As soon as she was outside, she threw her reins over her horse’s head, lifted her left leg into one stirrup, and pulled herself into her saddle unassisted. She looked like she knew what she was doing.
“How long, hour or half?” she asked him.
“Half,” he replied, as he patted her horse on the rump and headed back into the stable.
“Hi girls, I’m Cassey, and I’ll be taking you on your trail ride today. What are your names?”
“I’m Victoria,” I replied.
“And I’m Mary!” my sister exclaimed, making sure her small voice reached the trail leader.
“Great. Now look, girls, this is how it’s going to work,” she explained. “I’ll be in front, then Victoria, then Mary. Got it?”
“Got it,” we replied in unison.
“If you want to stop, you pull back on the reins. If you want to turn right, pull the right rein. If you want to turn left, pull the left rein. If you want to go forward, kick lightly.”
“OK,” we agreed impatiently.
“But do not ever, ever, kick the horse and jiggle the reins, OK?”
“OK!” We shrieked in unison, anxious to embark on this new adventure.
“Bye, Mom!” we shouted over our shoulders as our horses followed in line behind our guide’s horse.
We meandered through the trails for a while and then got bored.
My little sister rebelliously tested the last rule the guide gave us: never kick and jiggle the reins.
“Ahhh!!” she screamed suddenly as her horse flew past mine in a full gallop.
“Ayyy!!” I screamed as my horse took off after hers. I squeezed my eyes shut and clutched the horn on the saddle. We left our guide behind, tearing through narrow trails at terrifying speeds.
I opened my eyes to see a wooden bridge over a stream and then, just as soon as I saw it, we raced across it, still accelerating. I was scared, but also overcome with excitement over how fast we were galloping through the woods—trees and branches brushed past my face just as I saw them. I was in another world, having never known speed like this.
Then I heard the feverish clambering of hooves behind me and saw the guide frantically kicking her horse to gallop past mine, and then up alongside my sister’s horse. I watched as she leaned her whole upper body off to the left, reaching for my sister’s horse’s reins from around his ears. She was suspended over my sister’s horse’s head for a few strides, unable to grab hold of the reins tangled loosely around the horse’s head and ears. My sister’s horse’s natural instinct to race a horse running alongside him then kicked in, and he sped up. My horse followed in yet another gear. I saw my sister’s body start leaning to the left. She was in danger of falling, which, at this speed, with my horse right on her horse’s tail, was bad news.
“Bay, stay in the middle!” I shrieked as loudly as I could. I started calling my sister “Bay” because it was a lot cooler than calling her “Baby,” like the rest of the family did.
“Hold on to the horn!” I screamed again.
I didn’t know if she could hear me, as the thundering of three sets of hoofs on the dirt trail was deafening. But then I saw her body land in the middle of the saddle after a few more strides.
“Girls, stop screaming!” The guide screamed at us, “You’ll scare the horses!”
I thought to myself, they’re already scared! What more could they do?
I shouldn’t have thought that. I looked up and saw that my sister’s horse and the guide were quickly approaching a drop in the trail, leading to a wooden bridge, built over a sizable river.
“No!!” I was overcome with fear, tears obstructed my vision, I could no longer breathe, my heart was in my throat, and I could not feel my hands.
“We’re NOT going down!” the guide yelled, more to herself than to us.
Acting with one more wave of heroism, the girl kicked her horse to speed up, cutting off my sister’s horse. Then, as the beast started running into the brush alongside the trail, she leaned over, almost onto his neck, grabbed my sister’s reins, and jerked them back with a violent backward thrust of her body. The animal’s front legs straightened, causing him to come to a sliding stop, bouncing my sister in the saddle for a few strides. My horse slammed into hers, but didn’t push him any further, as his feet were now planted firmly into the earth.
I heard our heroine breathe a heavy sigh. I then succumbed to the fear that had gripped me through the entire episode. My body was shaking, I couldn’t breathe, and tears exploded from my eyes. My sister turned around, and was my mirror, her face red and wet with tears.
