The Mare (27 page)

Driving to Pat's horses was so different from walking over to the barn; it was like someplace foreign. Chloe and Nut were different than the horses at the other barn; their coats were dirtier, their eyes were softer and more people-y, and they ran happier. Nut liked to take Pat's hat off her head and run, then Chloe would run with him trying to get it. Chloe
did
have a long rounded neck and a high head and when I got on her I thought, High, wide and handsome in Beverly's voice.

When Pat finally let me ride instead of just working, I started working on jumping almost right away. We started out trot-jumping little fences, me in the two-point, holding her mane, her body jerking me forward and then back when she landed, running until I slowed her to go again over the next fence. My heart pounded, but my legs were calm on her and Pat's voice yelled, “Stay with the motion, don't hang behind!” and I went over right and Chloe ran.

And then I washed her with the hose and scraped the water off her, and even though her face was sweet, I missed my mare.

I said, “Miss Pat, how is Fiery Girl? Do you think she misses me?”

“Well, she's an animal. It's hard to know what they think.”

I soaped Chloe with mint between her legs and I thought, I would know.

“But I have noticed she stands at the door of her stall every day. Like she's looking for somebody.”

I stopped in the middle of rinsing Chloe. I said, “I know I can't see her, but why don't you have her here if she's yours? Why do you keep her at Estella's place?”

“Because I don't have a stall for her and also I don't think she'd get along with Chloe. I'd have to build a fence to divide the paddock.”

“Oh.”

“But I've been thinking about that. She's lot better now than she was. If you'd help me build a stall, maybe—”

I dropped the sponge and hugged Pat. I felt her be embarrassed and then just like me, and hug me back. “When?” I asked.

“If we can get the stall together by the end of the month, then. It should only take a few days, then a few more days for a fence in the paddock. You can pay for the lessons that way—not much mucking to do around this place.”

I told Ginger and she started letting me come almost every day, even though sometimes I had to wait extra time for Paul to get back from his “office hours.” On the extra-time days, Pat invited me in her house to put my feet up. Her house was dirty. It was normal-dirty, like plates with old food and yellow-y rags and clothes piled up, and also strange-dirty, with little broken things everywhere: toys and a glass cat head with jewel eyes and a scissors stuck in the door where the knob was supposed to be, and the toilet couldn't flush; you had to stick your hand down in the back of it and pull on the chain. It was like the house was falling down in pieces and Pat didn't even notice! The first time I came in, her mom was there, sitting in it. She was watching something about horses on TV and when we came in she said, “The queen flew into Lexington last night. She is very excited about the new foal sired by Abdul.” She was a strong old lady with a long neck that came out of her body like a person trying to escape out of a tree trunk. She did home care like my mom. Pat would rub her legs so her veins wouldn't hurt, like I did with my mom. And she would tell stories about how the other care workers stole but she didn't, and how she “blew the whistle” when she found this one old man's good things packed up in boxes on his back porch and he didn't even know the other shift worker was about to “snatch him bald-headed.”

Pat's barn was dirty too. All the combs and brushes were filthy in filthy bags, and so were the spray bottles and nasty jars of horse-rub, clipboards and plastic boxes of cards and the greasy towel covering the toilet bucket. Really, there were
pieces of dirt
on everything, even the old dead webs covering the bars on the stalls and the windows so crusty you couldn't see out of them. It was also covered with bird shit. There were these birds shaped like fat arrows in nests under the ceiling, and they flew in curves, going on the horses when they came in or out and diving at us while we worked nailing pieces of wood together to make the walls and door of a stall. I was scared of them at first, that they would peck my face, but Pat just smiled and said, “Get back, brother bird!” and they swerved away and out the door.

But mostly me and Chloe jumped. She was different from my mare, lighter, like she never cried in her life. When she jumped, she rounded her back so strong it almost pushed me off, pulled her legs up into her body so soft, and landed on them like a cat. Once she didn't take the jump, she ran around it, and I fell off and banged my head. I got mad and yelled at her and Pat yelled at me. “That was you, not her,” she said. “She saw you missed the distance and she wasn't going to hurt herself
and you,
heinie over teakettle.”

