The Mare (37 page)

The night she left I went out to the horse barn. It was dark and I could hear the animals react to me when I came in, their silence sudden and massed, like powerful thoughts crowded together, thinking on me. Then I guess one of them grabbed a bucket in its teeth and starting banging it on a wall. Another one snorted and I could feel their thought-shapes part to let me in. Their attention dispersed; they breathed and made quiet noises to each other.

I thought, No wonder Velvet likes it here. It was safe and secret with them, the ground deep under me, under meadows and houses and human things; ant-swarm human thoughts and giant human feelings. Paul, his other woman, Michael, the chopped-up book of my past: wide, clean surges of hope and love forced into weird shapes, breaking free again. Velvet's mother, her crushed little cursing face, her fighter's calm, impassive face; that first time, the way she met my eyes like no one else ever did.
Mi niña;
Velvet;
my
Velvet. The horses.

I went to Fiery Girl. I couldn't see anything but the flash of her eye and the outline of her ears and curious nose. There was a sign on her door; I imagined it still said “Do Not Touch.” But Velvet had touched her, rode her, cared for her. I put my hand through the bars and touched her nose. She jerked her head and I pulled my hand back, scared. The horse's teeth flashed and she grunted; I realized she was biting at her door like a cat scratching at wood. I was afraid to touch her again, but I stood there some moments, feeling the animals, calming.

When I finally walked back, Paul was on the porch, waiting. I didn't want to be glad, but I was. For the first time in days, we lay down together—rolled away from each other but together. Michael flitted through me, his artificial kisses I had mistaken for “delicate” stuck together with Velvet trying to call me about her murdered friend, stuck together with the hot-point past where my “self” was crushed into a ball like old aluminum, and I didn't even know what was happening to Michael. My husband lay next to me, blinking loud enough for me to hear.

In the school bathroom some girls walked in talking mean shit about somebody's hair, that she bleached it so bad it fell out and she had to wear this crusty ol' wig. I was in a stall. I pulled up my feet and they mobbed up the mirrors goin', “And she like fifty at least and wearin' fake Chanel glasses and that blond wig like she Lil' Kim or somethin'.” A girl banged into the stall next to me. “An' I heard she bringin' in retarded AIDS victims to the house?” “Don't be talkin' that way about people with AIDS, and that girl ain't that retarded, either.” “And she don't even
got
AIDS, the dude only—” “Yeah, but her own niece pregnant! She should—” “Yeah, but Dominic—” My ears popped open wide; next to me the toilet flushed and the door banged open. “—she say Dominic got somebody else on his mind for real, she can tell.” “While she
pregnant
? Word, some bitch gonna die, literally.”

That was the last thing they said, but all I heard was
Dominic got somebody else on his mind for real
and
I think something good's coming your way, but don't miss it!

Except I kept thinking about Brianna pregnant and her crazy aunt and somehow the sick feeling of a retarded girl being raped got mixed in it and why did people think the aunt was bad to help even if she did wear a ugly wig? I didn't want to be the bitch coming in from the side even if I did hate Brianna. So I made myself think about Fiery Girl and how I would see her again soon. But then I just wished I could tell Dominic about the way I jumped her. I wished I could at least text him. But I promised him I wouldn't. So I called Ginger and we read a book called
The Brief Wonderful Life of Somebody
together. Except I couldn't pay attention because of wanting to see him so much it pushed out everything.

Dante woke me, but I didn't know it was him at first, just felt something hitting my face—“Mami!” Softly he hit his hands on my face and pulled my cheeks. “Mami, I dreamed Velvet fell off her horse and died!”

“Shh, stop.” I pushed away his hands and held his arms at his sides, strong but soft. “Velvet's fine. She's in the next room. Now ssshhh…”

“But she said she's going to ride in a contest, and I'm afraid something will happen.”

“Don't be stupid. Go back to sleep or I'll hit you!” And I stroked his head and calmed him with my arms. He whimpered to keep me touching him, and I did until he slept.

