The Tin Horse: A Novel by Janice Steinberg Read Free Book Online

Mama grumbled to herself more than ever. “The airs she puts on, you’d think she was the Queen of Sheba.… Who cares that Leo is forty-two and he’s got fat, pudgy fingers, and he laughs like awheezing donkey? At least he has a head for business.… And I thought I was too good for Slotkin.”
    Barbara and I had both gotten good at pretending not to listen to her muttering. We chattered to each other or chased one of the goats that grazed on the unpaved streets near Sonya’s new house. We scampered around Mama as she walked, spinning in circles until we staggered from dizziness. But sometimes, if she said something like, “Nine kids like my mother, I’d kill myself first,” my eyes leaped in search of Barbara’s; she was looking for me, too, and we exchanged frightened glances.
    We
knew
not to respond when Mama talked to herself. So I was shocked when Barbara said this time, “Mama, who’s Slotkin? … Mama?”
    For a moment Mama looked dazed, as if she were swimming out of a dream. Then she stared daggers at Barbara. “Was anyone talking to you?”
    It wasn’t too late; Barbara could have backed down. Instead she repeated, “Who’s Slotkin?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “You said Slotkin. And you said Uncle Leo laughs like a donkey. Hee haw, hee haw!” She skipped a few steps ahead.
    Mama was seven months pregnant, and she’d been complaining that she could barely move, but she swooped forward with astonishing speed and grabbed Barbara’s elbow, then marched her the two remaining blocks to our house. All the while, Barbara kept defiantly braying, “Hee haw!”
    I trotted behind them, trying to
will
Barbara to be quiet … at the same time as I was transfixed by the drama. I’d never seen Barbara so naughty. Or Mama so furious.
    Mama kept her grip on Barbara as she pushed through our front door and into the hall.
    “Hee haw!”
    Mama slapped her. Then she flung open the door to the hall closet and shoved Barbara inside. Coats and jackets were jammed into the closet, hanging on a rod. Barbara fell into them, and for a moment it looked as if the coats would push her back out. But Mama slammed the door, grabbed the key hanging on a nail, and locked her in.
    “No!” Barbara pounded her fists against the door.
    “I can’t stand to have you in my sight!” Mama yelled.
    “Let me out!”
    “Elaine!” Mama commanded, and I jumped. I hadn’t done anything, but that wouldn’t save me if her wrath turned toward me. All she said was, “We’re going outside.”
    Trembling with the effort of not crying, I followed Mama into the kitchen. She got us glasses of water, then went into the backyard and lowered herself heavily into one of the beat-up wooden chairs Papa had found in the street and placed under the fig tree, next to our garden.
    Fruit trees—figs, apricots, peaches, loquats, pomegranates—grew in the yards of many houses in Boyle Heights. Our tree was a Black Mission fig, with purplish skin and fruit that was amber with a touch of pink. I thought of the tree as Zayde’s. The tree was the reason he’d chosen our house to rent when he moved the family to Boyle Heights, he said, and he sometimes sighed in contentment and said something (which I learned came from the Bible) about dwelling under his vine and his fig tree. Zayde tended the tree carefully, checking it on summer afternoons for the wilting leaves that meant it needed water and harvesting the figs just when they were ripe, not letting them spoil on the tree.
    I usually loved to sit beneath the fig tree, lounging on one of the chairs or, even better, sitting on the ground, where I’d find a perch in a crook of the twisty roots. When I began to read, it became one of my favorite places to retreat with a book.
    But today I wanted to be anywhere but here. I could still hear Barbara screaming. And Mama said, “Sit down. Sit! And don’t you move, or I’ll put you in there.”
    I sat.
    Now that it was May, Mama, Papa, and Zayde