The Tiger's War

I should have heard the warning growl before pulling open the dresser drawer in the garage. It had been twenty years since my husband and I had done any cleaning out here beyond superficial tidying. We’d plunked down his scratched childhood dresser in the garage when we first bought the house. Since there wasn’t enough room for the old dresser inside our new home, it never traveled any farther. The top of the dresser became a landing station for stray gardening tools, rafts of paper towels, and a box of Hannukah decorations.

Over the years, looking for a place to capture future grandchildren’s presents—the minky blankets with their pelts of faux fur, the bibs with grinning monkeys that reminded me of my curious daughter—I found a home for the gifts in the garage dresser. At the time, turning an empty dresser into a shrine to my daughter’s future progeny had filled me with delight. Though she’d been only thirteen when we moved into this house, I’d made a home within a home for her future. Like nesting dolls, my daughter within me, my grandchildren within her, all of us inside my version of a hope chest.

Though I was committed to cleaning the garage, I hesitated before opening the drawer. I felt something sharp claw at my throat. I didn’t want to find what I’d been missing for the past six years, ever since my daughter cut off all contact with me. Didn’t want to think of the daughter she’d birthed, whom I’ve never met, or the lost opportunity of ever seeing my daughter’s stomach expand or running my fingers over her belly where a small foot kicked 

B-u-b-b-e in Morse code. 

My heart pounded as I reached for the tarnished brass handle. The open drawer revealed what I didn’t know I’d lost. There, on the top of a mound of baby clothes, lay a tiny tiger. I blinked. The tiger flattened and I saw the beast for what it was: my daughter’s Purim costume from when she was three. My breath caught as my three-year-old daughter again filled in the costume, bouncing up and down with glee in our old kitchen—a kitten about to be outfitted in big cat’s clothing. “Put it on me, Mommy!” she’d squealed.

I backed away from the drawer and sank onto the stepladder where I usually sit to adjust my shoes. I needed to adjust the folds of my heart. I remembered making that costume and facing my fears to do so. I thought of myself as the type of feminist more adroit in her profession than in the traditional womanly arts. I can only cook a few dishes, and then my skills are limited to Jewish favorites: matzoh ball soup, rugelach, noodle kugel. A sewing machine never crossed my threshold. That Purim, the year my daughter turned three, I gathered my courage to make her a costume, like a real mother should and could. 

I thought, you can glue. 

I thought, you can paint stripes. 

Looking at her punim with its smooth polished cheeks and apple-shaped head, I thought, for you, my darling, I will face my fears. 

I purchased a glue gun, tiny red gems with flat underbellies. Puff paint. A flesh-colored leotard and tights. I laid the cloth tenderly onto the kitchen table and plugged in the gun. While it heated, I took a deep breath, uncapped the yellow and brown quick-drying paint. I squeezed the plastic bottles, drawing wavy, random stripes as I floated the tips across the leotard. After the glue gun’s light turned green, I began gluing on the plastic rubies, some of which stuck to my finger as I pressed them against the tiger’s body.

In the toy room, with its giant wicker chest overflowing with dolls and books, my three-year-old played with her stuffed lion. The lion’s bellow sounded more like “War” than “Roar.”  “Come here,” I called from the kitchen. “I have something for you.” Her tiny face peeked through the doorway—the lion left to languish behind her on the playroom floor. When my daughter saw the tiger’s pelt hanging from my fingers, she ran to hug it to her chest.

 “Mine,” she said.

“Mine,” I echoed, grabbing her in my arms.

She wriggled away and into the leotard and tights. She then sat ramrod straight in the kitchen chair while I dipped a brush into black paint. My daughter was going to become Queen Esther of the Jungle. I stroked the first line of a whisker from her mouse-sized nose out towards her cheek. She giggled.

“Tickles,” she said.

 “I know,” I said. “Don’t move.”

Her head lifted higher, as if she wore a crown only visible to us. I continued drawing black whiskers over her silky flesh. Then I handed her a mirror.

“War,” she said, turning her head this way and that. She scrunched up her nose, the black whiskers wrinkling, and growled as loudly as she could, “WAR.”

Adore, I thought while my daughter admired herself in the glass. 

Since that Purim so many years ago, my tiny tiger grew and grew and grew. Before I knew what was happening, though, she’d declared a war I didn’t know we were fighting. And I’d never dreamed we’d be fighting on opposite sides. She moved away from home, attended college, got married. She started talking to me in clipped tones. When she came home for visits, and I hugged her at the front door, she would stiffen, her arms hanging frozen to her side.  I deeply regret not having the courage to ask her why along the way.

The last time I heard my daughter’s voice was on the phone six years ago while we discussed plans for her to come spend Rosh Hashanah with us. The conversation started mildly then quickly exploded. I don’t remember what I was upset about, but I do remember saying, “You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother.” I kept repeating it like a refrain. “You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother. You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother.”  Her voice became shrill. I kept intoning You don’t know what it’s like to be a mother, as if stirring a cauldron. 

I don’t remember my daughter’s last words to me, only the dead silence after she’d disconnected the call. When I called her back, it went straight to voicemail. She’d blocked me. 

Now, years later, when I think back to that last conversation, I still draw a blank about what upset us. Perhaps the trauma of the moment has ripped my mind apart. I gaze at the photo where my teenage daughter and I have our arms wrapped around each other and imagine that my head has been torn out of the picture leaving a ragged hole. 

I see the dubious look on people’s faces when they ask why my daughter doesn’t talk to me and I can’t give them a satisfying answer. I want to roar back at them, “I don’t fucking know,” with the force of my hot, meaty breath. 

-Bliss Goldstein

Bliss Goldstein is a cross-genre writer who delights in writing creative non-fiction, fiction, and poetry, sometimes in the same piece. She has been published in HuffPost, the LA Times, Judith Magazine, and CALYX Journal, where she won the Margarita Donnelly Prize for Prose Writing. She taught writing at Western Washington University and has an MLA from Stanford University, where she co-founded the journal “Tangents.” Go to www.blissgoldstein.com if you want more bliss in your life.