And then I washed her with the hose and scraped the water off her, and even though her face was sweet, I missed my mare.
I said, “Miss Pat, how is Fiery Girl? Do you think she misses me?”
“Well, she’s an animal. It’s hard to know what they think.”
I soaped Chloe with mint between her legs and I thought, I would know.
“But I have noticed she stands at the door of her stall every day. Like she’s looking for somebody.”
I stopped in the middle of rinsing Chloe. I said, “I know I can’t see her, but why don’t you have her here if she’s yours? Why do you keep her at Estella’s place?”
“Because I don’t have a stall for her and also I don’t think she’d get along with Chloe. I’d have to build a fence to divide the paddock.”
“Oh.”
“But I’ve been thinking about that. She’s lot better now than she was. If you’d help me build a stall, maybe—”
I dropped the sponge and hugged Pat. I felt her be embarrassed and then just like me, and hug me back. “When?” I asked.
“If we can get the stall together by the end of the month, then. It should only take a few days, then a few more days for a fence in the paddock. You can pay for the lessons that way—not much mucking to do around this place.”
I told Ginger and she started letting me come almost every day, even though sometimes I had to wait extra time for Paul to get back from his “office hours.” On the extra-time days, Pat invited me in her house to put my feet up. Her house was dirty. It was normal-dirty, like plates with old food and yellow-y rags and clothes piled up, and also strange-dirty, with little broken things everywhere: toys and a glass cat head with jewel eyes and a scissors stuck in the door where the knob was supposed to be, and the toilet couldn’t flush; you had to stick your hand down in the back of it and pull on the chain. It was like the house was falling down in pieces and Pat didn’t even notice! The first time I came in, her mom was there, sitting in it. She was watching something about horses on TV and when we came in she said, “The queen flew into Lexington last night. She is very excited about the new foal sired by Abdul.” She was a strong old lady with a long neck that came out of her body like a person trying to escape out of a tree trunk. She did home care like my mom. Pat would rub her legs so her veins wouldn’t hurt, like I did with my mom. And she would tell stories about how the other care workers stole but she didn’t, and how she “blew the whistle” when she found this one old man’s good things packed up in boxes on his back porch and he didn’t even know the other shift worker was about to “snatch him bald-headed.”
Pat’s barn was dirty too. All the combs and brushes were filthy in filthy bags, and so were the spray bottles and nasty jars of horse-rub, clipboards and plastic boxes of cards and the greasy towel covering the toilet bucket. Really, there were pieces of dirt on everything, even the old dead webs covering the bars on the stalls and the windows so crusty you couldn’t see out of them. It was also covered with bird shit. There were these birds shaped like fat arrows in nests under the ceiling, and they flew in curves, going on the horses when they came in or out and diving at us while we worked nailing pieces of wood together to make the walls and door of a stall. I was scared of them at first, that they would peck my face, but Pat just smiled and said, “Get back, brother bird!” and they swerved away and out the door.
But mostly me and Chloe jumped. She was different from my mare, lighter, like she never cried in her life. When she jumped, she rounded her back so strong it almost pushed me off, pulled her legs up into her body so soft, and landed on them like a cat. Once she didn’t take the jump, she ran around it, and I fell off and banged my head. I got mad and yelled at her and Pat yelled at me. “That was you, not her,” she said. “She saw you missed the distance and she wasn’t going to hurt herself and you, heinie over teakettle.”
I started loving Chloe. I loved the feeling I got in my legs sometimes when I was on her, like the spot where my legs touched her sides was the best place in the world and we were both in it. I never felt that with Fiery Girl. I didn’t know why and it made me feel bad. I didn’t want to ask Pat about it because I didn’t want to admit it.
I went to see my mare, but only once. Because I wanted to respect Pat’s words, and also because I had to sneak out when Ginger and Paul were asleep and I really didn’t want to get caught this time. When I got the courage and went, the mare seemed like she didn’t like me. I brought her an apple and she ate it. But then she turned her body away from me and looked at the wall even when I hugged her neck and begged her to turn. I said, “Come on. I want to get you away from here!” And I thought to her about Pat’s place and the stall we were making for her. And the leg-feeling, that I wanted to feel it with her. Still, she wouldn’t turn. It was like, even she was mad at me for disobeying Pat.
