The Mare

by Mary Gaitskill

  “Oh,” said Ms. Lopez, “I think it was perfect. I’ve told her the same. I told her I’ve been in poor white neighborhoods and they are so disgusting she wouldn’t believe it. More disgusting than anything she has ever seen in her life. That’s what I tell her.”

  When I hung up I thought, Now we are really in it. We can’t go back. It was the first time it occurred to me that Paul had been right.

  Paul

  She came up every few weeks all spring. She went on long walks with Ginger; she was over at the barn; she spent time with Edie. I saw her mostly at dinner and after, when I would make sure she helped out with the dishes—she washed, I dried or vice versa. The three of us went to the movies together sometimes; she liked to sit up front in the car with me, and the soft curve of her brow rhymed with the roundness of her stomach and early breasts and also with the soft hilly landscape rolling past in the dark. I began to feel that Ginger was right, that in spite of all the dangers, this really was a good thing to be doing.

  And then Edie said to me, “Is she going to come and stay with you? She said Ginger was going to homeschool her.”

  Velvet

  I fell off Little Tina. We were in the round pen, and we were cantering and I was making her stop and start and sometimes walk backward. Then somebody started shooting. Behind me Pat said, “What the hell?” and I got scared and Tina started moving too fast. I turned around in the saddle to ask why they were shooting, and the rein came loose in my hand, and then they shot again and Tina moved sideways hard, and I slide off her and I hit the ground; her back legs kicked up and I rolled over and prayed. But she just kind of moved off sideways and Pat was there saying, “You okay?” and I said, “Why are they shooting?” And she said it was idiots target shooting out of bounds, was I okay? And I was. So she told me to get Tina and get back on her. I didn’t think I could, but Tina let me. I walked to her and turned around like, Follow me, and she did. That’s when I took her bridle and took her back to the mounting block.

  Paul

  Ginger just said, “Oh, I know where she got that. In this movie I saw with her, the character is homeschooled. She asked what it meant and I told her. I guess she liked the idea.”

  She insisted she said nothing to make Velvet think she was coming to live with us, that the girl was just “experimenting with scenarios in her head.” She said she would speak with her—God knows if she did.

  And then the girl turned twelve and Ginger took her shopping. Velvet came back to the house with all these bright bags, but she had to catch the train and I never saw what “we” had bought her. I heard about it later, though. From Edie, not Ginger.

  Velvet

  Ginger took me to this store. I told her I was going to a party, and I was. It wasn’t my party; nobody gave me a party. But Alicia was inviting me to a party. I didn’t know why. Maybe because I gave her the paper I wrote with Ginger and because we got in trouble together and I made her laugh. Maybe because Strawberry wasn’t there anymore. Really, I don’t know why. She still acted like she hated me, mostly. But she invited me and I wanted to wear something good. Ginger said, “Let’s buy you something, it’s your birthday soon.” And she took me to this store with things in it nobody in my neighborhood would wear. I said, “This is too fancy,” and Ginger said, “No it’s not.”

  But when I came out of the dressing room in this shirt she gave me, the lady in the store said, “A twelve-year-old shouldn’t wear that.” Ginger said, “I’m clueless.” And the store lady picked something. She picked out a short blue skirt that showed my legs and then this shirt. I felt weird, but the store lady said, “It’s very cute.” I said, “It shows my body.” And she said, “But not in a bad way.” I didn’t understand because it showed as much of my body as the other thing that she said a twelve-year-old shouldn’t wear. But in a way I did understand because it didn’t have lace and it wasn’t black.

  I looked in the mirror and I was ugly and stupid. I looked and I was pretty. In the store I did look pretty. In my house I knew I would not. At the party I didn’t know. But I wanted the outfit. I wanted it.

  I wore it to the party. And nobody spat. They looked at me. I could see they were looking like I looked in the store: I was ugly and stupid and then I was pretty. That is how the girls looked. The boys looked different. And I wished Ginger had not taken me to that store.

  But then that boy Dominic walked in. And I was glad that she did.

