The Mare

by Mary Gaitskill

  She said, “Just because my father—!”

  And I took off my house slipper and slapped her face good. She started crying and I said, “You think that hurts, llorona? Wait till he hits you.”

  She said, “He wouldn’t hit me,” and I hit her again. Because I knew it. I was right. If I push her enough, she always lets the truth out. She can’t hold anything back.

  Ginger

  The next weekend she was supposed to come, she didn’t show. I waited at Penn Station for half an hour before calling her at home. Her mother yelled into the phone; it was somehow comforting, like she was yelling on my behalf. Her brother came on and said Velvet was asleep. He said she’d been out late and a social worker was coming. I asked him why a social worker was coming. He said, “I don’t know, she’s from the school. She comes when my sister does something bad.” “Like what?” I asked. But I guess something interesting must’ve happened on the TV because he didn’t answer me. I said, “Can you go wake your sister up?” and he said, “Okay.”

  I waited on the phone for almost ten minutes. I was about to hang up when a tornado of screaming voices came up behind the cartoon noise. I waited, thinking that Velvet was coming. The screaming went on. The cartoons got louder. I hung up. It was nearly winter and my toes and hands were cold. I went into Penn Station to get a hot chocolate and walked around drinking it. I stared at the jumbled food nooks and windows filled with cheap shit: crazy-print panty hose, boxes of chenille gloves and hats, teddy bears, glass roses, Empire State knickknacks, magazines crammed with exhausting opinions and worthless pictures it cost thousands of dollars to take. Pretzels. Pizza. Squashed sandwiches and big, biliously iced cookies. Lights buzzing, music pumping, people yelling orders and wiping surfaces; so much honest effort put into so much ugliness, everyone worn out by it but still doing their job to push it out the chute. All of it probably overrun by rats at night. A crazy guy pointed at me and laughed.

  What was I going to tell Paul?

  I called her again. She picked up the phone and said she was sorry. “I’m sorry too,” I said. “I spent time and money to come all this way for nothing and you can’t even come to the phone?”

  She was silent.

  “You know what, we don’t have to talk about it,” I said. “I’m too angry to talk.” I hung up.

  I would tell him she texted and canceled because she was sick, and that I didn’t get the text until I was already halfway into the city.

  Velvet

  The next time I came, Pat was mad at me too. She said she made time for me that weekend and that Fiery Girl was expecting to see me. She said, “You ever read something called The Little Prince?”

  “No.” Really, I was supposed to read it last year in school, but I didn’t.

  “Okay. In that book it says once you tame something, you are responsible for it. You tamed that horse, you understand?”

  We walked to the barn. The ground was cold mud in hard, frowning shapes. The long grass was smeared with dry mud and the garden was nothing but dirt and dead plants bent over and broken, with bits of green trying to live.

  I felt the hardness of it even more than I felt my horse. Fiery Girl was warm under me and she snorted peacefully. But she would still not jump. She wasn’t afraid—that wasn’t why. It was because she could feel I had no jump in me. All I could feel was the cold hardness and stillness of the ground.

  At least Pat wasn’t mad at me for that.

  Ginger

  Mrs. Vargas’s friend called and asked for me. Mrs. Vargas was in the room, I could hear her, but it was her friend who spoke English on the phone. She said, Silvia wants you to know Velvet’s report card had an A on it. They wrote a note on it saying she’s done better than ever, even though she didn’t come enough. She says because of that, please have her for Christmas. She’s getting into trouble here and Silvia knows she’ll be safe with you.

  It was the first time she’d ever said please. It was the first time I’d heard her first name.

  Paul

  The day before Christmas, the family met us at Penn Station and we went to eat at the same diner we’d gone to before. Ginger gave the boy a Hot Wheels car and his mom a gift card from Macy’s. Mrs. Vargas presented us with candles.

  “Ahh,” said the boy, “the tradition continues!” He said it in English; he also said it sarcastically. He was much sharper this year.

  I sat across from him and, while his mother and sister triangled with my wife, he and I talked about horror movies and cartoons. I asked him what he thought he’d be when he grew up and he didn’t miss a beat. He said, “I’ll be a statue of the suffering of hell.”

