Tiger Girl (11 page)

Was I somehow the one thing about the past that should remain forgotten?

Nursing my sense of martyrdom like a scab I couldn't stop picking, I mopped furiously, attacking the grime that I had once mistaken for an actual pattern on the tile. Gradually the floor lightened by three shades, from a deep dusty dirt color to a pale vanilla.

Sitan emerged from the back, where he'd been washing the last of the trays. “I'm gonna head out. Congratulations, Uncle,” he said. “This has been the best week ever.”

“Funny how a little PR works magic,” I said bitterly.

“We should buy a tree,” Uncle said. “It's almost Christmas. We should celebrate.”

I looked around the front room, thinking about the needles that would fall all over the floor. “No space.”

“Oh, a tree! A live tree! Wouldn't that be lovely?” Anita beamed. “We should put it in that corner. Right under the ‘Open' sign.”

“Yeah! We could get some lights, really fix it up. It's Lillian's first Christmas. She'd like that.”

I sighed but didn't argue. Thinking about a tree made me feel sour inside. Another reminder that I'd chosen to spend my Christmas away from my family. The rituals didn't feel the same away from them. The twins always competed to see who could create the more lavish tree decorations, dividing the tree in half and draping shiny garlands and strings of popcorn, metallic balls and silvery icicles and clothespin angels through the thick green boughs. In Texas, Ma hadn't celebrated Christmas when I was little, but as the twins entered junior high, they only remembered life in America. They couldn't imagine celebrating without a tree, the same way they couldn't imagine answering to anything but their American names—Jennifer and Marie instead of Navy and Maly—and Ma couldn't deny them. One year they'd glued Chinese crispy noodles spray-painted gold onto construction-paper rings and enveloped the tree as though it were one of the “Chinese salads” they'd concocted to compete with the McDonald's that had opened in the next town over. Sam was a good big brother to them, humoring their little-girl whims. He set up the ladder and held it tight as they put up the various angels at the very top—blonde angels with gossamer rings, pink-haired fairies, a red-headed mermaid, and one year a Cambodian
devata
, complete with gold tiara. Now my little sisters were teenagers, fifteen, and Sam
would turn eighteen soon, old enough to enlist. Yet here I was in California. When would we celebrate Christmas together again as a family? I wondered if I'd been foolish to come here.

As it was so late in the season, just eight days before Christmas, we soon discovered that most of the tree lots had sold out long ago. Uncle drove us by all the grocery stores—Lucky's and A&P and Kroger's—but there were only a few spindly wreaths left, some shedding poinsettias, and no live trees, although the big Chinese grocery Lion's had a few artificial trees, including a small counter model spray-painted pink. But Uncle insisted now that we should have a real tree.

One of the clerks at Lion's took pity on us and said he thought some people were selling trees from their lawn in town. It was one of the small houses with lots of lights. That sounded like any house to me, but Uncle thanked him, and the four of us piled back into Uncle's Toyota and took off through the back streets, following an array of Christmas decorations so bright that it seemed as though some people were personally trying to guide a jumbo jet into a safe landing in their driveway. I saw houses coated in fake snow and electric icicles and guarded by lit-from-within giant plastic snowmen. One intrepid family had sprayed their entire green lawn with what looked like shaving cream and spider webs, trying to mimic snow. Another had managed to string lights in the palm tree on their lawn. They'd also constructed a manger strung with blinking lights and accompanied by animated wise men who waved beside a pair each of donkeys, camels, zebras, and elephants. Their Bible references were decidedly mixed, combining the Nativity with Noah's Ark, but Sitan was thrilled. He held Lillian up from her baby seat. “Look, Lillian, look! See all the animals!”

Finally we came upon a small house set far from the street, at the end of a cul-de-sac where the houses grew more sparse and
the orange groves lined both sides of the street. Two spotlights shone upon a motley collection of pine trees tied to stakes on the crabgrass lawn. A dog barked furiously from inside the house. A hand-painted sign hung on the garage door: “Trees 4 Sale.”

“Looks like they just went up to Big Bear Mountain and chopped them down themselves,” Anita said.

“Is that legal?” I asked, but nobody cared.

We pulled into the driveway and got out to inspect the trees. There was one pine that wasn't quite as spare and straggly-looking as the others. We pulled on the needles and they didn't all fall off in our hands. A woman in a bathrobe emerged from the squat house and we asked, How much for the tree? She said forty, and I said twenty, and then she sold it to us for thirty. Sitan strapped it on the roof with bungee cords from the trunk, and we drove back to the donut shop with our Christmas tree.

That night we stayed up late decorating the tree with ornaments that we got from the Asian grocery, thirty percent off since they knew us. The bakers came in, and the Kasim sisters smiled to see our sturdy pine before the front window. They said they'd bake us an angel out of sugar-cookie dough, something special, and they hummed carols as they worked. After they finished their first batch, they came out from the kitchen and sang a song together in French while the cookies baked. I didn't know the words, but the tune was nice, better than Rudolph or Frosty or all the other kids' songs I was used to hearing blare from the loudspeakers at the strip mall.

Soon the donut shop filled with the scent of baking dough and sugar and pine tree. While the tree hadn't seemed like much propped up on that woman's lawn, it revived once we set it up and put a pan of water under the trunk.

“Those mountain pines are the best,” Anita said. “Just breathe in! Smells better than those sickly trees sitting out in those lots all month!”

Indeed, our possibly poached tree did smell wonderful, like mountain air and sunshine and a Southern California winter. Sitan held Lillian in his arms and helped her hang tinsel on the branches, then pulled the tinsel out of her mouth as she tried to eat it. Anita gave her some clothespin reindeer to hang instead.