—
I talked to Ginger about the leg thing. We were in the car at night, “getting lost” on the same roads we always drove. I told her how I could feel it with Chloe and not with my mare. She didn’t answer for so long, it was like she didn’t hear me. Then she said, “Just because you can’t feel it with Fiery Girl doesn’t mean it’s not there. Before my sister died, I didn’t feel love for her. I didn’t even like her. But I did love her. I just didn’t feel it.”
“How could you love somebody and not feel it?”
“I don’t know how to describe it.”
I didn’t say anything. The same trees and houses went past, slanty and shadowy, the same but still strange. Ginger’s music was on, this grown woman singing like she was my age. It was ugly and fake, her making her voice like that, but I didn’t care. I was remembering something from a long time ago.
Ginger said, “Before Paul there was a, a…boyfriend who I had a bad relationship with. We were bad to each other.”
“How?”
“We just hurt each other all the time. It was awful and I always felt bad about it. But I ran into him a little while ago, and I realized there was love between us, even though we acted horrible. I was glad.”
The thing I remembered: being in the car with my father. His free hand under my clothes feeling me all over for money until he found it and he took it. Because I lied and told him I didn’t have it, he kept it all.
“So I’m saying, just because you haven’t felt that thing with Fiery Girl yet doesn’t mean it’s not there. It’s just not right on that spot where your legs are.”
I lied. Why did I lie? The money was for emergencies—was the toll an emergency? Was he right not to see me again or even send anything?
“I used to feel something like that,” said Ginger. “I felt it when I painted.”
“In your legs?”
“No. In my brain. I used to think of it as a radio signal that I had to be alone to hear. I don’t hear it now, but I’m hoping it’s still there.”
“What did it sound like?”
“I didn’t actually hear it. I more felt it.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I know.” There was a space between songs and I heard her breathe in, then out. The music started again.
I thought, Did my father love me but not feel it?
Ginger said, “I wonder if I can’t hear it anymore because I’m not alone?”
She said it like she was alone. That made me feel alone.
“If so, then I’m glad I don’t hear it,” she said. “I’d rather hear you.”
Does Dominic love me and not feel it?
Ginger reached over and put her hand on my leg. “What’re you thinking?”
“Nothing.”
But I was thinking, No. He feels it. He feels it.
Ginger
She made good on our deal: She filled up her math notebooks and wrote her essays with a minimum of groaning. And she’d improved, no question. It was still hard for her to read and write, harder than it should’ve been, given her intelligence. The one book review she did—on Black Beauty—was stilted and showe
d her boredom. The essay she did on what it was like to come and visit the country was better. The one she called “My Horse” was wonderful.
I knew she still wasn’t turning her homework in. We still did it almost every week during the school year, but whenever I could actually get through to a teacher, he or she would say—with rare exceptions—that they never saw it. I stopped saying anything about it because it didn’t help and at least she was learning.
Then I talked to Edie. Velvet and Edie spent time together nearly every weekend. I was very pleased by it, even if I didn’t think they were true friends. The age difference was too big for that, and Velvet was subtly guarded around Edie; I almost had the impression that she was somehow “acting” for the older girl.
I was right. When Edie came by the house to pick Velvet up one day, she had to wait a bit for Velvet to change out of her horse clothes, and while Edie was waiting, she and I talked out on the porch. She said, “You must be so proud.”
I said, “I am.”
“For her to go from failing to the top of her grade? That’s extraordinary, and it’s because of you and my dad.”
She must’ve thought I turned my head out of modesty.
“And on top of that, she’s even competing at the county fair? I wish I could see her, but I’ll be up at school by then.”
