The Resurrection of Tigger

A Story by Joy Hussain

Jenny’s neighbor has a chain link fence across the front of her yard. Into this fence she likes to jam tattered, weather-beaten, moth-chewed stuffed animals. Jenny can’t remember a time when the pathetic little critters have not been standing sentinel across the front of Mrs. Lewis’s property. Jenny doesn’t know how exactly long they’ve been there or why; they are far too ratty to be decorative. Besides, even if they had been nicer, they are far too creepy to be charming, with their little heads jammed through the holes in the chain link, arms and legs similarly pinned, eyes, noses, mouths missing here and there like some tortured martyrs from a great war.

II.

Jenny’s other neighbor is Paul Castillo. He’s maybe in his early thirties and sometimes mows the lawn with his shirt off. He has a very ugly barbed wire tattoo across one bicep and a thin line of hair which leads from his navel into the waistband of his grass-stained jeans. She knows this because she sometimes glimpses him from behind a copy of People, Newsweek, or National Geographic when she’s sitting in the swing on her front porch; the number of glimpses which she has amassed suggests that they are not entirely by accident.

III.

It’s Saturday. Jenny’s sitting in the porch swing. She’s made three sandwiches; peanut butter, she likes it crunchy, and sliced banana. Jenny probably won’t eat all of them, since she’s trying to drop a couple pounds, but she likes the way the three little triangles look lined up against the cornflower blue of the plate. Harper’s Bazaar is lying open in her lap. It’s an article about a recent Christian Dior fashion show. The models look like a flock of richly plumed birds which some photographer has caught in a slightly unnatural habitat, like a zoo or a pet shop. She wonders if they’re similarly embarrassed to be gawked at.

The fashion spread’s getting boring; Jenny glances up from its pages and notices Mrs. Lewis watching her from the front yard of the neighboring house. The woman is morbidly obese; she gets around in one of those motored hover chairs. Jenny smiles slightly in her neighbor’s direction; she remembers the too many sandwiches and tilts her head slightly towards them, using one amateurishly manicured finger to lift the edge of the plate. Join me, she mouths silently. Mrs. Lewis’s mouth becomes a thin, hard line. The woman drops her head, and Jenny sadly wonders if she is ashamed to be caught staring or maybe somehow ashamed to be seen. Jenny watches her motor away around the back of the house and thinks that if the models are rare birds then Mrs. Lewis is an owl, shy and brooding and oh so very sad.

Monday morning. Jenny’s car is sitting, hood open, in her driveway. She’s elbow deep in automobile organs, oil slicked up her arms like black blood. Jenny’s not one to curse, but a mild cuss or two may have escaped very quietly into the morning air.

“Excuse me?”

Jenny looks up. Paul Castillo has appeared in her driveway and stands framed by the sweaty bangs which hang in her face.

“Sorry…it looked like you might need a hand?”

She straightens, her hand goes to the small of her back. She bequeaths the wrench to him with a shy, apologetic smile. “Oh, wow, thanks. You’re really saving my life here. Boss always hates it when I’m late, and…” Jenny checks her watch. “I’m late already.”

“Don’t worry about it. We’ll, um, have you fixed up in a sec.” He ducks into the engine and begins fumbling around. Now and again he’ll mumble something about what he’s doing and how it’s supposed to help, but Jenny only half listens. To be honest, she could have fixed it just as well. Maybe better. Somehow, though, it would’ve felt like a bit of a defeat.

VI.

Jenny is decidedly not a pretty girl. Her shoulders are too broad, her chin too strong. Stocky figure and veiny hands. Her spine does not gracefully curve into the plateau of her pelvis the way the models’ in Harper’s Bazaar do. She has very nice hair, though. She works hard at it since she thinks it’s her best feature. Frames her face nicely, she thinks.

VII.

Monday evening. Jenny has just arrived home from the office. She’s got yelled at for coming in forty minutes late and she looked a mess all day and never quite got all the oil out from under her nails. Oh well; the copious amounts of Indian food in the greasy brown paper sack in her passenger seat would make all that better. Maybe some Sherlock on Netflix. She’ll stress about the diet later, but oh well.

