The White Horse

by Grant, Cynthia D.

  I’ve got so much to be thankful for: family and friends, good health, enough money, a car that usually runs, a home.

  And a job that is driving me insane.

  Forget about the job. Focus only on this moment, on the air flowing into and out of your nose, like a river flowing to the sea. Inhabit the eternal, the living present. Embrace infinity.

  And tomorrow don’t forget to ask Janessa if it’s true she’s engaged to that pimp she’s been seeing.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Her mother was going to blow, she could feel it.

  She hadn’t taken off her coat since she’d come home from work. She sat at the kitchen table, smoking, while Don explained why it was such a rip-off that he’d been turned down for disability.

  “You’d think with this back, and the whiplash too—”

  A minor fender bender. He was planning to sue. He went on and on about the money they’d get, while her mother’s eyes grew colder and harder.

  Raina was sitting on the couch, watching TV with Brandy and Lyn, while Jimmy ate a big bag of chips.

  “He won’t want supper if he eats all that.”

  “He’s all right,” Lyn said.

  “He’s getting fat.”

  “Two-year-olds are supposed to be chubby. You don’t know nothing about kids. Mind your business.”

  She didn’t want to share a place with Lyn. She’d asked Granny if she could move in with her, but Granny said no. “I’d love to, honey, but this place is for senior citizens.”

  Lyn would have to do her share of the work. She wasn’t gonna be no baby-sitter so Lyn could take off with her idiot boyfriend who hung around all the time when he wasn’t selling crank. Lyn kept hoping she could live with him. So far he hadn’t asked.

  The baby tumbled around inside her. Calm down, baby. Did it know her voice? They’d said so, in that class she’d took. She’d missed the one about breathing and labor. Lyn said forget the breathing stuff; once the baby started coming you got through it any way you could.

  “I thought I was gonna die,” she’d said proudly. “You can’t believe how much it hurts.”

  She’d told Raina about this girl she knew, or maybe she’d seen her on TV, who was pregnant and went into the bathroom to pee and the baby’s hand was sticking out.

  She tried not to spend much time at the apartment. She dropped by the Laundromat to visit Bert and sometimes she went to the library. It was too noisy to read at home.

  Things would be different once she got her own place. But how was that going to work? She didn’t have any furniture, not a thing for the baby. Her mother said she’d help. She’d help Lyn, anyway. She might like Raina better when the baby was born. A sweet little baby. Unless she’d messed it up. At least she wasn’t worried about AIDS anymore. Her fingers shook so bad when she’d made the call, she could hardly punch in the numbers. Then cried with relief. Her mother had caught her, said: It’s always a big drama with you.

  She was trying to be good. Had only messed up once when she went to Kimmy’s and Pam showed up with her kids. Queen of the junkies. Arms and legs like sticks. Even Kimmy thought the kids should be taken away. Pam got on the phone and called her mother for money, pinching the baby to make him cry. Hearing him, she said, made her mom feel guilty. The other little boy wouldn’t say nothing to no one. He stood around with his jacket on backwards, the hood hiding his face.

  Raina felt so bad, she’d had a cigarette. Then a beer. What difference would one make? Then some people came over with a bunch of wine, and the next thing she knew she didn’t know nothing and the baby was floating in dreams.

  Sometimes she wished she could unzip her skin and step out of it and run away.

  Why had she come home? She’d been so stupid. Her mother didn’t love her. That would never change. She pictured herself trying to explain it to the teacher: See, my family doesn’t believe in giving a baby away to strangers. We’d rather keep it and mess it up ourselves.

  “That’s bullshit,” her mother was saying.

  “I’m just telling you how it went,” Don said. “I told them I couldn’t work, with this back. And now this thing with my neck. They don’t listen.”

  Her mother went to the fridge and popped open a beer.

  “Where’s dinner?” she said.

  “Wasn’t nothing to cook.”

  “You’re supposed to get food stamps.”

