Free Tiger, Tiger by Margaux Fragoso Page B

in a baggie that he held open. Saying he couldn’t afford anything more, he got into the long checkout line. His face seemed tight, impatient. Generally, he was always smiling. He had said a few times that I brought him total happiness, and that my love was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He had also said that he wanted to marry me when I was eighteen; I knew enough math to know that was only ten years away, and I was very happy about it too, because married people saw each other every day of the week, not just Mondays and Fridays. Married people could have babies, and they could live wherever they wanted. I told Peter I wanted to move to Westport, Connecticut, and live by a lake. When I told my mother I was going to marry Peter when I turned eighteen, she said, “You can marry him in heaven.”
    Peter continued to say how he felt sad that he couldn’t make a baby with me now, because I had no working eggs. Sometimes he would say, “How’s your belly?” a code that meant he was imagining me pregnant. Other times he would make a humming sound that meant he was picturing me naked. I didn’t know why, but on occasion, it made me furious when he did this and I felt like hitting him.
    I had entered the basement by only two of its three entrances: in the winter, by going down the soft wooden steps, or lately, because the weather had been warmer, through the heavy green doors at the back of the yard. But this time Peter, taking my hand, led me to the small cement slope at the front of the house and brought me to that narrow, oval-shaped wooden door. On the way, I glanced at the somber pink bear, even more covered in ivy than the year before, and the ivy now totally covered the mermaid’s tail. Peter kept saying he was going to trim it before it hid the statues completely, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
    “Are you mad? Are you mad?” I asked as we entered the basement. I knew by the way Peter was silent that there was something wrong with him. I felt a little afraid that he might be getting like Poppa, changing from happy to angry all the time, and that I’d never be able to predict or control him again.
    Peter surprised me by saying Fiver was in the basement. He was sick all the time and, right now, he had to be kept quarantined from the other rabbits.
    “Poor little guy! He’s all by himself !” I said, rushing to the Pathmark shopping cart where Fiver was kept. “He must be sad alone here in the dark.”
    “No,” said Peter, quickly. “He’s not. Rabbits enjoy darkness. They live in warrens underground, in the wild, and when they’re kept outside, the hutches need to be placed in shady areas. They like coolness and damp air. So don’t think Fiver is unhappy here; he’s really quite peaceful.”
    But he didn’t look peaceful to me at all; he looked depressed. He was hunched in a corner with his head down, but not sleeping. He had a newspaper floor and a bowl of rabbit pellets and a bottle with a long metal tip. I took a bean from my pocket and stuck it through the mesh of Fiver’s cart, but he wouldn’t come over to take it no matter how I coaxed him.
    “Is he going to get better? Or will he die?” I said, expecting the truth from Peter.
    “Well, I think he’ll improve,” said Peter, though he didn’t seem all that sure. “I’ve been buying the expensive brand of food, and giving him medicine from an eyedropper. As you can see, his home is tidy, his newspaper’s changed every day, and he has plenty of water. I wouldn’t worry about it. Sweetheart,” he said, turning away from Fiver and taking both of my hands, “will you keep your promise to me?”
    “What promise?”
    “You said you would do anything. You made a promise.”
    “I don’t remember.”
    “For the beans, remember? I said they were too expensive, just to feed to a rabbit; I said we should get carrots instead, and you already had them in your hands, a bunch of them; you said no, you wanted these, and that