The Mare (12 page)

It was over very fast, but the happiness of that visit was peaceful, not so disturbed by worry and the fear that I was doing something wrong. She spent most of both days at the barn, taking lessons and working, just spending time with the animals. She came home—home!—for lunch and went back to the barn until five or so, then came back to us for dinner. I tried to get her to help me, but she would really only do that when the mood took her, and then she was wonderful, smiling while she dried the dishes or set the table. I had meant to help her with her homework, but she said she forgot it. So we walked instead and then I watched TV with her, us sitting against each other, me feeling her responses as she watched her favorite blond girls fight vampires or get boyfriends. And then she would go back to the barn to say good-night.

I went back to the barn at twilight. I didn't have any apples. I just went to the mare to see what she would do. Which was nothing. She stood in the middle of her stall and stared at me with her ears up. I said, “I'm mad at you.” I thought she looked like maybe she felt bad, but then she just put her head down to look for pieces of hay in her bedding. I said, “All I did was bring food to you and you ran at me and then you threw me against the wall.” She put her head up and looked at me, then went back to eating. I said, “Okay. Good-bye.”

But when I was walking away, it was like I heard her in my ear, like she was saying,
I'm sorry. I didn't want to knock you down. I just forgot you were there.

Still, I did not go see her the next day. I went to the barn and I worked, I helped turn the horses out. Me and Beth and Gare led Little Tina and Blue Boy and Graylie out to the paddock. Beth brought Rocki back in and I groomed him and cleaned his feet. Then me and Beth cleaned buckets together. She told me about another barn she used to go to but that she couldn't go to anymore because her parents couldn't pay. It was named Spindletop, and the horses there were super clean. They got groomed every day, and their halters and bits were cleaned every day—they even got the hair
on their ears
trimmed. She said the girls there rode in a big show where people came from all over the country, and that she was going to show one day at the rodeo at the county fair. She also asked questions about Brooklyn and how I knew people up here. I told her the Fresh Air Fund and she said, “Oh, right.”

And I really wished Strawberry was there. Because if Strawberry was there I don't think Beth would've said, “Oh, right” like she did. Strawberry was too bad for that. It wasn't like it was wrong for Beth to say; it wasn't a insult. But still…she wouldn't say it to Strawberry, I don't think. I started picturing Strawberry walking up in the barn, just looking around and how that would be. I pictured what she would've done to Gare when she said “deported” to me.

I got so into thinking it that I forgot to say good-bye to the mare.

At the end of the visit, she asked if her friend Strawberry could come with her next time. She said the girl had come from New Orleans, that she was a Katrina survivor and that she still couldn't go home to her family. My first impulse was to say yes; even Paul was moved. Still, it seemed a lot to take on so soon, and also, it was great leverage. So I said, If your grades get better, she can come. If your report card at the end of the year is better, she can come next summer. She said, Ginger, Strawberry might not be here next summer. So I said, Easter, then. That got her attention.

It was just after I came back that Strawberry asked me to sit at the lunch table with her and Alicia. It was like one day she's getting in the closet with me and putting makeup on my face but acting in school like I'm not good enough; the next day she's like, “Velvet, come sit with us.” And I am eating lunch with these girls I don't even like anymore and Strawberry is looking like she's doing me a favor.

It happened after I walked to her house with her and told her what Ginger said. But I don't think that was why. It wasn't the horses, it was the boys. These boys that came up on either side of us. But first it was Helena; at lunch that day, Strawberry almost fought Helena. I was walking by with my tray, but I woulda seen it if I was across the room—Helena got in Strawberry's face, she knocked her soda off the table by pretend accident, and said she didn't care if Strawberry was up on no roof, she better stay away from Chris. Strawberry
smiled,
ice-cold, and she stood up and suddenly looked big enough to kill Helena even though she's smaller. “It's Chris won't stay away from me,” she said. “I wouldn't touch anybody who touch you.” And right then I walked slam into Helena, and my food spilled on her, and I cursed her and she cursed back and there was detention, and having to sit in the room with Helena. Who was older than me, but still, only twelve, and why was she fighting with somebody like Strawberry over a boy?

