Riding Lessons

by Jane Smiley

  Abby had told me once that even though the stables own Blue, he only gets a little “turnout” from time to time because there are so many horses there. The turnouts are small pastures without any grass, and he gets an hour. At Abby’s place, he goes out all day and all night and eats off the ground and wanders around. The pastures are very big, and this year, they’re still green. I was Melanie during the whole car ride out there. Dad turned around two times and looked at me. The second time, he said, “You okay?”

  “Yes, why?”

  “Well, you haven’t said a thing. I thought maybe you’d fallen asleep.”

  “I am thinking.”

  “About what?”

  “Flowers. I wish I knew the names of flowers.” I didn’t, really, but I didn’t want to say that I was thinking about Ned.

  “You can ask.”

  “I might.”

  So when we reached Abby’s and got out of the car, I saw a tiny little orange flower, and I asked.

  Dad said, “That’s a scarlet pimpernel.”

  So, another thing that I knew now. I bent down and looked at it, and said those strange words, “scarlet” and “pimpernel,” out loud to myself. Dad smiled and kissed me on the head. He said, “Sweetheart, you are a curious girl.”

  Abby was dressed in her cowboy clothes—blue jeans, and some boots, and a cowboy hat, and this shirt that I really liked, black with a red embroidered bucking bronco just below each shoulder. She was carrying two lead ropes, and we went straight to the pasture gate. It took a few minutes. When we got there, she said, “Are you okay?”

  “Why?”

  “You haven’t said a word. You don’t have a sore throat or anything, do you?”

  “My teacher told me that I had to be quiet and pay attention for the rest of the school year because I was wearing her out.”

  Abby laughed and laughed.

  Blue and Gee Whiz came to the gate as soon as Abby whistled. I petted Blue, but the one I was looking at was Ned, who was grazing with Ben on this little hill under some trees. Here are the things I saw:

  Ned looked up at the whistle, and turned his head toward us, but Ben didn’t.

  Ned switched his tail, and then Ben switched his tail.

  Ben stuck his nose into a bunch of weeds and pushed at them like he was looking for something.

  A mare in the mare pasture whinnied.

  Ned pricked his ears at the whinny, but didn’t answer.

  Gee Whiz answered, and he was really loud. My ears were ringing.

  I said, “Do they have different whinnies?”

  “Oh, sure,” said Abby. “They can tell each other apart, and I can tell them apart, too. Gee Whiz is loud and piercing. I guess you noticed that. My horse Jack, remember him? The one at the racetrack now? His racing name is Jack So Far. He always sounds like he is whining. I call it his ‘whiny.’ ”

  “What does Ned sound like?”

  “Ned hardly ever whinnies.” She thought for a moment, then said, “Nope. I guess I’ve never heard him whinny. That’s kind of strange.”

  “What about Ben?”

  “He goes ‘Eee-eee’ sometimes. I’ll listen.”

  We led Blue and Gee Whiz back to the barn and cross-tied them opposite one another. Here’s what I noticed:

  Blue looked this way and that, pulling at his cross-ties, but only a little.

  Gee Whiz stared up the hillside with his ears pricked. I let my gaze follow his, and in a moment or two, I saw a coyote making its way along.

  Blue never noticed the coyote.

  Both horses were good about lifting up their front feet to have them cleaned, but when Abby picked up Gee Whiz’s back feet, he sort of leaned on her. Blue didn’t do that. I wondered if Gee Whiz would ever be as good a horse—as considerate a horse—as Blue.

  When we walked them to the mounting block, Blue stayed right with me, and if I slowed my steps a little, he slowed his.

  Gee Whiz seemed to expect Abby to keep up with him.

  Once we were in the arena and walking and trotting to warm up, Ned came over to the fence and watched us. I made myself ride my very best. I wanted to show Ned that someday, maybe…

  But I dared not say it even to myself, much less out loud.

  I did say, very softly, one more time, “I am Melanie.”

  It was a good lesson. Blue was a little tired from all the showing, but that just meant that I had to wave the crop a little to get him up into the canter, and then when he was cantering, he went around easy as you please, as if he were half-asleep. His canter is very rhythmical. I counted in my head, one two three, one two three, one two three. After about fifteen minutes, Abby said, “Are you enjoying yourself today?”

