By then, Norm had changed his EMDR approach and was doing something called RDI (Resource Development and Installation) with me. Instead of remembering trauma, I was supposed to remember positive things, because, as Norm said, “there’s just too much trauma.”
We’d switched from the earphones to a pair of sponge-covered clickers that took turns buzzing in my hands. I found the tactile aspect more relaxing than the visual and audio options. Norm handed me the device and instructed me to remember a time I drove on the highway and liked it. The memory that sprung into focus was from my early twenties. I was on my way to Ocean City, Maryland, and I was alone, driving my boyfriend’s black convertible, blasting reggae down the road. As I crossed the Bay Bridge, I started steering with my knees as I took my hands off the wheel and shot them up into the air, the way you do on roller coasters, because I felt like I was flying in that wind, so high up, free.
Norm was writing on a pad. “ ‘Free.’ What other words would you use to describe how you felt?”
“Happy. Strong. Alive.”
“Good,” he said. “Now let’s go back and remember some more.”
That day I didn’t drive home on the highway. Instead, I took the usual country roads, except for one extra turn: I stopped at a barn. I’d passed it once when I’d accidentally taken a wrong turn, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it after. The barn was painted white and had its own built-in silo, and the paddocks sprawled from the edge of the road to a distant line of pines. When I pulled in, a girl was riding a black horse, her spine straight. All my life I’d dreamed of riding a horse, but I didn’t know if I ever would. I’d never forgotten my friend Jennifer’s horse, who filled me with such untouchable desire that I could no longer be Jennifer’s friend, but eventually the years had faded that desire, and what was left had turned to fear.
Now I was determined to blast through that fear and give myself something my parents never could. Now I would finally step through that door between the horses and me.
Inside the barn, country music trickled from a small radio on a ledge. The horses stood quietly in their stalls, periodically swatting at flies with their tails. Sunlight sliced through the windows, dropped bright squares on the floor. A lone guitar shaped a sad tune. “Hello?” I called. The air smelled of hay and wood and horse sweat, sweetly musky.
And that’s where I first met Applesauce, the horse that started it all. The girls referred to him as “a fat gray sofa,” and my first thought when I saw him was He’s big. My second thought was He’s big. It’s difficult to understand just how big a horse is until you’re standing next to one, until you lose your balance by staring into one of his eyes. But it didn’t take long before I was accustomed to Applesauce’s size, as I groomed him the way the instructor showed me, using the currycomb to massage him in small circles along the sand dune of his back, then sweeping away the dust with quick flicks of the brush.
The instructor took me outside to a small sand-filled ring, and as the sun beat down on my shoulders, I climbed up the mounting block and, for the first time in my life, I mounted a horse. And when I felt him move beneath me, I was happy.
As I made my way home that day, all I could do was think about horses. I ride horses now, I was thinking. I’m an equestrian. All those years I gazed from the roadside at horses in fields, until they seemed farther and farther, until they were specks on the horizon and the sound of them in my mind felt like the most I would ever get of them. But now I had finally touched a horse. I’d groomed him. I’d climbed onto his back. And for a few short minutes as he walked lazily around, I’d ridden him.
And then, an already perfect day got more perfect: Larry came home with the mail.
“Guess what! I rode a horse today!” The words tumbled out before he’d managed to close the front door.
“A horse? Really? Where?” He put the mail down on the side table, and I kissed him.
“Yes, because I’m an equestrian now. I found this barn and rode a horse named Applesauce!”
“Wow, just like that? Your very first horse! Good for you, sweetie!” He leaned forward and hugged me. “I’m proud of you.” Then as he sorted through the mail, he pulled out a large envelope. “This is for you.”
It was a letter from Middlebury College in Vermont. I had gotten the scholarship to Bread Loaf.
A few weeks later, on my way to my first real riding lesson with Tommy and Shaddad, I stopped at a tack shop and told the lady behind the counter that I’d just started riding horses. “Wonderful! Where do you ride?”
