When You Trap a Tiger

Lily feels an overwhelming sense of loss as her hope fades. Mom arrives at the noise and hugs her. Sam can’t move, and Lily vaguely wonders if she sees her as “A wild girl, maybe. Half tiger” (249). Halmoni comes up the stairs, pale and shaky, and falls.

Mom calls 911 and goes in the ambulance with Halmoni when it arrives. She tells Lily and Sam to stay put. Sam worries Halmoni’s collapse is her fault, as she wanted their ordeal to be over. She then admits to sneaking out at night to scatter rice around the house and neighborhood, seeking to protect Halmoni. The girls decide to go to the hospital; Sam calls Jensen (who helped with the rice-scattering), but she doesn’t answer. Sam takes the keys to Mom’s car despite her fear, and she and Lily go out into a second rainstorm, “down and down, together” (254).

Sam only gets as far as the road just beyond Halmoni’s driveway before she starts to shake and must park. She tells Lily that she struggles to keep their father’s memory alive, despite making a list of his traits and reciting it nightly. She admits to wanting to keep the list to herself: “Like, if I told you all those Dad-stories, they’d disappear.