  He wasn’t alone—he was with Chris, who Helena got in Strawberry’s face about. Also this thin tall boy with very dark skin and long straight-black hair who walked like he was somebody famous. And a girl, somebody older than us. She was black but light, with red hair and a silver belt with a buckle that spelled SONDRA, and she walked and turned her little head so beautiful. My gladness turned sharp in me; I remembered Dominic’s arm around Strawberry with her red-streaked hair. Sondra looked at me, but Dominic did not. I looked back at her, then looked away, and then the boy who acted famous was next to me. Up close he had nasty teeth; brown and rabbit-y, but two of them long on either side, like he’s a vampire. His eyes, though, were like warm candy, like a song where the singer sounds like a liar, but you believe it anyway.

  He said, “Hey, shawty. Who got that dress for you?”

  Across the room, Alicia and Helena were looking like they didn’t believe.

  “It’s not a dress. It’s a skirt and a top.”

  “Your boyfriend got it for you?”

  This song came on: Supersonic, hypnotic, funky-fresh—and I just smiled.

  “Aw, your boyfriend got it for you. That’s nice.”

  —beat flows right through my chest—he touched my arm. “But I could get you something better. What’s your name?”

  “Hey, Shawn,” said Dominic, “what you talkin’ to my little cousin about?” He was there with Sondra, who looked at me very chill. “Sondra, this my cousin Velvet.”

  He remembered my name. My glad was back, big and soft; I looked down and mumbled hi to Sondra’s hi.

  “Just inviting her for a smoke, thass all.”

  “She too young for that.” He looked at me with the little dent in his nose and his eyes soft like—

  Suddenly I felt Sondra standing there, strong and perfume-y, with covered eyes. Not saying anything. Not having to.

  “She old enough for a boyfriend,” said Shawn.

  “That don’t mean old enough to smoke.” Dominic punched my arm real soft. “But you can hang with us if you want.”

  So we went to somebody’s bedroom with clothes all over their bed. Shawn went to sit next to me, but Dominic moved too fast for him, between me and Shawn so close that his leg was against mine. Shawn didn’t say nothin’; they just talked about something else. Sondra talked to me separate. She said, “Your boyfriend bought you the outfit? It’s cute.” Her voice was nice.

  “I didn’t say it’s from a boy. My godmother got it for my birthday just today.”

  “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Twelve.”

  “It looks like money. She rich, I guess. Really, you don’t look twelve.” And then she passed me this sweet-smelling rolled cigarette, but I didn’t take it. Because Dominic was there and he didn’t want me to. So I just sat and felt Dominic’s leg like it was breathing his life into my leg, up into my whole body. What they talked about after that didn’t matter. I was just breathing in life. When we walked out of the room, Alicia and Helena gave me eyes like they did not know who I was and hated me anyway. But I didn’t care. Dominic was walking in front of me. He had his arm around Sondra, but he turned his head to look at me. And his look was not candy. It was tight and hot, joking and serious. Like a song I never heard before.

  Paul

  They attacked her and beat her. That’s what Edie said. Not at the party, but later, they swarmed her and beat her. She didn’t even try to fight back; there were too many of them. Her little brother was there, but he didn’t help. He actually stood there and laughed.

 
; Between me and Ginger, there was hell to pay. Leave the girl alone, I told her. What do you want to do, get her hurt worse? And she went nuts. She beat the wall and screamed that if it weren’t for me, she could come stay with us and nobody would hurt her again and I told her she was crazy and selfish and she ran out the door. It was raining and she just ran out into it. I waited and she didn’t come back for I don’t even know how long. So I went out in the car and found her walking in her sopping pants.

  I opened the door; she got in. We drove around, up in the neighborhood where we’d first taken Velvet bike riding. I waited for her to talk. She said, “Please don’t take her away from me. You wouldn’t let us adopt, so at least let this happen. Can’t you see how good it is for me? Don’t you see how even Edie finally respects me? She finally sees me as a normal woman. I am a normal woman. I want to be normal. If we can’t adopt, this is the closest I can come to having a child.”