Pulling into the driveway, she sees that Paul Castillo has stepped out of his yard and is approaching her front gate. He raises one hand in greeting and smiles in his friendly manner. Jenny opens her car door and smiles back.

“Hey, Jen, just checking the car made it home in one piece.”

Jenny smiles at the maleness of his attitude, at his needing to reaffirm his skill in fixing cars and otherwise saving maidens in distress. She doesn’t mind, though, stroking his ego a bit. “Purred like a kitten all day.” She snags the bag of Indian food with one hand as she unfolds herself from the front seat. “Care for some dinner? It’s the least I can do to thank you.” Really, though, she’d love the company, and Paul Castillo is an attractive man.

Jenny’s glad when he accepts her invitation. She hasn’t gotten laid in a long time.

VIII

Jenny’s living room is very clean. There’s a decent size plasma television that she got on black Friday last year. A glass-topped coffee table and mocha brown leather matching sofa set. A shelf of DVDs and family photos. On one shelf by itself sits a stuffed Tigger; it’s faded and worn but has failed to collect any of the dust which has managed to settle on some of the other family artifacts. Jenny places the paper sack on the coffee table as she walks by it and disappears into the kitchen after plates and silverware. “You drink soda? I only have diet, I think…no beer, sorry, I don’t drink. Water maybe, or I have some iced tea…”She’s bending, peering into the fridge, when she feels a rough hand on the slightly exposed flesh at the small of her back. She turns and Paul is smiling. Not predatory or insistent. Kind, she thinks. Reassuring. Safe. He removes his hand as she turns around and smiles at him. “Diet’s fine. I don’t drink either. Not anymore.”

Paul’s drifted over now to the shelf of memorabilia; Jenny returns now, two cans of soda jammed into one hand and forks, spoons, and knives gripped in the other. She finds him glancing over the photos of her family. Mom and Dad, brother and sister, friends frozen forever as children and teenagers. There are childhood photos from birthday parties and proms and reunions. Jenny suddenly feels the need to distract him; the pictures are too personal. She would’ve put them away if she ever had anyone over.

Jenny flicks on the television; the volume’s muted. She looks quickly for the button to unmute it. “You like Sherlock? Or The Walking Dead; I hear that last episode was pretty good.”

Paul indicates a family portrait from Jenny’s childhood. It shows a girl and two boys, a proud, smiling Mom and Dad. “You’re the oldest, huh?” The girl in the picture is clearly the eldest of the three siblings; she’s pretty and confident, smiling proudly out of the frame. Jenny’s mouth turns down slightly at the corners as she walks over. She flicks an index finger at the smaller of the two boys; he’s wearing a Tonka trucks shirt and his too-long hair, bowl-cut, hangs in his serious little face. “Youngest, actually”.

Paul looks at her in surprise. “Sorry…I thought. Little tomboy. Huh?” He smiles.

“Not really. I wanted to wear my Hello Kitty shirt that day. Mom made me change.”

He looks surprised again. “Interesting choice for a little girl.”

“Little boy, actually. Charlie Raoul Anderson.” Jenny’s practically shaking from nervousness. She watches his face begin to comprehend what she’s telling him.

Suddenly he grips her shoulders and shoves her roughly, almost violently, away from him. “You f*****g b*****d! You let me fix your f*****g car for you…what, were you trying to avoid getting your nails dirty you little f**k?”

Those are the last words he says to her before he retreats, almost frantically, out the front door.

It’s Tuesday now. Early in the AM. Jenny’s sitting on the floor in her living room. Her face is still tracked with salty streaks of mascara. Her shoulders are dyed blue and grey with the bruises from where Paul had grabbed her. From where she sits she can see Tigger staring down at her in an almost accusatory fashion from his perch on the top shelf.

XI: The Story of Tigger

It’s a good day for Charlie Raoul Anderson. Field trip day to the town carnival. His friend Amanda sits next to him on the bus. She likes him. His brother has told him this.

