The Mare (4 page)

When we got back to the house she wanted to eat a sandwich, so I fixed her a ham and cheese with tomatoes for health. She asked if there were any pickles and I said, No, I'm sorry. She looked at me quizzically while she ate. Tomatoes dripped out. She asked if those girls would be at the barn when she went for her lesson. I said I didn't know. I wondered if they said something racial to her, but I didn't want to embarrass her by asking. I didn't think there would be direct racism in this town. But it might come in a subtler form.

“What did you think of them?” I asked.

“I dunno,” she said.

“Would you want to see them again?”

“No.”

I asked if she'd brought a swimsuit. She said yes. I told her we'd gotten a life jacket for her, for when we went to the lake. She asked to see it, and when I brought it, she put it on and frowned; it was too small. My heart sank a little. We both went out to the garden, where Paul was pulling weeds, and told him we were going to the store to get a new life jacket. He said he would go with us. She wore the life jacket into the car, and I was aware of her fiddling with it as we drove. When we went over the Kingston Bridge, I sensed her stop fiddling for a moment; I turned and saw her hands still in her lap, her soft, responsive profile as she looked out the window, reacting to the huge bright sky and sparkling water. I felt pulled by big feelings, but I didn't know what they were.

When we got to the parking lot of the store and found a place, she said, “I made it fit.” And she had! She had worked out the adjustable straps and fasteners that we hadn't even thought to look for. Paul said, “You're smarter than we are!” and her eyes sparkled shyly.

We decided that since we were at the mall, we would buy her a bike. It took a long time because she was so uncomfortable about choosing one. We kept asking, What about this one? Do you like this one? Do you like the color? And she would say, “I dunno” and look down, as if confused. I asked her, Do you
want
a bike? She said yes, but almost in the same way she might say no. A salesman came over and that only made it worse. I was beginning to feel we were doing some strange violence to her when she said, “That one” and pointed to a violet bike with flowers on it.

When we got back home, Paul and I got our bikes and we all went for a ride in the neighborhood across the county road behind our house. It was a short ride, but it seemed like an adventure, and it linked the three of us. We sweated up some hills, and then coasted down fast. We came to some broken asphalt—I yelled “Lumpety bumpety!”—and Velvet grinned triumphantly as we bounced over it. When we came to a little park with a duck pond, she wanted to stop and see the ducks. There was a swing set and even though it was preschool size, Velvet wanted to swing on it. We were too big to swing with her, so we took turns pushing her. Then we played on the teeter-totter and the rickety wooden go-round—then she wanted to go back to the swings. She did everything with enchanted hunger, like she was maybe too old for this but wanted it anyway, because she knew it was something she should've had. Besides, it was fun—
we
thought it was fun.

When we got home, Paul asked Velvet if she liked Celia Cruz—she said, “Yes!” So he put on a Cruz CD and turned it up loud enough so that you could hear it in the backyard. Velvet kept me company while I made the salad and got the chicken ready for Paul to cook outside. It felt good to make food for her. I remembered my mom fixing food in the kitchen, her hips solid against the counter as she moved her hands; I remembered the feeling of love and trust in it. I wanted to be that, even if it was only for a little while. When Paul came in with the chicken on a big plate, I knew he was enjoying it too; I could see the pleasure coming off his chest.

At dinner we asked about her family. She told us about her brother, who was visiting another family. She told us her mother worked as an old person's aide and also rented out a room to a Mr. Diaz, who didn't live in the room but kept his private business in there. “What business is he in?” asked Paul with too much nonchalance. She said she didn't know, that he kept the door padlocked when he was gone, and they weren't allowed to bother him when he was there. She asked if we had any kids. Paul told her about his daughter; Velvet was disappointed when Paul told her that Edie was in Italy. Velvet didn't ask me about kids, but she looked at me expectantly. When I didn't say anything, she said she wanted to try her mother again.

Velvet sounded happy when her mom answered; she said, “Ma-mi!” But right away the woman started yelling. She was yelling so loud I could hear her from a foot away. Velvet spoke quickly, sometimes arguing, sometimes almost pleading. I heard “Celia Cruz,” said hopefully; the mother just kept yelling. Finally Velvet looked at me and said, “My mom says thank you for buying me the bike.” Then she put the phone down, looking mad and happy both.

We watched some videos; I had one I'd picked out in advance, a movie about a tough Hispanic girl who learns how to box and triumphs over her crappy life. I hadn't seen it, but I'd seen trailers for it; they showed one person after another yelling at the girl about how she was no good while the words “Prove them wrong!” flashed on the screen. Then they showed the girl punching the crap out of a bag while music played.
I
thought it was inspiring—
Prove them wrong!
—and I looked forward to sitting there with Velvet, being inspired together. We put it on, and there was the first scene of the girl's father yelling at her that she was no good. Velvet looked depressed. “It's going to get better,” I said encouragingly. The yelling at home went on for a long time. Then the girl got to school and a teacher yelled at her. Other girls insulted her, and pretty soon, she was in the bathroom, beating on somebody. “Can we watch something else?” asked Velvet.

