When You Trap a Tiger

Lily recalls how Halmoni’s stories used to scare her when she was younger. At Halmoni’s instruction, the two would reach out and grasp a story from the air for the older woman to tell. Lily and Sam’s favorite story was about a tiger and two sisters, Eggi (the younger) and Unya (the older).

Halmoni’s cottage sits at the edge of town, adjacent to some woods and across from the public library. Lily always thought of it as a magical place, covered in ivy and sitting high on a hill with “windows that wink in the light” (10). Mom acts like the rain is no problem and asks Lily if she thinks it is. Lily feels “she’s asking me to pick sides” (11) between her and Sam again. Mom leaves the car to check on Halmoni’s house; the sisters joke about how silly she looks. They leave the car, the rain soaking them right away when Mom tells them Halmoni is not home.

The family continues to get soaked. Mom uses an old trick to open a ground floor window; she climbs through and lets Lily and Sam in. Sam wonders if Mom used to sneak through the window to see boys; Lily refutes this, saying Mom probably didn’t date anyone besides their father. Sam is offended, and Lily reflects on how “thinking about Dad is different for Sam than it is for me. She’s old enough to remember him. When he died in a car accident, she was seven. I was only four” (15). The family changes into dry clothes, borrowing silky pajamas from Halmoni’s room. Mom notes the strange chests and boxes stacked in front of the basement door. Throughout the house, there are baskets of Halmoni’s smudge sticks, herbs for “casting away bad energy” (16), and small statues offering protection.

Sam goes up to the attic bedroom, and Lily follows. They used to share this room while living with Halmoni (following their father’s death three years ago). Lily remembers this period fondly, but an older Sam sees Halmoni as secretive and inexplicable. Lily wants to rekindle her bond with Sam, but also wants the older to be kinder to their mother and says so. Sam thinks that Lily is a “QAG” (20), which is Sam’s acronym for “Quiet Asian Girl” (20), a stereotype. Sam defies this persona (she likes the white streak in her hair for this very reason). Sam complains about living away from friends with only her mother and grandmother, and Lily reminds her in her quiet way that she exists too. Halmoni returns home.

Halmoni looks thinner to Lily. Halmoni brushes off Mom’s questions about her whereabouts and excessive groceries. When Mom wants to inspect the basement’s flood damage (the reason why chests and boxes were stacked in front of its door), the older woman stops her by saying “Today is dangerous day for spirits. We move another day” (28). Halmoni tells Mom to change out of her pajamas, and Sam escapes upstairs. Lily wants to help with dinner so that she can ask Halmoni about the tiger—but the latter insists that they prepare kosa, a carefully presented meal of rice cakes and wine for spirits. It occurs to Lily that her younger self never questioned rituals like kosa.

Halmoni takes Lily’s report of the tiger very seriously. She reveals that there is more to the girls’ favorite tiger story: Tigers are looking for her because when she was Lily’s age, she took something from them, and now they’re looking to collect. Mom comes in, but neither Halmoni nor Lily reveal what they were talking about. Halmoni tells Lily to set the table and rely on kosa to keep the tigers away.

Lily retells her favorite tiger story. In it, a halmoni who lived with her two granddaughters left home to get them rice cakes—but encountered a tiger along the way. The tiger ate the rice cakes and then the halmoni. The tiger was still hungry, so it disguised itself as the halmoni by wearing her scarf and went to her house. The younger sister, Eggi, missed her halmoni very much and opened the door upon seeing the disguised tiger. Eggi and her sister Unya ran to the ends of the earth with the tiger in pursuit. They begged a sky god for help, who agreed to save them in exchange for a story. The sisters did as they were told, and the sky god sent them a staircase and a rope for safe passage; Eggi used the stairs, and Unya used the rope. The sky god then made Unya the sun and Eggi the moon. However, Eggi didn’t like people looking at her, so she and Unya traded places. The tiger offered to tell a story of his own, but the sky god banished him instead.

Lily realizes that her younger self never wondered what the tiger’s story was actually about, or “What would happen if the tiger came back?” (39).

Lily wakes in the middle of the night and sneaks to the kitchen for a bite of kimchi (spicy fermented cabbage). She sees the chests and boxes moved and the basement door ajar. Curiosity prompts her to investigate despite her fear. The basement was once her favorite place to play and pretend because of all of Halmoni’s old things. But now, it’s empty, and Lily is confused; the carpet is dry as if it never flooded. She hears a strange, animal-like groaning and runs back upstairs. There, she realizes Halmoni is behind the sound.

Halmoni is throwing up in the bathroom; the strangeness of the scene upsets Lily. Lily knows she should get crackers or offer help, but she doesn’t; she thinks this makes her “not a good granddaughter” (46). Halmoni sees Lily and reassures her that she just has a “little beetle” (46)—a bug. Lily says she couldn’t sleep because of the tiger. Halmoni offers to tell Lily about what she stole.

Halmoni tells Lily that she stole stories from the tigers. Long ago, “[w]hen tiger walked like man” (49), a sky princess created stories that turned into stars and made the night sky bright. The tigers wanted these tales for themselves, so they guarded them from the top of the highest mountain. Halmoni didn’t like the stories that were dangerous—the ones that “make people feel bad and act bad” (50), like those of Korean history that made her own grandmother cry and friends get angry. Halmoni says she was little and sneaky; she waited until the tigers fell asleep, then succeeded in stealing the bad stories and putting their stars into jars. Before Halmoni left, she trapped the tigers inside a cave with rocks. She ran away from her village and crossed the ocean; now, the angry tigers are free and coming for her.

Lily wakes to find Mom in the living room, drinking coffee and staring out the window. Mom says she has a job interview; she’s an accountant who worked long hours in California. Mom makes Lily a cup of tea despite her not wanting one. Lily tries asking Mom what she recalls of Halmoni’s stories, but she “didn’t really have the patience for stories” (55) and preferred outside play to reading. Mom tells Lily she can set up “playdates” with children of high school friends should she ask; she also advises that Lily visit the library to meet “some reader kids” (57).

Lily doesn’t argue despite Mom’s many misconceptions; she’s far too old for playdates, and the public library always scared her because it looks too much like the witch’s cottage in Hansel and Gretel. Mom leaves, and Lily burns her tongue. She drains the rest of her tea but drops the mug, cracking it, before burying it in the trash. She tells herself she shouldn’t be afraid of a fairy tale anymore and that the library might have useful research: “If a tiger is hunting my grandmother, I’ll find a way to protect us” (59).