Free Tiger Lillie by Lisa Samson Page A

my family. Cristoff understood though. And of course, Teddy picked me up, twirled me around and gave a good long hoot. That night, we french kissed for the first time. We were seventeen.
    My Uncle Jimmy pours more wine and we await the next part of the tale, the part that still tints my life here in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, the part that ended up inside of my stomach years before as a swollen, abrading question mark.
    “I had a friend. Her name was Fruzsina.”
    Her name is still Fruzsina and she lives up in New Jersey with a guy named Tony. She won’t marry him. She’s rich and she can’t stand his kids, and “There’s no way those brats are going to get one penny of mine. Not a single penny.” She married well the first time when she came to America.
    “One night we knew it was time to leave Hungary. Students from the nearby university, where my father had taught, were mowed down during a peaceful demonstration. We stole a bicycle from the people who lived below us. Fruzsina sat on the seat and I stood in front of her, working the pedals. Austria was only a few kilometers away. It was a cold, wet night. I left a note for Grandma Erzsèbet and I kissed Babi and Luca”—my aunts nod some more—“and I told them to be strong and to stay on their cot. I knew they would. They were such good girls back then.”
    My uncles both bark out a laugh.
    “The moon was hidden by clouds and we set out in the middle of the night. No one followed. No one heard us as we rode along a seldom-used footpath between dormant fields. I prayed inside of my soul, ‘Oh, God,’ I prayed. ‘Let us arrive safely. Please.’ An hour later, when the bicycle bounced over the border and into Austria, we were free. Free at last!”
    I clap with joy, tears painting my cheeks. Everybody claps. What Mom doesn’t say is that her drawers were soaking wet when they got off that bicycle, she was so scared. Some years she tells of the young Austrian couple who gave them shelter. But not this year.
    Grandma Erzsèbet, Babi and Luca, and my uncle Istvàn, who had made his way back home during the revolution, escaped two weeks later to join Katherina. The Bajnoks were free.
    Every year I gaze upon my mother in wonder and feel my soul gape open, my legs dangling inside the chasm of my own fears, my doubts that if it had been up to me, these precious women would have never crossed the border.
    Uncle Istvàn is dead now. I remember his funeral two years ago on the eastern shore of Maryland. He followed in his father’s footsteps as a professor of agriculture at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. I remember thinking of all he had survived only to die of an aneurysm.
    He died a free man. That is what he would say if you could ask him about it. Not that we can really comment on our deaths. Can you imagine what one might say?
    Well, now. I suppose, now that I’ve been through it, and I’ve seen how unimportant most of my opinions were, or rather, the matters I chose to have an opinion on were so frivolous and ridiculous, for example, why I cared so much that my church had a drum set or that young men not get tattoos, I would have chosen a much different approach. I died in my opinions. And they gave me no comfort at all.
    I can see Rawlins coming to that conclusion.
    Well, maybe not.
    How about my father? He’d say, “Well, naturally, beyond the obvious rewards of a life of faith, I gambled on the value of a good marriage and it paid off. Yes, I’m dead now, but Kathy was right there, holding my hand as I left, kissing my lips as I drew my final breath. And maybe I didn’t save the world, maybe I only really helped a handful of people see things more clearly, but in the end, I died in love.”
    Me? What will I say? Well, let’s face it. It’s always easier to project for someone else. All I know is this: I’m not ready to talk about my death, because I don’t know what this life is really about yet. Oh yeah, glorify God and enjoy Him forever