When You Trap a Tiger, page 2
Mom waits for us on the front stoop, which is nice, I guess, but kind of strange because she should open the door and go inside.
She shakes her head and frowns. “Halmoni isn’t answering,” she says. “She’s not here.”
“What do you mean, she’s not here?” I whisper. For a moment, I panic: the tiger ate her. But I tell myself to remain calm.
Mom sighs. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
I can’t tell if she’s worried or annoyed; the rain runs over her eyes and lips, making her emotions blurry. I wish I knew how she felt, so I could know how I should feel.
Sam fiddles with the brass doorknob, willing it to turn. But that stubborn door stays shut. “So…” Sam stares at Mom, then at me. With her hair flat and her thick eyeliner running in black stripes down her cheeks, she looks like a wet tiger. “We just have to wait here. In the rain. For an undetermined amount of time?”
Mom wipes her glasses on her soaked T-shirt, which doesn’t help much. “No. I don’t think so. Hang on.” She holds up one finger, then runs around to the side of the house.
“Where’s she going?” I ask. I cup my hands over my head, trying to form a protective roof, but it’s useless. “Where’s Halmoni?”
Sam doesn’t answer. We watch as Mom stops beneath the living room window. She taps the side of the pane, runs her hands over the sill, then thumps a fist right below the glass.
“Well, this is normal,” Sam says, voice laced with sarcasm.
Then Mom shoves the window open. She glances over at us before hoisting herself up and tumbling headfirst into the house.
“Whoa,” I whisper. I’ve never seen Mom do anything like that.
Sam shakes her head. “Whoa is right. I bet she did that all the time as a teenager.” Sam looks at me like she can’t decide whether to frown or laugh, and I know exactly how she feels, because picturing Mom as a teenager is both ridiculous and kind of scary. It’s weird to think about Mom before we existed.
But Sam smiles, and my heart relaxes. “She probably snuck out to party with her friends.”
I nod. When Sam is happy, her moon face glows, and she looks like my sister again. I inch closer to her—just barely, so she doesn’t notice.
She wrinkles her nose. “Do you think she snuck out to see boys?”
“I don’t think she dated anybody before Dad.” I can’t picture Mom with anyone but Dad. Or, to tell the truth, I can’t picture her with anyone, because I don’t remember the time of Mom and Dad.
I can tell right away that was the wrong thing to say, though, because Sam’s glow shuts off fast. She clenches her jaw and turns away. “That’s just naive,” she mutters.
Thinking about Dad is different for Sam than it is for me. She’s old enough to remember him. When he died in a car accident, she was seven. I was only four.
“Sam…,” I start, but I don’t know how to finish the sentence.
I used to be able to talk to her. I used to tell her everything. If this had happened a few years ago, I would have said, I JUST SAW A TIGER IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD. I would’ve shouted it right into her ear because I couldn’t hold it in.
“I just saw…,” I try again. But the locks on the other side of the door interrupt me. They sing as Mom slips them, slides them and opens the door. “Hurry inside,” she says, as if we could get more soaked than we already are.
Sam and I enter, leaving watery footprints in the entryway, lake-sized puddles on the wood floor.
Halmoni’s house looks like a memory. The living room and kitchen cuddle together around a purple dining table and a fireplace that doesn’t work. An old grandfather clock tuts in the far corner of the living room.
On the mantel, two stone lions hug a photograph of Mom, welcoming wealth into her life. On the other side, a frog guards a photo of Sam and me, protecting our happiness. And everywhere—in baskets hung from the ceiling, sitting on countertops, stuffed into bowls—are bundles of herbs and smudge sticks, to cast away bad energy.
When I breathe the house in, the scent of buckwheat noodles, sage, and laundry detergent smells like home.
Sam’s less happy. She folds her arms over her chest and frowns. “Um,” she says. “What’s that?”
I follow her gaze. At the other end of the living room, there’s Halmoni’s bedroom, the bathroom, and two staircases: one that goes up to the attic bedroom, and one that goes down to the basement. But now, in front of the basement door, there’s a tower of engraved Korean chests and cardboard boxes, stacked like a barricade.
