The Mare (29 page)

I called again the first week of school and nobody answered the phone. But the next day a teacher from Velvet's school called me. She wanted me to know that Velvet had turned in a beautiful paper about a horse; she said it was probably the most beautiful paper she'd ever seen from a student. Technically, she wasn't supposed to call me, but she knew it would really matter to me, and she wanted to tell me. I said, “How did Velvet react when you told her?” “I haven't yet,” said the woman. “Velvet hasn't been in school all week and I can't get her mother on the phone. Do you know what's going on?”

My first week at school they beat a old man and made him crawl on glass. If I said that to Ginger she would say, “ ‘They'? Who is ‘they'? Be specific.” And I would be thinking, What difference does it make? They beat a old man. Anyway, I didn't know who they were; they were kids in my school a few grades above me.

But I saw them doing it. It was the morning before the school opened. Most kids stand by the door waiting to go in, but I walked away from them that day because I was missing my horse and also thinking about what my mom told me, and how she looked at me when I said I wasn't bad just because my father didn't want her. Or me. I walked to the side of the school and I saw these older kids in the back, way at the end of the basketball court, crowding around. Even from far away it looked like something bad. But I mind my own business, and anyway the doors were open and my homeroom teacher, Mr. Stamford, was yelling at me.

They next day the homeroom teachers yelled at all of us. They used words like
vicious
and
decency.
They said the old man was small and crazy and the boys said they would burn him and made him crawl on the glass while they kicked him; Mr. Stamford yelled about jail. Teachers have been yelling at us about jail since first grade, so somebody just said something funny in the back and people laughed. “That could've been your father or your grandfather!” yelled Mr. Stamford. But it couldn't. Not mine. I didn't have a father or grandfather anymore.

I finally got her on the phone. I told her how proud I was that she turned in her essay. I asked her what the teacher said to her about it. She said, “Nothin'.” I said, “What do you mean? How could she tell me it was great and tell you nothing?” She said, “Ahh dunno” and then, abruptly, asked me if I could get her into a better school. How could I do that? I asked. What kind of school? She said, This girl Marisol is going to Catholic school next year. “What kind of grades does Marisol get?” I asked, and she snapped at me. “If you can get your grades up, I'll talk to Paul about it,” I said without hope. “And then we can talk to your mother.”

She didn't even mention her horse.

After school I walked around looking for Dominic. I went to the block where I first met him with Strawberry and walked around it, like, three times. These little kids were staring the crap out of me. I kept my hand on my cell, hoping he might call, even though how could he? I never gave him my number.

I kept thinking, What would he do? I knew he wouldn't kick a old man, but would he just walk away or would he try to stop them? What would it be like to crawl on the ground while people kicked you? What would it be like to kick somebody like that, with everybody else doing it too? I went back to the school and went to look at the place. There was still glass on the ground and something that was maybe blood. I
felt,
but not a normal feeling that you can say what it is. It didn't come from inside me, it came
to
me, like a echo, far away, but from
everywhere.
Except I didn't hear it, I felt it on my skin and in my body.

What Shawn said, that Ginger could be nice because people like her got other people to do the violence for them; I didn't understand what he meant, but it felt true. Ginger in the car, talking to me about Fiery Girl loving me and the thing she could only hear by herself—that was true too. I knew because now I was hearing it.

When Ginger mentioned sending Velvet to Catholic school I said, “We can't take that on; it's too much.” She said she thought something bad was happening at the school, that Velvet was acting strange. I said bad things are always happening at school at that age; bad things will happen at Catholic school too; we can't protect her from her life. She pushed and I blew up. I didn't say anything I hadn't said before, but my voice was more angry than my words and I could see her shut down inside. She didn't storm out of the room, she just got quiet and looked away. I knew I should put my arms around her, or at least touch her; if I'd done that, it would've been all right. But I couldn't. Polly had broken with me just hours before. She'd gotten her degree and she was going away.

The truth of Shawn and the truth of Ginger were both real, but I couldn't be in them at the same time. I wanted to talk to Shawn about it, because he was the only one who might understand. So I called him. But he didn't call back. He blew up my phone all spring, but I never called him back. Now he didn't pick up the phone at all.