  I said, “Yes.” That was all. I am Melanie.

  After that, Abby herself stopped talking. I guess she decided that you can say “Heels down” or “Thumbs up” or “Look where you’re going” only so many times without boring yourself to death. She started doing serpentines and spirals and loops at the trot and the canter, every so often including a little cavalletti or crossbar, and Blue and I followed her as best we could. Anyway, she did not have to say “Heels down,” “Thumbs up,” or “Look where you’re going,” because I said those things to myself. And I listened to me.

  We took a break and walked around. All along one side of the ring, there was another kind of flower, this one white and small. When we walked past it, the smell sort of rose around us. Because of the smell, I did say, “What’s that?”

  “Alyssum.”

  Ned stayed more or less beside that end of the arena, walking back and forth, sometimes putting his head down to snatch a tuft of something. After we did all that, Abby said, “Do you mind if you don’t jump today? I think Blue is exhausted from all his lessons and showing at the stables. I don’t want him to get sore.”

  Melanie said, “I don’t mind.”

  Blue flicked his ears. He knew we were talking about him, but as much as I loved him, he had never talked to me. He would whinny if we stood in the pasture and shouted, “Blue! Blue! Where are you?” but Abby had never told me that he was answering the question. Now I wondered, and so I glanced over at Ned, and I said inside my head, “When we call out to Blue, is he answering us back?”

  Ned said, “You want to know where he is. He’s telling you.”

  I turned my head (we were trotting down the long side of the arena). Ned was still snatching at bits of something.

  As I got close to Abby, I sat into my saddle, and Blue slowed to a walk, no pressure on the reins. I said, “What do you think Ned is eating?”

  She looked. “Oh, chamomile, I’m sure. He loves that. My mom drinks chamomile tea. It’s good. It smells good, too. Anyway, Blue is going to be here for two weeks. Next week you can jump. I’ll set you some good courses.”

  Ned said, very softly, “Chamomile,” like he was telling himself a word he didn’t know.

  Abby said, “You want to walk on the trail?”

  And I said, in a very Melanie voice (you know, easy, soft, suggesting, not demanding), “Can Ned go along?”

  Abby looked at me for a long moment, then smiled. “Why not? He’s used to being ponied. They do that all the time at the track. I think he’d like to get out.”

  Ned said, “I would.”

  Gee Whiz said, “Oh, for heaven’s sake.” But after we got Ned out of the pasture and Abby mounted Gee Whiz and led Ned along beside him on Gee Whiz’s right (that is “ponying”), Gee Whiz was pretty nice to him, and only pinned his ears if Ned got past Gee Whiz’s shoulder. It was obvious to me, even though Ned didn’t tell me, that Gee Whiz had to always be the winner. And that Ned didn’t really care. Another interesting thing.

  We walked along between the two pastures, then went through the gate, up the hill to the left, and over the
ridge (not a very big ridge) onto the hillside that ran along the fence between Abby’s ranch and the Jordan Ranch. We could see some cattle in the distance, but they were just plain old Black Angus, not those blue cows that had been there before. Abby’s dad, I remembered, thought those blue cows were a terrible pain in the neck. The trail widened, and I let Blue come up alongside Gee Whiz on the left side (not past his shoulder, of course), and I said, “I wonder if there are any real blue horses.”

  “Blue roans look sort of blue, but they aren’t really blue. Danny brought one home once to try out, but he didn’t like his way of moving, so he didn’t keep him.” Now Gee Whiz’s ears pricked again, then Blue’s, then Ned’s, and there was Rusty. She appeared at the top of the hill and looked down at us, then trotted toward us, wagging her tail. To me, she always looked like a wolf should look, sleek and fast. We kept walking along the trail. It got narrower, and so I fell behind again. When the dog got to us, she made sure that she led the way, and Gee Whiz let her. Ned had nothing to say that I wouldn’t have known on my own, just looking around.

