Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso Page B

didn’t want to tell him that; I was afraid he might get offended, so when he asked what I thought of it, I said, “It’s nice. It kind of reminds me of a . . .” I tried to think of a metaphor he would like. “Of an ice cream cone. Since you’ve got freckles, it’d be the sprinkled kind, I guess.”
    “An ice cream cone with sprinkles. I’ve never been told that. Would you like to try to lick it, like you would an ice cream?”
    “I’d rather have real ice cream, Peter.”
    “We can get one later. We can get anything you want. But right now, you can pretend this is ice cream.”
    I shook my head. “The problem, Peter, is that that thing . . .”
    “My penis.”
    “Okay, penis.”
    “Don’t be afraid to use the correct word.”
    “Okay, your penis, isn’t that where you pee from?”
    “Yes. Well, there’s a little hole, see, and that’s where I pee.”
    “I’m going to be licking pee. That’s really gross.”
    “Well, why don’t you just kiss it, then? Just kiss it right on the tip.
    It’ll feel really good.”
    “No, I don’t want to.”
    “Why?”
    “I can’t.”
    “Why?”
    I knew that what I was going to say next would make Peter angry, but I was mad now myself. “It’s disgusting, Peter! Just stop it! Just stop telling me what to do!”
    “You made a promise. You promised me anything. Now you’re going back on your word.”
    “This is unfair!”
    “How so?”
    “It just is!”
    “How is it unfair? You made a promise and I’m asking you to keep your promise, and we swore we’d never lie to each other.”
    “I didn’t know what you were going to ask for. You didn’t tell me!”
    “Well, then you shouldn’t have said ‘anything.’ ‘Anything’ means anything.”
    “I can’t do it!” I was on the verge of tears. “I can’t! You’re going to make me throw up if I do it. If you make me kiss pee, Peter, I am going to throw up!”
    “There’s no pee! It’s clean. Society has brainwashed you with its rules.”
    “I can’t stand rules!”
    “No, you’re like everybody else,” he said, pulling up his pants, backing away as he spoke. “Don’t worry, I won’t make you do anything. The bad man isn’t going to hurt you! I’m not going to force you to do anything! I’m not like that! What kind of person do you think I am?”
    He opened the basement door and started to stride out.
    “No, wait, Peter, wait!” I grabbed on to his T-shirt. “Let go of me!”
    “I can try, maybe, now that I’m used to the idea, maybe I can try.”
    “Let go! Don’t talk about it anymore!”
    “But I’m not like them, Peter. I’m my own person.”
    He snorted.
    “I really am, Peter! I am!”
    He turned to me, there in front of the house, in the savage sunshine, and whispered in a choked-up way, “You think my body is disgusting. You don’t like me because I’m an old man. You think I’m ugly.”
    Fiver died two weeks later. The day after, I was standing in line in the big blue playroom where we lined up before the first bell at school, in my blue jumper, ankle socks, and Buster Brown shoes. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. I felt my knees sinking so I straightened my legs, feeling my blood prickling and tingles shooting through my feet. To keep busy, I played with the hood string of my light spring jacket, which my mother had insisted I wear though the late-May weather was too warm. I wound the string around my finger, let it go, watched it snap back at me, then repeated the process. When one leg started to hurt, I pushed everything over to the other side. Sister Mary was nearby in her white habit; I hadn’t realized I’d been sobbing until she put her arms around me.
    “What’s wrong, sweetheart? What’s wrong?”
    I couldn’t stop crying enough to speak, and besides, I liked the sound of her saying “What’s wrong?” I wanted her to keep saying it, and to hold my sadness close. She pulled my hand along gently, and I knew where we were going. Within