Embarrassed, I showed her the other ones: something about a Pakistani girl overcoming prejudice to become a soccer star in England and something about a girl discovering that she is a princess. Velvet picked the second one. We watched it together on the couch. Yearningly, Velvet drank in its scenes of senseless abundance and approval. An actress who was famous for playing a beautiful, fun-loving nun when I was a kid took the princess into a room and gave her tons of jewelry. In a trance of pleasure, this little girl who did not know me leaned against me and put her head on my shoulder. Shyly, I touched her hair. Paul came into the room, and I felt his warmth even though the lights were down and I couldn't see his face.

When I finally talked to my mom, she just yelled at me. I tried to tell her about the horses and she told me that I could get kicked and killed, that a horse in DR had almost killed her. I told her that these horses were nice, and that I was going to ride one tomorrow. She said, You tell those people that I forbid it. Tell them if anything happens to you, they are going to be in big trouble. “Okay,” I said. “I'll tell them.”

Then I hung up and we watched movies. We watched another movie about the princess. After that, we went upstairs and they showed me my towel and washcloth in the bathroom; they were white with pink flowers. Ginger waited for me to get ready for bed, and when I got in bed she asked if I wanted her to read to me. It was embarrassing, but I said yes and she sat on the bed.

And then I felt strange. I had waked up pressed against my mother and little brother, and now I was alone in a bed with a pink cover and this blond lady sitting there, her face full of niceness with pain around the edges. Why was this even happening? I missed my mom next to me. Instead Ginger was next to me, reading with her eyes down, her voice like white dream horses running across the sky: A little girl playing hide-and-seek goes into the closet to hide and comes out in a snowy country. She meets a man with hairy goat legs. (Like Paul!) The hairy-leg says a beautiful witch has come to the land and made it winter all the time. Ginger looked at me with her blue, blue eyes and then away. Hairy-leg says the little girl has been sent to help, that only she can help. Ginger closed the book. She sat quiet like she didn't know what to do. Then she said, “That's all for now, Princess Velveteen.” And she touched my head.

When she turned off the light and closed the door, there was still light from the outside on the wall with tree branches in it. I thought of my mother at home in the bed, with car lights moving on the wall and people talking and playing music in the street. I thought of Dante crying at the bus station—where was he? I thought of my grandfather. Was he there like he said he would be?

That night Paul and I went to bed feeling close, our arms wrapped around each other. When I woke up in the middle of the night, scared and sad from a dream I couldn't remember, I reached for him, pressing myself against his back. But instead of his name I heard myself say, “M'lindie!” Which is what I called Melinda when I was five. Then I was awake enough to know it was Paul's big male back I was holding—but still I whispered, “Melinda.” And then I fell back to sleep.

Which maybe isn't as weird as it sounds. Melinda and I slept together until I was ten and she was twelve.

I woke up feeling sad without knowing why. Then I realized why. I was remembering a time a long time ago when I thought my mom was a witch and I wouldn't eat what she made me. I wouldn't eat and at first she yelled at me and then she was worried I was sick. She stroked my hair and asked if my stomach hurt and tried to give me tea with ginger. I was too afraid to drink it, but because she was talking so nice, I told her why. I said, “Mami, I'm afraid a witch might be living in your body.” And then the witch came out. Her eyes got red flame inside them and she left the room angrily; Dante laughed and pointed at me, because I would be whipped, not him. But when she came back with the belt, he shut up and put his hands over his pee-pee. I tried to run, but she grabbed my hair and pulled up my shirt and she beat me until I bled, until Dante was screaming louder than me. Then she sat and dropped the belt, put her hands over her face, and cried. I heard Manuel; he was looking at me out his cracked-open door. I pulled my shirt down.

I got out of bed and went to the window. Over the field across from the house, the sun was coming up. It was perfect-round and burning red. Looking at it made my feelings pull apart.

Then I remembered: My horse lesson was today.

I came downstairs and saw her sitting at the table drinking juice and playing Uno with Paul. She said, “When are we going to go to the horses?” It was eight o'clock and her lesson was at eleven. She wanted to go over anyway. I said she had to eat breakfast first and made her bacon and eggs. Then I got her to help me with the dishes, mostly because I could feel her attention going out the door, and I wanted to feel linked with her again.

When we were all done, I said, “What are you going to do over there for two hours?”

First she said, “I dunno,” and then, “Talk to Fugly Girl.”

“Be careful,” I said. “You heard Pat. Stay back from the stall.”

