Sumatrans' a type of tiger

From birth Sumatran was defined in writing, his character carefully calculated, tables were referenced, time and date taken into account. 

Every piece of paper, every prediction painted on his in-progress portrait led to the same number, sān, three. The word penetrated the surface of his skin, entered his body and permeated there, a taboo tattoo. He was born in the year of the tiger, 1998 sometime in February no one in the families quite sure of the exact date. According to folklore, the tiger came third, struggling to swim against the tide in the race to have a place on the calendar, unable to beat the ox and the rat. He was his father’s third son, the smallest of three, the name that hung at the end of the list, almost adjacent. 

In the water he struggles, suffocates as he turns, his body hitting the tiles and head knocking against the ropes. When he surfaces, he gasps for air, he rushes to the stopwatch, desperate to save seconds. But he knows he wasn’t fast enough, he feels it, a dull feeling that drums against the side of his ribcage. 

The rat’s already out of the water, watching from afar. Sumatran glances at him, see’s the gleam in his black eyes, see’s how his dark curls cling to the sides of his face and how when he steadies his breath he looks calm, collected.  Sumatran ignores the hands extended towards him, pushing their help aside as he pulls himself out of the water. He kneels on the damp tiles drawing in one long shaky breath, he was a minute slow. 

The rat’s treading water, moving between the lanes, perfecting his form. As a spectator Sumatran sees it, he sees how his rival's body almost pierces the water, carving the waves. He notices how quick he catches his breath, fills his lungs mid-turn. 

Sumatran wants to look away but he can’t; the jealous predator inside him wants to learn, to grow, become stronger, conquer. To notice how when he gets to the other side he pauses before he kicks off into another lap. How when he passes under the skylight his body curves, silver like a crescent moon. 

He could have knelt there for hours and written down every move, every word of advice. He could look desperate but tigers shouldn’t learn the secrets of rats, they should learn how to be better tigers. 

Sumatran watches the sun lower itself into a bed of red clouds as he walks home, watching it send stretched out shadows down the side street. He feels the red radiation on his face, feels it burn into him as if he’s being branded with an iron, red hot. As Sumatran walks he is carved by the streetlights; the neon cursive that identifies his insecurities, lack of identity, they pin back his eyes and examine his skin. They command his attention. He ignores the stalls being set up, focuses on looking ahead. The backyard blackmarket scrambles to life, it clusters and crowds the corners of roads, clutching onto plastic bags that break and spill, they linger here because they know there are customers. 

Sumatran was enticed once, to rid himself of the rosacea blooms on the back of his arms and left side of his face, he hid the box in the medicine cabinet. His mother struck him when she found out, her palm collided with the left side of his face and didn’t allow him to walk home alone for months. It hurt but it was harsh love, that’s what Sumatran’s grandmother called it whenever he came crying. Harsh love, how a tiger mother cares for her tiger son. She wraps her claws around her young to keep them safe and although they’ll be pricked the pain is nothing compared to the hungry jaws of an ambitious omnivore.

At home his grandmother is out on the porch, fanning her face. She sees him and her face cracks like clay and like a flower unfurling at the sight of the morning sun he smiles too. When he rushes to meet her, her face twists and she’s no morning sun. 

“Shǎ háizi! You're dripping water everywhere, stand on the flowers.” So he sits on the edge of the porch with his feet in the soil. She asks if he’s beat the rat and he tells her he hasn’t. She nods her head, the universal symbol of faux wiseness. She shakes her fan at him brushing the white lace across the back of his neck, “go help you mother.” 

Inside Sumatran follows the simple orders, removing his shoes and hanging his coat on the rack. He calls out, announcing his arrival. He waits in the entranceway similar to how a spirit will wait to be welcomed in. He waits for the question, knowing it will come. It does after all everyone follows tradition in this house, everyone does what is expected of them. Apart from him, he is expected to win. When he tells his mother his time she doesn’t turn around or speak. There were no more words till dinner time. 