I looked at the shelves of boots on the wall, then back at her. “Actually, I’ve only ridden a horse once. And I didn’t exactly ride it—I more like sat on it. But I have a lesson today with someone new.”
“I see.” She nodded.
“Don’t I need some special clothes?” I asked.
“Do you have half chaps or breeches?”
I wasn’t entirely sure what those things were, but I was sure I didn’t have them. Within a half hour I’d purchased a helmet, a pair of tan breeches, brown paddock boots, and brown suede half chaps. When the lady caught me eyeing the tall black boots displayed on the wall, she told me, “Those are for after you’ve been riding for a while.” I wondered how that would happen—that one day when I would say, It’s finally a while—now I can get those tall black boots! I changed into my new ensemble in the dressing room, then paid for my merchandise, proud as a kid who wears her new shoes straight out of the shoe store.
Over the next year, I would ride many different horses, with many different instructors, before I would meet Claret. But no matter where I went, each horse would teach me something new. One of the most important things I came to understand is that horses are prey animals—they live on the edge of panic, always ready to flee—and they require us, as riders, to help them feel safe. One horse I rode spooked at wind, another at doors, and another at just about anything that moved. And always, they needed me to be brave. If I got scared as we neared a door, the horse knew instantly and turned away. But when I steeled my core and kept my legs on firmly—when I looked ahead with determination at the object of fear—the horse moved with me, toward it. This, I learned, is how you move past fear.
One particular afternoon, I was trying to come to terms with the whole idea of falling off a horse. Would it happen? Would it hurt? Would something break? Would I die? “If I fall,” I asked the instructor, “will it be very painful?”
“It’s not exactly going to feel good,” she said. “But, it’s not a matter of if; it’s a matter of when.”
That’s a strange feeling, that moment when you know, I’m going to fall off a horse. Most people don’t know what accidents await them in their futures, but I knew at least one of mine. At first this knowledge was difficult to reconcile. It was like an equation I wanted to recalculate until the numbers came up differently. Maybe I’ll be the lucky one. Maybe I’ll become such a good rider that it will be as if my behind is glued to the saddle. Maybe I’ll stop riding. I knew right then that I had to make a choice: I had to either go after my passion or give it up. There is no halfway with horses. Either you’re present or you’re gone. And I realized that if I let fear stop me from doing something I was passionate about, I was only one small step away from being back on my couch, afraid to even stand up. There’s risk in everything, from the moment we’re born, but, as Dylan says, He not busy being born is busy dying.
So I kept riding, kept seeking the horses, kept stepping each day a little farther from my fear. And all of those steps—and pauses and lurches and swerves—would lead me to a barn in New Hampshire, where a copper-colored, bright-eyed horse was waiting for me.
I sent my confirmation letter back to Bread Loaf, and started driving on the highway again. At first I’d merge on and whip right off at the next exit, my palms clammy, my heart knocking. But then I’d get back on again. I’d play music and look at the clouds and hang in the ri
ght lane, close to the shoulder so that I always had a way off. After a few tries, I began to feel comfortable with it again. Highways are good, I thought. They get you places. Sometimes the child voice would say, Oh my God, you need to get off RIGHT NOW. These cars are going TOO FAST. And I’d say, It’s okay. I’ve got it under control. Just stick with me, kiddo.
When it was time for me to leave for Vermont, Larry loaded my things into my car. A consummate gentleman, he’d always rushed to open every door, to carry my heavy suitcases, to fill up his arms with grocery bags. It was August, the light a miasma hovering over the grass, the chatty birds dipping through it, these last warm mornings of the year, and Larry was standing in the middle of it with a gift he held out in front of him with both hands, the way he’d once held chocolate at my doorstep when we were dating: a box wrapped in metallic paper with sunbursts on it. On the top he’d written in black marker: RITA’S BREAD LOAF BOX. “They’re letters,” he said, “one for you to open each day you’re there.” He kissed me softly on the mouth. “Now go have a good time, and come home to me.”
