Toy Tigers

His name was Willie and he was about three feet long with bright yellow stripes and plastic whiskers. Of all the stuffed animals in my small room, he was the one I loved the best.

You can tell a toy tiger all manner of secrets in safety, cry into his fur and be comforted by his warmth, knowing he will tell no one, knowing he will always be ready to listen, suspecting he might be the best friend you have in your small, ten year old world. I whispered to Willie all the things I couldn't say aloud about a mother gone mad, brothers that scared the daylights out of me, a father who's protection was tenuous and intermittent at best and a grandmother who could love and hate, give and deny, shelter and evict, all in the same breath. Willie kept my secrets, wisely never answering but never turning me away. Even in his old age - patchy, stained, losing his stuffing and missing half his tail - he remained a guardian and a confidante.

When I left home the first time, I expected he would still be there when and if I came back but my mother decided to clean up after me, throwing away my books, pictures, clothes, and my tiger, moving the sparse furniture to other parts of the house and turning the tiny room into a storage space. She took to telling people she didn't have a daughter although never in earshot of my daddy or grandmother and delighted in the belief that she had won, enjoying the concern and attention this brought, exploiting the sense of triumph. She was stricken and unaccountably surprised when the stories made their way back to my daddy, furious and out of control when he made several trips to the discount furniture store in Central Square to bring back a sleeping cot, a chest of drawers, a rickety night stand. Later there was a trip to Goodwill for a radio, a lamp and a wall mounted although cracked mirror. Nana took me on an all day shopping spree at Walmart and said yes to everything, even curtains for the window, and a tiny portable tv, rabbit ears and all. The following September I made the cautious decision to go home and try again.

It takes more than second hand furniture, toy tigers and good intentions to make a home and we didn't have what it took, not that time or the times that followed. I think that somewhere inside of us all, somewhere we didn't want to look, we knew it. Toy tigers are safer than real ones.