Tiger Girl

by May-lee Chai

  And Paul nodded, agreeing with me.

  CHAPTER 15

  On the Altar of Miracles

  I had just managed to doze off when the phone rang, waking me from a half-dream in which I was driving on the highway, the taillights of the cars ahead of me streaming red light like water until I was floating down the 10 on a glowing crimson river. Giant fish—catfish, carp, a ribbony eel with a mouth full of teeth—and a white crocodile bobbed in the air beside me as I tried to steer around them. I found that I had an oar in my hands, and that I was paddling through a red-tinged fog. Someone honked at me, and I peered through the haze, desperately trying to see past the floating schools of fierce-looking fish, but the honking continued, and I woke up on the sofa, my neck cricked against its arm.

  The phone rang again, and I leapt up, tripping over my feet as I ran to the kitchen. Maybe something had happened to Uncle, I thought, and I was suddenly chilled, my skin turning to gooseflesh in the gray light of early morning. “Hello?”

  “Who is this?” A husky voice at the other end sounded angry.

  “Are you calling for my uncle?” I asked.

  “Your what?” There was a pause, and then the person hung up.

  “Give me that!” Paul emerged from the bedroom and grabbed the receiver. “Hello? . . . Hello?” Disappointed, he slammed the receiver back on its cradle. “Who was that?”

  “I don’t know. The person hung up.” I padded back to the sofa. “Don’t wake up Sitan.”

  Sitan shifted on the floor, his sheets a knot around his legs. It was bad enough that Uncle allowed both Sitan and Paul to share his apartment, two men who were all but strangers to me, but now he didn’t even bother to return, leaving us alone with each other. I curled up on the sofa, pulling my coat over my knees.

  “Was it a woman? What exactly did she say?” Paul was wearing jeans, no socks, no shirt. His long torso was tattooed up and down. The light was too dim to see much of the design. A long eel or perhaps a dragon, something with scales and bulging eyes peered from between his washboard abs.

  “It was a guy, I think,” I whispered. “Maybe it was a woman. I don’t know.” I tried to find my comfortable spot again as I sank into the cushions.

  “What did she say?” Paul was standing over me now. He grabbed hold of my shoulder and shook me.

  “Hey! Hands off!” I shoved his hand away and jumped over the back of the sofa so the furniture was between us.

  “Huh? What?” Sitan sat upright, his eyes still closed. He rubbed at his head with one hand.

  “What did she say to you?” Paul spoke slowly, as though he thought I might be lying, as though there were a right and a wrong answer and he was threatening me to get it right.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” I gauged the distance around him to the door in case I had to run. He seemed unhinged, desperate. I climbed over the back of the couch, darted over to the kitchen phone, and dialed *27. The phone at the other end rang, and I held it out to Paul. “Ask her yourself.”

  Paul grabbed the phone. “Hello? . . . It’s me! . . . Hello? Hello?”

  “Call the operator. Trace the number, see who we just called.”

  Paul bounded into the bedroom and came back out, pulling on his T-shirt, then his leather jacket. He stuffed his bare feet into the sneakers by the door.

  “Where you going?” I asked.

  But he ran out without answering, slamming the door behind him.

  By the time Uncle returned from supervising the baking, Sitan had taken off as well. Only I remained, seated in the kitchenette, eating half of the grapefruit.

  Uncle smiled. “Put some sugar on,” he urged me.

  “I like it sour.”

  “Is he still sleeping?” He gestured toward the bedroom door. “I have a surprise when he wakes up. I spoke to Father Juan, and he is going to announce this miracle during Christmas Mass. I told him I would bring my family. All of us together. To thank God for this blessing. I almost lost faith that this day would ever come, but now I am so thankful.” Uncle smiled.

  I nodded, fairly certain that Paul would be less than thrilled with this surprise. “Paul went out a few hours ago.”

  “Where? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Someone, some woman I think, called and then hung up on him, and he got angry and left.”

  Uncle looked somber. He took off his jacket carefully and hung it on the back of his chair, his movements small and precise, as though too much motion might unsettle the balance of the universe.

