The Mare (30 page)

I went back to school. Ginger said, “You've got to, you've got to,” and she sounded so fucked-up I felt bad for her and also I needed to see my horse. I didn't act different in class or in the lunchroom and I didn't take bullshit from anybody. But I paid more attention to teachers even when everybody else was clowning and throwing gummed-up paper at everything. I did some work and gave it in.

When school got out, I went to the block where I first met Dominic and walked around there until it was time to go get Dante. I saw the same little kids who stared at me before. Once I saw Mrs. Henry, who took care of Strawberry, and she talked to me. I saw boys who said, “Dayum, you need to break me off a piece of that, girl.” Except for one who said, “Charlie, I don't think so. Look at her eyes, that girl is a hundred miles away, she is aficionado, she belongs to somebody for sure, she's in love.”

That even made me smile. But I didn't see Dominic.

I tried not to think about it. I thought about my horse instead. I thought about her following me up into the van, the way her feet looked confused and almost funny, like somebody acting scared by running with their feet high. But my mind kept coming back to his lips and his hands touching me, his open legs, his eyes flashing as he turned to look at me over one shoulder and then the other; feeling flashed at the memory, all through my whole body, moving and breathing, coming out my skin and eyes, quiet and wild in the air.
Where are you, where are you, where are you?

I thought, This is stupid. This is the last day I'll do this.

That was the day I saw him.

He was with the boys who said break off some of that, and he looked at me like they did before he saw me. I stopped; his face changed. He turned from the other boys and said my name. The other boys looked away, then moved away, just a step, but it was like a mile. He said, “How you doin'?” I said, “Okay. How you doin'?” He shook his head and said, “Like hell.” And we started walking like we planned it. He said, “You know about Shawn?”

“Yeah. You know what happened?”

“Yeah, it was crazy. He was just standing next to Angel on the corner—”

“What corner? Where was it, in Williamsburg?”

“No, Bushwick. On a corner of Harmon, Irving—I dunno. This guy Juan, he's beefin' with Angel, he come up with his crew and had words and they shot Angel and Shawn.”

“That's crazy.”

We didn't talk for a minute. He said, “So, you were with him?”

“Not really. Once or twice. I—”

“Wha'd your grandfather say about that?”

“Dominic, my grandfather's dead.”

“That old man, that night? He died?”

“No, my grandfather died three years ago. I never even met him. But that night, that man called me granddaughter, and I called him grandfather before I knew what I was saying.”

“You a strange girl.”

His eyes flashing while he walked away with Brianna and some girl, one shoulder then the other. “Vete pal carajo,” I said, then
I
turned and walked away.

“Hey, no, wait,” he said, “wait, you want to get something to eat?”

“I'm not strange.”

“I don't mean it bad, I mean more like, you complicated.”

“I have to pick up my little brother in an hour.”

“We can be quick.”

“And why you asking me about Shawn when you with that nasty ho Brianna and also with her equally nasty friend, that is some ratreria shit.”

His face was surprised, like,
You funny,
but
soft
too, his open lips and eyes and even his nose so soft they were
blurry.
But when he closed his lips, the shape of them was
cutting.
“I don't know what friend you mean—”

“Janelle, for one.”

“Oh, she—” He smiled, like embarrassed. “She seventeen. And Brianna's almost seventeen. I'm seventeen, and Shawn is—I mean
was
—older than me, and you a little girl.”

“No, I'm not.”

“You the same age as my little sister.”

“I'm not your little sister.”

He smiled and my body flashed sick-hard.

“Okay, big girl, why don't you come eat with me?”

I thought he would take me for pizza. But instead we went blocks away to this place on Grand, with Christmas lights, where my mom took me and Dante once for New Year's a long time ago. I got a mango drink; he got salami and cheese.

“Why do you call me complicated?” I said.

“I don't mean nothin' bad.” He moved his chair around so he was next to me. I was embarrassed, but the man behind the counter looked with nice eyes. Dominic said, “I just mean you diff'rent. I felt it the first time I saw you. It's in how you carry yourself—even when you was
eleven
!”

“That's why they say I'm a conceited wannabe.”

“You think I care what girls in school say? I can see you ain't any a that. You just diff'rent. I don't know how. But it ain't about white people or horses neither.”

And then he kissed me on the side of my head. “But I'd like to see you on a horse!”

Ginger wasn't even going to tell me about the boy. She wasn't going to tell me because she thought I wouldn't want to hear it, but it woke her in the middle of the night; I could feel her body pulling against itself as she turned and turned in place like some old animal.

“You're helping her,” I said. “Ginger, you're doing everything you can. It's amazing what you've done. It's amazing what
she's
done, and she knows it, and that will hold her in good stead.”