I told her we couldn't do Catholic school because we couldn't afford it. She was quiet and then said, “I understand.” I don't remember what we talked about then, just that she kept stopping to scream at her brother, who was screaming at her. I asked when she wanted to come ride. She said she didn't know, she needed to help her mother at home. Her mother didn't have her job anymore and they needed to get the house clean so that they could get a boarder.

I wanted to talk to Paul and I couldn't. I couldn't even feel him when I lay next to him that night, except distantly, like something chaotic happening somewhere far away from me.

They say that your partner always knows when you “cheat,” even if it's unconscious knowledge. But I don't think Ginger did. She was too focused on that damn kid. It was almost insulting.

Shawn never answered, so I thought his phone got lost or stole. I went to his house. I knocked at the door for a long time and his grandma finally came. Her face was deep, her eyes were so deep I was scared to look at them. I saw she didn't remember who I was and, looking at her face, I didn't want to say.

“What you want, girl?”

“Is Shawn home?”

Her eyes remembered me; they remembered and they hurt. I said, “When will he be back?”

She said, “Baby, Shawn's dead. You didn't know? They shot him.”

Music played from cars driving by;
supersonic, hypnotic, funky fresh.
A chill went through me.
This beat flows right through my chest.
I said, “Who shot him? Why?”

“There is no ‘why.' He was with a boy had a beef with some other boys. He was just there. That's what they told me.”

I said, “Sorry,” but it didn't come out. Still, she heard.

“It's not your fault, baby,” she said. “Thanks for comin' by. Now you go home.” She started to close the door.

I said, “When was it?”

“Fifteen days ago. Saturday before last.”

Saturday before last: that was the day of the county fair, when I heard Shawn in my head saying “lil' Orphan Annie.”

Real soft she said, “You look older than you are, don't you? You probably no more than fourteen years old.”

“I'm thirteen.”

“Thirteen,” she said, shaking her head. “Thirteen.” She closed the door.

I went away from the house and sat on some steps a few doors down. Music still played from cars, different songs crossing each other. I tried to hear the song that played when I met Shawn. But it was gone. People walked by. I touched my face with my hand; my skin felt thick and numb.

I thought: I want my mare. I want to put my arms around her neck and feel her feeling me.

I didn't have Pat's number, so I called Ginger. She wasn't there and Paul didn't answer either. I called twice and then I called Ginger's cell. She didn't pick up.
Lil' Orphan Annie.

I didn't leave a message. I put my cell in my pocket and went to pick up Dante.

I didn't go to the New York meeting to find him. When I did find him, I didn't approach him. It was enough to know he was there, and that no harm would come, that goodwill lived between us. But, at the tail end of the meeting after the meeting, he came to me. He said, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry for how I was, everything.” I said, “I am too.” He put his arm around me, and without thinking, I put my hand on his heart. I said, “Can we go somewhere and talk?” His eyes thought off to the side and then he said, “Yes.”

As we walked out, my enemy-friend from a long time ago stared me in the face. But I didn't care about her.

We walked for blocks looking for someplace quiet; every restaurant or coffee shop was loud and crowded. I talked nervously. I said that when I had met him I did not know how to be part of life. He said, So now you know? I said, I'm figuring it out. I'm married and I'm fostering a child. I felt this statement touch him, though I wasn't sure how. He said he lived nearby, that if I wanted, we could go to his place.

I realized I was afraid like this: He offered to make us tea, and when he opened a drawer, instead of spoons, he took out a large knife and held it up in his fist. I stood and shouted, “Put that down now!” He laughed and said, “It was a joke.” I sat down and we had tea. His phone rang and he answered. I checked my phone; Velvet had called but left no message. He was talking to a woman; I could hear her angry voice. He was telling her that his plans had changed unexpectedly; he said, “Trust me.” She hung up on him. He said, “That was my girlfriend.” I stood and said, “I guess I should go.” He said, “No. Let's go into the other room.”

The trapdoor opened and I went down the stairs.

I tried to sit and watch
Napoleon Dynamite
with Dante, but I couldn't, not with Shawn dead, sit there and act like nothing happened. I couldn't talk about it to my mother and I didn't want Dante to hear it anyway.