It was a few days later I was walking with Strawberry and I told her about the horses, and she looked at me really happy. And right then these three boys came up alongside of us. I didn't know them; they were older than us. First they were only by her, and they were saying things that were nice but sounded nasty. She said, “Chris, I'm walking with my friend. Maybe you can call me later.” And then she didn't answer no more. And I could suddenly feel her like I feel a horse. Scary strong, and with her skin feeling everything.

The boys were still next to us, talking about us like we couldn't hear. And we were on her block but nobody was around us and her house is far down. I looked at the one she called “Chris”; he even had hair on his face. And this tall boy came around to my side and started with me.

Except his voice didn't sound nasty. It was nice and he said, “How you doing, shawty?” I looked at him. He had soft eyes that went with his voice and a little dent in his nose. So I said, “I'm fine.” And he said, “I can see that.” And I smiled and he said, “Aw, you sweet. What's your name?” And I told him. And I thought he was gonna say somethin' stupid about it, but he just said, “I'm Dominic.” And all of a sudden I noticed his lips. They were soft too, and something else that was the opposite. I felt confused. I looked at Strawberry and she looked at me, like for the first time. And even though her house was closer now, it was as far away as the grassy field where the horses were.

Then Dominic said, “How old are you?” And I told him and his face jumped back. For a minute there was just the sound of all our feet and the pavement suddenly looking weird bumpy in a way I never noticed. Then Dominic said, “Chris, the girl says call her later. Man, I gotta go.” And he didn't wait for Chris to answer, he just stopped walking with us and Chris stopped with him. And they said, “Ima call you” (Chris) and “Be good, shawty” (Dominic) and were gone.

Strawberry and me walked quiet for a while, and her body went back to normal. She said, “Sometimes I hate boys, they bring so much trouble.” I could feel my body going back to normal. She said, “My first host family make me leave 'cause they say I ask their boy into my bed, but I never asked, he just come anyway.”

Which was basically the same thing she said to Helena—and it was a lie because she told Chris he could call her. But right then I didn't care about that. Because I was thinking about something that happened with my father's friend Manuel, who lived in my house before Mr. Diaz, and so I said, “I know. There was this man staying at our house when I was like nine or ten, and he give me trouble even then.” And she looked at me so deep she didn't have to say anything. Her eyes, her whole body, said,
I know.
Like that first time in detention.

When we got to her house, we didn't go into her closet. Instead we watched a movie about a girl who's really a princess. Not the same one from Ginger's, a different one, where she's normal in America but a princess in this other country. Us and the little fat girl all sat on the couch under a blanket, like a family. And her fat lady host, Mrs. Henry, put her warm hand on my shoulder and asked Strawberry if she wanted me to stay over for dinner.

But I had to go get Dante, and I was already late, and he was crying and mad at me. On the street, he said, “You don't care about your own family, you like those nonfiction ugly people better. You're even ashamed of us!”

I told him to be quiet, and at least those people didn't yell at me all the time. But really, I felt bad. I said, “I wasn't late because of them, I just got in a fight with this girl who's a bitch to me.”

“That lady you know is a nonfiction bitch.”

“You don't even know her,” I said. “You don't know what nonfiction means either.”

“I don't care what it means,” he said and he smiled all Chester Cheetah at me.

The next time we talked on the phone, she asked me why I still had a doll. I said, “Oh, she's from when I was like, five.”

“It's not a ‘she,' ” said Velvet. “It's a
it.
Why do you have it
now
?”

“I have it because my sister kept it. I didn't even know she had it all these years. I didn't find it until she died and Paul and I went to clean out her place. She had every doll and toy we ever had all piled up in a box.”

There was a long moment of television noise. She said, “That's sad.” Except her voice said,
That's funny.

