I eat sweet pickles from the jar & chase them with shots of their own juice. The shot glass is a pink woman. She’s all torso, my lips on her clavicles. It’s blood in my swimsuit bottoms, down on my knees in front of your grandmother’s antique mirror season.

For the first decade & a half of my life, summer meant Bismarck, North Dakota. One week carved out of July to drive 5 hours east & slightly south to see my mom’s side of the family.

There were always the same activities just rearranged depending on the weather. Tye-dying in my uncle’s garage, the Raging Rivers Waterpark (the big-ticket splurge of the week), a day at the mall, the Mandan & Hidatsa earth villages, & Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park.

Specifically, General George & Libbie Custer’s house.

This is General George Custer of the last stand. During which, Libbie (previously Libbie Bacon) was waiting at home. The story would be better, I think, had she been back in Michigan with her sisters, peddling a swan boat down the River Raisin or picking through Oysters Rockefeller on the back veranda, fanning fat blackflies away from the lemonade.

After entering through the gift shop, there would be a picnic from my grandmother’s Tupperware—variations on Sarah Lee sandwiches, cookies from the freezer, cut strawberries & marshmallow fluff.

With the coolers returned to backseat footwells, the tour would begin.

I’d trail behind, pretending that I lived on a Thoroughbred breeding farm in blue grass Kentucky, that my parents were horse people, that I had to go out in freak thunderstorms to bring the horses in.

I lean over the balcony’s railing, because the one person to tell me not to is not here. There is the blue square of pool, trios of vacationing mothers & daughters, grandparents & grandsons, & white caps on the waves. A lifeguard hoists a yellow flag.

I’ve noticed an absence of granddaughters.

The air is swollen, heavy against my neck. Draped over the chairback, my bathing suit will never dry. I carry it back inside with me. The French doors squeak as I shut out the ocean.

There had been a stuffed tiger positioned at the top of the steps leading to General Custer’s cellar. According to the tour guides, this tiger represented a real tiger won by General Custer in a hot game of cards. The kitchen was the last room before we’d leave the house & return to exit through the visitor’s center.

I would finger the faux leather satchels of polished agates, bucket hats stamped with stampeding bison, pan for gold in your own home kits, & snow globes featuring a Lakota Sioux warrior astride his feathered horse. I don’t remember ever asking for a snow globe.  

There was something about the horse's down-stretched neck & its warrior’s black eyes—so small they were only dots.

On the drive back to my grandma’s & Crockpot Salisbury steak at folding tables in her carpet garage, I would think of the tiger. I liked to imagine him stalking field mice between the wooden shelves of preserves. Then, whenever she came down, the cook would call it to her.

Crouched on the floor with her apron an egg white around her, she’d stroke the tiger’s under chin until its tiger eyes closed.

In his office three floors above, General Custer would mistake the purr for a hive of hornets nested in the walls. He’d spend the rest of the afternoon stabbing the butt of his pistol through the plaster. Each time—a ha!

I don't remember how old I was when I realized that the guides were talking about & had always been talking about, a taxidermy tiger.

It made more sense. I couldn't tell if I was disappointed or relieved. Whenever it got hauled away, I bet that its taxidermy fur smelled like roast meats, sour dairy, mildew, mouse shit, biscuits, & coal smoke.

The world is now behind glass. I hang my bathing suit on the bedroom doorknob & lay down across the seersucker bedspread—another heirloom. When I wake up, it will be dark.