Women & Other Animals (2 page)

Big Joanie wonders why they don't stop the music altogether. The faces before her are pale with fear. Behind her, the cat stretches farther with each stride. The memory of prowling Asian forests travels from its feet into the muscles of its legs. The tiger spikes the air with growls, tests its space, tastes its freedom.

When Joanie was twelve, a year older than the oldest blackhaired girl, she was working alone in her mother's garden, on the far side of the barnyard, along the road.

She was weeding a row of bush beans, straddling the plants on her knees, when she heard noises behind her. Instead of investigating the noises, she kept weeding.

She sensed danger up and down her spine, noticed her spine, maybe for the first time, as if it were a closely planted row of beans or seed corn sprouting in her back.

The men came from behind, through the garden gate with a gunny sack which they pulled over her head without even shaking out the last of the chicken feed.

She had never breathed the fine dust of chicken feed so deeply, or felt it cake her eyes, or filter into her hair and catch on her scalp. The men pressed her into the sand and garden dung, so that the grit worked itself into her armpits.

Joanie was as big as a grownup, and probably those men had mistaken her for a grown woman, her mother said later, scrubbing chicken manure off brown eggs with enough force that she would soon break one. A few mornings later when Joanie was standing in the driveway with her arms across her chest, her father, who was a big man but not an ugly man, said those men were probably from out of town. He looked as though he wanted to say more, but he grew unsteady watching his only daughter—who was already

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as tall as he was—hug herself and rock back and forth, and he slammed the truck door and left for work.

The first man pinched her breasts and called her ugly. "You'll like this, you ugly bitch." Coming from a grown man that word "ugly" stung her. The second man spoke sweetly. "Oh baby, this feels good." When he said, ''I want to kiss you," the first man kicked dirt on them and said, "She'll see us, you asshole." With the first man, Joanie just prayed for it to be over, for the day to be over so she could go to bed, for this life to be over so she could start again and run when she first heard the noises. As the second man whispered kind words to her, Joanie felt dulled by a sympathy toward him, a sickening camaraderie which slowed time.

"Don't take that bag off," the first man said, "or we're coming back." Joanie lay across the bush beans, sticky, pasted with sand and dung, her Tshirt pushed up under the chicken feed sack, her throat clogged by the mash. The men tore through the garden, trampling her mother's tomato and squash plants as Joanie lay listening to the mockery of crows above. She felt herself separating, the way a garden divides into rows of snap beans and corn and tomatoes. Her spine had only just come alive minutes before, but now she thought of the way vertebrae boiled apart in oxtail stew. Her mind halved, and halved again, endless halving. She lay swathed in an awful calm, feeling the rhythm of the men's bodies long after they were gone.

"Doughnut move," says Conroy's boss, Bela, the assistant to Helmut. "Stay calm, everybody. Doughnut move."

Big Joanie wishes she could sink behind the barricade, but there is no room, and she wants to stand up straight, but the ledge on the barricade cuts into her, so she continues to bend slightly forward, touching the elevenyearold's knees with her own big knees. When a drop of cherry juice is poised to drip from her snow cone tray, Big Joanie shifts so the drop doesn't fall on the girl's white denim but instead runs icecold down her own chest inside her uniform shirt. The smallest girl buries her face in her father's sleeve, but the older girls shrink against their own seats. Big Joanie feels herself stretch wide across the tiger's field of vision. She wonders if she will be

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ripped open and devoured like a milk cow, like an Asian water buffalo.

"Freeze," comes the voice of Helmut, the world's best animal trainer. "Nobody will move." In less than a minute, Helmut should be performing, so he is wearing silk pants and a vest with no shirt. His blond hair lies perfectly in place, even as sprigs of her own hair snap loose from her pony tail. The tiger Helmut has trained continues to pace, orange, black, orange stripes rippling across big cat muscle. "Nobody will move," commands Helmut.

Though she always has remembered that afternoon in the garden, has used it as a marker, a zero point on her own time line, she has never had a good hold of it. She knew those men with voices but no faces about as well as she knew God. Big Joanie obeys the world's best animal trainer, but she hates it that every person in this arena except her can see the tiger. Only about a minute has passed since the sunglasses man dropped the snow cone; the cherry color hasn't even begun to fade from her remaining snow. But the air has changed, become as empty as before a tornado. If she dares look up, the roof of the arena will be sucked away, and open sky will mock her. In arenas across the country, she has held her snow cones high as an offering, but today God has made it clear, he will not bargain with Big Joanie.