Larry pushed my car door closed, and I drove away. I drove on one highway, and then another, and another. I passed trees and jutting rock walls and mountains. I passed a fading sign on the roadside that said, PACKING PEANUTS WANTED. I passed little huts selling firecrackers. It was the farthest I’d driven in more than a year, and I wasn’t scared for one moment of it. Instead I felt like a kid on her first day of school, eager and nervous and ready to learn.
Bread Loaf—which was held on a gorgeous sprawling campus on a mountain with no cell phone coverage and a single pay phone surrounded by sunflowers out in the grass—was a whirlwind in another world. We waiters didn’t stop—whether it was working our shifts or attending workshops or craft classes or talks or readings or late night parties where we danced in living rooms in our socks. We were a tribe of motion and mutual love. Just keeping up took all of my energy—I barely had time to eat or sleep let alone think of panic—and I was smitten and aroused by every minute, by this chance to be so completely thrown into a world of kindred spirits, with the mountains rising and falling all around us and the Milky Way floating above us like snow suspended in the black sky.
The entirety of my eleven days there was like that sky—a swath of dazzling fragments: Ilya Kaminsky singing his poems until there was no one left in the room who wasn’t crying; a woman in a classroom with the chalk in her hand—ut pictura poesis (as is painting so is poetry); snippets of conversation overhead between girls while I showered—“I felt so stupid in my tsunami dream”; Steve Orlen, my workshop leader, offering the etymology of my maiden name: “descended from martyrs”; sitting on steps with a beautiful girl who had a Snoopy shirt that matched mine, who stood at a podium in a red halter dress and transfixed me utterly as she read to us about the ways we hold on to things; the tremble and passion in my heart when it was my turn to stand at the podium and read a poem about a two-fingered boy; watching the sun set over the mountains from a bench on a porch beside a lovely woman, the last light holding her face as we looked at each other and out at the sky, which was changing—one moment, the protracted swipe of a flamingo’s wing, the next, the exhalation of a toy dragon—while the waxing moon appeared low over the hills, ready to drop.
In quick stolen minutes at my bed, I opened Larry’s letters. Each envelope was dated and had a small gift tucked inside—rocket stickers, Albert Einstein stickers, a miniature pen-drawn self-portrait of Larry waving, a sushi-shaped eraser, a blue button with a green bird and the word rare—and in each card, Larry inscribed a quotation from a famous writer. On the first day’s letter, he quoted T. S. Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
In one card was a button with a picture of a tree and the word hugger below it. The world’s tallest tree is a redwood in California measuring over 360 feet, Larry wrote. The oldest trees are the 4600-year-old bristlecone pines. In another note he invited me to the sky: The moon phase tonight is a waxing crescent. Meet me in orbit around Luna. Let’s be astronauts! He asked if I was eating and sleeping, he told me to be brave and to shine, he said he loved me and missed me, and he reminded me that he was always a phone call away. Larry’s box of letters was the most magical, thoughtful, loving present anyone had ever given me. It gave me hope that things could change for us, that we could be closer, and that when I came home, maybe I would know the place for the first time.
FORTY-EIGHT
Since Tina and I have seniority, we get our own private rooms as new girls come in and take our old room. On my orange wall I tape a picture Dallas drew for me—a field of flowers with bubble letters above it that read Dallas loves Rita. Next to it I put a picture of him grinning widely, looking at me. But in my new room, I miss my late nights with Tina. As if to make up for the new separation, we’ve started showering together in the evenings, giggling most of the time while we wash each other’s hair, scrub each other’s backs, and soap each other’s breasts. Hers feel so perfectly full in my hands, as if nothing has ever truly filled my hands before. Sometimes I can’t wait for dinner to be over just so I can feel connected to her body again.
