Read The Tin Horse: A Novel for Free Online Page B

introduced us, always adding, “And there’s a new one on the way.” And on Saturday afternoons, he gave Mama peace by taking us to the movies at the Joy or the National Theater. Barbara liked the Joy because it showed cowboy movies. I favored the National because before we went in, Papa bought each of us a little bag of sunflower seeds at the candy store next door; I ate the seeds during the movie, cracking the shells with my teeth and spitting them onto the floor—an act that felt thrillingly mischievous, but no one punished me for it! That’s because everyone did this at the National; by the end of the movie, there were shells all over the floor, hence the theater’s nickname, the Polly Seed Opera House.
    In the spring, Papa and Zayde, who seemed equally delighted with Mama’s pregnancy—he kept smiling at Papa and patting him on the back—planted a vegetable garden by the fig tree in the yard. We helped them water the new shoots coming up and pull out weeds. And I hadn’t known Papa could draw, but sometimes he sat at the kitchen table and practiced fancy lettering. He made a beautiful alphabet for Barbara and me and did each of our names with curlicues and flowers coming out of the letters. One day I saw a drawing he’d done of a storefront with fancy lettering on the window. I hadn’t yet learned how to read, but I recognized our name,
Greenstein
, and I knew
& Son
from seeing it on the sign at Fine & Son Fine Footwear.
    Did I feel a sting of rejection, confronting this evidence that Papa wanted a son? Was there already a bud inside me of the attorney who would champion feminist causes? What I remember is that I, too, wanted a boy. I already had a sister. And, in my ignorance of human reproduction, I simply assumed that since it was what we wanted, the baby inside Mama was a little brother.
    At the same time Papa became so cheerful, Mama seemed to be sucked inside her own thoughts. She burned things on the stove or got the buttons wrong when she dressed us or forgot to make us lunch. Worse thanher distraction, however, were the times she did notice us. She’d always had a temper, but now if we took too long in the bath or we talked too loud, she’d pinch or slap us.
    I say “we” and “us”—Barbara and I both referred to ourselves that way—but of course we weren’t the same person. Nor did Mama treat us the same. Her punishments for me could be arbitrary, as if she simply needed to relieve some anger and her eyes happened to light on me. I walked past her in the kitchen one day that spring, and out of nowhere she grabbed my shoulders and shook me for what felt like forever. Then, as if a storm had passed through her, she softly touched my terrified face and said, “You just looked like you needed a good shaking.”
    But between Mama and Barbara, a clash could turn into war. Like what happened on the day Sonya showed off her telephone, the first phone I’d ever seen in a person’s house.
    “Here, Char, call someone.” Sonya plucked the receiver from its cradle on the wall.
    “No, thank you,” Mama said, but Sonya pressed the instrument into her hand.
    “You hold it up to your ear,” Sonya said.
    “I know how to use a telephone! But who do you want I should call? The mayor? The …” The idea of telephoning anyone was so foreign, Mama couldn’t even think of whom else she might call.
    “Call Canter’s. Look, I have their number right here. I call and order a pound of corned beef, they send a boy to deliver it. So much easier when I’m busy with Stan.”
    “You’d buy a pound of corned beef without looking to make sure they give you fresh and trim off the fat?” Mama sniffed and handed her back the receiver.
    “You think they’d give anything but their best to a customer who telephones an order? In fact, I think I’ll order some now.” Sonya made a show of placing the call and telling the man at Canter’s to send her their leanest, most tender corned beef.
    On the way home,