The manager's girlfriend begins to lick him. He blinks to clear his vision and loosens his tie. The girlfriend samples him, tastes him. Small, insignificant circus people scatter in the tiger's wake. A dozen men in blue coveralls draw near the tiger, then back away, like the tide coming in and going out. Still, the music blasts. The manager presses the bleached cuff of his shirt sleeve against his forehead. The tiger pads back and forth between the cage and the front center seats. His girlfriend's mouth closes around him.

Below, that bigheaded, bigassed snow cone girl is wedged against a low barrier between the arena and the seats, her back to the tiger. That girl lugged herself up and down the stairs of this section early in the show. She was doublebagugly but oddly voluptuous, her breasts and hips pornographic in their proportion. Lying Page 8

with that giantess, eyes closed, a man might feel he'd come home after a long journey. Still, even a man who liked them big couldn't get past the face. A man who would take that to bed was a man who entertained no illusions of himself. That's what the manager had been thinking when she looked right at him, through eyes as closeset as double barrels of a shotgun. She seemed to know what he'd been thinking and that he'd lied to four creditors on the phone this morning. Then, just as abruptly, she looked away.

His girlfriend purrs, her breath raspy. He grabs a handful of that glorious hair and pushes her head down harder, establishes a better rhythm. Sweet God in heaven, he thinks, but his pleasure is lashed to his fear that she will stop. He knows she would like nothing more than to look up and see this tiger loose on the arena floor, but he can't bring himself to tell her.

Tiger muscles flex behind Big Joanie, close enough that the sharp smell of tiger urine is overpowering. Helmut, Bela, and Conroy draw near, pushing the tiger closer to the barricade and closer to Big Joanie. Helmut speaks to the tiger in German, words that sound as if they emanate from some private train car where the three men sit, smoking cigars and drinking liquor in comfortable chairs. The tiger stops. Big Joanie hasn't realized the world could be motionless, but the tiger stops pacing, and the world is like a stilllife: ugly woman and tiger.

"Nobody will move," whispers Helmut in English. "Everything will be fine." He speaks so softly that Big Joanie wonders if she is reading his mind rather than hearing him. The voice mesmerizes her, connects her to him. He will lift her from danger before the audience of thousands.

But the tiger growls and severs their connection. Of the two creatures, Helmut is the weaker. The tiger's eyes cut into Big Joanie, sending twisty patterns of electricity through her. The tiger is aware of her rushing blood and of the muscle beneath her fat.

"You will not move." Helmut's voice travels easily into her, and if Helmut or any man had ever declared loyalty to her, Joanie might stop.

"Doughnut move, girl," says Bela. But Bela has never cared for

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her either. Remembering the men she's known is futile, though she can't stop herself. Pictures of them rattle through her like strungtogether boxcars.

"Big Joanie, stay still!" commands Conroy. If he had invited her to his room last night, she might obey. If Conroy had covered her head to protect her and not to hide her, if he had ever sat beside her in the pie car or held her hand, she would become meat for him now.

Instead, Big Joanie wills herself to turn, and as she does, lost vertebrae line up and reconnect. Big Joanie feels puzzle pieces snap into place. She turns broad shoulders to face the tiger, straight on, full frame. The creature is as strange as Asia, as familiar as her own reflection.

She rests her snow cone tray on the barricade. She sees the tiger more clearly than the hairspinning woman sees the husband who controls the rope that holds her aloft, more clearly than Big Joanie's mother ever saw her father, more clearly than any pretty woman will ever see an ordinary man. The tiger is more golden than orange, its black stripes as delicate as smoke trails from a cigarette, as painful to Joanie as whip marks. One pale front leg barren of stripes reveals an asymmetry.

Shaggy feet with claws like dark quartermoons grip the rubber mat uneasily, as if testing foreign soil. Big Joanie has seen this tiger jump through a ring of fire, yet she has never really seen its yellow god's eyes or read the calligraphy of its warpaint face. The tiger stares back at her. She weighs what it weighs. If the tiger pounces, she will be overcome, but the tiger must look at her and acknowledge her, and Big Joanie will know the face of the animal that devours her.