“Yeah, I know. I threw most of the stuff away. But I wanted to keep something that Melinda kept. My friend Kayla made the clothes for her—they're cute, don't you think?”

She didn't say anything. A sarcastic feeling came through the phone. Along with television noise.

I never even had one doll except for the broken key chain I found on the street—Ginger and her sister had a whole box? And I'm supposed to feel bad about that? I thought, Dante's right: She is a bitch. Or just dumb.

Then my mom said, “Come here. Your hair is a mess—let me braid it for you.” I went to her and said, “Mami, you know something crazy? Ginger said she
likes
my hair natural.” And she
laughed
and said, “Likes it! That's funny! I'll believe she likes it when she goes to the shop and pays somebody to make her hair like yours!” She worked on me with love in her quick hands; making fun of Ginger put her in a good mood. She said, “This black woman I know says she hates white women saying,
Oh, your hair is so beautiful.
She wishes she could slap some knowledge into them!” And she laughed deep in her body, working my hair so that my scalp tingled all the way down into my neck. It made me feel so soft that I thought soft about Ginger again, how her voice on the phone had a bruise on it when she told about her sister. And about the mare, looking at me with her ears up. Saying she was sorry and I didn't even say good-bye to her.

I knew about the box of half-rotted dolls and toys for years before my sister died; she had shown them to me the last time I'd seen her. She was nearly forty then and making one of her failed attempts to get sober, and she was wondering if maybe I wanted my dolls back. The visit hadn't been going very well and when she held up the moldy and bald (I'd torn her hair out) Glinda, I lost my temper and said I thought it was crazy to keep these things, that she ought to just throw them out. And my biker-chick sister put her face in her hands and left the room, crying. I sat there for a moment, stunned. Then I got up and went to her. She'd stopped crying by then and when I said, “Sorry,” she said, “No, you're right.” And I helped her take the falling-apart box out to the Dumpster just before I left for the airport.

She must've brought it right back in after I was gone; the box was just about disintegrated when I came across it. I pawed through everything in it—Barbies, old-style talking dolls, troll dolls, Beatle dolls, plastic horses—to find Glinda.

The next time I came to see Ginger, it was late, so I didn't go to the barn until morning. Nobody was there. The radio was pulled out of the office on an extension cord, and it was playing embarrassing cowboy music, but there was
nobody.
The horses had gotten watered and fed, but their stalls were dirty and they were looking with nervous eyes. Then I realized I didn't hear Fiery Girl kicking. I got scared and went to her. She was standing in the middle of her stall, but when she saw me she came up to the bars and looked at me with her eyes saying something I at first didn't understand. Then I saw: Her stall was full of shit, and she was saying
Help me.

I wanted to, but I was scared and I told her.

Help me.

“But there isn't even anybody here in case you hurt me.”

Help me. I won't hurt you. Help me.

We looked at each other without any more words. She still did not kick or bite. I said, “All right. I'm going to trust you. But if you hurt me, I will never see you again.”

And I got a wheelbarrow and a fork and went back to her stall. Normally I didn't go into the stalls to clean, but I didn't want to put a halter on her. I blocked the door with the wheelbarrow and went in. She got out of my way and let me clean. When I was finished with one half of the stall, she moved and let me do the other. She didn't look at me. But her neck was soft, and her head was down. With her trembly lips she said,
Thank you.

I stayed in the barn and talked to the horses for like an hour. But no people came until I left. That's when I saw Beth, the girl from my first visit. She told me Pat and Beverly were at a horse show and she was taking care of the barn. I thought, Not very well, and she got pink in the face like she heard me.

The best part of that visit happened the first night; Paul and I fucked and it felt great. It was especially great because we hadn't done it for a while, and we'd never done it when Velvet was in the house, I'm not sure why. But this intimacy now made her presence more real, and I felt joy at getting up and seeing her the next day. I felt like we were all putting roots down into something deep and rich.