The White Horse
Page 12
“Well, that’s a help. Maybe we should find someone else.”
“Anyway, what good does it do?”
“We’ve been all through that, Raina. It’s settled.”
They finished supper and cleaned up the kitchen, then the teacher bathed the baby in the sink. She looked astonished when she felt the water. She kicked and splashed and made them laugh.
While the teacher got the baby ready for bed, Raina wrote in her notebook at the kitchen table. The house was so quiet and peaceful and clean. Sometimes the quiet made her nervous. She was afraid she would do something stupid and spoil it, like yell: I can’t do this! and end the suspense. The teacher’s face mad and hurt and disappointed. Get out. Right now. I should’ve known you couldn’t change.
Be back on the street, alone again.
But the weeks went by and she hadn’t wrecked anything. The quiet had begun to seep inside her.
The teacher came in, cradling the baby. Her fuzzy yellow sleeper smelled sweet and clean. Raina nuzzled the baby’s belly and she giggled.
“What are you working on? Homework?”
“No. A story, I guess. Or a poem. It’s kinda weird.”
“What’s it about?”
“A white horse.”
The teacher smiled. “The kind that comes with a handsome prince?”
“It’s not that kind of horse.”
The teacher patted her shoulder. “I’ll be interested to read it when you’re done. If you’ll let me.”
“Maybe. We’ll see how it turns out.”
The teacher fixed a bottle for the baby, then tested it on her wrist.
“Just right,” she said. “Say good night to Raina.”
“Bye, baby.” She kissed her, and they left the room.
Raina wrote for a while, then closed the notebook. She found them in the rocker in the baby’s bedroom, rocking back and forth, the teacher softly singing. The baby’s eyes were closed, the bottle still at her lips.
“Is she asleep?”
“Watch this.” The teacher tried to move the bottle. The baby’s eyelids fluttered and she started sucking. The teacher chuckled. “Isn’t she something?”
“I’m going out for a while.”
The teacher’s head swiveled around.
“I mean,” Raina added, “if that’s okay.”
“Where? Alone?”
“No, with my biker boyfriend. We’re going to Tijuana to get married.”
The teacher sighed.
“I’m meeting this girl at the library. We’re working on something for school.”
“Raina, you know I don’t like you out at night. And you shouldn’t make plans before checking with me.”
“Okay. Sorry.”
“You think that’s funny?”
“No.” But it was, in a nice kind of way. Before, no one cared where she went or what she did. She was on her own. Now she had a curfew. “I’ll be home by nine-thirty.”
“Nine,” the teacher said. “How are you going to get there?”
“Walk.”
“At this time of night?”
“It’s only five blocks. Okay, I’ll run. Will that make you feel better?”
The teacher smiled uncertainly. “I’m still trying to get the hang of this, Raina.”
“I know. You worry too much, Miss Johnson.”
“Raina?”
“What?”
“You can’t keep calling me Miss Johnson.”
“Why not?” She couldn’t call her Mom. Maybe someday. Maybe never.
“It just sounds kind of odd,” the teacher said. “Let’s start with Peggy and take it from there.”
“Okay. That’s fine. I’ll see you later.”
“Nine o’clock, Raina. Don’t forget.”
“I won’t.”
She bent down and kissed the sleeping baby, her lips brushing the teacher’s hair.
Chapter Twenty-Six
THE WHITE HORSE
by
Raina Johnson
The white horse came into our lives one night
on the draft leaking under the front door.
Mama was holding it at the kitchen table
when Bobby and I woke up the next morning.
A tiny horse the color of burning ice
danced and pranced on the palm of her hand.
We’d always wanted a pet but we were poor.
“This one’s so small, it won’t eat much,” she said.
Bobby longed to take it to school for show-and-tell.
“No,” mama said. “Someone might steal it.
The white horse will be our secret.”
Mama loved the white horse. Its tricks made her smile.
She didn’t look tired after work anymore.
Outside, winter howled at the door while
springtime bloomed on Mama’s cheeks.
The white horse loved Mama. It hated us.
It snapped at Bobby when he sat on her lap.
“You were teasing it, Bob. Get down,” she said.
The white horse purred on her knees like a cat.
Soon the white horse was as big as a dog.
It followed Mama everywhere she went.
She didn’t have time to help us with our homework.
The white horse gobbled up all her attention.
Some nights, they left the house together,
the white horse on a leash wrapped around her wrist.
“We don’t like being alone,” I told her.
“Take care of your brother,” Mama said.
The white horse ballooned to carousel-size
with staring eyes and a frozen mane.
On crystal wings it flew around the room,
Mama astride its back, laughing.
The white horse grew bigger and bigger.
“He’s eating everything!” Bobby said. All the food in the fridge. In the cupboards too. The TV set.