  When we went home in the car (stopping at the supermarket for a salami sandwich, which I needed), I thought Melanie had done a good job, even though being Melanie was exhausting. I went back to being myself, but I thought about what I’d learned, and wrote it down in my notebook before I went to bed. It was 11:13 when I turned out my light.

  On Monday, as soon as I got to school, I started watching Melanie again—so much that I noticed Miss Cranfield looking at me when she asked questions as if she was wondering why I wasn’t raising my hand. When she did look at me, I would stop looking at Melanie and look at the board, or at my desk, following instructions all the time. I told myself I could stop if I wanted to, so I kept going.

  One thing I saw was that Melanie would smile sometimes at Ruthie Creighton, and Ruthie would smile back. This happened three times in the morning. At lunch, I was sitting with Todd and Ann, and Todd was telling a moron joke. Ann said that if he knew that he himself was a moron, then he wouldn’t tell those jokes, because they were stupid. This made Todd laugh, because he always laughs, even when the joke is on him. I looked across the lunchroom at Melanie, who was eating what they served, and Ruthie. Ruthie was not sitting at Melanie’s table—she was sitting alone, as usual, and she had something wrapped in brown paper. Something small. She started opening the paper, and then Melanie turned and said something to her, and then Ruthie held out her hand and Melanie gave her an orange. Ruthie smiled. It was a pretty smile. Something else I learned. But then Melanie turned back to her own lunch, and they didn’t talk about anything. I decided that Melanie was one of those girls that my grandmother would call “deep as a well and twice as dark.” Then my grandma would shake her head. She likes people who talk. That’s why she likes me.

  After lunch, Todd and Ann and I went out to the playground. Todd could get teased for sitting with us at lunch, but he’s the only kid our age who can walk along the top railing of the jungle gym, and he does it pretty often, when none of the teachers are looking. One time in the fall, a teacher saw him and fainted. Well, that’s what I say. Probably she yelled at him, but by the time I had told everyone that she’d fainted, I could see her fainting perfectly well, just going “Ohhhh!” and slumping to the side. Today, Ann was talking about something and I wasn’t paying any attention, because I wanted to walk past the swings to the hopscotch area. I could see Melanie there, by herself. I didn’t see Ruthie anywhere. I walked straight over to Melanie and said, “Can we play?”

  Melanie nodded.

  I went to the edge of the playground and found two pebbles and handed one to Ann, and we went back to the hopscotch court, which was painted on the pavement. There were two of them—one had three hops that came first, and one had hop, jump, hop. Melanie was playing the three-hop one, and she was pretty good.

  There are people who don’t know the rules of hopscotch, most of them boys. What you do is, you toss the pebble into the first of the squares (1 to 10), and then you jump over that square as you hop and jump to the far end, then you jump and spin (usually on two feet, but sometimes on one), and then you hop and jump back to where your pebble is. You bend down and pick it up, then start over with square 2, and so on. You ask me, it is a kind of ballet, and that is what Melanie made it look like. She got through the third square without a mistake, and the mistake she made after that was throwing the pebble a little too straight so that it landed in 5 instead of 4, just over the line. Ann went next. She got to 2. She’s not a very good hopper, though she can jump and spin high. Normally, I would have kept talking the whole time I was hopping and jumping. I think telling yourself what to do always works. But I pressed my lips shut and did the best I could. I made it through 1 and 2, but I felt wobbly the whole time. For 3, I didn’t throw the pebble very hard and it landed in 2. I did it on purpose, because I was exhausted.

  Now Melanie went. Ann, not me, said, “Do you take dancing lessons?”

  “Yes,” said Melanie.

  “Where?” said Ann.

  “At a studio in Monterey. My mom did ballet when she was young, but she got too tall. I’m going to get too tall, too, but it’s fun for now.”

  I said, “You should take riding lessons.”

  Melanie looked at me, but didn’t smile or say anything. She concentrated, and got to square 8. We were never going to beat her.

  I closed my eyes.

  Ned said, “Look where you’re going, but not at your feet.” He was standing under the tree. Ben was behind him, reaching his head around to scratch his hip. He snorted and shook his ears. I opened my eyes. It was a lot cloudier on our playground than it was in Ned’s pasture.