One night before “lights out,” Tina steps into my doorway. This time she isn’t giggling. She picks her left foot up and places it on my night table, just for a second, just long enough for me to see under her long T-shirt. She isn’t wearing underwear.
It happens quickly, and then she walks away. “Wait, come back!” I call, but Ms. Hanlin quickly replaces Tina’s spot in my doorway. “Good night, you little rascal,” she says, bending down to hug me.
In the dark, I’m overcome with desire. I roll over and press my hands to the wall that separates our rooms. “Come back,” I whisper into the darkness. And then, as if to answer, she does.
My heart is pounding. She sits on the bed, and I sit up to meet her. This time there is no pause, just her lips against mine, warm and open—softer than any man’s. She kisses my neck, my collarbone, my breasts, and her hands on my body make me realize how loud breath can be. I want her as I have never wanted anyone. I want every part of her. We pull into each other, over and over, and I am born in her hands, into desire.
When it’s finally time for me to go home, Tina won’t come out of her room, and I can’t bring myself to knock. We don’t know how to say goodbye to each other.
I’m wearing Taby’s dress, long and black with a low strappy back.
“You have my dress, so now you have to see me again,” she says, smiling.
“I can’t wait,” I say, squeezing her hard.
“Love ya like a sister!” she calls as I lug my suitcase to the door. Everyone is crowding around to give last hugs, and as I turn to wave, I catch the sunlight coming through the windows and glittering in her hair.
Though I know my mother doesn’t want me, this time she doesn’t have a choice. I am almost sixteen, and the system is finally ejecting me. “Let’s just hope you’re ready,” she said the week before.
“I’ve been ready,” I told her.
When I see her coming down the hall toward me with Joanne following behind, it’s Joanne who stops me flat. She’s twelve now, and in the year since I’ve seen her, her face has lost some of its roundness, and her body has started to change. She stands with her hands straight down by her sides, and I can tell she’s unsure about where she is, and about what comes next, and that she’s biting her lower lip because she doesn’t want to cry.
Many of the memories I have of my sister are of her behind a window: waiting for me at the balcony door to come home from school; pounding her fists on the back window of my mother’s car as my mother drove away without me; crying behind my father’s patio door as I bolted away from her; sitting inside a kitchen on a cloudy day, the day I flew toward her,
breaking the glass, running.
And now I’m walking toward her, and there is no glass between us—only the years we’ve lived apart. “I’m glad you’re coming home, Rita,” she says, and then she starts crying. I wrap her in my arms, but for me there are no tears, because for the first time I feel truly free.
It’s windy when Mr. Ware walks us out to the car and hands me a cassette. “This song will always remind me of you, and when you hear it, I want it to remind you of me, and of everything you learned here.” His eyes go red and watery. “And of everything that you are.” The song is Cat Stevens’s “Wild World.”
We hug goodbye one last time under a low gray sky, and before we part, Mr. Ware speaks into my hair, which tangles in the wind. “I’ll always remember you like a child, girl.”
FORTY-NINE
When I arrived home from Bread Loaf, I found the truth in T. S. Eliot’s words. I experienced those first tingling moments of recognition that come when you’ve been away for a while, when everything is at once familiar and new. This was our town—with its steeples at the center, its quiet porch lights glowing through the trees, its two-lane roads winding like stories—but it could have been any town. This was our black mailbox, our driveway, our windows hazed with light—but it could have been any house. For a moment I considered that maybe time had warped, that I was coming back to a town too late, to a house that was no longer mine. But then I saw my dogs sitting alert at the door, as if they knew I was coming, and then Larry appeared behind them, and they all came out to greet me, and Larry brought my suitcases back in, and within a few minutes the chimera disappeared and the sweetness of being home set in.
One of the first things I did was sit down at my desk to write. Really write—take those snippets in my notebook, and make something with them. Larry came to my door and stood without saying anything.
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