“Is everyone OK?” our heroine asked.
We couldn’t answer, still gasping for breath, clutching the horns on our saddles.
The guide then, still with my sister’s reins in her left hand, agilely swung her right leg over her horse’s neck and hopped off. During her acrobatic dismount, she maintained a mystical, invisible control over her horse. She didn’t even have her horse’s reins in her hand, and he obediently stood immobilized while she vaulted off of his back. Once on the ground, she loosely looped her right arm through her horse’s reins, and tightly held my sister’s reins in her left hand.
“OK, girls, we’re just going to walk back to the stables, nice and slow.”
My sister was silent. I tried to be polite and answer, but my heart was still pounding, beating against my lungs and interfering with my breathing. I forced myself to answer, though. This girl had saved us. The least I could do was respond. So I took in one large breath, and whispered, “OK.”
When we finally got back to the barn, I was still crying.
“What’s wrong?” my mother inquired.
“Ask her!” as I pointed at my sister, and ran to the car as soon as I was off the horse.
“I never want to see another horse ever again!” I declared. “I hate horses! Hate them!” I repeated adamantly as I ran to the car.
A few days passed and somehow that terrorizing fear vanished, leaving only the memory of extreme exultation. I wanted to go riding again.
“Mom, can we go back to the barn?”
I was hooked.
3
September came and dragged me back to the city. School was a tedious blur. Days crawled. I watched minute after minute languidly tick by on every clock in every classroom. One hour in a classroom was an eternity. My gaze was either fixed on the clock, or drifting to the open window. I yearned to be outside, where I could breathe.
The afternoons at home made up for the tedium of the school day. Home was where the action was, for many reasons. First, it was crowded—my mother’s parents had moved in to babysit my sister and me while she worked. My grandmother was always angry about something. It was usually my grandfather’s fault. When it wasn’t my grandfather’s fault, it was my father’s fault.
On one occasion, amidst a fury of slamming pots and pans because my grandfather had forgotten to buy butter on his grocery run, I asked her, “If you hate him so much, why don’t you just get a divorce?”
I had heard the word “divorce” so much, and saw that it meant removing the evil man from the house, so clearly it was a logical solution to her hatred of my grandfather.
“Why bother now? I’m too old! I’m just waiting to die! Oh God, just take me already!” she wailed.
Another contributing factor to the perpetual excitement of my home life was my father’s unannounced visits. He had moved out and was not allowed to come over when my mother wasn’t home, but that didn’t stop him. His visits usually resulted in my grandmother brandishing a wooden spoon at him, ready to attack, me jumping between them, screaming at the top of my lungs, and then the police would show up.
It often went something like this, “Get out of here, you pig!” my grandmother would shout at the intruder.
“This is my house, you fat old whore!” he
would snap back. “This is my house, MY house!” he repeated.
“Get away from me!” she would scream.
“I’m going to kill you and your whore daughter!”
The death threats were my signal to intervene. Even though I never called him “Dad,” I knew it would appease him and then he might listen to me.
“Dad! Please! Go!”
“No way! This is MY house! She needs to go!”
“DAD! Please, stop!” I would then start to cry as he turned back toward the door. He would leave, slamming the door so hard it shook the house.
__________
By the time I was seven, the divorce and all its drama were in full swing. Police were frequent visitors at my house. We even made the front page of the metro section in The New York Times.
On one occasion after we had finished eating dinner, the doorbell rang. My mother answered the door, and there they were in full uniform. I wondered why the cops were here at night, because they usually came during the day, when my father intruded on us.
“Hi Mariana, we have to take you down to the precinct for some questioning,” one officer began as my mother invited them in, and they stepped into the living room. I watched the intruders smear the dirt from their heavy black boots all over the rug in our living room. I was sitting on the couch in my pajamas, barefoot. My sister sat next to me, also in her pajamas and barefoot. I recognized the silent officer as one of the officers who often visited during the day. When he caught my stare, he looked away and then back at my mother.