So I waited until just before my mom would be home and then I went to Lydia. I had not been there for a year, but I saw her sometimes on the street and she was nice to me. So I went to her door. Her daughter Kristal answered wearing a shirt with Tweety Bird on it; she was only a few years older than me, but in a year her body had grown up all the way even in that shirt. She didn't let me in; she went to get her mom. Lydia opened the door, but she didn't let me in at first either. She just went, “What up, sweetheart?” with not much sweet. When I told her why I couldn't go home, her voice got so hard she almost shut the door with it. “Then you have to go to the police,” she said. “I can't help you.”

“But the police know,” I said, and I was crying then. “It happened while I was up riding horses and I just found out. His grandmother told me.”

“Why don't you go home then, baby?” she said. I told her because my mom lost her job and had too many bad things already, and she opened the door. She put her hand on me and asked if he was my boy, and I said no, he was just a boy, but we talked sometimes, and she said, “Come in and sit with us, then. We just sittin' together. Don't talk about it—my babies don't need to hear it. But just sit and watch some TV with us.” And she let me stop crying and then we went in with her family and she sat with me on the couch with her arm around me while a little boy and his girl twin watched Madea.

When I called her back, her mother put her brother on the phone again. He said, “She's not here.” It was dark by then, so I said, “Where is she?” And he said, “I don't know.” His voice wasn't scared but almost high-spirited, as if he were delighted by some funny thing. He said, “My mom says Velvet's going to live in a box on the street.” I said, “But she's not doing that now, is she?” And he said, “Nooooo.” I said, “Then tell her to call me when she comes back, okay?”

I got off and felt how bad I wanted to sit outside in the cold and drink. I put on a jacket and a scarf. I poured myself some pomegranate juice, mixed it with lime, soda, and a ton of sugar. I went outside and drank it and thought of Michael.

We kissed with our whole mouths, but the feeling was delicate, too delicate for sex. He touched my face and we held each other. I sang a song to him, a nonsense song from when we were teenagers, and he looked it up online to see who it was by because I didn't know. It was so gentle, like something young springing from inside age, smiling and sweet like I was never able to be in middle school, or high school, or when I knew this man nearly two decades ago; in that foolish moment, the hard glass of my girlhood became flesh as if for the first time.

Middle school; where Velvet was.

Kristal said to come in the kitchen and help her get some soda and chips, and when we were in there, she said, “You can stop by on Friday if you want to. Lydia's goin' out that night, and I'm taking care of the kids. You can come. Maybe you can stay when I go out. I'll give you a little cash.”

I said, “Okay, let me find out.”

Madea said, “Sometimes I look at you, I don't know if you got a mirror or a friend.”

I wanted to ask Kristal why she called her mom “Lydia,” but I didn't. I was tired, and everything was strange. I wanted to see the old Haitian lady. On the way home, I hoped I would see her. If I knew where she was, I would've gone to find her, but I didn't know.

The phone rang in my lap; I picked it up and said, “Honey, what's going on? It's late; why were you out?”

“It's before ten,” she said.

I said, “It's still late for you.”

She ignored that and said, “When can I come up there? I want to see my horse.”

“You know you can come whenever your mother says it's okay. But your voice sounds different. Why haven't you been talking to me?”

She was quiet a long moment. Then she said she hadn't been going to school, that she thought I'd be mad at her.

“Honey,” I said, “why aren't you going to school?”

“Something bad happened.”

“Listen,” I said. “Something bad happened this summer. You got thrown off a horse and got a concussion and you got kicked out of the barn. But you kept riding and now you've moved your horse to a better place where you can ride her again. You
walked your path.
You asked me how to do that; now you know because you did it. Keep walking your path.”

She listened to me. I could tell. Because I believed my words and she could hear it in my voice. Of course I believed it. If a man who had told me I wasn't worth anything could hold me and kiss me and I could sing him a song, then any good thing might happen. If what I had longed for, blindly and brokenly, and struggled like an animal to find in the most unlikely form, if it had really been there and was now simply, gently revealed—any good thing might happen. Anything.

“Ginger,” she said, “somebody I know got shot. This boy who didn't even do nothing.”