I held her close and stroked her heart, and I felt her slowly become right again: fragile, strangely young, but strong, with the fanatic strength that thin girls sometimes have, more fierce nerves than muscle. I remembered that night she said, “I want to be a woman! I want to be a normal woman!” It was as if her whole body said that now, that she wanted to be a woman, she wanted to protect this girl.

I wasn't sure I believed what Velvet had told her: that the murdered boy had done nothing wrong, that the girl didn't know the people he'd been with when he'd died. But right then, it didn't matter. If she'd asked about Catholic school then, I would've said yes.

I thought: I have a good man. What happened with Michael was a blessing. But his body has no feeling like this. Even now, even though he's better than he was. It was wonderful to see him. But I'm not in middle school. She is and she needs me. I may not be a normal woman. But I can pretend. I can try.

When Ginger dropped me at Pat's, Pat waited till Ginger drove away—then she took my shoulders and looked in my eyes. “What happened to
you
?” she said.

“Nothin'.”

“
Nothin'
? Then why do you look like you got hit by a truck doin' sixty?”

I looked down and didn't say.

She let go of me. She said, “Make that a truck doin' eighty. C'mon, let's get to work.”

And we went and worked on jumping Fiery Girl. Who did not want to jump. Chloe and Nut watched from their side of the paddock while we trotted around and around and I tried to make her go over the jump and she would not go. Pat yelled, “Be clear! You're not being clear! You decide and you get your legs on her and tell what you want to do!” But I couldn't be clear because nothing was clear. There was Dominic's lips on me and an old man crawling on glass and Shawn dead and his eyes and Dominic's eyes and my body burning all the time and the noise coming in all night while I lay on the couch, some idiot yelling. I kicked Fiery Girl and told her to jump, but all I wanted to do was look at my phone and see if Dominic texted, even though he hadn't even once. The only clear thing I could feel was that Fiery Girl was scared of jumping and she was getting pissed at me, and still I couldn't focus right. She was starting up with this crazy jog-dance when Pat yelled, “Whoa!” and came and took the rein sideways in her hand.

“What are you doing?” she said. “This poor horse looks like she's hearing ten different things from five different riders, and she's getting ready to say, ‘Shut the F up!' ”

“She's scared of the jump, Miss Pat.”

“I see that. I also see you're doing one thing with your hands and another with your legs and your head is all over the place.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Dismount. We're going to get focused and work on trust.”

What that meant was leading Fiery Girl where she didn't want to go. First I walked her through mud puddles, which she did not like. Then we walked on this piece of shiny tarp that Pat brought out. She didn't want to. I had to make her, gently. It sounds boring, but it wasn't. Because I felt her through the line, at first just her normal mouth-self and then something that was soft and round and just starting not to be afraid. And there it was: the leg-feeling. It was in my hands, but it was the same. Dominic and the poor man and Shawn and everything else was there, but it was in the distance and this feeling was here now.

Girl, where I am now is basically a trap house. You don't wanna come there. But give me your number. Maybe I'll come see you one night when you're over at what's her name, Lydia's? When the other girl's got something else to do, maybe I'll be up around your way.

I thought: He will. He hasn't. But he will. I don't have to worry; it's over there in the corner, waiting to happen.

Then Pat gave me some peppermints and I got my mare to follow me without the line. We walked on the tarp again, and in the puddle, sometimes me giving her a mint. Then Pat lowered the pole on the jump so it was almost on the ground. My horse hopped over the pole and broke into a run. Across the paddock, Chloe tossed her head and ran too; Nut chased her, bucking and farting.

“Can you come next weekend?” said Pat. “Next weekend I bet she takes the jump.”

I said yes, and I meant it.

But I didn't do it.

“You don't need to ride a horse—you need your own feet on the
ground.
Take your dumb face out of the mirror and listen to me! There's no man out there you can trust, and if you forget that, next thing you know, your belly's out to
here
and you're watching the door for somebody who never comes.”

She said, “Mami, I'm thirteen,” and put on more of that greasy lip gloss, which I grabbed away so hard I crushed off the tip. She yelled like she does, like a stupid animal, like she can't even talk, “Na-urhhh!” like an elephant or a cow. I mocked her and laughed at her. I said, “You think I don't know how old you are? The day I gave birth to you was the loneliest day of my life. No one was here except your aunt Maria, she was the only one, and she was already half dead.” She didn't care, she just grabbed for the lip gloss. “Listen, you ungrateful girl, I'm trying to educate you. Watch yourself! Men are babies screaming for love. They get it, they throw it across the room until it breaks and then start screaming again. And always some dumb woman comes running. It makes no difference to them if it's you or the one before you or the one after you or the one down the street.”

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.

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.

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.