  “I don’t think they make statues like that, Dante.” Though of course, they do.

  “Then I’ll make it myself,” he said. “I’ll make it out of the junkyard.”

  I said, “That’s great,” and he burped, which made his mom slap his head.

  It wasn’t until much later that it occurred to me he was referring to the kind of elaborate graveyard statue you see in horror movies. That he was saying, basically, I’m going to grow up to be dead.

  Velvet

  The tree was still beautiful and they still had my favorite striped glass ball. But I kept thinking of that night we went to the party and Paul disappeared with that red-haired woman. I didn’t know if everything was the same with them or if they were pretending, and so nothing seemed the same to me. So I pretended and waited until I could walk to the barn. Even that wasn’t the same since Fiery Girl wasn’t there anymore, but still I walked over in the cold, steam coming out my mouth like I was a horse. Half the sky was full of white clouds; the other half was black with a lot of stars. There was ice in the paddock where I first rode.

  It ain’t what it was with Shawn. You know that.

  The horses moved and breathed when they heard me, but I didn’t hear them talk. I realized I hadn’t heard them talk for a long time. Maybe because I wasn’t a kid anymore? I went to Joker because I hadn’t seen him since the day me and Fiery Girl rode past. He was glad to see me but too nervous to pet; he kept moving around and then he sneezed in my eye. It made me almost laugh, but I wanted to touch somebody, so I looked for Reesa, my first horse. She was lying down and I wanted to curl up against her, even though it’s not safe. But I couldn’t because she got up when I opened her stall. She looked at me with such soft eyes and stood quiet and let me get warm on her. I remembered how it felt that first time. I felt love for her. I rubbed her and scratched her back where she liked it and looked out her window at the night. It started snowing.

  You know I have love for you. You love me?

  It was late when he finally came. The kids, Rochelle and Jason, were asleep. He came in looking angry, then I realized, no, scared. Something happened, but he wouldn’t say what it was, said I shouldn’t know. He kept walking around. He said they wouldn’t come here because nobody knew about here. They’d go to Brianna’s place; he needed to stay with me. Did I know when Kristal would come back? I didn’t know exactly, but I knew it would be late, he could stay until then. Jason heard us, I guess, because he came in the room holding his little three-year-old dick and looking sleepy-bug-eyed at Dominic until I kissed him and put him back in bed. When I came back in the living room, Dominic had calmed himself down. He sat close to me on the couch, but he didn’t look at me; he texted. I could smell him, and the smell of him scared me and I didn’t know why. I tried to bring back the warm feeling of when he crouched down with his legs open, but this was not like that. His sideways face was hard, and his hands didn’t care about anything but texting. He worked his phone. I didn’t move, but still I went toward him in waves, hurting to touch him. He closed the phone and put it on the table. He looked at me; he started to talk, then he stopped. His eyes saw my feeling, and I let him see it all the way. He said he had to do something and he picked up his phone again. He opened it and stared at it. He put it down and looked at me. He touched my face with his hand. I had words I couldn’t say, b
ut he heard and answered by kissing my mouth—quick, like he meant to move away. But he didn’t. For a second he pulled back and I felt him soft, waiting like a horse, waiting for me to tell him which way to move. Like a horse, he heard my answer before I knew I gave it, and we kissed for real, and he made these noises, little noises that said Please, please let me close, please let me inside, and because the noises were so baby, I touched the back of his head like to protect him. Next thing I knew, he kneeled and pushed my legs apart, and put his hands and head on my breast. I pulled my shirt up and he touched them and kissed them. It felt so good I got scared and my body trembled. He rose up and kissed my face and said, “Don’t be scared. I ain’t gonna hurt you, boo. We ain’t gonna do it all, I can’t, I’m with Brianna.”

  “If you with her, why you with me like this? Why you callin’ me ‘boo’?”

  “I don’t know, I shouldn’t. But I need to touch you. I wanna feel you next to me. We can at least do that, right? You know I have love for you. You love me?”