But of course then I could not. Asleep in the next room, and she deprived me of sleep! He was only dreaming; it couldn't be true. I tried to calm myself and sleep, but anger beat my brain like a drum—that she could do this to me in the middle of the night, get into Dante's dreams and disturb him so he woke me on a work night! I tore off the blanket and went down the hall, threw open her door. I meant to beat her right then, get the truth out of her before she was awake enough to lie, she would stupidly throw it right in my face just to spite me—

But I didn't. My body suddenly felt weak and I just stood and looked at her, her arms and legs wrapped around her pillow, holding it like Dante held me. If I beat her it would take me another hour to get to sleep. I would do it tomorrow. I would find out and then—“You need to do something different,” said Rasheeda. “You beat her ass every which way and she still not doing what you want. You need to get a different idea.”

I went out into the living room and sat on the couch, making my body calm. Rasheeda. She said when her daughter was sick she prayed. She believed it was the only reason her grandchild didn't get AIDS. She gave me the prayer she said; it was in my purse, crumpled up. She knew I couldn't read it, but she gave it to me anyway. I got it out of my purse, opened it and held it in my hand. Streetlight flashed on it, and I tried to remember the prayer my mother loved.

Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession was left unaided.
Mary, don't let my daughter die on a horse. Humble her, punish her, but don't let her die. Surely she isn't doing something so stupid.
Inspired with this confidence, I fly unto you, Virgin of virgins, my Mother.
Because she won't listen to me, nothing I do works.
Before you I stand sinful and sorrowful,
punish me, punish her, but don't let her die that way. She is foolish, but not bad except for pride, and it's my fault that she was born wrong, not hers. Forgive, forgive, despise not my petitions, have mercy, hear and answer me.

I didn't go find him to take him from Brianna, only to talk to him. It was my birthday and that made it seem okay. I didn't text or call because he said not to. I went to the block where we first met and then met again. When I walked there this time boys looked but didn't talk to me so much, I guess because it was still cold and my body was covered and my face was closed to them because I was all the time calling him, calling him with my mind. I know I was doing that because he heard me; I know he heard me because he came.

He wasn't alone, he was with another boy—really he was a man, and he had a hard face. My heart opened too fast, and I said his name in a voice you shouldn't speak on the street with a hard man there. And Dominic, he looked at me with his face hard too. His look froze my heart, but I could not close it. “What you want, girl?” He said it like he didn't know me.

“Just to say hello. Just to tell you about my horse.”

His eyes went soft and then hard again, except not all the way. The man looked away, bored. “You got business with shawty here?” he said. “Ima catch you up tha way.”

The man left, and we started walking. I hoped he would go to the restaurant with the lights, but he just said, “So what about your horse?”

“Ima be in a competition with her.”

“Awesome.” His voice was sarcastic. I didn't say anything. There was pounding in my ears and everything seemed like it was moving very fast. I wanted to say,
Why are you being this way?
I wanted to tell him about seeing the distance, but I couldn't do that either—his hard voice made even that stupid. So I just asked, “Who's that man?”

“That ain't your business.”

“Why can't I ask that? You said we were friends.”

“Not like that we ain't.”

“Like what, then? I can't even just ask you who somebody is?”

He stopped on a corner. His eyes went hard/soft/hard/sad. There were boys like a foot away. “Listen,” he said. “I know you come here and walk around looking for me.” His voice was mean, but his eyes looked sad and scared and cut me to the heart so I could not talk. The boys pretended not to see.

“You can't be doin' this,” he said. “If I wanna see you, I let you know. You get it?”

“But you told me, you
showed
me—”

“I told you not to bother me!”

Brianna's girls came round the corner. Very quiet, I finished my sentence: “Dominic, you showed me that picture you didn't show nobody else.” For about two seconds everything stopped. His eyes said,
I'm sorry, I'm sorry sorry.
But his back was to Brianna's friends, and all they heard was him going, “
Picture
? That wasn't nothin', that wasn't even me, I was just playin' with you! It ain't my fault if you don't know game when you see it!”

One of Brianna's bitches laughed low.

“A'ight? Now you need to go home and not bother people no more.”

And he turned his back and talked to Brianna's friends.