I started loving Chloe. I loved the feeling I got in my legs sometimes when I was on her, like the spot where my legs touched her sides was the best place in the world and we were both in it. I never felt that with Fiery Girl. I didn't know why and it made me feel bad. I didn't want to ask Pat about it because I didn't want to admit it.

I went to see my mare, but only once. Because I wanted to respect Pat's words, and also because I had to sneak out when Ginger and Paul were asleep and I
really
didn't want to get caught this time. When I got the courage and went, the mare seemed like she didn't like me. I brought her an apple and she ate it. But then she turned her body away from me and looked at the wall even when I hugged her neck and begged her to turn. I said, “Come on. I want to get you away from here!” And I thought to her about Pat's place and the stall we were making for her. And the leg-feeling, that I wanted to feel it with her. Still, she wouldn't turn. It was like, even
she
was mad at me for disobeying Pat.

I talked to Ginger about the leg thing. We were in the car at night, “getting lost” on the same roads we always drove. I told her how I could feel it with Chloe and not with my mare. She didn't answer for so long, it was like she didn't hear me. Then she said, “Just because you can't feel it with Fiery Girl doesn't mean it's not there. Before my sister died, I didn't feel love for her. I didn't even like her. But I did love her. I just didn't feel it.”

“How could you love somebody and not feel it?”

“I don't know how to describe it.”

I didn't say anything. The same trees and houses went past, slanty and shadowy, the same but still strange. Ginger's music was on, this grown woman singing like she was my age. It was ugly and fake, her making her voice like that, but I didn't care. I was remembering something from a long time ago.

Ginger said, “Before Paul there was a, a…boyfriend who I had a bad relationship with. We were bad to each other.”

“How?”

“We just hurt each other all the time. It was awful and I always felt bad about it. But I ran into him a little while ago, and I realized there was love between us, even though we acted horrible. I was glad.”

The thing I remembered: being in the car with my father. His free hand under my clothes feeling me all over for money until he found it and he took it. Because I lied and told him I didn't have it, he kept it all.

“So I'm saying, just because you haven't felt that thing with Fiery Girl yet doesn't mean it's not there. It's just not right on that spot where your legs are.”

I lied. Why did I lie? The money was for emergencies—was the toll an emergency? Was he right not to see me again or even send anything?

“I used to feel something like that,” said Ginger. “I felt it when I painted.”

“In your legs?”

“No. In my brain. I used to think of it as a radio signal that I had to be alone to hear. I don't hear it now, but I'm hoping it's still there.”

“What did it sound like?”

“I didn't actually hear it. I more felt it.”

“That doesn't make sense.”

“I know.” There was a space between songs and I heard her breathe in, then out. The music started again.

I thought, Did my father love me but not feel it?

Ginger said, “I wonder if I can't hear it anymore because I'm not alone?”

She said it like she
was
alone. That made me feel alone.

“If so, then I'm glad I don't hear it,” she said. “I'd rather hear you.”

Does Dominic love me and not feel it?

Ginger reached over and put her hand on my leg. “What're you thinking?”

“Nothing.”

But I was thinking, No. He feels it. He feels it.

She made good on our deal: She filled up her math notebooks and wrote her essays with a minimum of groaning. And she'd improved, no question. It was still hard for her to read and write, harder than it should've been, given her intelligence. The one book review she did—on
Black Beauty
—was stilted and showed her boredom. The essay she did on what it was like to come and visit the country was better. The one she called “My Horse” was wonderful.

I knew she still wasn't turning her homework in. We still did it almost every week during the school year, but whenever I could actually get through to a teacher, he or she would say—with rare exceptions—that they never saw it. I stopped saying anything about it because it didn't help and at least she was learning.

Then I talked to Edie. Velvet and Edie spent time together nearly every weekend. I was very pleased by it, even if I didn't think they were true friends. The age difference was too big for that, and Velvet was subtly guarded around Edie; I almost had the impression that she was somehow “acting” for the older girl.