Some conversation followed, but my grandmother scurried us to our bedroom. As she opened the door to let us in, I turned and saw my mother’s back, her wrists bound behind her in shiny silver handcuffs. With one shove, we were alone in our bedroom.
“What’s happening?” my sister asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. I should have tried to coax and comfort her, but the sight of my mother shackled helplessly with steel on her wrists sucked the wind out of my lungs. I couldn’t speak; a lump in my throat was choking me.
After some time passed, our grandfather opened the door. “Your mother will be back in the morning,” he said gruffly. “Go to sleep.”
Just as he shut the door, I heard my grandmother crying in the kitchen, over the water running on the clinking dishes she was washing in the sink.
Many years later, my mother told me that she had been arrested because my father had called the police and reported that she had threatened his life. Everyone knew it was a lie, not to mention a ridiculous one, but the cops still had to abide by their policies.
4
As I grew older, my father and the police intrusions after school became less frequent, and instead, my afternoons were filled with extracurricular activities such as piano and French lessons. Even though home life was less stressful, the afternoons were still tedious.
“Mom, I hate piano,” I declared to my mother minutes before my weekly lesson was to begin. “And French lessons are pointless; no one speaks French,” I continued.
“French eets very important language to know!” she huffed in her Romanian accent. Her articles and prepositions were frequently lost in translation.
“Mom, it’s English and Spanish in this country, that’s it.”
“So what, you just want to sit in front of TV every day after school like a bump? No way!” she proclaimed.
“Bum,” I corrected.
“Victoria!” she roared. She hated to be corrected, especially when making a point.
“Mom, I just want to ride,” I pleaded.
“Ride? Ride?” she repeated with extra emphasis. “How am I supposed to find a horse in Queens?” she mumbled to herself, picking up the yellow pages.
“Mariana!” my grandmother howled, overhearing the conversation about horses. “Girls do not ride horses!” she commanded.
“Mama, this is my child, if she wants to ride, she will ride!” she returned in Romanian.
“So she can break her bones like you did? I do not want to hear it!” my grandmother exploded.
“Then don’t listen!” my mother shot back.
__________
The following Saturday, my mother gave me her old riding boots and gloves and I put on my least favorite pair of jeans. Then she drove me to Leslie’s Riding School—a barn fifteen minutes away from home, in Queens. One trail ride, and I was hooked.
I didn’t meet Leslie for a while. She was usually off tending to things more important than horse-crazed ten-year-old girls. But when I did meet her, she was not the warm, caring horsewoman I expected. She was curt, gruff, and mostly kept to herself. Being around her felt like being in the military—she only spoke to dole out orders to her staff. However, if she could do something herself, she would. Her staff both feared and respected her. She was an accomplished horsewoman, having been raised with horses and inheriting her barn from her father, who was another well-known horseman and blacksmith, as the newspaper clippings on the walls revealed.
I found her extremely intimidating because of how much she knew and how cold she was. But I wanted to be like her. She rode in jeans and chaps like a cowgirl, defiantly breaking the rules of what it means to be a girl. I desperately wanted a pair of cool chaps just like hers—black with fringes. But my mother couldn’t afford chaps like Leslie’s, so I rode in old boots and torn jeans. I looked like a cross between a homeless person and an equestrian. Leslie, on the other hand, was every bit the cool and confident horsewoman in her jeans and chaps.
Two people could not have been more opposite than Leslie and I. She carried her sturdy five-foot seven-inch frame with purpose and pride. I barely came up to her rib cage and just tried to stay out of the way. My long, dark hair was always tied into a braid, while Leslie had brazenly cut her sandy-blonde hair as short as a man’s. Her clear, blue eyes pierced their victim. My brown eyes, on the other hand, had no such intensity. What I appreciated about her, though, was that she never spoke to me like I was a child, as everyone else did. She treated me like an adult.
