Tiger, Tiger

A CHILDHOOD LOST, A LIFE REGAINEDI still think about Peter, the man I loved most in the world, all the time.At two in the afternoon, when he would come and pick me up and take me for rides; at five, when I would read to him, head on his chest; in the despair at seven p.m., when he would hold me and rub my belly for an hour; in the despair again at nine p.m. when we would go for a night ride, down to the Royal Cliffs Diner in Englewood Cliffs where I would buy a cup of coffee with precisely seven sugars and a lot of cream. We were friends, soul mates and lovers.I was seven. He was fifty-one.They were the happiest days of my life.

Margaux Fragoso grew up in Union City, New Jersey. When she was seven she loved the red gumballs that came from gumball machines but left behind the blues and greens; later, she loved Madonna and still later Kurt Cobain. Margaux now has one daughter and no longer lives in New Jersey. Tiger, Tiger will be published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in the United States and is already being translated into seventeen languages.