Velvet
Ginger asked me why I said I was at the top of my grade when I wasn’t even giving in my homework. I told her that I did give it in; that the teacher was lazy or just lying. She said, “All your teachers?” I didn’t say anything. She said, “You would be at the top of your grade if you were turning it in.” I still didn’t say anything. We were sitting out in the backyard in plastic chairs. The grass smell was in our noses and the crickets were out. The neighbors were behind their fence talking about the Iraq War, how it had to happen because of the Bible. Paul was away somewhere and Ginger was drinking something, I wondered what.
She said, “Why did you tell Edie that you were going to ride at the county fair?”
“I didn’t tell her that.”
“Then why did she say you did?”
“I said I know somebody who’s riding at the fair.”
Ginger said, “If you’re going to lie, you should learn to do it better than that.” She said, “You keep lying to me, we aren’t going to stay close. Lying creates distance between people.”
“I’m not lying.”
She didn’t say anything. The crickets went, I’m a boy I’m a boy, I’m a girl I’m a girl. Ginger sipped her drink. I thought about what Shawn said, why she could be so nice. I thought about the dream of a trapdoor in her yard, and how she went down the stairs to steal treasure from hell. I thought, It’s you who’s the liar. “It all started in the Bible,” said the neighbor man. “With an Arab woman named Hajar.”
Trapdoor. I got up and walked in the back door, through the house, and out the front door. Ginger called to me, but I didn’t stop. I went directly to my mare. No one was there. I opened her stall and went in. This time she didn’t turn her back to me. I rubbed her neck and thought of when I took my paper for school and put it on the counter where water had spilled; I watched the words I wrote with Ginger melt and then I went to school. I thought about myself giving the clean, dry paper to the teacher and getting it back with a 4 on it. My horse put her head on my shoulder. I thought both things, the clean paper and the ruined one.
Pat says, “This mare tolerates no bullshit,” and she is right. It wasn’t bullshit; I was telling her the truth just standing next to her: destroying the paper but giving the teacher the paper. The county fair. Me and Fiery Girl at the county fair. It hadn’t happened. But it would. I could feel it. So could my mare.
Ginger
I didn’t talk to Paul about it because of how provoked he could be about what I was “doing.” Sometimes he was so remote, it was like he was wearing a “Keep Out” sign on his back. In some ways I was grateful for it because it meant he was out of our way, but it was also painful.
Still, I respected the sign. So I tried to talk with Kayla, and a lot of other people too, whether I knew them or not. I got more advice than I wanted at the drugstore checkout from Danielle, the woman who ran the Cocoon Theater—who just happened to be there with Laura, a member of Becca’s clique, the artist. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut, but I couldn’t help it: I told them about Velvet not turning in her papers even though she did them.
“What do you expect?” said Danielle. “You’re competing with her mother.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Oh, you are,” said Laura. “And you’re not going to win.”
I flushed; the conversation was now about something else. “What are you saying?”
Laura answered me with a look. Danielle said, “The message you’re giving her contradicts the message she’s getting from her mother.”
“What message do you think her mother is giving her?”
“That she wants her to fail,” said Danielle. “That’s why she doesn’t turn in her homework. She’s doing exactly what her mother wants her to do.”
I thought, She’s right. But it made me mad. Because she didn’t even know Mrs. Vargas or Velvet. I said, “I don’t think that’s what her mother wants.”
“I doubt that’s what she wants either,” said Laura. “She just may be highly ambivalent about somebody else messing around with her kid. Somebody white, with money, who doesn’t know anything about their culture.”
Danielle touched my hand. “I think you’re doing something good. I support what you’re doing. It just sounds…complicated.”
She was innocent, I was pretty sure. Laura, I wanted to kill.
Velvet
When we were finished with the stall and the fence, Pat told me we could bring the mare, that I could go get her and lead her into the trailer. We hooked Pat’s car to a little trailer that looked like a toy from a machine, and I was afraid to think about my horse in that thing, with nothing but a piece of metal moving between her and the road going faster than she could understand. But Pat said not to worry about it, and we got in the car.
Beverly wasn’t there, but Estella was. She said good morning to Pat and nodded her nose at me. Pat positioned the trailer outside the barn door and I helped her put out a ramp for the horse to walk up. Estella stood and lit a cigarette, smoking with flat eyes, thin lips wrinkled.
