Women & Other Animals Read Free Page A

sending twisty patterns of electricity through her. The tiger is aware of her rushing blood and of the muscle beneath her fat.
    "You will not move." Helmut's voice travels easily into her, and if Helmut or any man had ever declared loyalty to her, Joanie might stop.
    "Doughnut move, girl," says Bela. But Bela has never cared for
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    her either. Remembering the men she's known is futile, though she can't stop herself. Pictures of them rattle through her like strungtogether boxcars.
    "Big Joanie, stay still!" commands Conroy. If he had invited her to his room last night, she might obey. If Conroy had covered her head to protect her and not to hide her, if he had ever sat beside her in the pie car or held her hand, she would become meat for him now.
    Instead, Big Joanie wills herself to turn, and as she does, lost vertebrae line up and reconnect. Big Joanie feels puzzle pieces snap into place. She turns broad shoulders to face the tiger, straight on, full frame. The creature is as strange as Asia, as familiar as her own reflection.
    She rests her snow cone tray on the barricade. She sees the tiger more clearly than the hairspinning woman sees the husband who controls the rope that holds her aloft, more clearly than Big Joanie's mother ever saw her father, more clearly than any pretty woman will ever see an ordinary man. The tiger is more golden than orange, its black stripes as delicate as smoke trails from a cigarette, as painful to Joanie as whip marks. One pale front leg barren of stripes reveals an asymmetry.
    Shaggy feet with claws like dark quartermoons grip the rubber mat uneasily, as if testing foreign soil. Big Joanie has seen this tiger jump through a ring of fire, yet she has never really seen its yellow god's eyes or read the calligraphy of its warpaint face. The tiger stares back at her. She weighs what it weighs. If the tiger pounces, she will be overcome, but the tiger must look at her and acknowledge her, and Big Joanie will know the face of the animal that devours her.
    Tiger muscles tense and contract as they do before springing at Helmut's bidding. But the tiger hesitates. It shifts its weight and looks away from Big Joanie, retracts its claws. The tiger glances toward the empty cage, and shifts its weight again. Seconds flash in Joanie's mind like glimpses of sun between boxcars. The tiger twists its body, tilts its head, and roars into the bank of lights.
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    Rhyme Game
    Tinny Marie and her mother rattled along Halfmoon Road in the pickup truck, heading east toward the risen sun. Bits of trash flew out of the cans and barrels in the back—a plastic bag from Spartan egg noodles, a popsicle wrapper, grocery store receipts. Tinny Marie's mother had canceled weekly garbage service because she could save money by storing the trash until she had a truckload and then dumping it herself. The longer she saved it, the more she was getting out of her eightdollar compactor fee. Between compactor visits, cans of garbage lined up outside the back door, waiting.
    Tinny Marie's mother was driving with one hand and holding a cup of coffee with the other. Coffee sloshed with each bump, spilling and soaking into the foam rubber where the bench seat was ripped. The smell of burned coffee made Tinny want to gag. She knelt on the seat sideways and leaned out the window to watch the swamp glide past. The tips of marsh grasses were white with frost. When the pickup crossed the stream which flowed under the road and later crossed their property, Tinny spit out the window toward the water. She turned her sideview mirror in all directions to see the road shimmy up from behind.
    "That coffee smells real bad," she said.
    "Best coffee I ever had," said her mother.
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    "Does the coffee make you glad? Or mad?"
    Tinny's mother honked and waved at a man coming toward them in the opposite lane in a Martin's Excavating dump truck. In order to wave, she let loose the wheel, causing the truck to swerve right. Tinny closed her