Tiger muscles tense and contract as they do before springing at Helmut's bidding. But the tiger hesitates. It shifts its weight and looks away from Big Joanie, retracts its claws. The tiger glances toward the empty cage, and shifts its weight again. Seconds flash in Joanie's mind like glimpses of sun between boxcars. The tiger twists its body, tilts its head, and roars into the bank of lights.

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Rhyme Game

Tinny Marie and her mother rattled along Halfmoon Road in the pickup truck, heading east toward the risen sun. Bits of trash flew out of the cans and barrels in the back—a plastic bag from Spartan egg noodles, a popsicle wrapper, grocery store receipts. Tinny Marie's mother had canceled weekly garbage service because she could save money by storing the trash until she had a truckload and then dumping it herself. The longer she saved it, the more she was getting out of her eightdollar compactor fee. Between compactor visits, cans of garbage lined up outside the back door, waiting.

Tinny Marie's mother was driving with one hand and holding a cup of coffee with the other. Coffee sloshed with each bump, spilling and soaking into the foam rubber where the bench seat was ripped. The smell of burned coffee made Tinny want to gag. She knelt on the seat sideways and leaned out the window to watch the swamp glide past. The tips of marsh grasses were white with frost. When the pickup crossed the stream which flowed under the road and later crossed their property, Tinny spit out the window toward the water. She turned her sideview mirror in all directions to see the road shimmy up from behind.

"That coffee smells real bad," she said.

"Best coffee I ever had," said her mother.

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"Does the coffee make you glad? Or mad?"

Tinny's mother honked and waved at a man coming toward them in the opposite lane in a Martin's Excavating dump truck. In order to wave, she let loose the wheel, causing the truck to swerve right. Tinny closed her eyes and clutched the cracked seat and door handle. Her brothers had promised to take her with them to the auto parts junk yard, but the way her mother drove, there was no guarantee she'd be alive to go. Loose gravel spit up as Tinny's mother jerked the truck back onto the pavement.

"Looks like we're here," said her mother as she braked to turn into the compactor driveway.

"Let's have a beer," said Tinny Marie.

"Did you peer in the mirror?"

"I'm a queer reindeer."

They backed into the unloading zone, and Tinny helped her mother empty the blue plastic oil drums and galvanized metal cans. The more an object was unlike garbage, the better Tinny liked throwing it into the pit. Her favorites included pieces of busted furniture, appliances, and books. A handwritten sign on the side of the operator's shack said "No TVs!" Tinny Marie would've liked nothing better than to see a TV explode.

After they had emptied the cans and barrels and swept out the rusting truck bed, Tinny climbed on top of the cab. The roof bowed and made a sound like thunder beneath her weight. From inside his shack below her, the compactor man turned on the hydraulics and a chunk of the world began to compress. Lengths of wood splintered and snapped like bones. Cans flattened and bottles popped. Tinny imagined a stray cat jumping into the hole. She closed her eyes and hunched her shoulders against a shiver.

"Tinny Marie, what do you see?" asked her mother from the ground.

Tinny opened her eyes. "I see a tree and it sees me."

"What if I were you?" asked her mother. "And you were me?"

"What if bumbles was a bee? What if there was a flea on that bee? On his knee?"

Tinny's mother carried her empty cup into the shack with the compactor man and closed the door. Hands on her hips, Tinny Page 12

surveyed the field beyond the mowed grounds. She could see all the way through to Indian Road from her perch, nearly all the way home across the yellow scratch of fall. The reds of the sumac trees are like scabs, she thought, on hills that are like knees. "These trees are bees' fleas' knees," she said aloud.

From the top of the truck, she could see Jimmy Poke's red and white cows lounging in the sun beside the farm pond edged with frost. The cows didn't seem to care that winter was coming. They lay chewing as if seasons didn't change. Jimmy Poke was a friend of her mother's. He dragged one leg behind him as he walked and called all the women "Dahlin'." He always kissed her mother on the mouth. Tinny Marie said "Dahlin" twice out loud but couldn't find a rhyme.