Pat went into the barn first and got a small whip that was different from a crop. “You’re gonna lead her, and if she doesn’t go up the ramp, I’ll tap her with this. Don’t worry, I won’t hit, just tap. Only if I need to. Maybe she’ll go without it. Estella will be on her other side just in case.”
Fiery Girl came out with her head up and ears forward; when she saw the trailer, her neck got stiff and she pulled on the chain. I put my hand on her neck; there was something in her I hadn’t felt before, something little and hurt, too hurt to be bad. I tried to find it with my hand, and talked to it soft. “Just come with me,” I said, “like before.” She listened; she put her head down to study the ramp and snorted at it like she recognized it and did not like it. It was almost funny—then I remembered the little girl. The girl she loved brought her to a trailer and she thought she was going home and—that was the hurt. Right then the mare shied off to the side, pulling me off balance.
Estella put her cigarette in her mouth and held her arms out, blocking the mare. Fiery Girl turned back to the ramp, but crouched and tensed in her legs. I got my balance back and tried to lead. She moved away from the ramp again. Estella held out her arms and Pat clucked with her tongue, then she must’ve tapped with the whip because the mare whinnied and started forward. I relaxed my lead arm and fixed my eyes on the trailer. Her head went up and I felt her mind on me, but she didn’t follow me. I told her it was safe. She looked to be sure I meant it, then calmed, her eyes deciding to trust me. “Good girl,” I said. “Good, beautiful.” Pat said, “That’s right.” Head high, the horse looked at the ramp again. I
touched her neck. She relaxed and dropped her head a little. I rubbed her neck like I’d rub my mom’s legs. I got onto the ramp. So did she. Then it was like she took a deep breath and banged up it with high, wild feet.
Estella looked at me fully then, and not like I was a little girl that she had to lift up. She took her cigarette out of her mouth and said, “Good job.”
Ginger
We took her to a party that night, to celebrate bringing the horse to Pat’s. It was a faculty party and normally those are terrible, but this was supposed to be for kids. There was going to be music, and Velvet wanted to go.
When we entered, the room was full of music and laughter, but the first people we saw were Becca and her editor friend, Joan. They greeted Paul, not me. My attention was pulled away by singing; in the corner, a young professor’s wife was playing a guitar while a tiny, charming child sang a pop song for a circle of children. Joan was saying, “I hear you ride horses. You should come to the barn where my daughter rides.” Velvet looked down, maybe confused by the friendly unfriendliness. Oblivious, Joan continued, “Edie could bring you over sometime. Would you like that?” and Velvet said, “Yea-uh,” with a tinge of mockery only I heard. Becca’s face softened on the girl like she was actually about to speak when there was a burst of energy and a gang of kids ran around us like happy water, pushing us a little apart. They were all younger than Velvet, much younger, with quick, animated faces, confident that they belonged and were loved above all, and they flashed around Velvet like she was a rock while right in front of me she became one. My heart sank. A writing teacher I was actually friendly with started talking to me, her smiling eyes on Velvet, trying to get a smile back. Joan touched my shoulder and said, “Let’s talk about it”; Becca turned away and Joan floated after her. Paul saw someone and abruptly excused himself; Velvet’s eyes followed him. “Let’s get some food,” said the teacher, and we did, but Velvet’s face disturbed me; her expression reminded me of her mother when I first met her in the Fresh Air Fund office, sitting in her body like it was a tank. We loaded our plates and sat down with a beautiful dance instructor who seemed to be friends with the writer. I listened while they talked, and Velvet sat silently beside me, her attention elsewhere. In another part of the room, a man was somehow playing a classical song on a garden hose. Children were laughing with delight. I followed Velvet’s eyes and saw she was looking at Paul, who was talking to a woman with red hair. I hadn’t seen her before. She looked old to be a student; was she a new instructor? The writing teacher was saying: “My kids are taking synchronized swimming and ballet and tap while all the other kids are taking soccer and basketball. Laurel so excels in swimming that it affects everything else she does, and the ballet, that has given her body a special awareness as a swimmer—”
The Mare Page 23