“Of course she likes me. She’s my friend.”

“No, I mean she likes you likes you.”

“You’re nuts. Besides, I don’t like her. Not like that. It’s gross.”

Now he’s watching her face as she’s talks; she’s pretty, he supposes. She has very nice auburn hair and freckles. Charlie likes her hair and freckles. He wishes his face was more like hers.

At the fair Amanda holds his hand. He lets her. Later he wins a stuffed Tigger at Skee-Ball. Amanda claps for him. She smiles; she expects him to give it to her. Everyone expects him to give it to her. In the end he keeps it. Amanda doesn’t sit with him on the way home.

XII

Jenny’s late to the office again on Tuesday. She barely hears her boss as he yells at her. It doesn’t seem that important right now anyway. Driving home she can’t remember a thing that he said.

Paul’s in his front yard when she drives up. She circles the block again and he’s gone when she arrives back at her driveway. Grateful, she pulls in and unbuckles. It’s drizzling slightly. She climbs out of her car and is making a dash for the front door when she sees Mrs. Lewis sitting in her power chair on the sidewalk. Odd; Jenny hopes she gets inside before it starts to rain harder.

Mrs. Lewis is still there a half hour later. Jenny hasn’t been able to resist peeking out the front window to check on her. It’s raining harder now. Jenny sighs. Grabs her umbrella and rushes out the front door. She calls out.

“Mrs. Lewis?”

The woman refuses to look at her. Maybe she really doesn’t want to be seen. Or helped. Or talked to. Jenny sighs. Turns to go inside.

“Chair’s out of power.”

The voice is weak, raspy. Hard to distinguish above the rain. But it makes Jenny turn back around.

“Ma’am?”

“Chair ran out of power. Forgot to charge it this morning.”

Jenny now rushes to the woman’s side. “Here, I’ll help you up. Lean on my shoulder.”

The woman hesitates; Jenny takes her arm and gently, but firmly, guides her up out of the seat and towards her own front door. “Let’s go to my place and you can call someone.”

“Ain’t got no one to call”

“Well let’s dry off and then we’ll think about that.”

Jenny’s insistent and stronger than most women her age. Mrs. Lewis allows herself to be guided inside and over to the nice leather sofa. It creaks as she sits down, unaccustomed to any weight other than Jenny’s.

XIII

“When it stops raining I’ll take you back over to your place and I can probably get your chair back inside.”

There’s a long pause. Mrs. Lewis is unfriendly. Ashamed. She doesn’t seem inclined to do any talking.

“I don’t see you out much.”

“I don’t get out much. Had to today though. Bear fell.”

“Ma’am?”

“Off the fence.”

“Oh.” Jenny is too polite to ask why that necessitated a trip out into the rain. She’s surprised when Mrs. Lewis continues.

“Bear needs to stay on the fence.”

“Why?”

“You know…you know those memorials people put out on the highway when someone dies in car crash?”

“Mhm.”

“Thirteen years ago I ran over my baby girl when I was backing out of the driveway. Sometimes I wish she’d died somewhere else; there’s nothing worse than a memorial you have to look at every day.”

Jenny doesn’t know what to say after that.

XIV

The next day Jenny helps Mrs. Lewis back over to her own house. She pushes the power chair inside, plugs it into the wall. Mrs. Lewis doesn’t thank her. Not in so many words. But she smiles a little when Jenny says goodbye and quietly closes the front door.

Later Jenny stands by Mrs. Lewis’s front gate with Tigger in her arms. She looks at his face. It’s worn; the plastic eyes are clouded with age. He reminds her of an old blind man. Carefully, she pokes his head through a hole in the chain link. Arms and legs too. And she leaves him there. A memorial of her own.

As Jenny looks up, she sees Mrs. Lewis watching her through the front window. Jenny waves a little, embarrassed to be caught. The woman just nods at her. A tiny, barely distinguishable tilt of the head. And Jenny, gratified, turns and goes home.