Finally Uncle came out, handprints in flour on the knees of his khakis. He looked at the tree, he looked at Anita smiling and Sitan playing with Lillian, and he held up a sugar cookie. “Look what the Kasim sisters made for the tree!”

It was an Apsaras, a dancing girl with curvy hips and full breasts and gracefully extended arms. It was the sexiest-looking Christmas ornament ever.

“Those are awesome!” Sitan exclaimed. “I wanna eat one!”

“We can poke a hole in the tiara and hang this right here.” Anita pulled at a bare branch. “If they make a batch, we can cover the tree.”

“If they make a batch, we can sell these for five bucks a piece!” I said. “We can launch a whole new line of products. These are the homage to Cambodian culture we've been looking for. Get some icing, draw on a face, these would really sell.”

They looked at me as though I'd started barking like a dog.

“Yes, I mean, they're beautiful for the tree. Sure,” I said. “But we shouldn't waste them on the tree. We should sell these!”

Uncle looked a little startled. “It's Christmas. This is supposed to be a religious holiday. Everything shouldn't be about money.”

I wondered how on earth he could have lived in America all these years and still think that way. I opened my mouth, but before I could say anything, Anita put a hand on my arm.

“I know exactly what James is saying.” Anita took the cookie and held it to a branch. “This is a gift for the tree from
the Kasim sisters. And we can hang it right here.” She smiled at Uncle gently, and he nodded. Then she turned to me. “And if they want to make any more, we can follow Nea's idea. Later.”

I didn't say anything more. There didn't seem to be any point, since I clearly didn't understand at all.

If you see a tiger sleeping, don't assume it's dead
.

—traditional Cambodian proverb

Our Christmas tree with the sexy ornaments was a big hit. I was a little worried the next morning when a couple of cops came in for a coffee break—I was afraid they'd be able to tell we had a poached tree—but once they took a look at the Apsaras cookies, they didn't even notice the pine tree underneath.

“You gonna sell these kind of cookies?” one asked.

“We might. Come back next week and find out,” I said.

Since Uncle had worked through the night supervising the bakers, he slept through the morning rush, when all three of us were waiting on customers, Anita barely able to ring up each sale fast enough before another customer pushed to the front of the line clutching a pink box full of pastry. Then he didn't come in for the noon rush either.

All week, we'd had great crowds, but Uncle never saw any of them. I wondered if this were part of his penance or if he were trying to avoid me, or if, perhaps, he really enjoyed his rounds more than standing behind the counter ringing up sales. I was pleased with the success, but I was already growing a little restless. The donut shop wasn't as interesting as running our restaurant at home. I was more of a cashier than anything else here.

Still, every time I heard the bells on the door ring, I glanced up and peered over the crowd at the counter, hoping I'd spot Uncle coming in, but it was never him.

As our trays were depleted and we had to turn some customers away, I called out, “Come back tomorrow bright and early! We'll have plenty more!”

Sitan laughed at me, but I said, “Hey, don't let a potential customer get away. We need as many people as we can get.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.” He saluted me with a wink.

Then the bells rang again, and I looked up eagerly. This time it was a surly-looking Asian man in his early twenties, his hair shaved close on the sides, the top spiked high. He wore a white short-sleeved T-shirt and had dense tats on both arms. My first thought was, Gangster. He's casing the place. I gave him a hard look, the kind that said, I remember what you look like, and he looked away, rubbing his arms as though he thought he could hide the tigers and snakes and dragons emblazoned there.

I tried to nudge Sitan, I wanted him to see, too, just in case, but Sitan was busy flirting with a nurse in scrubs as he rang up her bag of donut holes. Anita had disappeared, maybe she'd slipped into the back to take a bathroom break, maybe she was getting something from the kitchen. I hoped the gangbanger had seen her when he'd come in so that he knew we had a white person working in here, someone the cops would care about if he tried to rob us. I knew I shouldn't think this way—the counselor I went to see in college would have labeled this a low self-esteem issue—but I thought it all the same. This is what I would call my survival instinct.

I made a mental note to myself to send a flyer to the police station. If any more cops should come by, we should offer them free coffee with a donut purchase. We should print up a coupon for them, something their families could bring in later. I'd have to train everyone to smile and say, “Thank you for stopping by, officers.” I needed to re-think my issues with authority figures.
A steady stream of cops coming in for a sugar and caffeine fix would be better than hiring a private security guard.

As we were close to closing, our customers had thinned until there were just some teenagers checking each other out while pretending to look at the drinks in the cooler. Sitan was ringing up a woman and her daughter coming back from soccer practice.

The mother laughed with her daughter, and they waved their good-byes.

“Keep checking back!” I called. “We're changing our menu all the time!”

Anita emerged from the kitchen and pinched me on the arm. “You little capitalist. Can't stop the sales pitch, can you?”

I shook my head. Now that Anita was back, I was hoping the gangbanger would take notice and leave. But he was hanging back by the booth, waiting for the teenagers to finish paying for their drinks.

Anita came up behind me and leaned her chin into my shoulder. “Are you thinking what I'm thinking?” she whispered into my ear. “That guy's been staring at you for about fifteen minutes.”

“Don't say anything.” I kept my face neutral. “He won't try anything so long as you're here. At least, I don't think he would.”

“Don't worry, sweetie. I won't embarrass you.” She winked at me. “I think he's cute, too.”

I stared at Anita in amazement. With a nod, she licked her finger and touched my thigh, then pulled back as though she'd burned herself.