Mama’s paycheck. Bobby and I needed new winter coats.
“Stop whining all the time,” she said.
Every night Mama flew on the bright white horse.
Some mornings she could not get out of bed.
She felt too tired to go to work.
Our voices hurt her head.
She forgot to pack our lunches and give us kisses.
Keeping a horse inside was against the law,
so our friends couldn’t come to the house anymore.
Mama closed the curtains to hide the glow that
rose like steam from his shining skin.
Bobby and I had to turn away.
It hurt our eyes to look at him.
The white horse ate the couch and the dining room set.
It devoured Bobby’s bike. It grew bigger and bigger,
filling the whole house, warping the walls,
crashing through the roof so the rain fell in.
Mama didn’t notice. The sun was still shining
where she and the white horse were flying.
“We’ve got to do something,” I told my brother.
I told my mother: “The white horse has to go.”
“No,” she said.” He’s a wonderful pet.
He loves me and he’s beautiful and gentle.”
Enchanted, dreaming, Mama was blind.
She didn’t see what we were seeing.
The white horse watched us with ravenous eyes.
Soon there would be nothing left but us for him to eat.
One morning we found Mama on the kitchen floor.
Her eyes were empty and her hair was wild.
Bobby got scared and started crying.
“Mama, make the white horse go away!” he said.
It reared up beside him, fierce teeth flashing,
its hooves lashing out, striking Bobby’s head.
Bloody tears trickled from my brother’s eyes,
waking Mama, breaking the spell.
“What have I done? He could’ve died!” she cried.
We ru
shed him to the hospital. Doctors bandaged his head.
“What happened?” they asked, their faces angry.
“He fell,” Mama lied, fear and shame in her eyes.
Bobby didn’t say anything.
When we got home the white horse was hiding.
Mama knelt and held us close.
“I’m so sorry, children. Can you ever forgive me?
Tonight I’ll make the white horse go.”
He sidled out shyly, after dinner, his sleek coat
gleaming like living snow. Mama was sitting at the table,
paying bills. He nuzzled her with his velvet muzzle.
“Go away,” she said. “You hurt my children.”
“Come fly with me,” he whispered. “You know you love me.
“I’ll take you where you want to go.”
“No,” she said. “My children need me.”
“You need me more.” The white horse bit her.
She screamed in pain and struggled against him.
He bit again, his teeth like needles
that caged her wrist and pierced her skin,
tattooing her with beads of blood.
“All right!” she cried. “I’ll meet you outside.
Just let me say good-bye to the children.”
“Be quick.” He galloped out, huge hooves pounding.
Mama slammed and locked the door behind him.
His eyes filled the windows. The thin panes shivered.
“LET ME IN! I PROMISE I’LL BE SMALL!” he roared.
“No!” mama said. “You can’t trick me anymore!”
She stuffed rags in the cracks where he’d first snuck in.
The white horse heaved his crushing weight against the walls.
His icy breath shrieked down the chimney.
He pleaded. Me screamed. His hooves thundered on the door.
All night he raged like a storm, a fever.
When the sun came up, the white horse was gone.
Mama and the house were still standing.
Bobby and I were afraid to go to school,
afraid the white horse would sneak back when we left.
“I promise you, children, he’s gone forever,” Mama said.
She sent us off with lunch and hugs and kisses.
That day I couldn’t pay attention in class,
scared that Mama and the white horse were flying,
so high this time, we’d never find her.
“What’s the matter with you?” my teachers asked.
After school I found Bobby and we hurried home,
racing through the streets, Bobby holding my hand.
From way down the block we could see our house.
All the windows were glowing like candles.
“Oh, no!” Bobby cried. “The white horse has come back!”
I held him and said, “Please don’t worry anymore.
I will never let him hurt you. I will keep you safe forever.”
We were so afraid to open the door.
But the light inside the house came from Mama’s eyes,
shining with a mother’s love, pure as fire.
She gathered us into her arms like flowers.
We never saw the white horse again.
About the Author
Cynthia D. Grant has published twelve young adult fiction novels since 1980. In 1991 she won the first PEN/Norma Klein Award, for “an emerging voice among American writers of children’s fiction.” Over the years, Grant has received numerous other distinctions. Unfortunately, her Massachusetts upbringing prohibits her from showing off. She lives in the mountains outside Cloverdale, California, and has one husband, Eric Neel; two sons, Morgan Heatley-Grant and Forest Neel-Grant; two cats, Kelsey, an orange tom, and Billie, a barn cat–barracuda mix; and Mike the Wonder Dog, who packs two-hundred-plus pounds of personality into a seven-pound body.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1998 by Cynthia D. Grant
Cover design by Liz Connor
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1361-1
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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