Read Online The Other Traitor by Sharon Potts - Free Book Online

Saulie!” she shouted.
    Saulie raced the bases marked in chalk, red curls bouncing, his short sturdy legs churning up and down like engine pistons.
    The ball bounced behind a parked car and two boys ran to get it. The second baseman got there first. He fumbled the ball, trying to throw it to Irving, who was standing in front of home base waving his arms. “Throw, you shmendrick! ” Irving screamed.
    Saulie was nearing home base, a chalk mark on the rough asphalt. The second baseman wound up his arm and threw.
    Don’t slide, Saulie, don’t slide. Stop trying to be a hero . Her brother had already torn up his other pair of overalls, and his legs were covered with scabs.
    Saulie slid into home.
    “Safe,” the umpire said.
    Saulie got up, a wide grin on his face. Blood darkened the fabric on his freshly torn pants. The other kids surrounded him, patting his back.
    She shook her head, even though she was proud of him. “Saulie, come inside,” she called. “I need to get that cut cleaned up.” She closed her book and went to get him. She knew how stubborn he could get.
    “Good game,” a man said to Saulie. He was standing near a small truck with Portraits written on its side, and he had a camera box and a folded tripod under his arm. “Let me take a picture of you swinging. Maybe your ma would like it.”  He handed Saulie the broomstick, which had been lying on the curb.
    “But his pants are torn,” Mari said.
    “You’ll hardly notice in the picture.”  The man opened the wood camera box like an accordion and set it up on the tripod in the street. “Ready?”
    Saulie went into a swing pose, hamming it up with a fake serious expression.
    “Say toochis !” the man said, smacking his butt.
    “ Toochis .” Saul’s face broke into a grin, revealing his too-big front teeth that made him resemble a beaver.
    The man took the picture, then glanced at Mari. “What about you? You’re awfully pretty with those big dark eyes, especially when you smile.”
    Mari covered her mouth with her hand. Mama had told her she shouldn’t smile so wide, so as not to tempt the evil spirits, but Mari couldn’t help it sometimes. “No thank you.”
    The man shrugged. “What apartment are you in? I’ll bring the photo up to your mother after I’ve developed it.”
    “2B,” Saul said.
     
    Mama was making stuffed cabbage and it stank all the way into the outside hall. The apartment was different from when Papa had been alive. Mama had sold the velvet drapes, rugs from the living room and dining room, and a few of the pretty cut glass bowls that she’d kept in the china cabinet and on the coffee table.
    Mari had done her best to fill the empty spaces. She had turned broken broomsticks, rusty pipes, cracked dishes, rubber balls, and whatever else she could find, into tiny people. She chose not to dress them in scraps of fabric, preferring to leave their elegant attire to her imagination. They stood in the corners of the rooms, arms extended to give her a hug whenever she passed them.
    Saulie pulled off his overalls in the bathroom and sat on the edge of the clawfoot bathtub as she examined them. He’d torn a section she’d already darned before and it was damp with blood.
    “Hold still while I clean the cut.”
    “I’m going to play for the Yankees someday,” he said. “Ouch.”
    “I’ve told you not to slide anymore.” She dabbed an old clean diaper they used as a rag against his knee, soaking up blood. Luckily it wasn’t too deep a cut.
    “I want to be like Lou Gehrig.”
    “Last week you said Babe Ruth,” Mari said. “I’m putting on the iodine.”
    “I changed my mind. I know Babe batted 373 last year and Gehrig only batted 341, but this year Gehrig’s on track to beat him. And anyway, I’ve got Gehrig’s consistency. OUCH!”
    “I’ll bet neither of them screams like a baby. Go put your other pants on.”
    Mari took the torn overalls to the kitchen to scrub them with lye soap.
    The photographer was