Mom shakes her head. “That’s bizarre, isn’t it? Why would she do that?” She chews on her thumbnail and glances around the room. For a second, I catch the worry in her eyes.
My earlier excitement drips away. It is odd. They’re out of place. And Halmoni’s not here.
Something cold and dark settles in my stomach. “Where’s Halmoni?” I ask.
Mom looks at me and softens. “Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure she’s just out shopping or visiting her friends. You know how she is.” She gives me a smile that’s sad and hopeful at once. “Are you happy to be here, Lily?”
There’s something going on, something she isn’t saying. I want to ask her about it, but I don’t want to take away her smile, so I just nod.
She’s about to say something else, but a shiver grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me.
Mom blinks at us, like she forgot how wet we were. “Right. Hang on. Let me find something for us to change into.” Our suitcases are back in the car, and none of us want to brave the rain, so Mom wanders down the hall and into Halmoni’s room.
When she emerges, her hands are full of towels and Halmoni’s silk nightgowns, and Sam and I pluck two off the top. The pale orange nightgown shimmers and shifts like sunset in my hands. Even Halmoni’s pajamas are beautiful.
“I’m gonna turn up the heat,” Mom says. “Wait here.”
But of course Sam doesn’t wait. As soon as Mom walks back into Halmoni’s room, Sam dodges boxes and furniture and heads right upstairs to our bedroom, leaving puddle-lakes behind her.
I start after her, but hesitate. I don’t want to be the little eggi who follows her unya everywhere. But in the end, of course, I follow her anyway.
Upstairs, the attic room is creaky-cozy, with peaked ceilings, a full-length, wood-framed mirror, and two twin beds dressed in faded quilts. When Sam and I lived here, we pushed the beds together and curled into one another, trading stories in the dark.
Now the beds are on opposite sides of the room, separated by the wide window.
Sam throws off her wet clothes, smears her dark makeup onto the clean towel, and tugs the black sequined nightgown on. Then she flops onto her bed. The mattress greets her with a groan, and she reaches behind the bed frame to plug her phone in before turning to me. “What are you doing? You were supposed to wait downstairs.”
Sam always acts like Mom’s orders only apply to me, which is annoying, but I’m used to it.
I sigh and dry off before slipping into my own nightgown. The soft warmth sends a shiver through me, releasing the cold in my bones. I breathe in, hoping for Halmoni’s milk scent, but all I get is a hint of soap.
Sam frowns, still waiting for me to leave, but I sit on my bed instead.
“Does this place feel weird to you?” I pick at the bedspread as I speak, careful not to look at her. “With Halmoni missing, and all that stuff blocking the basement, and the…just the vibe? Like something’s wrong?”
“First of all, Halmoni’s not missing. She’s just out. Don’t be so dramatic. Second of all, yeah. The vibe is weird. But Halmoni’s house always feels like this.” Next to her, Sam’s phone goes bright and begins loading, like it’s stretching as it wakes up from a nap. She grabs it and watches it blink on, only half paying attention to me. “Do you remember last time we moved here?”
“Kind of.” We lived here for three years after Dad died. I was born in California, but my first memories are shaped like this house.
Sam scrolls through her phone, and I don’t expect her to respond, but she drops it and looks up. “At first it was nice to be here, because Halmoni took care of us when we were sad and she helped Mom out. But Halmoni was always doing weird things without explaining any of it. She’s full of secrets. This house is full of secrets.”
I chew my lip. “Like what?”
Sam rolls her eyes. “I don’t know. That’s not the point. The point is we’re here instead of California and I hate it. I hate being here.”
Sam’s words are so harsh that I flinch. “Don’t say that.”
The way I remember it, Sam and I loved living here. We were sad because of Dad, of course, but it wasn’t all bad. Sam and I told stories in the attic room, we ate rice cakes in the kitchen, we created imaginary worlds in the basement. We were together.
I want to ask her, Do you remember?