  “I’m gonna, pretty soon. But the caseworker said—”

  “Don’t you know you can’t take no for an answer? Those people don’t give a damn about you.”

  “There’s leftover macaroni and cheese.”

  “And that’s supposed to feed five people? Here I am, working my butt off all day while everybody else just sits around.”

  “They wouldn’t give me nothing,” Don said. “Not a dime.”

  “So where’d you get those cigarettes?”

  “Buddy of mine. He loaned me some money.”

  “You don’t got any friends.”

  “You calling me a liar?”

  “You better change Jimmy,” Raina told Lyn.

  “Soon as this show’s over.”

  “Come on, he stinks.”

  “Change him yourself, if it’s such a big deal.”

  Raina scooped up Jimmy and took him into the bedroom. She laid him on the bed and wiped him clean. He wriggled with delight when she sang to him and looked into his eyes. Lyn’s mind was always wandering to the TV set. The other day he wouldn’t stop fussing and Lyn had spanked him and pushed him away. Raina figured out the label on his shirt was scratching and he didn’t have a way to say it. She tore it off and he was fine, smiling at her, his baby teeth shining.

  Little boy, she thought, you don’t stand a chance.

  Her mother was waiting when she came out of the bedroom.

  “So what’re we supposed to do about dinner?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I can go to the store.”

  “You shoulda thought of that before.”

  “I didn’t have any money.”

  “So I suppose I’ll have to pay for it.”

  “Yeah. Unless your boyfriend’s got a secret stash.”

  “Leave him out of it.”

  “Gladly,” Raina snapped. “I’m sick of him coming in the bathroom when I’m in there.”

  “Try locking the door.”

  “Try kicking him out.”

  “I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Don said.

  “Ask Lyn. She knows.”

  “It’s no big deal,” Lyn said.

  “Yes it is. You’re just too dumb to know it. You want your kid around a guy like that?”

  “She’s lost it,” Don said.

  “You better shut your mouth,” her mother said. To her. “If I kick you out, you got nowhere to go.”

  She saw the whole thing then, as if it were a movie she’d seen so many times, she knew what would happen next. Like standing in the road, in a dream, in a movie, watching a speeding car coming at you. But you can’t move your feet; can’t get out of the way. And you have these lines you have to say.

  “The only reason you want me around is for Lyn. So she can use my money to get a good place. Or you’ll get stuck with her and Jimmy.”

  Her mother’s face got so mad and scary, Don looked like he wanted to hide under the couch, and Lyn and Brandy sat frozen, while the TV blared. But Raina saw the joy in her mother’s eyes; the sweet relief of rage.

  She had always been her mother’s favorite; the child she most loved to hate.

  “I shoulda never asked you to come back,” her mother said. “I shoulda known you’d act like this.”

  “You’re the one who’s acting. You don’t feel nothing. Not even for your own kids.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “It’s like you’re in some dream and you can’t wake up.”

  “You are one ungrateful bitch.”

  “I’ll tell you something else: A mother shouldn’t talk to h
er children like that.”

  “Not unless they’re assholes.”

  Her mother’s eyes glittered, always the sign that the fuse had been lit. The other kids would hide while the one she hit cried. Unless it was her. The tears came later; in bed, wanting to die, thinking: God, please take me. Then she’d wake up the next day and it would start again.

  But she wasn’t a little child anymore.

  “You don’t know how to love us,” Raina said. “I guess you would if you could. If you were in the mood.”

  “You stupid little shit. You moron. You slut. You think you’re better than me because you go to school? You’re nothing. Knocked up with some junkie’s kid. Probably fucked it all up when you were using.”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  “As of this moment you’re out on the street. With all the other losers. That shouldn’t be too hard.”

  “Not with a mother like you.”

  There was a flicker in her mother’s eyes. A wound. Then they flared in an ecstasy of hate.

  “I didn’t want to have you. Tried not to. Didn’t work.”

