieking, but he does not recognize them. They have turned completely into birds.

  Ma drifted away from me into her dreamless sleep. I held on to her hand all night, thinking about the bird girls, flying freely above the jungle, the sunlight strong against their feathers, the wind carrying them higher and higher, the beasts below them small as insects. Could they see the villages where we toiled? Could they see the soldiers with their guns walking two by two so no one can escape? Could they see all the way to the ocean? I imagined the bright blue water stretching to the long curved edge of the world, like the map that hangs on the plywood wall of the makeshift classroom in the refugee camp. The one the teacher points to when she shows us where the lucky families go when they are sponsored to leave. I was thrilled by the idea that I, too, might turn into a bird. Such lucky girls, I thought.

  I never thought to wonder: Did they ever miss their human parents? Did they miss their mother even though she’d sent them away? Did she ever tell them stories? Did they ever wonder why she changed?

  Nor did I think much about their father, who could not recognize their cries. How long did they cry out to him? How long before they gave up and flew away?

  This was how my nights passed in the refugee camp.

  CHAPTER 8

  The Plan

  That night as I lay on the sofa, I tried to think of what I could offer Uncle. Right now I was taking up space, eating his food, earning no money. No wonder I felt like a burden.

  Before I gave up and went back home, back to college, I had to try harder. I couldn’t give up after a couple of days. I was sure there was a way to win Uncle over. To show him that I was a good daughter, one he’d be willing to acknowledge, one he’d be proud to call his own. I wasn’t just someone who reminded him of all that was unhappy about the past, of the wars and all that had been lost.

  I needed to show him I could be useful.

  Uncle loved the donut shop. He spent all his time there. He’d even given it a special fancy name. If I could make it into a success, I figured, he’d be happy to have me around.

  I got up from the couch and pulled the Yellow Pages out from under the phone. I took out my notebook and pencil from my backpack and began to list our competition, trying to see if we had any advantage in terms of location, bus routes, price, service, anything. I knew we could beat anyone on flavor, but how to let people know?

  I brainstormed a list of promotions: manning tables in front of grocery stores or bus stops like kids selling Girl Scout cookies. Give-aways at beauty parlors, nail shops, tanning salons, video stores, and florists, all these little businesses in the endless strip malls. Maybe I should pack up a variety box and donate them to the cops? Thank them for their service to the community, write up a card, and drop a box by? I didn’t trust cops myself—when had they ever helped my family?—but they might be useful to have around, keep the gangs away. And, rumor had it, they like donuts.

  By the time the light seeping through the crack in the curtains was the bluish color of skim milk, I had a list of promotions two pages long. I was dozing off when I heard the newspaper thwack against the apartment door.

  I checked my watch. It was twenty after five and Uncle still hadn’t come home.

  Rubbing my face with one hand, I staggered to the door to get the paper, a thin local called the Santa Bonita Times. There was a picture of a girl in pigtails holding a bunny under the headline: “Local Girl’s Prize Rabbit Returned.” Some kid’s pet went missing for five weeks and then showed up again mysteriously on her family’s doorstep accompanied by an album of photographs showing the bunny in front of famous places: the Hollywood sign, Universal Studios, the beach, the Golden Gate Bridge, Muir Woods, and the Hearst Castle. Some people had too much time on their hands, I decided. The other news was typical small-town fare: there’d been a fire in an apartment complex, a rash of break-ins in a trailer park, a fight (non-fatal) at a nightclub, a flower show sponsored by the Junior League, a middle-school play, and a preview of the upcoming Parade of Homes featuring a series of photos of houses dripping with Christmas decorations (obnoxious). AP wire stories covered a roundup of world and national news. The last pages were devoted to sports and comics. They didn’t even have Bloom County or The Far Side, just old-timey stuff like Family Circle and Brenda Starr.

  All this and they led with the bunny, I thought.

  I looked for the masthead and the names of the editors. A paper like this might like a feature on a new Grand Opening. I could see La Petite Pâtisserie Khmère bumping the bunny from its place of honor above the fold. Uncle and me standing side by side and smiling in front of the pastry case, or, better yet, holding out a tray of fresh donuts enticingly.