  I told her I was willing to consider adoption. She said no. She said, “I love her.”

  I struggled to control my voice. I said, “If you love her, think about her safety. She’s already been hurt. The truth is, she could get more hurt on those horses.”

  She didn’t answer until we were almost home. Finally she said, “I know.”

  But when we talked to Velvet, she said it wasn’t about the clothes. She said those girls just didn’t like her. She said the clothes made them respect her. She said she was friends with some of them again.

  Velvet

  It wasn’t all of them right away. It was Alicia that called me a pig at recess and told me to “go hang around with the rich people.” I hit her and knocked her head to the side; I was strong because of working in the barn and she did not dare hit me back or even talk, she just held on to her face and stared at me.

  It was later that her friends came up on me when I was walking to the train with Dante. Dante laughed while they hit me, but what else could he do? He was only seven. If he didn’t laugh, he’d have to put his head down and feel like shit. So he laughed, and when they were done, he picked up my backpack and carried it for me. And when I got home, my mother looked at the places somebody’d cut my face with heavy rings and she put medicine on it. It made me remember when I was little and she would wash me and comb my hair more softly than she does it now. Sometimes she would hum a song and her touch and her voice would wrap us up in a place where there was nothing but her and me. I would be very still and I would want her to keep doing it forever. It was like that now, except it was even better because she was angry too, and not bitch-angry like at Mr. Nelson at the grocery. She was deep angry, but not at me; she was angry for me. This angry was big and warm like a horse, and it felt better than her nice. It was better than anything Ginger had, and what Ginger had was good. My mother said, “If this ever happens again, if they do this to you again, swear to God, I will hurt them like they have never been hurt before.” She said what she said before: “I will come after them with my body.”

  Except that she didn’t. It was Shawn that helped me the next time. They were following me down the street, and not even Dante was there. They were saying they were gonna beat me down, put me in the hospital this time. I looked at the buildings and cars going by and it was like everything was normal, like me getting beat down was normal. I thought of Ginger and my mare; that didn’t make me feel stronger. It made me feel weaker. The girls got closer. And then like in a movie, Shawn came up beside me. “Hey, girl,” he said. “What’s good?” I said, “Nothing good now. You see those girls?” He looked, I looked. “They gettin’ ready to jump me like before.” All he had to do was look their way with a hard face. They stopped; him and me started. He asked if I wanted to smoke some weed with him. And I said yes.

  Ginger

  On the phone, I asked if those girls were still bothering her. She said they were not. I told her a story from when I was her age, how a bunch of girls attacked me, how I knocked one of them down and they didn’t bother me anymore.

  She said, “I wouldn’t do that.” She sounded amused.

  I asked her, “Why not?”

  Instead of answering, she asked if I believed in hell. At first I said no. Then I said, “Honestly, I think it’s possible. Though I don’t think you get sent there. I don’t think God would have to send people there. I think they would go there by themselves.”

  She asked, “Why do you think that?”

  I said, “Look at how people act. They walk right into horrible things all the time. They actually go out of their way.”

  I told her about the time I dreamed of going to hell on purpose. I was only seven, and in my dream, I went to hell to take the devil’s treasure. I got lost, but finally I succeeded and I came back up and put the treasure under my bed. The dream was so realistic that when I woke up, I looked under my bed to see if the treasure was still there.

  “Was it?” she asked.

  “I don’t remember. But really, those girls, they aren’t bothering you?”

  “No,” she said. “Not anymore.” And then, “I dreamed I went to hell too. Because my grandfather told me to. There was a door in your backyard.”

  The hair on my arms stood up when she said it.

  Velvet

  I went with Shawn because I wanted to get away from those girls and also show them what I could do—walk away with a boy who looked famous. And because even though he wasn’t Dominic, he was close to Dominic. Maybe Dominic would even be there, where we were going.

  But he wasn’t. There was only Shawn’s grandmother there, and I could see where he got his dark skin; she was very black with her gray hair up in a net and she did not look happy to see me. The TV was on really loud; we sat on the couch and watched it. A woman was in the hospital and she had cancer and her man was with another woman. Shawn’s grandmother said there would be dinner in a minute and we went into his room.