  “We can hit redial on the phone and see if he’s there.”

  Uncle didn’t answer. “He’ll be back.” He seemed to be trying to reassure himself. He put a paper bag on the table in front of me. “The Kasim sisters made tarte aux fraises.”

  “Thank you,” I said. He nodded and headed to the bathroom.

  I picked up the phone and hit redial, but the other end only rang and rang and rang. Whoever lived there didn’t have an answering machine. Then I called the operator and asked if she could give me the last number I’d called. I thanked her and wrote it down on the side of the brown bag of pastry.

  “Was it busy again this morning?” I called to Uncle through the bathroom door, but he didn’t answer. I could hear the water running in the shower.

  I really hoped Paul wasn’t going to just disappear now that he’d turned up. Was he disappointed because Uncle wasn’t rich anymore? Then a thought caused a chill to run up and down my spine. Maybe he really was just casing out the donut store. Maybe he hadn’t left the gang. Now I wished I’d taken a better look at his tats. Maybe someone could identify what they meant, which gang he was affiliated with. The more I thought about it, the more naive I realized we’d been. We had no proof that this “Paul” was really my long-lost brother. Didn’t he himself admit his records all had made-up names? The Red Cross wouldn’t be able to say who he really was. And the story of his escape in Cambodia. How did I know it was true?

  We didn’t even have his DNA for a test, although I had no idea where anyone actually tested DNA except for crime labs on TV cop shows.

  I looked in the sink, but there wasn’t so much as an unwashed cup.

  Nothing to prove Paul was who he said he was.

  And nothing to find him with again if he didn’t come back.

  At work, I hinted to Anita that Paul was an imposter. “Did you ever see a picture of my family? There was one taken in Phnom Penh,” I said. “I saw it once, when Uncle lived with us in Nebraska.”

  “I don’t think I have, honey. But I sure would like to if you find it.”

  “So you don’t actually know what Paul is supposed to look like? Because he doesn’t look like Uncle, does he? He’s strong-looking. He’s got broad shoulders and all those muscles. He’s not very tall. Uncle used to look, not exactly handsome, but like a wealthy man. He had that kind of never-had-to-work-in-his-life look.”

  “That must have been some photograph,” Anita said.

  “What if there’s some kind of mistake?”

  “Your uncle is so happy, honey,” Anita said. “Finding his son alive is the answer to his prayers.”

  “But what if Paul isn’t really who he says he is? What if he’s lying?”

  “Now why would I think a thing like that?” Anita shook her head. “Sometimes we just have to have faith.”

  The next day came and went. Uncle stayed open on Christmas Eve, just in case Paul should try to find him there at the donut shop.

  “I’m sure he’s busy,” Uncle said. “Something came up. He has his own life. I should have told him my plans. I forgot that he is a grown man. He has this girlfriend who called him. Maybe he has his own family. I didn’t ask. I didn’t think to ask. Maybe he thinks I don’t care. Maybe he’s disappointed in me. I didn’t think.”

  “I’m sure he’ll come back,” I said, Uncle’s state of agitation alarming me. I’d never seen him this nervous. Ma’s mood swings I was used to, but I hadn’t known Uncle to question his blind faith in t
he future before, and it worried me.

  “You think he’ll come back?” Uncle asked, as though he genuinely cared about my answer.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “He said he’s coming back?”

  “Well, I didn’t ask. He didn’t say good-bye. It seemed like he was just going out for a bit.”

  “Maybe he’s been injured. Maybe something has happened.”

  “He’ll come back. He found you. He gave your number to his friends to call, didn’t he? That means he wanted them to know he was here.” I didn’t add, So that after he cased the place, he could signal for them to rob us. But then I felt guilty for even thinking it. Again.

  “I’ll pray. The Lord has been so good to me. I won’t be ungrateful.”

  On Christmas, Uncle insisted I go with him to church.

  “But won’t Father be expecting Paul? He’ll be disappointed if it’s only me.”