  I said yes by kissing, and we went in the next room, where there was a bed. We took off our shirts and I saw words on his chest tattooed in BIG mad-beautiful letters, like: You humbled my adversaries and I destroyed my foes and 18:39. It was so wicked serious I almost put my shirt back on. I said, “Is that, like…from the Bible?” “It’s from a letter my uncle wrote me,” he said. “From prison. But yeah, he got it from the Bible.” “You believe in that?” I asked. He said, “Not in a bible-ass way. I ain’t even read it mostly. But this I like. And my uncle, he like a father to me.” I touched his chest with my hand and kissed it. I took off my bra and we pressed hearts together. We talked about his uncle and about Shawn and how my grandfather talked to me, and what happened that night after I went home. About his sister and how he got split up from her when his mom moved in with this boss up in Washington Heights. Also about Fiery Girl; the time I talked to her and she talked back to me and I cleaned her dirty stall. He told me about how he used to think he could be an actor. He said he acted at this charter school he used to be at before he got kicked out for assaulting a teacher; they put on plays and he was Romeo in one of them. I laughed. I said, “You mean like wherefore art thou?” and he said, “Yeah, you don’t believe me?” I said, “No!” just to be that way, and he promised the next time he saw me he’d show me the picture of it that his teacher took.

  And the whole time we were talking, we were touching everything. I took off everything except my panties and he touched everything until it was like a dream. He unzipped his pants and I saw him. There was nothing ugly or crocodile—no. Because it was him, even more than his face, and I kissed it like it was his face. I heard him laugh very soft and I looked up. Was kissing it stupid? But I saw his eyes soft and his lips smiling, and I smiled too. He said, “Go on, beauty, don’t be afraid. It ain’t what it was with Shawn. You know that. Open your mouth, love me. Show me love.”

  Reesa lay down again, curled with her nose down almost in her bedding. I went and sat against her body for heat. Out the window, the snow was like the beginning of a old black-and-white movie where they show the outside of the house in the snow and then the inside where everybody’s living the story. I took out my phone and looked. Nothing.

  Ginger

  We drove at night, but she didn’t talk and she frowned at my music, like it was distracting her from disappearing into her music—this goopy Spanish stuff, all love songs except for one with snarling dogs and gunfire and guys yelling “Ronca!” That song was the best, all threat and flash in the dark, but when I told her I liked it, she just stared straight ahead, and I remembered her friend who died.

  Something else was different too. She stopped leaning against me when we sat to watch TV. When I put my arm around her, she went still under my touch. I thought she was rejecting me, then I realized it was worse: She had lost her trust in touch. Not just my touch, all touch. I still touched her, out of habit; my hand on her back, her arm, her forehead when I said good-night. She stayed remote. Someone had made touch into something else for her and I could not change it back.

  Velvet

  That Christmas Fiery Girl took the jumps—not just one, but four in a row. It was cold, but the ground was firm and dry with no ice or slush, and I put my legs on her like business, not feeling. Because I was going to find a way to be in a competition, get points, and be in a bigger competition where I could win some money and buy clothes and do my hair and go to that club and find Dominic.

  That’s all I thought about back home, trying to sleep on the couch with people brawling at each other outside and their cars pumping music so hard it pumped up in the walls of my building. That’s all I thought about when I was on the mare, and damn, she seemed to get it. The one time she gave me trouble in the stall, lifting her head and resisting the bit, I slapped her mouth and she minded. “Real smart,” said Pat. “You just smacked somebody that outweighs you by a thousand pounds.” But when I took her out, that horse took the jumps better than ever, better than Chloe, fiercer, like she’s gonna eat ’em. When we were done, she cantered proudly, and I remembered that on the couch, watching lights and shadows tangled on my ceiling, hearing voices and music tangled with pretend pictures of me at the club; Dominic’s face when he saw me looking bad—everybody would see it.