I searched for any reason to spend more time at the barn. I volunteered to do any chore to extend my barn time and score some free rides. The staff and regular trail riders nicknamed me “barn rat.” I had fallen deeply in love with horses.
On the back of a horse, I was whole. On the back of a horse, I was not insecure, anxious, and unsure. On the back of a horse, I was confident, connected, and centered.
In the barn, I felt at home. The sounds of the horses chewing their hay, blowing their noses, and swishing their tails washed away my worries. When I walked past a horse offering his nose for a pat, his breath brimmed with the sweet smell of fresh hay. The feel of their soft coats and muzzles under my hands planted me firmly in their world of innocence, acceptance, honesty, and love. After I groomed the horses, a film of dust and hair coated my clothes, leaving me with my very own piece of the barn to take home.
__________
The barn had a small indoor riding ring, but the main attraction was riding in the trails out in Queens Park. Eventually I came to know all the horses in the barn, but I had a few favorites: Topper, Star, Dusty, Red, and Flash. I had learned to ride in English saddles, which meant I no longer needed the security of a horn on Western saddles to hang onto in case I got scared. I wasn’t scared anymore, not even when I rode Blaze.
Blaze was bigger than most of the other horses. And he had blue eyes, unlike any of the others. He was white with splashes of brown and gray. I thought he was ugly. And mean. Blaze bucked off a lot of people—more than half of those brave (or ignorant) enough to climb onto his back. I was scared the first time I got on him. But then I thought he could sense my fear and would definitely buck me off. So I got on and told him (and myself) that I wasn’t afraid.
I’m not afraid of you, Blaze. I’m not afraid. I’m in charge, I’m the boss, you listen to me, I repeated to myself.
>
Amazingly, that horse never bucked me off. He didn’t even try.
Topper was my favorite. He was a Palomino, so he was all blond. He was sweet, too. He always nuzzled my hand before I got on, as if to say, “Hey buddy, nice to see you again.” Topper was totally reliable. He was like a machine; if I pushed the “go” button, he went, if I pushed the “stop” button, he stopped. He never did anything bad. But I wasn’t allowed to ride him all the time. Leslie made me ride all of the horses.
Even though I had dogs, goldfish, and parakeets at home, I desperately wanted my own horse—a horse that only I could ride and that I could spend all day with. A horse that everyone knew was mine, not just borrowed until the next person came to ride it. This wish became an obsessive yearning, and I was not quiet about what I wanted.
__________
“I wish I could have my own horse,” I sighed to Sherwin on a trail ride. Sherwin was a short, eccentric Filipino who came every Saturday to ride his favorite horse, Star. He never wore the same outfit twice, and he was the only man I ever saw who wore a printed scarf, like the ones my grandmother wore on her head. He was always so happy. He was the happiest person I knew. I was fascinated by his everlasting good mood.
Star was cute, like a toy. She was a short, sassy white Appaloosa with brown spots. She had a thin, frayed white tail and a huge rump. Whenever she cantered, she helicoptered her small, wispy tail around her rotund behind, completing a full circle with every stride. I could never really concentrate on my own ride if I had to ride behind her because her hilarious canter was too distracting. She was perpetually perturbed, always pinning her ears back and gnashing her teeth at other horses. I couldn’t quite understand why Sherwin, who was unendingly jovial and carefree, took such a liking to one of the moodiest mares in the barn. But as long as she had someone who doted on her, I was happy. Every horse deserved their own person to make them feel special and important.
Unfortunately, Leslie overheard my wish to Sherwin and huffed, “Ha! You want a horse now? Just so you can forget about it when you discover boys in a few years? Don’t waste your time, you’re just like all the other little girls who want a horse until they discover boys.”
The Tale of the Dancing Slaughter Horse Page 2