Me just standing there. The corner boys watching me. This one bitch grillin' me hatefully. And me ready to fly on her—but like he could feel it, he stuck his arm out between us and pulled the bitch by her shoulders,
pulled
her around, saying to her,
Don't get into that shit, come with us, we gonna
—whatever, I didn't hear. She looked at him sharp, like,
Why do you care,
but still she went. And quick, over his shoulder, he looked back at me.

Me doing nothing. Worse than a beat-down.
You showed me that picture.
Stupid and lame. I hated myself for saying it, more than I hated him for what he said back. If one of them looked at me then and laughed, I coulda run and punched the bitch, but nobody did; they were too busy trying to get attention from him.

The corner boys still stood there. I yelled, “What you lookin' at!” and at least they looked down. But when I walked away I could still feel their eyes on me, like they could see my private body. I felt like I did that time after Manuel, when I wanted to hide in my own house, and now I was on the street and it felt like everybody was looking at my body. All the eyes, and the streets and buildings and cars as far from me as the trees and houses of upstate. But here was no horse to come and touch her face on mine. Fiery Girl, her face on mine—I tried to grab the memory of it. Instead I felt the eyes and remembered the substitute, and Alicia snapping her fingers at his face and Ginger saying, “I'm weak.” And my mom saying, “It's not your fault. You have bad blood.”

For the first time I understood: She said that to make me feel better. From love.

I went to get Dante from day care. He leaned on me all the way home. I fixed my mind on his forehead and eyelashes until that's all I saw.

There is a graveyard in the next town over that I like a lot. It's small and very old, full of thin, crumbling stones so decrepit the names and dates are worn away, slanting sideways or lurching back, some with pieces broken off. There are few big display plots, just these plain, mostly anonymous stones from the 1880s. The living have worn a path through the grass on their way to the drugstore or the parking lot or the diner on the main street—where I'm going to meet Kayla for coffee.

I walk slowly, reading the few legible stones and feeling the gentle humor of the ground beneath me.
As you are now, so once was I / As I am now, so you will be / Prepare for death and follow me
—somebody who died in 1803 wanted his stone to say that. Numbly I smile and wonder how it will be on my deathbed to remember that when I was forty-eight years old I acted in a performance of
A Christmas Carol
with children wearing pajamas and bonnets, and that a Dominican family came from Crown Heights to see it. Where will Velvet be then? What will she remember of our time together? I remember when I talked to her about our periods, and I said, “You're coming up and I'm going down.” How she smiled.

Prepare for death and follow me.
Church bells ring.

Yes, I am going down. Like every human will, like every woman in particular, as her body splutters and gives out. Nothing wrong with Velvet's satisfaction in the contrast. Maybe my whiteness gives it double meaning, double triumph for her. Whatever. I'm going down anyway, my husband going after somebody younger even as he protests his love. No wonder Becca hates me, Paul left her when she was about my age. He didn't leave her for me, but I am almost ten years younger and must've seemed like a replacement.

A replacement: Michael. The fever-feeling of youth coming up inside me, suddenly animated like a cartoon trying to become human. Sparkling dreams of passion and tenderness unlimited by time and its wounds—stupid for any woman my age to dream of such things. But I did dream, so how can I complain about “cheating”? I didn't get physical with Michael, or at least not genital; we made out like kids. But I tried to start it up again with him; for days, weeks, I e-mailed with him, trying to make it happen again even as he lost interest.

I stop on the edge of the graveyard, paralyzed with sadness and loss. It's dead now, my adolescent longing, and even so I can't help but press it against my cheek one more time, hoping to bring it alive again. Paul is flawed but alive and here I am still rubbing this dead thing on my face—why? How did this dead thing come up out of the past and eat my happiness? Why did I allow it?

I walk out onto the parking lot. People pass me and our eyes do not meet. What will I tell my friend? Nothing. Just that Paul and I are having trouble. It doesn't matter why I allowed it; I did, and so did he, and now nothing will be good again. I am finished. Except for Velvet. Velvet and the horse. Even though she is so aloof now and doesn't tell me anything. Even though Paul is right, everyone is right, the whole coarse world is right: I can't even be her
pretend
mother. I give in. I agree. I'm over. It is what it is. But I can still get her on that fucking horse. I can help her win.