  That’s what I was thinking when we were in the subway going to Macy’s. Normally that is not a place we would ever go, but Ginger had gotten my mom a gift card. I had to go to translate, and we couldn’t leave Dante, so there we were on the subway, my mom complaining that she could only get junk with this card, Dante dumping potato chips on her head, me waiting for her to hit him, her not even noticing but bitching at me instead. Then the train broke down and we had to get off in Manhattan and wait on another train. My mom started laughing over these stupid white girls wearing colored sneakers in winter, but I wasn’t listening because these Indian-kinda dudes with scarves on their heads were playing for change on little wooden flutes with a machine on the floor making the song like it was from a movie. Oh my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch. I need your love, I want your love.

  That’s when she hit me in the face. “You stupid girl, you give everything away! In front of people!”

  The train came in screaming. We got on it pushing. Huge tired people pushed in between me and my family and I faced the flying tunnel out the back door of the last car, hiding my hit face.

  My mom got a purse and crap gloves that day. That night I got up off the couch. I waited until they were asleep and I found my old birthday shirt Ginger gave me. I saw it wasn’t any good; it was made to go with a summer skirt and also it was only cute, not hot-cute. If I couldn’t be fly with my clothes, I had to make it like I’m so fly I don’t even have to try, work my face instead. So I put on my black jeans and my Puma hoodie with the silver cat and the silver hoops I stole with Strawberry. I made up my face in the kitchen, by the window where all the light came in, I put gold around my eyes. I left my North Face jacket open so you could see the silver on my chest. And I went out to find that club again.

  The street was poppin’, not too cold for people to be mobbed-up around cars, music and powerful feeling up in the air. I walked with my head down and myself pulled in—people looked, but left me be. Until I got to the bus stop. I had to wait and then it was like, Hey, Mami, what’s up? Can I talk to you? Oh, you waitin’ for your boyfriend, that’s awright. Except this one dude, he’s like So is your boyfriend a black man? Where is he? Why he keep you waitin’ here? It was starting to be aggravating when this woman suddenly came down on the dude like a Rottweiler, pulling the whole show away from me, but screamin’ about me, You can’t wait two minutes to work on some underage pussy? I looked away. She’s going, You said you loved me! And he’s, You crazy ho-bag. I as good as told you, you were just emergency pussy till the real shit come back!

  I thought it was just boys who fronted this shit, boys in my grade acting stupid. This was a man and he was not acting.

  A
nyway, at least the bus came before they did anything else, and nobody was on it but some asleep bad-smelling people and a lady my mom’s age who looked like she was coming home from work. I looked out the window and wondered why I was doing this. It was stupid, but I had to. I had to try.

  Except it was even more stupid than I thought. I got off a stop too late because I didn’t see no party and when I walked back I saw why: there wasn’t one. The building was dark and shut up and it looked broke and poor, like somebody hit it with a wand and turned it back into a place for rats and homeless. I felt disappointed but also relief, and then my neck hair stood up. Men were talking, close. I saw them come around the side of the building, dark moving in dark, arms, legs, jaws. They saw me and stopped. I kept walking. They didn’t call out. But I felt them looking and their look was like a animal following me. I made myself not run. I felt animal-breath on my neck. I made myself not pee. Then one of them laughed and the animal turned away.

  I got to the bus stop. There was a old man there, talking to nobody. I sat close to him like we were together and he was talking to me. I was still feeling the animal-eyes of those men and I wished he would pretend to be my grandfather, but he didn’t.

  I got home and went to the kitchen to change back into my sleep clothes. From the window, voices and lights talked on my skin. There was a noise down the hall and I jumped, but it was just Mr. Figuera coming in. He came out of the hall, his dark shape moving in dark, like the men back there, not like someone who sat next to Dante watching Family Guy. The dark shape saw me and I was a stranger to him too; I could see because he stopped with a tiny jolt and then he relaxed and said, “Chica, what are you doin’ up?” I said, “Nothin’. I can’t sleep.” He sat on one arm of the couch and I could see him, except he didn’t look like him. Mr. Figuera had sleepy eyes and a friendly, hairy face; the man in front of me had a hard mouth and eyes like a cur between shrink and bite. I asked him where he was comin’ from, and he told me, “Bushwick.”