  “Good thing, or I wouldna been around for you to beat on, and watch the other kids when you passed out.”

  “Fucking liar.”

  “Seven years old. Why’d you leave me in charge? Were you so stupid or did you just not care? Yeah, I know you had a terrible childhood. Me too.”

  “You’re sick. You’ve always hated me.”

  “Why couldn’t you love me? Because I knew what you’d done? I loved you anyway.”

  “I’ll fucking kill you if you don’t shut up.”

  “Too late; I’m already dead. Why aren’t there any pictures of me and Bobby?”

  “Don’t you dare bring that up. Don’t even say his name.”

  “There’s pictures of everybody else.”

  “Do you hear what I’m saying? I mean it, Raina.”

  “You act like he never existed. He did. Are you so ashamed?”

  “I can’t believe you’d do this.” Her mother moved toward her. “After what you done. It’s disgusting.”

  “I didn’t do nothing wrong, Mom. I tried to wake you up.”

  Her mother was on her, hitting her face and neck. Raina hunched forward, protecting her belly. Brandy jumped up and grabbed her mother. Please, Mom, don’t! Got knocked aside. Her mother slapped Raina, tore her hair and shoved her. She landed on the floor in front of the couch. She looked up; Lyn was staring at the TV set.

  She climbed to her feet, pointing at her mother. “That’s it!” she said. “That’s the last time you ever touch me!”

  “Get out of here! You think I want you around? You and that retard in your belly? You’ve probably screwed it all up, like everything else! You’re nothing to me! You don’t exist! You’re dead!”

  “Please don’t make her go!” Brandy cried.

  She took nothing with her; she just left.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Something awful happened tonight. Raina came by. I was brushing my teeth, then the doorbell’s ringing.

  She didn’t have a coat. She sat down on the couch.

  “How’s it going?” she said. “Long time no see.”

  I could hardly bear to look at her, I felt so sorry for that baby in her belly.

  “All right.”

  “Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “I’m always glad to see you, Raina. I’ve been wondering how things were going.”

  “Fine. I been staying with my mom.”

  “That must be nice. She always sounded like such a fun person.”

  I shouldn’t have said that. But seeing her made me feel so upset. She’s not some story in the newspaper; another article about the tragedy of teenage pregnancies. She’s real, and she was sitting on my couch.

  And I wanted her to go away.

  “Have you been doing any writing?”

  “No, not lately. I been getting ready for the baby and stuff. Trying to think up names. It’s important what you name a baby.”

  “Yes.”

  “What about Savanna? For a girl, I mean. Do you think that sounds too white trash?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what my sister was gonna name her kid, if Jimmy hadn’t been a himmy. If it’s a boy I might call him Douglas Stephen. That was his daddy’s real name.”

  “I see.”

  “What were you gonna name your kid? If you’d had one.”

  It was like some hideous dream. “Oh, I don’t know, Raina. That was a long time ago.”

  “I just thought, you know, you might have some ideas.”

  I said, “I kind of liked the old-fashioned names.”

  “Like what?”

  “Kathryn, for a girl. Or maybe Grace or Hope.”

  “What about a boy?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Warren.”

  “You’d name a kid that? Good thing you didn’t have one.”

  “It’s late, Raina. What do you want?”

  I hadn’t meant to hurt her. But I felt like she was torturing me.

  “Nothing. I just thought I’d drop by and say hi.”

  She told me she and her sister were going to get a place, as soon as she got her AFDC.

  “But she sits around on her butt all day, so I end up doing everything. It’s a drag. So I was thinking it might be better if we didn’t. You know, live together, I mean.”

  I’d known Raina long enough and well enough to know that we were done with the preliminaries.

  “I been thinking about what you said, Miss Johnson.”

  “About what?”

  “You know, the baby and stuff. How I’m too young to raise it by myself.”

  “You already knew that, Raina.”

  “Yeah, but things got kinda confused for a while. My mother thinks families should stay together. Till death do you part, if necessary. So I was thinking maybe we could stay with you.”