Sumatran leant over his plate, looking around him as his mother and grandmother ate in silence. His mother moves around her food, scooping up meat shrapnel and shoving it in her mouth. Sumatran swallows quickly, aware that he still smelt of the pool of chlorine and old water and that the smell was making its way down the table. He sat low in his seat, slumping, resting his head against the family portrait propped up behind him. Replace himself with the painted version, all oil and watercolour, the quiet version. He hated how present he was, how obnoxiously obvious he is when his brothers aren’t around. He was loud in the quiet room, demanding to be spoken to without saying a word. He tried talking to his grandmother, tapping the side of his bowl, staring out the back window and moving a piece of meat from his plate to his mother's. He wanted to know if she’d had a good day, if his father had called, if, if she would be kind today. She didn’t answer him, didn’t take a sip of water, didn’t rearrange the contents of her plate in warning. 

But Sumatran didn’t need a warning; he knew something was coming and his grandmother believed it was necessary. 

“You’re sick” his mother slammed her fork into the centre of her plate, “that’s why you’ve been underperforming. You need to see a doctor.” 

Sumatran rubbed at his face, “alright when do you think?” 

“Tonight. We’re going after dinner” 

Sumatran scratches at his arm, deep down some dark grown-up part of him had hoped for this. Hoped that she’d guide him to some medicine that could heal whatever part of him was broken, mend him, the body grows stronger every time it heals. 

They were about to close, the signs had been taken in. The doctor was halfway through turning off all the lights so Sumatran stood half in shadow, half under the light of a dying lone lightbulb. The doctor's face was waxy and it almost gleamed like lipid under light. Behind him small wooden boxes were stacked on top of each other clustered together like hornets in a nest. He recognized a couple of the labels from his previous visits, beetle wings, red deer antler, ibris claw. Everything is ground or turned into oil. 

The doctor slides on a pair of black rubber gloves, they twist around his wrists and squeak when he picks through his ingredients. He asks for his name, age, problem and what year he was born into. 

“The year of the tiger”

He nodded as if that was all he needed to know. There was no rhythm, no organization to the drawers he was opening, he’d reach for one and then grab another. He pulled out bones, scrapings of ginger, lotus leaves and garlic cloves. He threw them over a low flame and Sumatran watched hot oil sputter to the stained floor, his eyes watering as the scent of a thousand things in different stages of decay reached his nose. 

Everything was the same as it was when he was a kid, the smell, the cold air, the possibility of a miracle. He used to cry when he was little, scream and writhe unable to understand that this is what had to be done to make him better. He was out of balance, weighed down, his soul restless, fighting itself. If he wanted to be able to perform well he would have to drink and then rest, for one night and one night only. 

He was presented with a small bowl filled with a black liquid, he was going to have to drink darkness. 

He drank it like how a kid drinks alcohol, with a sudden hesitant excited gulp. His whole body shivered as the bitter oil slid down his throat and culminated in his gut. It spoke with the tiger inside of him, sedated it. Sumatran's mother paid up, she didn’t complain or bargain. She’d placed all her trust into those paper hands. If he didn’t improve the doctor wasn’t a scam. The traditions, ancestors weren’t a scam, it was him. He was unable to change, mould into a model boy.

When they left the sky was dark and Sumatran stumbled down the street trying not to be sick. 

Before his mother unlocked the door she turned and did something she hadn’t done in years, she reached out, claws retracted and ruffled Sumatrans hair. Shaking his half-dry head around with her palm. He closed his eyes and soaked in the comfort. He could mistake her for a sister when she’s like this, all attributes of motherhood dropped as if the tiger persona was merely a mask she could remove. But the teeth and claws are always there, even if the mouth is closed and claws retracted. The mask slid back on, with its striking black stripes and amber fur, nearly red, nearly blood. 

In bed, Sumatran holds onto his little tiger carving. His father was given a set of the animals of the zodiac. It was his graduation gift, he was told each of his children would receive a figurine. His sons were a lottery, all ideas and possibilities, there were twelve in the set, nine now. The eldest son got the dragon, the second, the ox. They were small and they were carved out of ivory, out of elephant tusks. 

He won his next race. His body twisted and coiled through the water like a cottonmouth viper. He pounced on the stopwatch, ripped it from his trainers' hands. He was a whole minute faster, the rat had stopped mid-race and was wading towards him, treading carefully. 

“What time did you get?” 