  Ann was standing up straight, facing the street. She gave a little “Huh,” jumped, and spun. She made it. She jumped and hopped back to the beginning, picking her pebble up on the way. Altogether, she made it to square 5.

  I put my pebble between my thumb and first two fingers and stared at the painted 3, then tossed the pebble without looking at it. It landed on the 3. Now I hopped, 1, 2, and over 3, landed on both feet in 4 and 5, hopped into 6, landed on both feet in 7 and 8, hopped into 9 and then 10, which is “home”—once you hop into 10, you can put both feet down and jump and spin. The whole time, I sort of looked up and sort of looked down—I could see the squares out of the bottom of my eyes, but I could also see the air and the fence and the street. Coming back, I did the same, looking at the squares, but also at the playground and the school. It was a relief to bend down in 4 and 5 and pick up my pebble in 3, then hop hop hop home. I was happy and impressed, but to Ann and Melanie, it was all the same as usual. I got through 4 and 5, and then the school bell rang, and we went back to class. Melanie walked along with us, smiling, but she didn’t say anything—it was like it never occurred to her to talk. Ann said that she and her mom were going to bake a pie after school, lemon meringue.

  That afternoon, I looked for all the world as if I were paying attention, but mostly I was thinking about that feeling I’d had playing hopscotch. I can always do two things at once, no matter what the grown-ups say.

  Having Joan Ariel around was pretty interesting, too. I’d never heard any of the Murphys say that their brothers or sisters were interesting. Jimmy Murphy said that his sisters drove him crazy. Mary and Jane, who had to babysit, would just stand there with their arms crossed and scowl at Brian, waiting for him to do something naughty or dangerous. Joan Ariel made all sorts of faces. Sometimes she cried—her face would bunch up and then her mouth would open really wide, and you could see all the way down her throat. She was not screaming like a Murphy, but it wasn’t meep-meeping anymore, either. Whatever Mom was doing, she would drop it and jump to her feet. She didn’t always pick Joan Ariel up—sometimes she just walked back and forth waiting for the right time to give her a bottle. Grandma said give it to her when she wants it, but Mom had a book that said wait until the right time.
There were a few days after Mom and Grandma had a “discussion” about this when Grandma didn’t come over, but then she started in again, and they agreed that when Mom was there, they would do it Mom’s way, and when Grandma was by herself, she could do whatever she wanted. Mom was pretty much always there, though. Joan Ariel was now three weeks old. Mom said that she would start smiling at six weeks, and I didn’t say anything, but sometimes Joan Ariel already looked like she was smiling—her mouth would open and her lips would spread, and she would stare at me with her eyes crossed. I would then make a face, just for practice. Sometimes when I made lots of faces, she stared at me and didn’t cry at all. She still didn’t know the difference between night and day—sometimes she would be up at night and sleep in the day, and other times she would be up most of the day and sleep in the night. Mom might still be wearing her robe when I got home from school, but other times she would meet me at school with the baby carriage, and we would take Joan Ariel for a walk. Twice, Miss Cranfield saw us and came over, leaned into the baby carriage, and cooed at Joan Ariel—how was she doing, was she sleeping through the night? Then Miss Cranfield looked at me, and I understood that she knows that I know that she knows that I know that I have to be good for the rest of the year.

  The Wednesday after Ann and I played hopscotch with Melanie, Mom and Joan Ariel and I walked around the block and right past Ruthie Creighton’s house. It was a sunny day, Joan Ariel was sleeping and meeping, Mom was humming to herself, and I was singing a song Jimmy Murphy had taught me: “Left right left right I left my wife with forty-six children alone in the kitchen in a starving condition with nothing but gingerbread left right left.” It doesn’t have much of a tune. Every time Jimmy Murphy sings it, it makes me laugh. We crossed the street by Ruthie’s house, and Mom sped up. Ruthie was sitting on the top step of the outside staircase. She wasn’t doing anything. She looked right at me, and I looked right at her. Mom clucked. We passed Ruthie, and she clucked again. When we got to the next corner and turned left, I said, “What?”