I was right. When Edie came by the house to pick Velvet up one day, she had to wait a bit for Velvet to change out of her horse clothes, and while Edie was waiting, she and I talked out on the porch. She said, “You must be so proud.”

I said, “I am.”

“For her to go from failing to the top of her grade? That's extraordinary, and it's because of you and my dad.”

She must've thought I turned my head out of modesty.

“And on top of that, she's even competing at the county fair? I wish I could see her, but I'll be up at school by then.”

Ginger asked me why I said I was at the top of my grade when I wasn't even giving in my homework. I told her that I did give it in; that the teacher was lazy or just lying. She said, “
All
your teachers?” I didn't say anything. She said, “You
would
be at the top of your grade if you were turning it in.” I still didn't say anything. We were sitting out in the backyard in plastic chairs. The grass smell was in our noses and the crickets were out. The neighbors were behind their fence talking about the Iraq War, how it had to happen because of the Bible. Paul was away somewhere and Ginger was drinking something, I wondered what.

She said, “Why did you tell Edie that you were going to ride at the county fair?”

“I didn't tell her that.”

“Then why did she say you did?”

“I said I know somebody who's riding at the fair.”

Ginger said, “If you're going to lie, you should learn to do it better than that.” She said, “You keep lying to me, we aren't going to stay close. Lying creates distance between people.”

“I'm not lying.”

She didn't say anything. The crickets went,
I'm a boy I'm a boy, I'm a girl I'm a girl.
Ginger sipped her drink. I thought about what Shawn said, why she could be so nice. I thought about the dream of a trapdoor in her yard, and how she went down the stairs to steal treasure from hell. I thought, It's you who's the liar. “It all started in the Bible,” said the neighbor man. “With an Arab woman named Hajar.”

Trapdoor.
I got up and walked in the back door, through the house, and out the front door. Ginger called to me, but I didn't stop. I went directly to my mare. No one was there. I opened her stall and went in. This time she didn't turn her back to me. I rubbed her neck and thought of when I took my paper for school and put it on the counter where water had spilled; I watched the words I wrote with Ginger melt and then I went to school. I thought about myself giving the clean, dry paper to the teacher and getting it back with a 4 on it. My horse put her head on my shoulder. I thought both things, the clean paper and the ruined one.

Pat says, “This mare tolerates no bullshit,” and she is right. It wasn't bullshit; I was telling her the truth just standing next to her: destroying the paper but giving the teacher the paper. The county fair. Me and Fiery Girl at the county fair. It hadn't happened. But it would. I could feel it. So could my mare.

I didn't talk to Paul about it because of how provoked he could be about what I was “doing.” Sometimes he was so remote, it was like he was wearing a “Keep Out” sign on his back. In some ways I was grateful for it because it meant he was out of our way, but it was also painful.

Still, I respected the sign. So I tried to talk with Kayla, and a lot of other people too, whether I knew them or not. I got more advice than I wanted at the drugstore checkout from Danielle, the woman who ran the Cocoon Theater—who just happened to be there with Laura, a member of Becca's clique, the
artist.
I should've just kept my mouth shut, but I couldn't help it: I told them about Velvet not turning in her papers even though she did them.

“What do you expect?” said Danielle. “You're competing with her mother.”

“No, I'm not.”

“Oh, you are,” said Laura. “And you're not going to win.”

I flushed; the conversation was now about something else. “What are you saying?”

Laura answered me with a look. Danielle said, “The message you're giving her contradicts the message she's getting from her mother.”

“What message do you think her mother is giving her?”

“That she wants her to fail,” said Danielle. “That's why she doesn't turn in her homework. She's doing exactly what her mother wants her to do.”

I thought, She's right. But it made me mad. Because she didn't even know Mrs. Vargas
or
Velvet. I said, “I don't think that's what her mother wants.”

“I doubt that's what she wants either,” said Laura. “She just may be highly ambivalent about somebody else messing around with her kid. Somebody white, with money, who doesn't know anything about their culture.”

Danielle touched my hand. “I think you're doing something good. I support what you're doing. It just sounds…complicated.”

She was innocent, I was pretty sure. Laura, I wanted to kill.