  I’d show him what I could do.

  And maybe, I thought, there could be a follow-up article: “Father and Daughter, Separated by War, Reunite in Santa Bonita.” Surely we were a bigger story than the bunny. It would be a full page, with photographs. I could put the clipping in an album, show it to my roommate in college. Flip the page open casually as Shannon showed off her ski trips to Vail, her camping trips in the Rockies. “Oh, while I was on my personal leave, I reunited with my father. We’d been separated by the Khmer Rouge, but now we’ve found each other.” Show my dormmates the smiling photos. They’d be shocked. What an amazing story! I wouldn’t tell them that I’d known my father earlier and he’d pretended to be my uncle. I’d say instead, He didn’t recognize me before. I’d say, He was so happy to learn I was still alive.

  Maybe the local TV news would pick it up and then we’d go national. We might make it on The Today Show, or even Oprah.

  I could picture myself sitting on her sofa next to Uncle, who now explained that he’d had amnesia, a kind of PTSD that the doctors didn’t know about. He’d describe the moment when he finally recognized me, the feeling in his chest of his heart opening up, the weights like heavy stones lifting, how he felt as light as air, as though he could dance hovering six inches above the ground. I would smile modestly while the studio audience sighed and tears welled up in Oprah’s eyes. I would buy a new dress just for the show. I tried to imagine the color—red for our love, yellow like the sun for our happiness, blue to match my hair.

  Then the front door to the apartment opened and Sitan staggered in.

  I jumped up.

  “Oh, hey. Uncle gave me the—um, you know, whatcha callem.” He tossed the keys on the top of the bookshelf.

  “Are you drunk?”

  “Chill, girl. Been out with my homeboys.” He tried to take off his shoes and fell over. He lay back on the carpet, his hands on his stomach.
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  “Aren’t you working in the shop now?”

  “Mmm hmm.” He was drifting off to sleep.

  Disgusted, I gathered up my clothes and locked myself in the bathroom to get dressed. When I came out, Sitan was snoring loudly on the floor.

  The phone rang, startling me.

  I ran to the kitchen. “Hello?”

  It was Uncle. “Nea, is Sitan there?”

  “Just arrived. He passed out on the floor.”

  “Thank goodness. I wanted to make sure he got home safely.”

  “He’s not home,” I pointed out. “He’s on the floor of your apartment.”

  “He must be very tired.” Uncle sounded worried. “Just let him sleep. He can come in later when he wakes up again.”

  “I don’t think I could wake him if I tried. His royal highness seems pretty plastered.”

  Uncle sighed. “He’s been doing so well. He’s been making a lot of progress.”

  I decided not to argue. “I won’t wake him up. Are you coming back now?”

  “No, I can’t. I’m sorry. There was a call. A family needs a translator. I’m going to the hospital to help. Don’t worry. You can just stay at home today.”

  “Uncle, you’ve worked all night. You should rest.”

  “I’m fine.” He hung up.

  And I thought, he’s going to drop dead if he keeps working like this. Then a worse thought came to me. Maybe Uncle was trying to work himself to death. Maybe this was how his survivor’s guilt was manifesting. Like a death wish. And what would Ma say if I just stood by and let that happen?

  I paced in the kitchenette as the cheerful yellow light from the rising sun began to pour inside, lapping at the countertops and the white Frigidaire, splashing against the walls like a wave of honey. I peered out the window into the parking lot, and watched sparrows wheel across the sky, which grew brighter and more blue with each passing minute. A hummingbird hovered by the bougainvillea. It was hard to remember that it was December, that Christmas was only two weeks away. I’d left Nebraska fallow and frozen and taken a bus to arrive in a whole other season. Traffic zoomed by on the street below, and I watched as a bus barreled past; an ad for Die Hard 2 wrapped around the bus featuring a Christmas wreath superimposed over Bruce Willis’s shoulders.