But Sam keeps going. “It’s just not fair, Lily. Mom wanted to move closer to Halmoni, which is nice and all, but we didn’t even get a say. We didn’t even get to say goodbye. Aren’t you a little bit angry?”
If I’m being honest, I am, maybe, a little bit angry. But I’m happy to be here, too.
I clear my throat. Take a breath. Swallow. “I think maybe…you should be a little nicer to Mom.” My palms go sweaty. This is dangerous territory. I don’t usually confront Sam. We’re sisters, and sisters are always supposed to be on the same side.
Sam rolls her eyes. “Seriously, Lily? I can’t believe you’re defending her.”
“I just…” I can’t get the look on Mom’s face out of my head. Downstairs, looking for Halmoni, she seemed so fragile. Like, not how moms are supposed to look. I don’t know how Sam didn’t see that.
“You just…?” Sam stares at me, and when I don’t answer, she sighs. “Spit it out, Lily. You don’t have to be so creepy and quiet all the time. You’re being a QAG.”
QAG is Sam for Quiet Asian Girl. As in, a stereotype. As in, Sam tries so hard not to be a stereotype that she wears black lipstick and bleached a lock of her hair and says every little thought that comes to mind.
I tell her, I’m only trying to help. I ask, Don’t you see how hard Mom’s trying? I say, I don’t know why you’re so mad at me.
But actually I don’t say any of that. The words get stuck in my throat. Sam’s just so angry all the time, and everything I say sets her off.
She rolls her eyes again. “Whatever. You always make me be the bad guy, just because I speak my mind. You don’t have to be so afraid to rock the boat, you know.”
What Sam doesn’t realize is that she’s already rocking our boat. If I rock it, too, the boat will flip. We’ll drown.
I listen to the rain beat against the roof, and I run my hand over the quilt. I say, “You should be happy. You like Halmoni.” At least I think that’s true. Sam doesn’t seem to like anything anymore. Except her phone, maybe.
She shrugs. “I’m just saying. The point is: having to live here, without any friends, with just your mom and grandmother? That’s a lot.”
“And your sister,” I say, so quiet I can barely hear myself. So quiet, like a QAG. “I’m here, too.”
Sam has a sharp response ready, I can tell. But my words stop her. Her shoulders relax.
“Yeah,” she says.
It’s just one very small word, but she says it soft, and it opens up my heart and warmth spills out, spreading through my body, into my toes and fingertips.
“Yeah,” I reply. I almost feel like I could tell her about the tiger dream-mirage-spirit thing.
Then, downstairs, the door slams open. Halmoni’s home.
Halmoni throws the front door open with a bang and squeals, “Hello, my girls! My girls home to see me!”
Her voice travels all the way up to our bedroom, and I run down to see her, my feet pounding against the noisy old stairs.
Halmoni is thinner than the last time I saw her. Her colorful silk tunic and white pants hang looser than usual. Her jewel pendant rests in the U-shaped dip between her collarbones, deeper than before.
But she’s still as glamorous as always, with her lips bright red, her hair permed and dyed blackest black. In her arms, she carries four big grocery bags, filled to the brim with food.
Mom’s already at the door, dressed in Halmoni’s pajamas and greeting her with questions—“Why weren’t you here? Why didn’t you answer your phone? Remember when I told you we’d be here at six? We had to stand outside! And why’d you get so much food? That’s too much food!”
Halmoni just laughs. “Oh, my daughter, so nosy!” she says before placing her grocery bags and her knockoff Louis Vuitton purse in Mom’s hands, as if Mom were a butler.
Mom frowns, but before she can protest, Halmoni sees me and opens her arms for a hug.
“Lily Bean!” she says. Her whole face lights up, and I didn’t even know someone could be so happy about anything. I run down the hallway and slide into her arms, soaking up her love.
“Careful.” Mom sets Halmoni’s bags on the kitchen table and crosses her arms. “Don’t knock your halmoni over.”
Halmoni wraps herself tight around me and scolds Mom over my head. “Hush, young lady. At least Lily is loving me.”
Mom sighs. “I do love you. That’s why we’re here.”