“I will. I want to see the other horses too.”

I walked over with her. Pat was there leading a baby horse outside. I didn't see any other kids. “We came early,” I said.

“Good,” said Pat. “Want to come out to the round pen with me and Jimbo?”

I said I would be back to watch Velvet ride and left her following Pat to the corral, smiling and looking at her feet.

When I got back to the house, I was surprised to hear Paul speaking Spanish into the phone—or trying; he didn't really know the language. “Qué?” he asked. He looked like he was struggling to understand what was being said—and then he held the phone away from him as angry words poured from it. He put the phone back to his ear and then hung it up. He looked at me with a baffled face. “That was Velvet's mother,” he said. “I'm not sure what she was calling about. At first it sounded like she was saying
she
was in trouble. Then it sounded like she meant to say
we're
in trouble. She was talking too fast for me to understand, but I'm pretty sure she called me ‘stupido' before she hung up.”

We laughed, but uneasily. We decided to call the office of the organization that had brought Velvet out. No one answered; we left a message that we needed a translator to speak to Velvet's mom.

We went with the horse to a fenced circle. Pat told me his name was Jimbo, and that he was only a year old. She told me to stay outside the fence and then she went in and took Jimbo off the leash. She stopped talking to me and started talking to Jimbo. I couldn't pay attention to her, I just watched the horse. I could see he was a baby, not just for being small, he moved like a little kid. She made him come to her by walking away, and then if he moved away from her, she raised her arms and walked at him swinging the leash, like she wanted him away. Once when he wouldn't come, she came to the fence where I was and crouched down. I said, What are you doing? She said, Shhh and told me to get down too. The baby horse just looked at us. We waited. And then he came. He came up to Pat and put his nose near her. She told him he was good. I wished he would put his nose on me, but Pat got up and clipped the leash back on him.

When we took him back in the barn, I asked her why Fugly Girl had that name. She said, “It's not really her name, it's just what the girls call her. Because her head is a little too big for her body.”

People said my head was too big too. This girl I hate calls me “Flat-Ass Fathead” and “Velveeta Cheese.”

“Her ear too—one of 'em looks like somebody might've twisted it.”

“What's her real name?”

“Funny Girl. Which doesn't suit her.”

I agreed, it did not.

“Not much funny about the mare's background. She's an Appendix quarter horse—that's a quarter horse–thoroughbred mix—but I don't know the mix on her, and I can see both in how she's put together. Her last owners—or rather, the owners before last—brought her up from down south, where she was bush-track racing.”

“What's that?”

“Rough-type racing, basically to train jockeys. Hardly any rules. People get hurt all the time.”

“She ran races?”

“Back in the day.”

“Can I ride her?”

“No one rides that horse. Remember the sign? It's there for a reason. Don't even touch that horse.”

I thought, I already touched her. She already touched me. And you saw it.

Pat showed me the horse I would ride; she was just plain white and a little fat. But she was nice. Her name was Reesa. Pat put a halter on her face and brought her out of her cage—her stall—and “cross-tied” her, that meant she was tied by her face to both walls. And then she gave me a brush to clean her with. I brushed her whole hard body; Pat showed me the place on her back where she specially liked it, and I did it there a lot. Then we put the saddle on her; when I strapped it on with this thing called a “girth,” Reesa puffed out her stomach like to push it away, but Pat said it was okay. Then Pat put a helmet on my head, meaning my head might break, and I got scared. But she gave me the end of the leash (the “lead rope”) and I had to lead Reesa out into the circle. In the circle there was a wooden step-thing called a “mounting block,” and Pat put it next to Reesa. “Okay,” she said. “Ready?”

I stood still and breathed. Pat waited. Reesa waited. I climbed up on the top step and put my hand on her. “Keep the reins in your left hand. That's your control,” said Pat. “But take hold of her mane with the same hand—it's okay, you won't hurt her—and slip your left foot in the stirrup.” I took the mane; Reesa seemed like she was saying,
It's okay,
but I was scared. “Go on,” said Pat. “Foot in the stirrup, take hold of that saddle, and get on your horse!” So I held the saddle and swung my leg and then I was on top of her. And then I felt her. I felt her say things, deep things; mostly I felt that she was strong, that she didn't have to let me on her, or do
anything I told her.
But she did and she would.

“She accepts you,” said Pat. “She doesn't care who you are, how much money you have, where you're from. She accepts you.”

I thought, I know.

“She can feel your head move; she can feel your stomach tense or relax. Her skin is so sensitive she can feel a mosquito land on her before it bites. To make her move, you tap with your calves, you don't kick. Kicking her is like screaming at her, and you don't need to do that. She can hear you.”

I smiled so hard it made tears come. Pat just kept talking. With my legs, I asked Reesa to go. And she did.