Free Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso Page A

cry, and covered my face with my hands.
    “What’s wrong, honey?” Peter knelt on the cracked kitchen linoleum and took both my hands in his.
    “I let the guinea pig loose.”
    There was no belt around the waist of Peter’s red sweatpants that he could use to hit me with, as Poppa would have done. There was no anger in his eyes, only alarm, which moved like a virus, from one aqua eye to the other, and made his face rigid in a way that I had not seen before. And still, his first impulse was to console me with a “Don’t worry, we’ll get him,” springing to his feet with a masculine power that electrified him all over, from the gray-blond sprinklings of hair on his arms, to his sandy-silver bangs, to his long, determined feet in their light, white sneakers. He quickly raced downstairs to fetch Ricky and Miguel, and when he returned, the three of us followed him upstairs, slouched to our knees, beginning the hunt. We looked under the bottom bunk bed; we cast clothes aside and invaded the closet; we inspected corners and checked under blankets. After we had checked everywhere else, Peter and Miguel hefted the bunk bed, and sure enough, the poor thing had balled up his body in the dustiest, driest, saddest corner. His glossy black, brown, and white fur was covered with dust and cobweb filaments that Peter carefully removed.
    “This little fellow will be just fine,” Peter said. “I’m glad we found him when we did.”
    “If we didn’t find him,” Ricky piped up, his voice taking on the thin pitch of boyish excitement, “his teeth might have kept growing. He needs to chew on wood to keep his teeth from getting long. Otherwise, they could grow right over his mouth and he won’t be able to eat.” He paused, and then, in a dire tone: “If a few months had passed, we might have found just a skeleton.”
    “Well, that didn’t happen,” Peter said hastily, returning the guinea pig to his tank, where he gratefully sucked on his bottle. “And it was kind of fun looking for him, like a game of hide-and-go-seek. The most important thing is that Margaux’s birthday wasn’t spoiled.”
    In my peripheral vision, I caught Miguel rolling his eyes. We watched Blackhead for a bit to make sure he was okay, and he was—he drank his water, kicked wood shavings into his usual nest, and went to sleep.
    “Now that’s the life,” Peter chuckled, heading back downstairs.
    Remesagil Jones Farm Market, the store that Peter took me to one Friday in May, was located on Bergenline Avenue across from the newspaper stand where my mother often bought her lottery tickets. It was one of the largest fruit-and-vegetable stores in Union City, boasting items with exotic names that, peering through his square reading glasses, Peter read off to me: Holland tomatoes, acorn squash, green and wrinkled chayote (which I said reminded me of Play-Doh), nanderines, Swiss chard, escarole, napa, knob celery. I laughed at some of the funny-sounding names, and when Peter started to bag some kale and turnips that were located toward the back of the market, I wandered off to rip the little plastic baggies off three at a time and press the scale to see the red arrows flit up like startled tongues. I loved this store—its fecund colors and dark crisp odors—I loved the giant cantaloupes that were like round bumpy suns but had surfaces that made me think of moons, and I wondered whether some of the swirling flies felt like astronauts when they perched upon them, eyelashlike legs lifting inquisitively.
    Peter came up to me and said, “I almost forgot. Fiver is sick.” Fiver was another rabbit; the half-grown son of Porridge and Peaches. “Do you think you could pick out a little something to make him feel better?”
    “Oh, he loves carrots,” I said, racing to those, but then I saw something green, shaped like elf slippers. “Actually, I want these!”
    Peter refused me at first, saying they were pricey; then he gave in, as usual. I put the green beans