Content note: child abuse

 

The tiger curls in my living room, on the sofa in front of the TV. Finish your lunch, she says, and her words bend my back until I’m on my hands and knees, hunching over the plate she’s set down on the floor, like a dog. Finish your lunch, she commands, but I hate her cooking. I never tell her that, though.

Here is the punishment the tiger gives for my lack of appetite: wild chili peppers, the kind that was small but sharp, green and fat. She’d cut them in two until tiny seeds spill out, then she’d smear them on my lips and tongue. Spicy, huh? she’d say as I cry. Then eat. Don’t make my job harder, you crybaby. Eat, chew, swallow. The spiciness will go down.

It never goes down, not really. But it teaches me how to fear.

The tiger curls in my living room, on the sofa in front of the TV my mother bought using the money she earned by leaving me at home with a tiger. Workplaces don’t allow kids, Mother said, but clearly homes allow tigers. The tiger loves sinetrons and telenovelas, the more dramatic the better. Romances with rich men and downtrodden women, stories of street urchins meeting their missing parents who turn out to be rich, of girls who work hard and marry well and become not only happy but also rich. During the ad breaks, if the time is right—and the right time is around five when the construction workers next door finish their shifts—she’d go to the window and wave her tail coyly, bat her eyelashes, curve her striped back until she’s sinuous like sea waves that scream, Look at me, am I not beautiful, don’t I deserve my own happy ending? I want to tell her those men don’t like her and a nanny can never get a ton of money, but I fear more chili pepper. And anyway, I don’t think she needs me to tell her.

The tiger uncurls and lunges toward me, landing a few inches away with a clatter of claws as loud as gunshots. Her fangs are bared. Finish your lunch, she repeats.

At the ripe age of five I’ve learned a very important lesson: The best way to survive a tiger attack is to do as she says. I take another bite of my lunch. She doesn’t reach for a chili pepper. The growl she spits between her teeth ruffles my bangs, and I feel alongside it the caress of relief.

The tiger walks me to school. I’m too young for school, but Mother spoke to the teacher, who let me join them. So you have something to do, Mother said, but really I’m just glad for a few hours away from the tiger.

The tiger picks me up from school, but often she is late, like today. The tiger wants me to wait at this exact spot by the school gate, and often that is what I do, but today a classmate beckons and asks, Do you want to play? I know I should not, but I follow her anyway, and she with her pink backpack hanging from one shoulder bends over a bush of soka flowers and tells me, This is how you do it. She gently pulls out the string between the flower petals, sucking the honey at its end.

Try it, she gestures at the soka bush. But as I bend over it, she starts screaming.

Caterpillar! Caterpillar! She points at my calf.

I look down and find a black caterpillar with white fur sticking out like needles, crawling up my calf. I scream, stomp my leg to shake it off, and when it sticks to my calf anyway I scream some more, and cry until tears and saliva wet my face.

The tiger leaps out from among the soka bush and lands just before me. She opens her mouth and I think this is it, I’ve been naughty, she’ll devour me.

Her tongue darts out and laps my calf, sweeping the caterpillar away. She doesn’t chew, just swallows, then licks her lips and looks at me as if saying, See, that’s how you eat your lunch.

The tiger walks me home. This time she doesn’t walk too fast or lock me out when I can’t catch up. This time the tiger walks me home, and there’s no caterpillar on my calf, and that’s all there is to it, blessedly.

I survive four more years in the exact same way I’ve survived the first five years of my life. I got a little baby brother, and Mother hired another nanny for him, one special for newborn babies—lucky him. And because he was born lucky, his nanny is so very human, soft and curly-haired. The nanny cooks, and I don’t hate her cooking, but the tiger hates that I don’t hate her cooking. The tiger hates the nanny, but everyone else loves her, so the tiger never dares do anything to her. I wish it were that way with me too.

Now that meals go down easy for me, no chili pepper punishment is needed anymore. But strangely I now want chili peppers with every meal, and when they’re not there something feels wrong, like I’m missing a tooth someone has chiseled and planted into my gum.

Everything is as calm as a taut string, until Mother visits me in my room one day and says, Mbak Arum is leaving.

I blink. It’s been a while since I’ve heard the tiger’s name. In my head, she is just the tiger.

What do you mean? I ask.

Mother smiles sadly. She says now that you’ve grown and we have Mbak Nur for your brother, she’s not needed anymore. She wants to return to her village to get married.

Oh.

I wonder if it’s true, that I don’t need her anymore. I wonder if the man waiting for her is like one of those rich men in telenovelas, if he’d be happier to see her than the construction workers next door. It feels strange to imagine her having a life apart from me, just as strange as imagining me having a life apart from her.

How is she getting to her village? I ask.

A shuttle will pick her up tomorrow.

I imagine a van, black as night. I imagine the tiger climbing into it, but in my imagination, I don’t see how she could fit.

I bought her a parting gift, Mother says, pulling out a delicate golden necklace. Do you think it’s enough? She’s been with us so long.

I stare at the necklace glinting on my mother’s palm, and all I can think of is that one time I tried to tell her something the tiger did to me, but the next day the tiger scolded me in front of the neighbors’ nannies, and they all looked at me like I was a dirty, unruly urchin, and since then I never told anyone anything anymore. And maybe it’s a force of habit, maybe it’s my gift for the tiger, but I tell Mother nothing even now.

It will do, I say simply. What time is she leaving?

Tomorrow, at 2 p.m.

School finishes at one. I can’t take my eyes off my watch on the ride home, willing the school bus to move faster, as fast as the lash of the tiger’s tongue when she lapped up the caterpillar and saved me.

When I realize I won’t make it, I break down crying.

She’s already gone when I reach home. I step inside and no one yells at me to eat my lunch or locks me in my room for getting less than perfect score in Math. I stand by the window where she usually stands preening at the construction workers. I stare through the gauze curtain and try to see the world as she sees it and find nothing but a wish that she’ll get what she’s been looking for. I know it’s not me. Whoever it is, maybe she’ll be kinder to them.

Mother says in the morning just before the shuttle came, the tiger broke down crying, dabbing her tears away with her long black braid. The hands gripping the handle of her bag were bony and trembling, and Mother worried she hadn’t been well, hadn’t eaten enough. On the day of her departure the tiger looked like any other young woman, and that was how she could fit in the van.

I spend the rest of the week shivering, afraid of the tears I shed. Every time I bring my fingers to my cheek, I’m surprised that they come out wet. In the end, perhaps the best way to survive a tiger attack is to love her as she walks away. Because it’s not really the wound she gives that kills you, you see. It’s the hollow that your scar leaves.

© 2025 A. W. Prihandita