  “No, the miracle is the same even if Ponleu is not here today,” Uncle insisted. “I am still thankful. I am still grateful. And if we don’t come, then Father will be disappointed.”

  I hadn’t brought any fancy clothes. So for Christmas morning, rather than my usual jeans, I put on the one pair of khakis I’d packed in my backpack. They were a cotton-poly blend and not too wrinkled. And I had a snap-up Western-style blouse with red embroidered roses on it that the twins had given me for my birthday. I tried to put more attention into my eye makeup, as though that might help, but after my best efforts, the woman peering back at me from the bathroom mirror still looked kind of like a rodeo queen on a bad day. I sighed. It was the best I could do on short notice and no money.

  Uncle emerged from his bedroom in a baggy gray suit, not the nicer one from the newspaper photo. He’d lost weight since Auntie’s death. I imagined him wearing the same suit at her memorial service, and tried not to shudder.

  “You look good,” Uncle said, smiling.

  I thought about all the ways I could refute that, but instead I simply said, “Thank you.”

  Then we left for church.

  The last time I’d been in a church, my older sister Sourdi was a teen bride in an arranged marriage. Just thinking about it made me angry again. As Uncle drove, I tried to concentrate on my breathing, in through the nostrils, out through the mouth, like the counselors in school said to do. I focused on the present, not the could-have-beens. Sourdi was happy. She loved her three children. It was her life, her choices, not my decisions to make.

  Uncle pulled in to the gravel lot behind the small white church, nodding as though he’d decided something, come to a kind of agreement with his conscience or God or whatever voice in his head that he talked to and expected answers from. Meanwhile, my heart beat faster, my palms went clammy. My attempts at positive thinking weren’t working. I had bad church memories.

  After we were sponsored by the First Baptists in a small town in Texas, the Church Ladies would come to the trailer park to pick us up and take us to church. People nudged each other in the pews, recognizing the clothes on our backs as we walked down the aisle. Everything we had in those days had been donated from the congregation. Later, Ma would refuse to go, claiming headaches or mysterious illnesses; she couldn’t bear the stares, the way they made her feel guilty. Sponsoring our family had been the minister’s idea. Not everybody in the church felt America needed another refugee family, but now the congregation was responsible for us—for renting the trailer we lived in, for finding Ma the maid’s job at the Motel 6. Without their sponsorship, the government wouldn’t have granted us visas. Ma said we should be grateful to them, but that didn’t make everyone in the church any happier. We were clearly a burden.

  I didn’t know any English at first, didn’t know what people were whispering, but I could understand the suspicion in their sidelong glances, the ridicule in the way kids tugged at the corners of their eyes, the condescension from the Minister’s Wife when she clapped her hand on our shoulders tight as a vise. Like we belonged to her, like we were her pets or exotic animals to display.

  As I followed Uncle through the heavy wooden doors, the smell of incense and sweat mixed in the air. The somber organ music was heavy like a hand on the back of my neck. I felt my chest tighten and my throat constrict. I recognized the signs that I might be going into a panic attack. Breathe, breathe, breathe, I thought.

  Uncle was still muttering to himself as he walked up the middle aisle, seemingly oblivious to the gaze of the congregants. They evidently had all heard the good news. Row after row of families decked out in their Christmas best turned toward Uncle, toothy smiles lighting up their faces. They could have been sunflowers at dawn, the way their heads rose and turned as he approached. Out of the corners of my eyes, I could see their puzzled looks as we passed, the nudges. They were waiting for the son. They were wondering who I was. And suddenly the panicked thought came to me that maybe they thought I was the son. I was thin, my hair short still. Did I look like a really effeminate guy? I wondered. Were they staring at me?

  I hadn’t felt this uncomfortable since my first day of school in Texas, when all the kids stared at me and Sourdi. A girl in ESL turned in her seat to make a face at Sourdi. The fights on the schoolyard. That feeling that I was walking with a target on my forehead. Now I forced myself to look straight ahead and ignore the people, staring only at the altar bedecked in red poinsettias. Their foil-covered pots scattered the candlelight like so many tears falling at our feet.

