Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso Read Free Book Online Page A

congestion of Bergenline Avenue up to where it turned into Kennedy Boulevard. We had passed Pastore Music, the Burger Pit, and the Four Star Diner; we had gone all the way up to Sears and back again. Poppa was right, there was something sad and wasted about these city blocks. Maybe it was because Bergenline Avenue became desolate around Twenty-ninth Street and it just kept going downhill from there: fewer stores, fewer people, more teenagers sitting on the hoods of parked cars, more older men slumped on steps with bottles of hard liquor wrapped in paper bags.
    “I tell you, Keesy, I would rather die than be seen like that in the street, drinking cheap whiskey!” Poppa snorted. “But at least these bums here in Union City have respect, they do not beg for money. They sit quietly and meditate on what has gone wrong in their lives, and you pass by, and they do not ask anything of you, or make themselves a pity case.” He took another sip of beer. “Yet I have to carry a gun, or they might rob me. I have fine jewelry and people are jealous. I like to look my best and the underdogs despise me, wishing they, too, could have fine things. Often, Keesy, I think that without beauty to admire, what do we have? Even any of these bums, a good-looking girl turns and smiles at them and they feel their lives restored. A beautiful woman’s face and a fine horse, well groomed and ready to run on the track: these sights do not last. The face of Elizabeth Taylor. And Brooke Shields. Some of my friends say you look like her. But I think you are more beautiful. I do not like her eyebrows. Keesy, let’s stop here for a moment.” We pulled up by Los Precious Supermarket on Twenty-ninth Street, across from the NJ Transit Bus Station. “Do you want some chips?”
    Inside the store, Poppa bought himself some Donita pork rinds, a bag of La Dominica plantain chips, and some cassava chips. For me, he bought vanilla sugar wafers and a Tampico Citrus Punch. Before we got back into the Chevy, Poppa lifted my chin and said, “I feel sad for the day you become a woman. The men around here have no respect. They howl and hoot like a bunch of baboons at anything that passes by; I do not know what kind of families they come from. Even though we are moving, there are still going to be animals around. There are savages all over this city. I wish we could move to the suburbs.”
    The mood turned dreamy as we listened to the Beatles’ Rubber Soul . When the song “Run for Your Life” came on, Poppa sang and drummed his hands against the steering wheel. The song, Poppa explained to me, when the tape ended, was about a jealous man who suspected his girlfriend was cheating on him; he was warning her that if he ever caught her and her lover together, he would kill her.
    “Why does he have to kill her, Poppa? Can’t he just get a new girlfriend?”
    “It is not that simple, Keesy. It is about honor. But I don’t think a man should punish his girlfriend for indiscretion. Women are frivolous; they love easily and they cannot help that they are creatures of passion. They are not rational like men. To be mad at a cheating girlfriend is like yelling at the clouds for raining. I have a girlfriend, Keesy, that your mother knows nothing about.” He paused. I felt pleased for a second, understanding that he trusted me not to tell Mommy. A lot of times it was him and me sneaking around behind Mommy’s back. For instance, when I was with him, he would let me sit up front and not wear a seat belt, but when Mommy was there, I had to be strapped in, sitting in the back. And every time he brought me with him to get the car inspected, he would buy me four chocolate-frosted doughnuts for lunch, saying, “Don’t tell your mother.” But I was sad, too. I knew his having a girlfriend had something to do with him never hugging or kissing Mommy, and never saying “I love you.”
    He continued: “For all I know my girlfriend is with ten other men, but what can I do about