Tiger Girl by May-lee Chai Page A

stores—Lucky’s and A&P and Kroger’s—but there were only a few spindly wreaths left, some shedding poinsettias, and no live trees, although the big Chinese grocery Lion’s had a few artificial trees, including a small counter model spray-painted pink. But Uncle insisted now that we should have a real tree.
    One of the clerks at Lion’s took pity on us and said he thought some people were selling trees from their lawn in town. It was one of the small houses with lots of lights. That sounded like any house to me, but Uncle thanked him, and the four of us piled back into Uncle’s Toyota and took off through the back streets, following an array of Christmas decorations so bright that it seemed as though some people were personally trying to guide a jumbo jet into a safe landing in their driveway. I saw houses coated in fake snow and electric icicles and guarded by lit-from-within giant plastic snowmen. One intrepid family had sprayed their entire green lawn with what looked like shaving cream and spider webs, trying to mimic snow. Another had managed to string lights in the palm tree on their lawn. They’d also constructed a manger strung with blinking lights and accompanied by animated wise men who waved beside a pair each of donkeys, camels, zebras, and elephants. Their Bible references were decidedly mixed, combining the Nativity with Noah’s Ark, but Sitan was thrilled. He held Lillian up from her baby seat. “Look, Lillian, look! See all the animals!”
    Finally we came upon a small house set far from the street, at the end of a cul-de-sac where the houses grew more sparse andthe orange groves lined both sides of the street. Two spotlights shone upon a motley collection of pine trees tied to stakes on the crabgrass lawn. A dog barked furiously from inside the house. A hand-painted sign hung on the garage door: “Trees 4 Sale.”
    â€œLooks like they just went up to Big Bear Mountain and chopped them down themselves,” Anita said.
    â€œIs that legal?” I asked, but nobody cared.
    We pulled into the driveway and got out to inspect the trees. There was one pine that wasn’t quite as spare and straggly-looking as the others. We pulled on the needles and they didn’t all fall off in our hands. A woman in a bathrobe emerged from the squat house and we asked, How much for the tree? She said forty, and I said twenty, and then she sold it to us for thirty. Sitan strapped it on the roof with bungee cords from the trunk, and we drove back to the donut shop with our Christmas tree.
    That night we stayed up late decorating the tree with ornaments that we got from the Asian grocery, thirty percent off since they knew us. The bakers came in, and the Kasim sisters smiled to see our sturdy pine before the front window. They said they’d bake us an angel out of sugar-cookie dough, something special, and they hummed carols as they worked. After they finished their first batch, they came out from the kitchen and sang a song together in French while the cookies baked. I didn’t know the words, but the tune was nice, better than Rudolph or Frosty or all the other kids’ songs I was used to hearing blare from the loudspeakers at the strip mall.
    Soon the donut shop filled with the scent of baking dough and sugar and pine tree. While the tree hadn’t seemed like much propped up on that woman’s lawn, it revived once we set it up and put a pan of water under the trunk.
    â€œThose mountain pines are the best,” Anita said. “Just breathe in! Smells better than those sickly trees sitting out in those lots all month!”
    Indeed, our possibly poached tree did smell wonderful, like mountain air and sunshine and a Southern California winter. Sitan held Lillian in his arms and helped her hang tinsel on the branches, then pulled the tinsel out of her mouth as she tried to eat it. Anita gave her some clothespin reindeer to hang instead.
    Finally Uncle