  I reminded myself that I need not feel afraid anymore. In this church, the congregants were Uncle’s friends, or at least people who knew him, people he’d helped. If they were staring, it was because they were excited for him, his good news printed in the bulletin for everyone to see: “James Chhouen has been blessed by God. His eldest son, missing since the takeover of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, is alive and well and is reunited with him. Join us in prayers of thanks at the 11 a.m. Mass, Christmas Day.”

  Uncle took a seat at the very front of the church in the first pew. If Father Juan was surprised to see only me seated next to Uncle, he did not let it show on his face. He smiled and nodded at Uncle as he said the Mass. We rose and sat and knelt and rose again, the ritual of the movements soothing my nerves.

  Then, during the homily, I saw Father Juan look right at us and smile, and my heart tightened. I thought he would make us stand up in the glare of everyone’s eyes, but he only talked about “God’s miraculous love,” and spoke in the most abstract terms about Uncle finding his son. Perhaps Uncle had not told him the details, or perhaps they were not important. It only mattered that Uncle’s faith in God had been restored.

  When I was ten, just before Ma decided to leave our small town for a better job in East Dallas, she insisted that all of us children become born-again. She wanted to pay back our sponsors. In exchange for their kindness, she was giving them our souls. We were baptized before the entire congregation. I remembered standing on the side of the altar, dripping wet in a borrowed white robe and blinking the water out of my eyes, as all those smiling faces came up to congratulate the Pastor and his wife. Teeth snapped at the air, sharklike, circling round us children. This is what bait feels like, I thought. This is what it’s like to be a worm on a hook, waiting to see which fish will bite first.

  Now I held my body rigid with expectation, with the fear of being observed and judged for some deficit that I’d been previously unaware I possessed. This was what it felt like to be a refugee. To be on display, uncertain of myself, in a room full of staring people. I clenched my jaw so tightly that even my teeth hurt. I had hoped that I’d outgrow this feeling someday, that college would somehow change me, transform me into the confident American who always felt she belonged, but here I was, reliving my ten-year-old self all over again.

  I was lost in my memories, not paying attention to Uncle, when I heard a strange gasping sound. I turned and discovered he was crying, his eyes squeezed shut, tears pouring down his face, falling over his sharp cheekbones. I didn’t have any pocket
s, I couldn’t offer him any tissues, but another parishioner was fast on the draw, digging in her purse for a pack of Kleenex and then surreptitiously pushing it into his hand. I watched Uncle wipe the tears away.

  After Mass, people came up to Uncle, smiles on their faces, congratulating him. “I’m so happy you found your son!” “What a blessing!” “Alleluia! God has answered your prayers!” They patted his back, grabbed his sleeve, grasped his arm.

  Uncle nodded, smiling.

  Before anyone could approach and attempt to strike up a conversation, I stepped back from the crowd and pretended I was fascinated by the rows of votive candles. I didn’t want to have to explain who I was, and I didn’t want to lie to strangers.

  And, for a moment, I could actually believe that everything would turn out perfectly well, that this happiness could last, and that there might somehow be enough left over to encompass me.

  Kneeling before the flickering flames, the smoke and incense filling my nostrils, I had the curious sensation that I was floating, observing everyone from the high vaulted ceiling. I looked down on the heads of the people below me as they flowed toward Uncle like a river, splitting and dividing around him as though he were a rock in their path. The light from the stained-glass windows spilled around me in bands of blue and green and yellow. I dipped my open palm into a stream of red light from the sunlight pouring through the image depicting Christ carrying a cross on his shoulder, his face twisted in agony. The red glass panels around his head might have been blood or flame, I couldn’t be sure, but I held the light in my hand, then squeezed my fingers into a fist, as though I could capture the light and save it for later use. I floated overhead, watching the people patting Uncle on the back, shaking his hand. An old woman with blue-white cataracts clouding her eyes marched up to him and grabbed hold of his jacket, rubbing it between her thumb and forefinger as though she were a character in a parable, expecting to be healed by the power invested in the hem of a prophet’s garment.