  This time I did smoke. The smoke filled my body like Dominic’s leg, only this time it was Shawn’s leg. And then it was his hands. He kept trying to kiss me with that mouth of vampire rabbit teeth, and it just made me want to laugh. He kissed my lips soft, but it felt angry. He said, “You not really his cousin, are you? How old are you?” I said, “How old are you? What grade you in?” He said, “I’m not in no grade,” and the smoke filled my body again. He started kissing my neck. I said, “Your teeth are funny.” But he just said, “That so?” and then he took my hand and said, “Girl, you ever felt a man before?” And I pulled my hand back and said, “I’ve felt horses.” He laughed in this nasty way. I said, “I ride horses. Horses are bigger than a man.” I said man like he said grade, and he pulled back and said, “I don’t see no horses here. It’s me here.”

  A lot of minutes had gone by and dinner was not ready.

  Silvia

  The clothes that woman bought my daughter! They were nice, but too nice, like the woman was saying to me, What’s wrong with you, you can’t even dress your child right? I know that’s not what it was supposed to be, but that was my first feeling and my first feeling is always right; whenever I’ve gotten into trouble, it’s been because I didn’t follow my first feeling. Besides, when Velvet put them on, she just looked conceited, a bitch royale, and she looks like that anyway. Maybe where Ginger lives girls can go around looking like that, but here you’re gonna get hurt and I knew it. But everybody keeps telling me I’m too hard, I yell, I don’t understand it here—okay, fine. I can see she hates the clothes I can get for her, she always wants better and more—okay, fine. Let her have it. Let her see. And she did see; she never wore those things again. But how stupid was this Ginger that she didn’t even talk to me? How disrespectful, did she think she was dressing a doll? I knew she was silly, but I believed her to be good, or good enough. Was she? There was something strange in her eye, es rara—but it never stayed long enough for me to know what it was. Mostly she looked immature, more girl than woman—a sad girl trying to be happy. Una sufrida—what else could she be, married but not one child? I could see
the sadness and emptiness in her eyes and I’d feel her, that surely she’s been through some real hell. Then she’d stare at me, and I’d know she was also something else. But what? She acted so big, walking up to me like she knew my daughter better than I did. But then the next second she’d seem so lost. Who was she? Why was she being so nice?

  Then she sent me fifty dollars, and whatever she was, I had to take it. Mr. Diaz was moving out and I didn’t know what I was going to do.

  Ginger

  She passed her grade, even though she failed. Her grades were crap, but they pushed her through anyway. If the school passed her, did it make any sense to punish her? She was going on to middle school! So she came up again for the summer, this time for six weeks. I was going to tell her mom about the horses at the end of it, but I didn’t. I sent her money instead. I sent it in a greeting card with a picture of horses on it. I said it was for Velvet’s graduation, but really it was because Velvet told me that her mom was so broke a woman gave her money on the subway. The woman gave it to her mom because her mom was crying. The woman was Dominican, and she asked Mrs. Vargas why she was crying and she said, “I have no money for my family.” And the woman opened her purse and gave her five dollars. She said she wished she could give more, but she had a family too. Which I don’t.

  Velvet

  When I went back to the barn, Beth wasn’t there anymore. Some of the horses weren’t there either: Spirit and Blue Boy and Baby were gone. Instead there was a new girl named Heather and her horse, this weird pale horse she called Totally Crushed. Heather wore gold things, rings and little chains, and she had short, shiny nails and Barbie hair. I thought maybe she was one of the rich people Beth told me about, the ones who Beverly trained the horses for just so they could look good. But Heather already looked good on Totally. She was everything right and did everything right and everything that wasn’t right made her sick. She didn’t like Joker because “he doesn’t want to work.” She didn’t like Rocki because he was “wimpy.” She didn’t like Fiery Girl because, besides being “psycho,” she had “ugly ears.” Who she liked was Beverly. And Beverly liked her a lot.