the-tigers-wife

My grandfather would pet the dog, and, in a voice that made him sound like some kind of children's program puppet, he would say: "You're a dog! You're a dog! Where are you? You're a dog!" and the dog's tongue would drop out of its mouth and it would start keening. After a few hours of this, I said, "Jesus Grandpa, I get it, he's a dog," not knowing that, just a few years later, I would be reminding every dog I met on the street that it was a dog, and asking it where it was.

Knowing, above all, that I would come looking, and find what he had left for me, all that remained of The Jungle Book in the pocket of his doctor__ coat, that folder-up, yellowed page torn from the back of the book, with a bristle of thick, coarse hairs clenced inside. Galina, says my grandfather__ handwriting, above and below a child__ drawing of the tiger, who is curved like the blade of a scimitar across the page. Galina, it says, and that is how I know to find him again, in Galina, in the story he hadn__ told me but perhaps wished he had.