Sumatran turned and told the rat with a smiley snarl set on his face. He hissed the numbers round his curved canines and leant over the rope that separated their lanes. The rats swallow-tail eyes flicked from Sumatran to his own watch which he stopped with a hesitant, barely confident flick of one finger. His open mouth curved into a scant smile, “Well congratulations you’ve clearly been working hard.”

In the bathroom Sumatran sits, still holding his stopwatch, the wet cord wrapped around his thigh. He watches the rat, who for the first time was quiet, shuffling from the shower to the dispenser. Slotting two dollars into the machine and retrieving the white-plastic shampoo bottle that clattered to the wet concrete ground. The bathroom was fitted with an energy-saving bulb that illuminated the corrugated iron stalls and repurposed school lockers in blue light. Like they hadn’t escaped the water like they were still racing. Sumatran watched the rat open his locker, stalked it’s insides, the all-cotton jerseys stacked on top of referral papers, old gear, trophies and folded up paper awards. He caught himself in the mirror, caught how his smile had fallen without him realising. He frowned and his reflection returned the look. It was like he’d been separated, shed from his former body and forced to watch himself fumble around, defeated. Watch his shoulders sag and listen to his bones sigh, the soft solemn sound of suffering in all it’s silence haunted the room. Sumatran hated the guilt that was forcing itself to grow, he didn’t sow it, didn’t need it there. Couldn’t he be granted an hour of shallow bitterness, of prideful bragging, couldn’t he humble his competition. He could and he would, Sumatran finished changing and left without saying goodbye letting the rat cry himself some sympathy. His friends were waiting, they yelled out his name and waved some red flags they’d borrowed from a garden nearby. Sumatran smiled and ruffled their hair, yelling at them for the flags, for not waiting around to see him win harsh love. 

The gods were good, for once they were good, they didn’t damn him to drowning. For the first time in seventeen years Sumatran comes home a son, no, he’s more than that now, he’s a man and in two months he’ll be a man with a medal. That night Sumatran had his first beer, he sipped it on the kitchen floor while his mother split open the plastic pouch of herbs, another dose. 

But the rat got faster, he dove faster, held his breath for longer and longer until when he won he didn’t have the breath to cheer, to say a word to Sumatran. He didn’t have the energy to raise his fist in victory, he had to be dragged, pulled out of the pool and yet it didn’t matter that the rat was beginning to fold in on himself, that his spine pressed against his skin threatening to split it. Numbers were numbers with numerical weight and although Sumatran was right behind, his jaws around him and yet he couldn’t close them, snap them shut. During the day Sumatran dragged himself through the water, at night he swallowed it, poured himself spoonfuls of yin pretending it was whiskey.

A deep once silent part of him whispers, rattles around in his ribcage, it tells him to do what the rat does, Grow small and slim, wait for a moment before you push off into another lap. It tells him the only way to beat the rat is to become one. It gnaws at him, clawing its way through his body toward his heart. 

Sometimes he wishes he could go back to that one night in October, that Saturday night when he had a sister, the night when he was full. He was empty now, a casket carrying nothing but saltwater, numbers and phantom masculinity. He was supposed to be a tiger, confident, brave, stubborn and optimistic. Sumatran was a type of a tiger, the type that ends up with its skin on some white man’s floor. 

Before the final race Sumatran hides in the locker room, for some reason he’s clawing at the rat’s locker. Punching the metal, desperate for something, some secret key to success. He knows what’s going to happen, it’s been predicted, written down, calculated and conspired. He’ll swim desperately, breathing in water and he’ll surface knowing the rat has already won, knowing his mother didn’t bother to show. Sumatran sinks, his forehead scraping down the wrought iron locker, he holds his breath. In his dazed disillusioned state, he spots something white. A container sticking out of a familiar bag. Barely noticing he’d coughed all that black up and there was now a puddle under his head he reached out and curled his hand around the container. Orange and black pills spill and scatter over the wet floor, steroids. 

Off in some distant room, Sumatran hears someone fire a starting gun, he hears the roar of a crowd. Sumatran leaves the bathroom and walks towards the pool, he sees a body, a body he once confused for the moon slice through the water. Sumatran opened his mouth and roared.