  “Me?” I couldn’t breathe.

  “It’d be my baby but you’d be here too, and if I’m doing something wrong, you could tell me.”

  “No, Raina. That wouldn’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  How could she even ask me?

  “You think I could sit here and watch a sixteen-year-old girl—”

  “Seventeen. I had my birthday last week.”

  “—watch a teenager trying to raise a baby? I can’t.”

  “Do you think I’m such a moron?”

  “No, you’re a child. And kids can’t be good mothers.”

  “I can.”

  “Not now,” I said. “Maybe later. Maybe someday.”

  “After what, thirty years of therapy? I thought you might want us around.”

  “Not like that. If you want to talk about letting the baby be adopted—”

  “Why, so you can steal it?”

  “I don’t want your baby, Raina.”

  “Don’t worry,” she sneered. “We don’t got AIDS.”

  I had never felt so hopeless. “That’s not it.”

  “You think I fucked it up. That’s why you don’t want it.”

  I wanted to physically throw her out; out of my house, my mind, my life.

  “You think I’d take this baby and have to deal with your family for the rest of my life? They’d never leave me alone. They’d drive me crazy. For God’s sake, Raina, give this baby a chance! You’ve got to put it up for adoption.”

  “I can’t.” She hung her head. “Don’t you understand, Miss Johnson? This baby’s all I got.”

  “I’m sorry, Raina. I’d like to help you, but I can’t do what you want.”

  She looked up at me then, her eyes gleaming. “My mother threw me out. We got nowhere to go.”

  I felt sick to my stomach. “I don’t appreciate this, Raina. I don’t like being manipulated.”

  She shrugged and smiled. “Hey, I’m desperate.”

  “That’s your choice, not mine. You can’t stay here. That wouldn’t be best for anyone. Not fo
r you or the baby. Or me.”

  “Then I guess that’s it.” She stood up and stretched, her belly poking at her sweatshirt.

  “Where’s your coat?”

  “Don’t got one. It’s not that cold.”

  I gave her a jacket, and she put it on. I was afraid to let her go into the night alone, but more afraid to let her stay.

  “Let me give you some money.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  “I can give you a ride.”

  “Where?” she said. “I’ll see ya.”

  That was hours ago. Every time I close my eyes I see that kid walking down the dark street.

  Chapter Twenty

  She went to Kimmy’s that night, but two guys got in a fight and the manager called the cops and they made everybody go. She hung out in a video arcade full of crazies, trying to look bad so they’d leave her alone.

  In the morning she called Granny. Granny didn’t want to talk.

  “I’m late for work, honey. I gotta go.”

  She heard Granny’s lighter hiss, her lungs reaching for the smoke. She knew her mother had phoned as soon as she was out the door.

  “She tell you what happened?”

  “Oh, honey.” Granny sighed. “Why can’t you two just get along?”

  “She hit me, Granny. She knocked me down.”

  “She says you started it. Why’d you do that, Raina? You know how she is.”

  “So do you.” She had to wait until Granny stopped coughing. “She threw me out. I got noplace to go.”

  “What about your AFDC?”

  “I didn’t get it yet. I go back next week.”

  “Tell them it’s an emergency. They’ll put you up in a motel till the money comes through.”

  “Couldn’t I stay with you? Just for a while?”

  “Oh, honey, that’s not such a good idea.” Granny explained that having guests was against the rules. Too bad, or she’d be glad to have her.

  “That’s not true. You’re just afraid she’ll hit you too.”

  “Raina, why do you say stuff like that?”

  “You know she does. I’ve seen her do it.”

  But Granny’s tears were a curtain she could not get through.

  She stepped out of the phone booth. Rain was falling, turning into beads on the teacher’s coat. She went by the Laundromat. Bert gave her a few bucks and told her a long story, something about his first wife and Social Security. She couldn’t follow it; her back ached, and the baby kept moving.