Halmoni ignores this. She places her hands on my shoulders and leans back so she can look at me, grinning when she notices her nightgown. “Ohh, look at you. You are little mini-me! So pretty. So shiny.”
I laugh. “Shiny?” Sam’s the one who took the sequined nightgown, not me.
“Like the sun,” Halmoni says, winking. Halmoni is the only person in the world that my invisibility never works on. She always sees straight to my heart.
“Halmoni,” I say, pulse hiccuping as I think of the tiger, “I have to tell you something.”
But Sam appears, padding quietly down the creaky stairs and hovering in the kitchen doorway.
“And my moon,” Halmoni says, walking over to hug Sam.
Sam stiffens as Halmoni wraps her up, but she relaxes after a moment, leaning into Halmoni, breathing in. Nobody can resist Halmoni. She’s like gravity.
Halmoni pulls back and strokes Sam’s white streak. “So pretty, you hair.”
“No,” Mom says. “Please don’t encourage her. It’s unnatural.”
Sam glares at Mom, and Halmoni twirls the streak in her fingers. “It run in our family. I have this when I little, too,” she says, winking at Sam and me.
Mom’s voice is tight. “A bleached streak is not a genetic trait.”
Halmoni doesn’t even look at her. “And so fashion. Sam look like a rock star.”
Sam grins. Mom takes a very deep breath.
Mom hates the white streak, but Sam refuses to do anything about it. She claims it’s not her fault—that her hair just naturally grows that color.
It’s a whole thing.
Halmoni turns back to Mom and frowns. “Why the girls’ hair so wet?”
Mom clears her throat as she puts away Halmoni’s groceries. “Like I was saying, they are wet because we had to stand outside in the rain. It would have been nice for you to, you know, be here when you said you would. I had to use the old windowpane trick and climb inside—in front of my daughters!”
“Always through the window.” Halmoni looks at Sam and me and clicks her tongue. “She go out, she go in. Even the attic window, she climb out. You mother was a very sneaky child. So much trouble.”
Mom sputters, and Sam and I exchange a glance. I don’t know how Mom could climb out the attic window—it’s impossibly high—but Halmoni always exaggerates like this, and it’s funny to picture.
Sam bites back a smile and I swallow a laugh.
“And for that matter, you shouldn’t be driving anymore. Especially not in the rain,” Mom continues. “If you needed to get groceries, you should’ve waited for me to come. You need to be careful. You need to—”
“Tsst,” Halmoni hisses, holding up one finger. Sam and I used to watch a TV show about a dog trainer who used an angry hissing noise to tame dogs. This is the same noise.
Mom clenches her jaw, then tries another line of questioning. “And what about all this stuff? Why are you living like this?” She gestures to the stack of boxes and furniture in front of the basement door.
Halmoni shrugs one shoulder. “The basement flood, so the stuff come up.”
Sam raises an eyebrow. “You carried all this up by yourself?”
Halmoni turns to her and winks, which is typical. She doesn’t feel the need to answer questions, and I don’t mind that.
Mom, on the other hand, does. “No, seriously. Did you carry this up the stairs on your own? You know you could hurt yourself. You—” She pauses. “Where am I supposed to sleep?” When we lived here before, Mom slept in the basement, wedged in between all Halmoni’s things.
“You sleep in living room, on the couch,” Halmoni responds, like this is no big deal.
I expect Mom to argue, but she walks over to the boxes. “Okay, well, at least let me move this stuff. We can push it away from the basement door, and I can check out the flood damage downstairs. Sam, some help?”
Sam stares at her.
Mom sighs. “Lily?”
I start to walk over, but Halmoni grabs my wrist and pulls me back. “No, no. No moving those.”
Mom blinks. “They’re in the way.”
Halmoni waves her arms in front of her, like she’s warding off Mom’s annoyance. “No, no. Today is not auspicious day. When I move boxes out, that is a lucky day. But today is dangerous day for spirits. We move another day.”
A dangerous day for spirits. I swallow. I have to get Halmoni alone so I can ask her about possible tiger spirits.
